SNUAC Visiting Scholars Brown Bag Seminar Series, Spring 2017

SNUAC cordially invites you to

Welfare Regimes across World Regions: Care Arrangements in East Asia and Latin America with an Eye to Migrant Domestic Care Workers

Thursday, May 11 | 12:00 PM | SNUAC Rm #406
Speaker: Peter Abrahamson, University of Copenhagen

Starting point was partly a classification of both East Asia and Latin America being informal care regimes through a strong family orientation promoted by Confucianism and Catholicism respectively, and partly an observation that the welfare regimes were moving targets. Both regions are facing similar challenges from demographic changes (longer life expectancy, declining fertility) and changes within the labor markets (women’s increased formal participation), which combined effect has been termed care crisis. Responses have been to increase (collective) care arrangements via public sector or market interventions; both regions have expanded early childhood education and public (supported) day care and have legislated parental leave. Regions differ with respect to elderly care: in Latin America it is still left to family and/or market, while in East Asia public interventions either as supplementary or alternative have also been introduced. However, within both regions a phenomenon labelled cultural stickiness was discovered: despite legislated rights, practices remained in many instances the same because of non-compliance or non-take up. A preferred or dominant solution to the care crisis among middle class families have been to employ domestic, migrant care workers, which on the outset is a market solution, but it involves active state intervention through migration and labor legislation, and often relies on reinventing family ties either through marriage or family ‘inclusion.’ These developments have huge and different implications with respect to gender, generation and class.

Dr. Abrahamson

is associate professor of Sociology at University of Copenhagen in Denmark. 2009 – 10 he was professor of social policy at SNU. His research focuses on comparative studies of welfare state issues: poverty, social exclusion, activation, spatial differentiation, regional integration and care services. 2006 to 2008 he lived in and worked on Central America, and before that we worked on Europe based at University of Copenhagen. He is co-author of Welfare and Families in Europe (Ashgate 2005) and co-editor of Understanding Social Policy in Europe (Casa Verde Publishing 2008) and New Social Partnerships in Europe (The Copenhagen Centre 2003). He has a Ph.D. in sociology from University of Copenhagen and a Ph.D. in public administration from Roskilde University. He has published more than 200 papers in journals and books across 14 languages. He has been a visiting scholar with 13 leading universities and research institutions in Europe, USA, Latin America and Asia.

Next Brownbag Seminar

Visual Perception and City in Post War Japan

Eun Jeong Choi (Princeton University)

May 18 | 12:00 PM | SNUAC Rm #406