Intersections and Boundaries of Work and Non-work: The Case of Elder Care in Comparative European Perspective

It is widely recognised that a work activity can be undertaken in a variety of socio-economic relations. However, the ways in which work and non-work are differentiated, or intersect, are under-specified in existing research. This article takes the social care of older people as a field through which to explore the articulation of work and non-work. It analyses the nature of the boundaries between what counts as work, and what counts as non-work; the intersections of work and non-work, and what forms this embeddedness takes; and the variation of this articulation across different European countries (Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, and England). Three dimensions of articulation of work and non-work emerged from the analysis: (1) love or money; (2) morality versus instrumentality; and (3) from professional demarcations to embeddedness in everyday life. The article sets out how these vary by country. Overall, the research makes a general contribution to the sociology of work, and to our understanding of cross-national variation in the labour and provision of eldercare.