About María Ángeles Durán's nursery

In this entry I will write about a concept developed by María Ángeles Durán and presented with her usual lucidity in the book La riqueza invisible del cuidado: el cuidatoriado. What I am going to express here is an attempt to summarise, with some comments of my own, the ideas presented in this work. 

Durán explains that social classes exist, they are socially constructed, before anyone investigates them. Studying them helps to improve their awareness: naming, he says, is a way of creating. Hence the importance - and great contribution of Durán because of its usefulness - of giving a name to the group that is responsible for providing care to people - mainly women - who are outside the productive process - children, the elderly and the sick - in our society. Once the care-giver is aware of being a care-giver, of belonging to that social group, and understands their relationship with the productive system and with other social groups, they will be able to start making demands that will improve their material conditions. 

How does the care-giver cover her/his economic needs?

According to Durán, the care-giver's economic needs are covered in three ways: a) by other members of the household/family - it depends on the stability of the family; b) by own resources, either by income from work that is compatible with the care - overload - or by consuming savings of different kinds - it has a limit and can generate problems of re-entry into the labour market; c) by funds that are managed by the Public Administration - although this coverage is weak for the care of elderly and/or dependent people, despite the law of 2006. Where should we go to ensure quality care if the care is provided by a family member? Where should we go to ensure quality care in the event that the care is provided by someone other than a family member? Again, on the government side, this would allow non-family carers to receive a living wage for the care provided, rather than wages below the level set by agreements. This would certainly improve the quality of life of the carer, and could have a positive impact on the quality of care. 

Peasantry, proletariat and carers: similarities and differences

Durán explains that the concept has been created by parallelism with the peasantry and the proletariat with one aim: to turn a dispersed conglomerate -the care-givers- into a revolutionary social agent -the care-givers-. He expresses that the similarity he shares with the peasantry is the spatial dispersion - absence of common places and times to share experiences - and the existence of two subclasses - in the case of the cuidadatoriado, the paid and unpaid subclass, with sometimes shared and sometimes unpaid interests, and this makes joint actions difficult. The proletariat, on the other hand, does present a spatial-temporal concentration - in the factories -, thus favouring the struggle for common objectives, but the care-givers and the proletariat share not having the means of production. While the proletariat has an antagonistic social class, the care-giver does not, and this fact can complicate social action. There is no clear class consciousness among the carers, only a low percentage of the carers are paid, other carers are morally conditioned, and the group is generally made up of immigrants and women.

Moving from the individual to the collective level is undoubtedly important because, as we mentioned at the beginning, awakening the conscience of a collective - that is, getting individuals with nothing in common beyond being part of a certain productive process in an economic system to recognise themselves as equals among themselves - makes social groups active, getting the elements that make them up to understand that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and that, therefore, they can and must pursue a common goal. It is possible that, in time, society will understand that the chronic undervaluation of care and the caregiver was a mistake and, moreover, serious. But for this to happen, care needs to be put at the centre of the system and the work of the carer as a transforming agent, making the invisible visible, will be crucial. 

But what is the care facility? Shuffling alternatives

Durán indicates that the care-giver is still an open concept that needs consensus to be consolidated: it has to define its limits and for this reason several theoretical alternatives with social and political consequences - also economic, since choosing between one of the alternatives and discarding others can affect the productive system - must be chosen. Below, I present, in a summary table, the alternatives proposed by the researcher.

Table. Theoretical alternatives to delimit the care-giving

Source: Own elaboration from Durán (2018)

As shown in the table, any of the alternatives may be valid. However, I would rule out two options: the integration of care producers and recipients and the need for subjective awareness of belonging to the social group. The first one because it can dilute, as Durán points out, the transforming power of the collective by equating the caregiver and the caregiver. An excerpt from Carson McCullers' The Ballad of the Sad Coffee indicates that, although love is a shared experience, it is not the same to be a lover as to be loved. By analogy, in our case, although caring is a shared experience, it is not the same to care as to be cared for. On the other hand, in relation to the second alternative, I believe that not feeling part of a social class does not exempt you from belonging to it, since social class is articulated on the basis of a material reality and, whether it is more or less pleasant on a personal level, belonging to it cannot be decided individually. For this reason, I do not consider it appropriate to theoretically train the carer only by people who identify themselves with the group, as this could detract from the strength and generate tensions with carers who do not feel part of the group for various reasons. Of the alternatives proposed by Durán, I would be in favour of understanding as carers those people who dedicate themselves to care, whether paid or unpaid. The group would be quite numerous and, in addition, the demands should be directed in the first place to the Public Administrations so that they improve the conditions of both, although there could be certain discrepancies and tensions between paid and unpaid. Furthermore, focusing on carers in the broadest sense helps to identify another group which, although not as relevant as these, can arouse some interest: the group of people who do not care. In other words, we could create a theoretical division of society in terms of care: those who care - caretakers - care recipients and those who do not care. I believe that the analytical effort should be dedicated to the first and second group, without a doubt. But it should also be analysed what the conditions of the people who do not care are and why they do not care -privileges, economic, moral or other power-. 

Concluding

The contribution of María Ángeles Durán in giving a name - and therefore a life - to all the people they care for is courageous and innovative. Without a doubt, it is due to her - I believe - incredible capacity to analyse complex social problems from a lively, restless, broad, dynamic, critical and varied perspective. It is of great importance to ensure that carers are aware of themselves, that they build themselves up as social agents of change, in order to improve the lives of those who care and those who are cared for - implicitly or explicitly -. If we consider that care must be at the centre of life and the economy, as the interdependent beings that we are, caring for care is a first level imperative. And, in this aspect, Durán is, with all her academic and informative contributions, a great carer.