Cultures of care: Why countries in Western Europe choose different actors to counter the care crisis

European countries have reallocated care tasks to new care providers.

Sweden opened the care market for for-profit actors, Germany gave a prominent role to faith-based care providers and Italy facilitated the growth of informal care through migrant workers.

The choice of actors is puzzling: why does Sweden, with a long history of relying on the state, opt for market- and profit-based care providers?

Why does Italy, with little experience of immigration and a public opinion increasingly opposing immigration, opt for a migrant-in-the-family care regime?

Why does Germany, a rapidly secularizing society, bring back in faith-based welfare providers to solve the care problem? The picture runs counter to the expectations of central welfare state theories.

Theoretically, the project develops a new ‘cultures of care’-approach that highlights the importance of prevalent shared imaginaries of care.

Empirically, the study  explores how shared imaginaries of care condition the policy choices leading to new care providers.

The project shifts the focus from measuring care ideals through surveys to analysing how care imaginaries are transmitted through artefacts.

The project systematically collects empirical material on care ideals from two sources between 1980 and 2020: family magazines, and care brochures from governmental agencies.

Thereafter a process tracing study (including interviews with 60 policymakers) explores how shared imaginaries of care conditioned the rise of new care actors.