Caregiving and Volunteering Among Older People in Sweden—Prevalence and Profiles

This study examines the role of older people in Swedish society by exploring the prevalence of their informal caregiving and volunteering and by analyzing the profiles of these contributors of unpaid work. Data were collected by means of telephone interviews in a Swedish representative survey conducted in 2005. Our analysis reveals three distinct profiles of people involved in unpaid activities. One of these consists of those involved both in informal helpgiving and volunteering, a group that has been labeled “super helpers” or “doers” in earlier research. It is important for social policy planners to recognize these groups of older people and better understand the dynamics of their unpaid work in order to ascertain whether they might need support as providers and to enhance their well-being. There does not seem to be any simple contradiction between the parallel existence of a universal welfare model of the Swedish kind and an extensive civil society in which older people play important roles as active citizens.     

Productive Engagement Among Older Americans: Prevalence,Patterns, and Implications for Public Policy

This study estimates the prevalence of productive engagement among adults aged 60 and over residing in the United States over a nine-year period. We analyze three waves of data from the Americans' Changing Lives Study, which allows the findings to describe the non-institutionalized older American population. Focusing upon five activities—formal paid employment, irregular paid work, unpaid volunteerism, caregiving, and informal assistance to others—we identify changes in the engagement rates, examine the extent to which engagement occurs through single or multiple concurrent activities, and document intra-individual patterns of engagement within and across forms of productive activity, including the continuity, initiation, and cessation of involvement. The findings reveal that late-life productive engagement is widespread, with the majority of older individuals involved in multiple forms of activity concurrently. Non–market-based activities such as caregiving, informal assistance, and volunteering are most prevalent. Initiation and cessation of activities are common and yield more complex patterns and lower rates of non-participation than are revealed in cross-sectional analyses. Time spent in productive engagement is highly variable and exhibits an overall decline across time. We conclude by highlighting policy strategies to increase the availability and quality of opportunities for productive engagement and promote planning for engagement in late life.     

Productive engagement among older Americans: prevalence, patterns, and implications for public policy

This study estimates the prevalence of productive engagement among adults aged 60 and over residing in the United States over a nine-year period. We analyze three waves of data from the Americans' Changing Lives Study, which allows the findings to describe the non-institutionalized older American population. Focusing upon five activities--formal paid employment, irregular paid work, unpaid volunteerism, caregiving, and informal assistance to others--we identify changes in the engagement rates, examine the extent to which engagement occurs through single or multiple concurrent activities, and document intra-individual patterns of engagement within and across forms of productive activity, including the continuity, initiation, and cessation of involvement. The findings reveal that late-life productive engagement is widespread, with the majority of older individuals involved in multiple forms of activity concurrently. Non-market-based activities such as caregiving, informal assistance, and volunteering are most prevalent. Initiation and cessation of activities are common and yield more complex patterns and lower rates of non-participation than are revealed in cross-sectional analyses. Time spent in productive engagement is highly variable and exhibits an overall decline across time. We conclude by highlighting policy strategies to increase the availability and quality of opportunities for productive engagement and promote planning for engagement in late life.     

The Role of Religiosity for Formal and Informal Volunteering in the Netherlands

This paper deals with the question: To what extent do individual religious characteristics, in addition to collective religious characteristics, contribute to the explanation of formal and informal volunteering in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 21st century? To answer this research question, we used the SOCON 2005–2006 dataset. Our main finding concerns informal volunteering: we found that spirituality increases the likelihood of informal volunteering, implying that openness to other people’s needs increases the likelihood of the actual provision of help. There are no other aspects of religiosity that are related to informal volunteering. With regard to formal volunteering we found that, in line with previous research, religious attendance is related positively to formal volunteering, religious as well as secular volunteering, which can be regarded as support for the proposition that religious involvement is important for norm conformity. Further, having a more religious worldview decreases the likelihood of formal volunteering which might show that those with a strong religious worldview are more concerned with the ‘otherworldly’ and less so with what they do in this world. We found no influence of individual religious characteristics on formal volunteering. These results confirm the idea that integration into a religious community plays quite a large role in explaining formal volunteering. Informal volunteering, however, seems to be independent of social networks: it rather depends on individual motivation.     

