| dc.description.abstract | This research investigates the relationship between the crises of care and finance, and efforts
to ensure that care is valued more highly. It explores why investment funds have acquired
care homes, how they realise value, and the implications for workers and residents. It also
examines the factors that have limited financialisation, including the activities of social and
labour movements. These developments are studied through empirical case studies of three
major UK care companies, and analysis of the strategies of selected movements in the UK
and US. The research involved 64 interviews, observation and document analysis. A
geographical perspective helps to illuminate uneven investment in real estate, the quality of
the care homes produced, and the spatial dimensions of organising within globalised care
systems.
The research finds that financial ownership of care companies has been driven by their real
estate assets, the availability of debt financing, and specific business models. Corporate debt
has also enabled governments to displace and depoliticise responsibility for funding care.
However, finance has not replaced labour as a source of value: care remains labour intensive
and value can be extracted from low-status, poorly organised workers and clients. The thesis
deploys feminist care ethics to analyse the effects of financial ownership and crisis on labour
and residents, including evictions that result from care home closures and the production of
new, ‘hotel-like’ facilities. Financialisation has, though, been limited by a lack of material
resources in care and political opposition. In contesting financialised care, movements have
used stories to locate economic agency; to address political, experiential and affective
divides; and to promote alternative social relations of interdependence. Organising is crucial
to creating space for such stories. Overall, financialisation has been enabled by the
undervaluing of care, but it has also been limited by social values and relationships associated
with care. | en_US |
