Reconceptualizing the care crisis

Internationally there is a feminist discussion about a care crisis, its logics, and consequences. A discussion that focusses upon global and regional care chains, underfunding and neo-liberalizing. From a politics of location, the question becomes how this discussion relates to the Nordic welfare regimes. Regimes that typically understood as caring welfare states with universal rights to receive care of relatively good quality. Rights for the sick, the oldest old, the challenged and preschool children. This paper investigates how the care crisis in the Nordics differs from a care crisis in a liberal welfare state. I develop a contextually sensitive concept of a care crisis that can understand its characteristics. This reconceptualization makes visible what happens inside the social-democratic welfare state and relates it to concepts of gender insensitive universalism, intersectionality, and sustainability. And one that understands a care crisis as having two dimensions of insufficient and not ‘good-enough’ care. The new theorizing is applied to illustrate some of the lived, gendered effects for care professionals and those dependent upon the Nordic welfare state.