When to Work for Pay,When Not to: A Comparative Study of Australian and Danish Volunteer Care Workers

This paper explores the links between volunteers care workers’ current unpaid work and their own present or former paid work with the objective of analysing the ways welfare states influence volunteer care work. Data were collected between August 2012 and May 2013 through 41 face-to-face interviews with Danish and Australian volunteers working with the frail elderly, very sick and terminally ill. Three related arguments are made. One, paid and unpaid care work are so intertwined that it is not possible to understand volunteers’ unpaid working lives without simultaneously understanding their paid work lives. Two, many volunteer care workers are attracted to care work, not volunteering per se. Three, volunteering must be understood in relation to men’s and women’s ‘access to work’ in the welfare state, access that ultimately depends on the design and developments of these two contrasting welfare states.     

Participation in formal and informal volunteering: Implications for volunteer recruitment

This study examines factors influencing “formal” volunteering (that is, to an organization) and “informal” volunteering (that is, volunteering carried out individually outside of an organizational context) and the relationship between these two activities. We hypothesize that formal and informal volunteering activities are positively interrelated but that they are shaped by different types of personal resources: involvement in social networks increases the likelihood of both types of volunteering, but human capital increases the likelihood of formal volunteering rather than informal. The bivariate probit regression results emanating from the Independent Sector's “Giving and Volunteering in the United States, 2001” survey are generally supportive of the hypotheses. The findings suggest that nonprofit and public organizations that involve volunteers consider the pool of informal volunteers as a fertile ground for recruitment and find ways to better utilize older Americans in formal volunteering. The results also suggest that volunteer recruitment through organizational membership may be an effective strategy.     

Is Volunteering Always Voluntary? Between Compulsion and Coercion in Co-production

Governments are increasingly eager to involve citizens in co-production of services. They are seen as a substitution or a supplementary resource in service delivery. Citizens’ involvement relies heavily on their motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic drivers) to partake in co-production. Taking note from prior debate in the volunteerism literature, the article ties volunteer motivation to the process of co-production and citizen–state interaction. Here the state has contrastive options to motivate citizens’ behavior varying between compulsion and coercion. The question is how states’ increased engagement and interaction with volunteers affects volunteer motivation and free choice, the main characteristic of volunteerism. To exemplify this, we analyze the motivation behind state engagement in different forms of co-production: volunteering in rescue and police services and in a volunteer program for the unemployed in Estonia. We conclude that using citizens in co-production is rife with controversies that influence the very nature of volunteerism.     

The Relationship Between Corporate Volunteering and Employee Civic Engagement Outside the Workplace in Russia

This paper discusses the relationship between corporate volunteering and civic engagement outside the workplace in Russia, proceeding from a mixed-method approach. The quantitative findings are based on a comparison between employees in 37 Russian companies who participated in corporate volunteering (N = 399) and those who did not (N = 402). Using binary logistic regression analysis, we demonstrate that employee participation in corporate volunteering is positively related to four forms of civic engagement outside the workplace: informal volunteering, formal volunteering, formal monetary donation, and informal monetary donation. In addition, we draw on information obtained from interviews with 10 corporate volunteers, as well as with all 37 company corporate volunteering managers, to develop a general explanation for why corporate volunteering might lead to civic engagement. We identify three primary explanations. First, trust in companies can be converted into increased trust in social institutions. Second, corporate volunteering can expose employees to other realities, thereby leading them to rethink their priorities. Third, corporate volunteering socializes employees to volunteering, thus making them more likely to incorporate volunteering into their personal repertoires of activities. Corporate volunteering appears to be an effective mechanism for stimulating civic engagement and volunteering infrastructure in post-communist countries.     

One million and counting: the hidden army of young carers in Canada

The term ‘young carer’ refers to those youth under the age of 25 years who provide substantial unpaid support to a family member due to factors including, but not limited to, familial or parental absence, disability, mental health issue(s) or problems with alcohol and/or other drugs. In the UK, national statistics have been integral to tracking the prevalence of young carers while serving as an important tool towards the development of (and justification for) a national legislative framework supporting these youth. In Canada, research and awareness for young carers remains in its infancy and available national datasets have yet to be examined in relation to youths providing unpaid caregiving. As a result, this research provides the first trend analysis of youth-based caregiving in Canada using census data for the 1996–2006 time-period. Methodological limitations of official statistics are also discussed in terms of conceptual and operational constraints limiting the full identification of all those potential young carers.     

