Political care research has demonstrated how the dominant form of governance of care today entails various tensions and contradictions which stem from the incompatibility of idiosyncratic care practices and the assumptions of markets. The aim to measure, quantify and calculate care is a key aspect in these developments. Based on previous analyses of neoliberalism and the Lisbon strategy, and incorporating more recent EU social policy guidelines, this paper examines the extent to which measurement, calculation and economization of the sphere of care defines contemporary EU social policy. It then considers reasons to the success (or not) of such neoliberal policies by drawing insight from Nancy Fraser’s idea of the triple movement, focusing on the forces of marketization, social protection and emancipation. Through this analysis a central site of politics of care is shown to take place in the development of utilitarian policies and through the debate on the limits of measurement.
