Despite the long history of state intervention in care, care policies have often been regarded as a neglected area of the welfare state. The COVID-19 pandemic, feminist mobilizations, migration, demographic changes and the rise of far-right actors have brought care to the fore as an increasingly salient and contested political issue. Questions about who provides care, who is considered deserving of care, what constitutes good care and who bears its costs have moved to the centre of political debates. However, the relationship between care and the state remains theoretically and empirically unsettled. What does it mean for a state to care? And how does taking care seriously change our understanding of the state itself?
This panel invites papers that critically rethink the relationship between care and the state. Rather than approaching the state as a mere provider or regulator of care services, we seek to explore the multiple ways in which states intervene and sometimes withdraw from care. These processes are deeply implicated in the production and reproduction of inequalities based on gender, ablebodiedness, class, race, nation and other social divisions. At the same time, examining politics through the lens of care raises broader questions about the nature and boundaries of state responsibility. Can care provide a perspective from which to rethink concepts such as citizenship, democracy, solidarity and dependency? Which analytical concepts do we need to study the relation between care and the state? How do different institutions and welfare arrangements construct caring responsibilities? Which discourses, practices and logics underpin state action? And how are these arrangements contested and transformed by social and political actors?
We welcome theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions from different areas of political science and related disciplines, as well as diverse methodological and geographical perspectives. Papers may address formal care policies, institutions and discourses or use care as an analytical lens for examining broader processes of state transformation. By bringing these perspectives together, the panel aims to develop a more explicitly political understanding of care and to explore what placing care at the centre can contribute to analyses of states and societies.
