Development of long-term care as an EU policy field: Boundaries, knowledge and institutional actors

Long-term care (LTC) has become a visible topic on the European Union’s agenda, despite the EU’s limited competences in this field. Most recently, the European Care Strategy adopted in 2022 emphasised the need to improve accessible, affordable and high-quality LTC. Scholars too have begun to pay attention to the EU’s LTC policies and discourses (Caracciola di Torella and Masselot 2024; Dahl and Litvina 2023; Daly 2023; Zacharenko 2023). This research has pointed out the contradictory and competing problem representations, gendered aspects, inadequate and soft policy responses. The literature has also noted the holistic approach of the Care Strategy that connects childcare and long-term care and the needs of care recipients with that of carers. This paper takes a long-durée perspective on the EU’s policy engagement with long-term care to increase our understanding of it as a distinct policy field. This paper asks two research questions: 1) What are the chronological steps whereby long-term care become a discrete EU policy field? 2) What were the key tools in this process and who are the key institutional actors and what kind of struggles were involved? Theoretically, the article draws on a Foucauldian genealogical approach that analyses understandings considering their history and draws attention to boundaries and knowledges that are important in the construction of a new policy field. Here we especially look at how the boundaries to the policy field of gender equality are drawn and redrawn, and how gender issues become more or less pronounced or even silenced. We complement this perspective with a focus on institutional agency with a special attention to the role of the commission. Our paper draws on extensive archive of official document from 1980 until 2024.