The market pillar usually focuses on private care providers and the world of labor, the so-called care professions.
For example, private operators include private businesses and institutes related to the provision of care for children, the elderly, and vulnerable groups, such as private nursing homes and daycare centers. The work field and care professions include social work services and domestic labor.
The concept of the market as well as the concept of care can, of course, be interpreted in a broader context. Here we can also include all care practices that have been more or less commercialized, from the outsourcing of child-rearing and elderly care to the “self-care” and wellness industry, which have contributed to the understanding of care as a personal responsibility and affair. One question that arises is to what extent the “market logic” (which involves profit, self-interest, instrumentalization) aligns with the “care logic” (which usually involves more qualitative and selfless values such as empathy, intimacy, patience, concern). Or, to put it another way, how much can the market be regulated given that once an institution becomes for-profit, there is a tendency for it to take advantage of those who need it and turn to it?
In terms of Greek reality, the market space for the provision of care has also been shaped in a fragmented and contextual way. The lack of regulated employment for the care professions, which are devalued, underpaid, and performed under precarious and often irregular working conditions, contributes to that effect. Additionally, in the market sector, care services are not only gendered but are also notably racialized: thousands of immigrant women work in the domestic labor sector, invisible, behind the closed doors of thousands of houses, in conditions of irregularity and exploitation, in order to cover the gaps of public policy and meet the needs of households.