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Portrait Sara Eldén. Photo: Emma Lord.

Sara Eldén

Associate Professor | Senior Lecturer

Portrait Sara Eldén. Photo: Emma Lord.

Private domestic care services for the elderly : Inequalities and new conditions of care in a changing Swedish welfare state

Author

  • Terese Anving
  • Sara Eldén

Summary, in English

The sector for private domestic services in Sweden has grown rapidly since the RUT tax deduction was introduced in 2007. Already in the government proposition (2006/07:94) it was suggested that services provided by the expanding market would come to replace parts of the publicly funded elderly care, thus marking a shift in the organisation of care in the welfare state. Today we begin to see the effects of this, people over the age of 65 are one of the main groups making use of the RUT tax deduction (Swedish NAO 2020: 34) and an increasing number of companies offer services specifically targeting the elderly, their relatives and their different needs. At the same time research has shown that it has become more difficult to get publicly funded home care (Szebehely et al 2017) and during the last decades care for the elderly has been characterised by austerity, decentralisation, privatisation and ‘freedom of choice’ (Brennan et al 2012; Edebalk 2022). Departing from a qualitative study on paid domestic care for elderly and the changing conditions and understandings of care we will in this paper analyse the characteristics of the market focusing the relation between public and private care as well as underlying understandings of what care work is. We will argue that the expansion of the market reproduces inequalities between different groups of elderly and their relatives as well as between employers and employees, relating specifically to gender, race and class.

Department/s

  • Gender Studies
  • Department of Sociology
  • Sociology

Publishing year

2024

Language

English

Document type

Conference paper: abstract

Topic

  • Gender Studies

Conference name

Conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA)

Conference date

2024-08-27 - 2024-08-30

Conference place

Porto, Portugal

Status

Published

Project

  • RUT tax deductions for the elderly: New conditions for care practices