Infrastructures of Informal Care: Inequality, Exploitation, Emancipation

by Michelle Peterie (Editor), Katherine Kenny (Editor), Alex Broom (Editor), Gaby Ramia (Editor)

Overview

This groundbreaking edited collection examines the ‘dark side’ of care: social and governance infrastructures that both sustain and undermine care at the interpersonal level. Bridging macro-level critique with the lived realities of care, it offers a critical framework for reimagining care in the service of more just and equitable societies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781447372981
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2026
Series:	Transforming Care
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michelle Peterie is ARC DECRA Research Fellow at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, University of Sydney.

Katherine Kenny is Deputy Director of the Sydney Centre for Health Societies and ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney.

Alex Broom is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney.

Gaby Ramia is Professor of Policy and Society within the Discipline of Government and International Relations and Deputy Head (Research) at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney.

Table of Contents

Preface: Care in Global Context - Barbara Prainsack

Introduction: The Infrastructures and Intimacies of Care - Michelle Peterie, Katherine Kenny, Alex Broom and Gaby Ramia

1. Piecing Together Care Infrastructures in the Shadows of the Welfare State - Emma Mitchell et al, Western Sydney University

Part 1: Inequalities of Care

2. Policy Structures and Temporalities of Care in Contemporary Care Regimes - Myra Hamilton

3. Parenting Below the Poverty Line - Michelle Peterie and Alex Broom

4. Crippin’ Care: Gendered Indigenous-Disability Decolonialities in Settler Colonial Australia - Karen Soldatic

5. On the Need for New Infrastructures: Practices of Care for Families Multiple - kylie valentine

6. Understanding Family Financial Assistance with Home Ownership as Private Infrastructure of Care - Julia Cook

Part 2: Care, Exploitation and Expropriation

7. Coloniality and Care - Elise Klein

8. Creating Communities of Statelessness: Emotions of Belonging and Care - Jordana Silverstein

9. Care in the Margins: Affect, Intensity and Diversity - Rebecca E Olson

10. Fieldnotes in Discomfort and Non-Innocent Care - Lisa Slater

Part 3: Valuing (Emancipatory) Care

11. Who Cares for the Carer? Formal and Informal Supports for Carer Wellbeing and Identity - Amy Conley Wright

12. Migrants and Food Security during COVID-19: Towards Informal and Ordinary Acts of Care - Sukhmani Khorana

13. Can Australia Care for International Students? A Governance Infrastructures Approach - Gaby Ramia

14. Contesting the Changing Politics of Care - Ben Spies-Butcher

15. Exploring the Dynamic between an Ethic of Care and the Paid Work Ethic in Australian Society - Greg Marston

Conclusion: Considering the Future of Care - Katherine Kenny, Michelle Peterie, Alex Broom and Gaby Ramia