The ‘care crisis’: its scientific framing and silences

This chapter presents a historical knowledge of the framing of the care crisis theoretically. The ‘care crisis’ is a concept that was 'born in the USA' in a liberal welfare regime with a rampant neoliberalising more than two decades ago. This framing of the care crisis does not travel easily to other regimes such as the social-democratic welfare regimes, where it silences important aspects of care, such as professional care and issues of good care. Ultimately, the Anglo-American understanding of the care crisis has become hegemonic, that is, performing a kind of discursive imperialism. The chapter argues that researchers need to reflect upon their ‘scientific backpack’, their framing of the care crisis, and rethink the concept to fit the context, as well as recover lost insights from the early theorising of the care crisis.