The Obligation to Volunteer as Fair Reciprocity? Welfare Recipients’ Perceptions of Giving Back to Society

Dutch citizens on welfare have to volunteer at Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in return for their benefits. Through applying the ‘worlds of justification’ of Boltanski and Thévenot, this article aims to provide a better theoretical and empirical understanding of social justice of policies that obligate welfare clients to participate in CSOs. The analysis of 51 in-depth interviews with Dutch welfare recipients shows that respondents perceive these policies partly but not unilaterally as unfair. If respondents perceive welfare as ‘free money’ and if they are convinced that civic behavior demands interventions against free riding on welfare resources, ‘mandatory volunteering’ is considered as fair. Our main contribution is to the theoretical debate on recognition and redistribution by showing empirically how ‘othering’ plays an important role in determining when mandatory volunteering becomes a matter of redistribution or recognition.

     

Young adult carers: a literature review informing the re-conceptualisation of young adult caregiving in Australia

The experiences of young adult carers (YACs) have been vastly under-researched, particularly within Australian caregiving literature. This article explores the existence, extent and nature of informal young adult caregiving in Australia, defining YACs as individuals aged between 18 and 25 years who provide unpaid care or support to family members living with chronic illness or disability. The aim of this article is to provide a foundation for the re-conceptualisation of YACs as a distinct carer cohort who, without suitable recognition and specifically targeted support, may experience significantly reduced future life opportunities. The traditional, narrative-based review will first redefine YACs in accordance with overseas literary definitions and will then explore the complex nature and extent of young adult caregiving in Australia. Explanations as to why young adults are increasingly undertaking these informal caregiving roles and how YACs differentiate from their non-carer peers will then follow. Finally, three prominent paradigms, namely the clinical, social capital and carers' rights' perspectives, will be presented to establish a greater understanding of the implications, contextual experiences and unmet civil rights of YACs in Australia.     

Politicians,celebrities and social media: a case of informalisation?

With electoral politics no longer organised by social class, politicians increasingly seek to relate to a broad spectrum of citizens and part of their relatability is conjured through more casual, informal performances aimed at cultivating authenticity. The various platforms of social media promote forms of authentic communication by blurring the public/private divide, creating ‘spontaneous’ and instant access to ‘real life’. This article seeks to investigate the informalisation thesis by applying it to data from young people aged 16–21 years in Australia, the UK and the USA, asked about the way politicians and celebrities use social media. Findings reveal respondents’ desire for more authentic and accessible politicians, but this was in direct tension with traditional views and expectations of politicians needing to be professional, informed and worthy of respect. Informalisation amongst politicians is evident and welcomed by young citizens but persistent traditional views means it also threatens their credibility.     

An Empirical Examination of Formal and Informal Volunteering in Canada

Using data from the 2008 General Social Survey of Canada, this study examines the factors associated with individuals’ propensity to engage in formal and informal volunteering. The results show that social networks increase the likelihood of both formal and informal volunteering, but social trust and human capital increase only the likelihood of formal volunteering and not of informal care. The findings also reveal interesting cultural influences and regional differences in the propensity to engage in formal and informal volunteering, especially between French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians, and those living in Quebec and outside of Quebec. Native-born Canadians are more likely to volunteer than their immigrant counterparts, but they are similar to immigrants in the propensity to provide informal care. Additionally, women are found to be more likely to engage in formal volunteering and informal care than men. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

The family caregiving career: implications for community-based long-term care practice and policy

Informal (i.e., unpaid) long-term care for disabled older adults is often chronic, but it is only recently that research has considered the longitudinal implications of family caregiving. In particular, investigators have conceptualized caregiving as a "career," and within the caregiving career, a number of diverse trajectories and transitions can occur. Following a summary of these findings, this paper considers how longitudinal caregiving research can influence and potentially address key policy and practice concerns, especially in the delivery and support of community-based long-term care (CBLTC) services. It is suggested that with the refinement of the informal long-term care literature, existing policy and practice to support caregiving families can be similarly advanced.     

Volunteering,pro-environmental attitudes and norms

In the spirit of previous work in the compliance literature (e.g., tax, littering), we investigate whether environmental social norms affect volunteering in environmental organizations. Using two ