Beyond 'women's work' : gender, ethnicity and the management of paid care work in non-profit domiciliary services in Italy

Abstract

Based on qualitative data, this article focuses on management practices in social cooperatives operating as non-profit providers of domiciliary care services in Italy. Their livelihood is eroded by the presence of migrant live-in care-givers, who are privately employed, inexpensive and often irregular. This competition is not only economic but also symbolic, as it jeopardises the managers’ attempts to define care work as a skilled job and reproduces notions of care as naturally feminine ‘women’s work’. The article analyses the strategies adopted by the managers in order to negotiate this competition, and shows how these challenge dominant gendered constructions of care work.