INTRODUCTION: Social Inequalities, Uneven Space, and Care

Abstract

Unevenness remains a salient characteristic of caring relationships in a world plagued by disruptions and crises. Scholars of care have acknowledged the prevalence of uneven geographies of care that unfold primarily in urban space. Yet, the urban is also a hopeful realm where care is continuously extended to the needy-from homeless people to undocumented migrants. Performing the (urban) work of care and mitigating the inequalities that underpin it is a massive endeavor necessitating mass mobilization of individuals, social groups, and communities. But care also requires more than benevolence and affect as considerable investment and allocation of material resources are needed to sustain care work on wider redistributive scales. It is through these site-specific combinations of resources, or ‘materialities of care, ' which include not only human bodies, but also material hardwire, or infrastructures, that urban care is provided.