Towards solidarity: working relations in personal assistance

Ingrid Guldvik; Karen Christensen; Monica Larsson

doi:10.1080/15017419.2014.897644

Towards solidarity: working relations in personal assistance

Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research

Volume 16 (2014): Issue S1

By: Ingrid Guldvik, Karen Christensen and Monica Larsson

Open Access

|Apr 2014

Abstract

This article explores personal assistance from the assistants' perspectives. Many assistants are satisfied with their work and the possibility to combine the work with other activities on a flexible basis. However, the structural framework of the personal assistance scheme creates risks for the workers who carry out the assistance. These risks are related to strong user control, intimate and personalized relations, part-time work, weakly formalized working conditions and few chances to gain qualifications for future employment opportunities. The gendered labour market is also a structural condition of the scheme. The article focuses on three theoretical working life discussions: flexibility, professionalization and co-determination (between service user and assistant). The article reveals the specific and inverted form these processes are transformed into by the personal assistance scheme and suggests that they create barriers for sustainable working conditions for the assistants as well as options for developing solidarity between service users and assistants.

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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15017419.2014.897644 | Journal eISSN: 1745-3011

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Language: English

Page range: 48 - 61

Submitted on: Mar 20, 2013

Accepted on: Feb 20, 2014

Published on: Apr 5, 2014

Published by: Stockholm University Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

personal assistance,

care work,

employee perspective,

flexibility,

professionalization,

co-determination

© 2014 Ingrid Guldvik, Karen Christensen, Monica Larsson, published by Stockholm University Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 16 (2014): Issue S1