Care Workers, Mobilization and Political Agency in times of Austerity

This Paper will examine the mobilization of care workers against austerity in an Irish context where significant public sector rationalization, downsizing and the marketization of care (Conroy and Barry 2014; Himmelweit 2014) has had gendered, racialized and class implications. An analysis of past and current efforts by ethnic minority and migrant women, trade unions and feminist organisations to politicize care work and improve working conditions and pay reveal potential synergies between different claims yet also limits and erasures that emerge in the construction of ‘shared’ campaigns. This empirical assessment is informed by efforts to build intersectional campaigns on care work in other contexts, and allows for reflection on, gendered, class and racialized dynamics that shape efforts to employ caring and care work as a political practice and a form of political agency.