Towards caring neighborhoods and caring cities: Pathways to a feminist socialization of care

Abstract

In our contribution, we want to explore how care work is spatially embedded in neighbourhoods and cities. With this lense we aim to discuss why and how we could socialize areas of social reproduction. In doing so, our contribution connects to current debates on the socialization of care work (for example at Sorgende Stadt Konferenz in Bremen 2023 and Vergesellschaftungskonferenz in Berlin 2022), as part of a feminist transformation strategy.

Little has changed in the prevailing power relations and the organization of care work: care continues to be unequally distributed along the lines of gender, race, and class. We observe privatization and externalization tendencies in the care economy. This leads to care work being increasingly outsourced (to migrantized and racialized persons) or shifted to the private sphere, commodified or further professionalized and thus more subject to profit and efficiency constraints.

Against this background, we see the feminist socialisation of care work as a path to social transformation. In our contribution we want to outline how socialized care infrastructures could look like, which are locally anchored in the neighborhood and oriented towards the needs of the caregivers and care workers. To this end, we want to learn from various social movements and examples from places such as from Barcelona, Zaragoza and Santiago de Chile. In Bremen and Berlin, ideas and concepts for the socialization of care work such as “caring cities” are increasingly being discussed and tested as well.

In our view, the basis for implementation are participatory processes from below and infrastructures that are place based and thus, embedded in the spatial realities and needs of cities and neighborhoods. We see the greatest potential at the neighborhood level, since we need care infrastructures close to homes and communities as well as adapted to complex chains of care in everyday life. For this, it is essential to understand the current neighborhood care structures and actors in order to analyze which frameworks, structures and spatial arrangements are needed by those who carry out care work.

Within the framework of our contribution, we want to present the method of conducting a participatory inventory of these structures and our findings from that. Within an explorative project around the Leopoldplatz in the district of Berlin-Wedding, we mapped care institutions and through interviews with care workers elaborated fields of tension, demands and struggles: In practice, financial resources are often only sufficient for part-time positions, yet many care workers work full time; project funding is usually only for a short period of time, which leads to uncertain future prospects as well as additional, unpaid work; project funding is often tied to (political) trends and rarely addresses the roots. This partial insight from the ground already underlines the urgency of a feminist socialization of care work from below.