The Micropolitics of (Re)Negotiating Professional and Informal Care in the Changing Welfare State

There is an increasing reliance on informal caregivers in the organization and provision of care services for older people. The convoys of care model, that assumes that networks around care recipients are dynamic and negotiated, offers a way to study the interactions between professional and informal caregivers when they are both involved. However, little attention is given to how they actually negotiate their roles, the institutional challenges they face when redistributing responsibilities, and the consequences of these negotiations and challenges for the care provided. To capture this, we ask the question: how can we understand the micropolitics between professionals and informal caregivers in their shared attempts to organize care? Based on qualitative research in four organizations, we highlight different aspects of negotiations between informal caregivers and professionals. We also show the consequences of this, namely that individual healthcare trajectories are becoming more situated and negotiated accomplishments. There seems to be scant critical reflection on this. This reflection is needed to prevent inequality and support professionals in these negotiations. This requires organizations and policymakers to broaden their understanding of inclusion of informal care from merely instrumental to political and effortful, and take serious how it interacts with various processes and societal outcomes.