Care and the analysis of welfare states

This chapter shows how care become a core concept in social policy research from the 1990s onwards thanks to gender and other scholars. The chapter considers the evolution of social policy research in care as well as provides a critical overview of the current state of affairs in the field of care studies from a comparative and international perspective. In assessing where research on care policy is headed, the authors consider its potential as an analytic framework and pay attention to the ways in which care lies at the intersection of welfare, employment and migration, and what the concept and application of care bring to major challenges such as the growth of inequality, climate change and changes in the world of employment.