Care Work in Private Households. A Matter of Recognition. Social-ethical Analyses

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Bernhard Emunds; Professorin Dr. Marianne Heimbach-Steins
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284086583

This research project is about the structural conditions of care work in private households by rela-tives, migrant care-workers (live-ins) or ambulant professional care workers, all of them mostly women. Albeit there are specific differences between the three groups, their working conditions are typically characterised by grave dependencies, a lack of autonomy and social recognition. Our gender-sensitive social-ethical analysis aims at clarifying the conditions of home-care in Germany and at providing an interpretation within the framework of a recognition theory inspired by Axel Honneths theoretical approach. Within this theoretical framework we will analyse the care workers conditions of work and life with specific regard to the structural restrictions of their autonomy and to experiences of discrimination. Based on this we will develop a (tentative) set of criteria for recognition-oriented care work policy with reference to the private household. This set of criteria will be further enriched and refined on the one hand through a series of expert-interviews and on the other hand by means of a comparative analysis of the care regimes in Germany, France, Austria and the Netherlands, based on research-literature. We will investigate how the institutional and economic conditions of care-work evoke or perpetuate the lack of recognition in these welfare-states. The projects aims at elaborating strategies how to overcome the recognition deficit for those who do care work, based on social science and social ethics research, and at presenting suggestions for political steps that help reform the politics of care as well as identifying processes of change which need to be initiated on the societal level in favour of the recognition of care work. Thus our project makes a social-ethical contribution to the study of the consequences of the growing need of care in the long-life-society.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants