Reconstructing dependency: precarity, precariousness and care in old age

This chapter explores the potential for the development of critical approach to care based on the concepts of precarity and precariousness. Applying those concepts at the level of both theory and analysis, it is argued, serves to draw attention to both the socially constructed uncertainties of care provision conditioned by the labour market and corporate practices on the one hand, and the uncertainties of physical ageing and the ontological vulnerabilities that arise from our bodily existence on the other. Uncertainty also confronts those who provide care in either a paid or unpaid/informal capacity. The precarious conditions of work reflect the financial fragility of the economic supports and the changing and unequal markets that increasingly underpin the way care is provided to the increasing numbers of people who live extended lives today.