Abstract
This chapter examines diverse local care loops within one country, as it explains how the local context affects the implementation of eldercare policies from the perspective of two Polish towns. Poland has a family-by-default care regime, based on informal and unpaid family carer, with modest availability of public in-home and institutional care. In recent years, care provisions have seen cuts in spending, marketization, and precarization of care work under neoliberalism. As Poland has never seen a large-scale de-familialization of care for the older adults, the current situation is best described as the neoliberalization of the family-by-default model. We present empirical cases of care arrangements from our ethnography of elder care in two Polish middle-sized towns. This comparative study explains how the local care loops can successfully mobilize local actors, under favourable conditions.However, because of central cuts, financial burdens for local public care institutions and for families grew, and, as these actors resist the caring obligations, it contributes to creation of care loopholes that leave the low- or no-income people without care. These care loopholes may be filled in by the third sector ‘hybrid’ organizations that encompass the social integration efforts and care provision rather than focusing on one function.
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Notes
- 1.
The project was funded by the Polish National Science Centre [Narodowe Centrum Nauki] under the research grant number 2013/08/A/HS4/00602.
- 2.
The part of field research we are recounting here was carried out by the authors of this chapter and Marta Kiełkowska. During one research stay, we were accompanied by the participants of the seminar “Sandwich generation. The issues of providing care to people dependent on assistance in the migrating and ageing society” organized in the Institute of Sociology of the University of Warsaw and these were: Paweł Bagiński, Maciej Biernacki, Małgorzata Brożek, Adrianna Drozdowska, Marta Kozieł, Justyna Maciejewska, Mirosława Maćko, Kamil Matuszczyk, Patryk Mikulski, Karolina Pieniak, Adam Ramus, Karolina Rydwańska, Aleksandra Siwek, Piotr Starzyński, and Michał Wende.
- 3.
For the comprehensive description of our research design (see Chapter 3 in Radziwinowiczówna et al., 2018).
- 4.
Figure first published in: Radziwnowiczówna Agnieszka, Anna Rosińska, Weronika Kloc-Nowak (2019) Ethnomorality of care: Migrants and their ageing parents. Routledge, re-published by the publisher's permission.
- 5.
All names of research participants have been changed for the purpose of their anonymization.
- 6.
Figure first published in: Radziwnowiczówna Agnieszka, Anna Rosińska, Weronika Kloc-Nowak (2019) Ethnomorality of care: Migrants and their ageing parents. Routledge, re-published by the publisher’s permission.
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Radziwinowiczówna, A., Rosińska, A. (2022). Neoliberalization of Familialism by Default: The Case of Local Organization of Elder Care in Poland. In: Näre, L., Isaksen, L.W. (eds) Care Loops and Mobilities in Nordic, Central, and Eastern European Welfare States. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92889-6_3
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