At this online event, Maud Perrier will talk about her book in discussion with other experts in the field. Childcare Struggles brings together social reproduction with maternal studies to calls to build a cross-sectoral, intersectional movement around childcare. Using case studies from Australia, the UK and the USA the book shows how workers continue to organize against low pay, exploitative working conditions and state retrenchment. The book argues for the social and political value of expanding our understanding of who does the work of raising children and its framework of maternal worker power develops a unique theorization of feminist divisions and solidarities.

Dr Junko Yamashita is a Senior Lecturer in School of Sociology, Politics and International studies. She is known for her work on social and policy analysis of welfare, care, intergenerational relations and work. Recently she has co-edited ‘Routledge Handbook of East Asian Gender Studies’ (Liu and Yamashita 2020, Routledge), and co-authored ‘Hitori de Yaranai Daburu Kea [Do not do it alone: Dual Responsibility of Childcare and Elderly care] (Soma and Yamashita 2020, Popura sya, in Japanese).

Prof Bridget Anderson is a Professor of Migration Mobilities and Citizenship and the director of the Migration Mobilities Institute at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour (Zed Books, 2000). She co-edited Who Needs Migrant Workers? Labour Shortages, Immigration and Public Policy with Martin Ruhs (Oxford University Press, 2010 and 2012), The Social, Political and Historical Contours of Deportation with Matthew Gibney and Emanuela Paoletti (Springer, 2013) and Migration and Care Labour: Theory, Policy and Politics with Isabel Shutes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Susan Ferguson is a Marxist feminist scholar and activist and Associate Professor Emeritus at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada, teaching Youth and Children's Studies and Digital Media and Journalism. She has published widely on social reproduction theory, children’s culture and education, and democratic discourse in academic journals. She is the author of Women and Work: Social Reproduction, Feminism and Labour (Pluto, 2020) which has been translated into Spanish. She is a member of Faculty4Palestine and on the editorial Board of Midnight Sun.

Helen Penn is Visiting Professor at UCL Institute of Education, and Professor Emeritus at University of East London. She was joint founder of the International Centre for the Study of the Mixed Market Economy (ICMEC) which has focused on the privatization of childcare. Most recently, she has been a co-author of the Nuffield funded report Acquisitions, Mergers and Debt; The New Language of Childcare which focused on financialization of childcare and company childcare provision. She has published extensively on early education and childcare policies, in the UK and also in developing countries, and has acted as consultant on the funding of childcare to the forthcoming UNESCO publication on gender and education.

Join this event at:

https://bristol-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/93528416717?pwd=QkwxSkx5UnVxS2JscW9jdXRYNmJxUT09

Book launch: Childcare Struggles, Maternal Workers and Social Reproduction