Visualising invisibility: emotional labour in Domiciliary Care work

This research will explore the apparent tensions and contradictions of delivering person-centred home care, within what may be described as the current Neoliberal care economy, in the United Kingdom. In a context of unprecedented challenges, such as increasing life expectancy and market volatility, the sector is responding in contrary ways; efforts to retain and encourage client autonomy is seeing more people being cared for in their own homes, whilst the privatisation of the sector dictates the conditions and provision of care itself and is often outsourced to agencies. It is those who work in these circumstances, Domiciliary Care workers, of whom this research is concerned with. By performing duties with clients' homes, these workers become intertwined with processes of identity formation, establishment and maintenance of intimacy, (dis)affect, and so on. There is, then, significant emotional labour carried out by Domiciliary Care workers, despite a notable disparity when compared to contractual obligations of the role (which police client-carer relationships and discourage familiarity and intimacy). It is this tension and its impacts on Domiciliary Care workers that is central to the research.

The research methods are two-fold. A visual narrative inquiry approach aims to locate invisible processes of home care through the elicitation of stories, experiences and voices of Domiciliary Care workers. Photography will be employed to achieve this and facilitate access to the research. Alongside this, a multi-modal discourse analysis of care recruitment and publicity materials will explore regimes of visibility with the current social care system in the United Kingdom