Main description:

In this revealing look at home care, Cynthia J. Cranford illustrates how elderly and disabled people and the immigrant women workers who assist them in daily activities develop meaningful relationships even when their different ages, abilities, races, nationalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds generate tension. As Cranford shows, workers can experience devaluation within racialized and gendered class hierarchies, which shapes their pursuit of security.

Cranford analyzes the tensions, alliances, and compromises between security for workers and flexibility for elderly and disabled people, and she argues that workers and recipients negotiate flexibility and security within intersecting inequalities in varying ways depending on multiple interacting dynamics.

What comes through from Cranford's analysis is the need for deeply democratic alliances across multiple axes of inequality. To support both flexible care and secure work, she argues for an intimate community unionism that advocates for universal state funding, designs culturally sensitive labor market intermediaries run by workers and recipients to help people find jobs or workers, and addresses everyday tensions in home workplaces.

Contents:

Introduction: Tenions between Flexibility and Security1. Gender, Migration, and the Purist of Security2. Disability and the Quest for Flexibility3. Managing Flexibility without Security in Toronto's Direct Funding4. Negotiating Flexibility with Security in Los Angeles's In-Home Supportive Services5. Agency-Led Flexibility and Insecurity in Toronto's Home Care6. Bargaining for Security with Flexibility in Toronto's Attendant Services7. Toward Flexible Care and Secure Work in Intimate Labor