Download full text
(420.8Kb)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.46.2021.4.72-99
Exports for your reference manager
The Pandemic State of Care: Care Familialism and Care Nationalism in the COVID-19-Crisis; The Case of Germany
Der pandemische State of Care: Care-Familialismus und Care-Nationalismus in der COVID-19 Krise am Fallbeispiel Deutschlands
[journal article]
Abstract In the COVID-19 pandemic the (nuclear) family, and the private household that is assumed to contain it, receives an enormous revaluation across different welfare regimes. At the same time the notion of a nationally formed welfare state that protects "its" vulnerable national population is re-enacted... view more
In the COVID-19 pandemic the (nuclear) family, and the private household that is assumed to contain it, receives an enormous revaluation across different welfare regimes. At the same time the notion of a nationally formed welfare state that protects "its" vulnerable national population is re-enacted as a central care entity. From an intersectional and transnational perspective, the article coins the concepts of "care familialism" and "care nationalism" to analyse both the conditions of inequality and the exclusionary effects of these intertwined formations of "home" in the wake of the pandemic state crisis management in Germany. The article presents central dimensions of German care familialism and care nationalism to demonstrate how - and which - hierarchies of care/carelessness are systematically established and deepened within the current state of pandemic policies - from the neglect of those who cannot retreat to a "safe home" to the necropolitics of tightened border regimes and carelessness towards those who are recruited to provide care as live-in or illegalised domestic workers. Against an often-unquestioned methodological familialism and methodological nationalism in current care debates, a research agenda is proposed, which methodologically and conceptually decentres the family and the nation as the dominant formations through which care relations are institutionalised.... view less
Keywords
Federal Republic of Germany; epidemic; crisis management (econ., pol.); caregiving; welfare care; family; reproduction; social inequality; social policy
Classification
Health Policy
Family Policy, Youth Policy, Policy on the Elderly
Free Keywords
COVID-19; familialism; nationalism; care relations; social reproduction; global pandemic
Document language
English
Publication Year
2021
Page/Pages
p. 72-99
Journal
Historical Social Research, 46 (2021) 4
Issue topic
Forum: Caring in Times of Global Pandemic
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed