Towards a more just society? Care ethics and caregivers in urban China

Recently, feminist geographers have been calling for research that contributes to a more ethical geography of care that is responsible to society. However, after thoroughly examining the care ethics of attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness, this paper argues that adhering to these ethics in caring relations actually exploits caregivers, instead of contributing to a more just society. Based on empirical research in Shanghai and Beijing, this paper examines the nature of caregivers’ work and provides three significant insights: (1) Care ethics embedded into job requirements demands that caregivers conduct not only bodily and “dirty” work, but also emotional work. (2) The involvement of care ethics in care work establishes different social relations between caregivers and care-recipients, which produces a different subjectivity that blurs the boundary between life and work. (3) The new subjectivity formed when operating under care ethics tends to put caregivers in a “prison of love” situation, where being ethical means being willing to work long hours for low wages. By theorizing the ethics of care work from the three aspects indicated above, this paper challenges the geography of care agenda that seeks to promote the care ethics of attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness.