Abstract:
This article seeks to investigate boundary-work surrounding elderly care as a specific e occupation in Brazil. To this end, it analyzes the speeches produced by the State on the figure of the care worker, using documental analysis. Then it discusses the relevance of the strategic distancing between care workers and domestic workers, mobilizing qualitative research carried out between 2014 and 2017 in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo with: (1) companies that negotiate elderly care givers’ services, working at home and; (2) caregivers who work in a public policy that offers home care. From an intersectional perspective, it is discussed how care workers who provide services at home seek to untangle themselves from domestic work, discursively framed as distinct, despite the proximity and imbrication between the fields of care and domestic services.
Keywords:
Care; Care workers; Domestic services; New occupations; Intersectionality