Labour intermediation in care provision: diversified employment conditions and conflicting care temporalities

Abstract

The ongoing process of care marketisation is also impacting the Italian familistic welfare state, as evidenced by the increasing presence of private employment agencies in home-based care. This process is having different consequences, from workers’ segmentation to the multiplication of employment and working conditions. Time is essential in care work, and private agencies are provoking a real conceptual shift towards the idea of time as a subjective dimension of the employment relationship. When dealing with time regulation, the emphasis on autonomy and self-organisation faces the concrete limits established by a highly time-consuming activity like care work.