Ökonomisierung der Pflege – Formalisierung und Prekarisierung von Pflegearbeit

This article deals with changes in regulation with regard to long-term care policies in Germany since the introduction of the long-term care insurance in the middle of the 1990s that were implemented in the context of demographic and socio-economic change. These long-term care policies go along with benefit extensions on the one hand and processes of economization on the other hand. The approval of private services and the standardization of benefits has changed structures of the long-term care market, wages, occupational and qualification structures as well as working conditions of formal care workers – mostly in a negative way. The nature of service expansion and the consistently high proportion of women in the care profession are explained in the context of the modernized breadwinner model. Although there are efforts to formalize, to occupationalize and to professionalize there is a trend towards precarization that is analysed in the light of a three-dimensional concept of precarization (precarization of occupation, work and conditions of reproduction).