About
Social quality and changing relationships between work, care and welfare in Europe
How do people manage their lives? How is work in the labour force and caring for children integrated in different European regions? What is a good work-life balance? The way in which work and care are managed depends upon the different social and labour market policies in different countries. It also depends upon the values or goals that people might have-for example one couple might think it is important to care for the children themselves and not involve outside agencies, whereas another might prefer to use nurseries. These values or cultures of care also vary across Europe.
At present the European Commission is trying to encourage as many people to be in the workforce as possible. This is framed in what is known as the "Lisbon strategy". However, it is also important to encourage household to have children in the face of an ageing population. These perhaps contradictory policies mean that a lot of stress s put onto households to manage work and care. This project will investigate how this takes place.
Workcare is a project funded under the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission.
About
Workcare is a research project drawing upon the collaboration of 10 different institutional partners and 12 partners altogether.
It ran from October 2006 to September 2009.
Its aims were:
- To describe and analyse the European-wide patterning of welfare, work and care drawing upon a variety of methods and sources including quantitative data (ECHP, ESS, ISSP, WVS, EVS) and qualitative interviews with selected households
- To develop and apply a social quality perspective, enabling a sythesis of macro and micro levels of analysis
- To analyse social policies for work and care at both a European and a national level
- To explain the transitions between work and care on a comparative basis
- To bring in an agency or capabilities perspective on the analysis of work and care by trying to understand the underlying values, cultures and strategies of households in Europe
- To look at the role of flexibility in understanding the combinations of work and care both inside and outside the formal labour market.