Privileging the Household: Policy and Academic Analyses in the EU

The household is back in fashion as a privileged site of labour in academic and policy analysis.  The EC (2012) in its recent working document Towards a job-rich recovery saw care and housework services, as having an important job-creation potential in the future as populations age and the number of potential carers decline. Although the paper recognizes the array of activities engaged in by members of the household (cooking, cleaning, gardening and pet care, construction and repair, shopping, volunteering, child care are mentioned), there is scant discussion of the labour force to which this initiative is being directed ie. its ethnicised and gendered composition which varies in different migratory and welfare regimes. In contrast, recent feminist research too has directed its attention to households as the key nodes in the global chains of care where the focus rests on the role of migrant women. With some notable exceptions of studies highlighting the male commodification of social reproduction in the household, the global chains of care literature has largely not connected up with studies of time use and outsourcing. The paper argues that at a time when policy makers in Europe (national and EU) are turning to the household as a source of paid employment as a response to welfare restructuring and in a time of crisis as well as within a discourse of individual choice, we need to unpackage the household in terms of the substitution of its multiple activities, the labour force involved in its social reproduction and the links between the household and external agencies.