Chapter five: Contracting-out care: Nursing homes in canada

Abstract

From a neoliberal perspective, governments should steer and not row; competitive markets provide effective, quality services; and individuals should take responsibility for much of their own health. These assumptions provide the basis for privatisation, a process with multiple forms that are often quite complicated and difficult to see. More of the costs of services and more of the labour are shifted to individuals and families, management in public services follows practices imported from the for-profit sector and more services are handed over to the for-profit sector while those that remain public are often managed by for-profit firms. One aspect of this for-profit provision is the contracting out of services, which we examine in nursing homes. As feminist political economists, we assume that politics, economics, discourses and ideas are integrally related. We see that the search for profit profoundly influences how we live, work, talk, reproduce and play. So do the actions of individuals and collectives. We insist that the gendered construction of social relations and the interconnections between paid and unpaid labour are critical to our understanding of how things work.