Research groups

CitCare

CitCare offers a space where to thematise care policies issues – focusing on the care of dependent people of all ages (children, adults with disabilities, Alzheimer's patients, dependent elderly, people facing the end of life).

Care involves the recognition of human vulnerability throughout the life course.

Care policies, their definition and implementation, are an excellent vantage point from where to observe the dynamic relation between social protection and citizenship, and how it evolves over time.

Indeed, the question of how to deal with situations of dependency is at the heart of current tensions regarding the Welfare state: the demand for care is growing quantitatively as well as qualitatively, while states and public authorities seek to control or reduce expenditures. In this context, care policies contribute to defining the family and its role in society, delineating the respective responsibilities of public, economic and civil society actors, shaping the understanding of care and social intervention, and to regulating the economy and the labour market. They question institutionalised gender and class and other inequalities due to origin, as well as the articulation of various spheres of life (most prominently the so-called “reconciliation” of work and family). CitCare is particularly interested in the following issues: • new forms of public action with regards to the aging population (home-based care, citizenship within institutions, care for people with dementia, informal care givers)  and, more generally, related to new social risks associated to care (for instance single parenthood) •  ways in which local policies contribute to reconfiguring citizenship (by articulating rights and obligations, and by situating individuals within symbolic and practical frames of belonging and participation) • theoretic approaches of citizenship that account for these developments as part of a wider analysis of implementation of care policies.

CitCare offers the following activities:

Discussions of ongoing research: the group is a forum where researchers at all stages working on care, care policies and related issues of citizenship and social protection can submit their work and receive feedback.

Short workshops bringing together academics and practitioners around a research programme or a local or regional care-related issue. These workshops explicitly encourage exchanges between researchers and practitioners around particular policy-relevant themes.

Workshops and lectures: CitCare invites researchers from Switzerland and other countries to present their work in public lectures and workshops. CitCare works closely with the Network for the Analysis of Public Policy (REAP) of Geneva's Professional University of Social Work (HETS/HES-SO) and collaborates with the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Economic Sociology (LISE) of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS-CNAM) in Paris.

Individual people, institutions or associations interested in joining the group, or in proposing an activity within the framework of the group, can contact:

Barbara Lucas (barbara.lucas(at)unige.ch or barbara.lucas(at)hesge.ch)