Who Cares? Neoliberalism, Informal Labour, and Life-Making
Who Cares? Neoliberalism, Informal Labour, and Life-Making

Summary/Abstract: In this paper we develop a Marxist-feminist intervention into the phenomena of informal labour and life-making through a social reproduction lens. In order to approach these issues in a more consistent manner, we structure the argumentation in two parts. After taking a few necessary theoretical and methodological notes on neoliberal abolition of society and on Social Reproduction Theory, in the second part of the paper we elaborate the problem of informal labour and we link it to the recent crisis of care work. We assert that this “care crisis” arises from the neoliberal need for a reconfiguration of reproduction, deepened by reassigning the responsibility of care from welfare state to personal initiative and charity. Suggested thematic inclination of the paper evokes the concept of ideological formalization of family as a fundamentally “anti-social unit” and critically approaches the ideology of “familialisation”. When it comes to the matter of context and method, we depart from the premise that economic liberalism, grounded in individualist premises, represents an ideological expression of capitalism, and that family as a system for governing social reproduction within households depends not only upon naturalisation, but also upon individuation.

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