Care Work in Private Households. A Matter of Recognition. Social-ethical Analyses

本研究项目是关于由亲属、移徙护理员（住家护理员）或流动专业护理员在私人家庭中从事护理工作的结构条件，这些人员大多是妇女。尽管这三个群体之间存在着具体的差异，但他们的工作条件的典型特征是严重依赖，缺乏自主权和社会认可。我们对性别敏感的社会伦理分析旨在澄清德国家庭护理的条件，并在阿克塞尔·霍内斯的理论方法启发的认识理论框架内提供解释。在这个理论框架内，我们将分析护理工作者的工作和生活条件，具体考虑到他们的自主权和歧视经验的结构性限制。在此基础上，我们将针对私人家庭制定一套（暂定）以认可为导向的护理工作政策标准。这一套标准一方面将通过一系列专家访谈，另一方面将根据研究文献对德国、法国、奥地利和荷兰的护理制度进行比较分析，从而进一步丰富和完善。我们将调查护理工作的制度和经济条件是如何引起或使这些福利国家缺乏认可的。这些项目的目的是根据社会科学和社会伦理研究，拟订如何克服对从事护理工作的人的认识不足的战略，并提出有助于改革护理政治的政治步骤建议，以及确定需要在社会一级启动的有利于承认护理工作的变革进程。因此，我们的项目为研究长寿社会中日益增长的护理需求的后果做出了社会伦理贡献。

This research project is about the structural conditions of care work in private households by rela-tives, migrant care-workers (live-ins) or ambulant professional care workers, all of them mostly women. Albeit there are specific differences between the three groups, their working conditions are typically characterised by grave dependencies, a lack of autonomy and social recognition. Our gender-sensitive social-ethical analysis aims at clarifying the conditions of home-care in Germany and at providing an interpretation within the framework of a recognition theory inspired by Axel Honneths theoretical approach. Within this theoretical framework we will analyse the care workers conditions of work and life with specific regard to the structural restrictions of their autonomy and to experiences of discrimination. Based on this we will develop a (tentative) set of criteria for recognition-oriented care work policy with reference to the private household. This set of criteria will be further enriched and refined on the one hand through a series of expert-interviews and on the other hand by means of a comparative analysis of the care regimes in Germany, France, Austria and the Netherlands, based on research-literature. We will investigate how the institutional and economic conditions of care-work evoke or perpetuate the lack of recognition in these welfare-states. The projects aims at elaborating strategies how to overcome the recognition deficit for those who do care work, based on social science and social ethics research, and at presenting suggestions for political steps that help reform the politics of care as well as identifying processes of change which need to be initiated on the societal level in favour of the recognition of care work. Thus our project makes a social-ethical contribution to the study of the consequences of the growing need of care in the long-life-society.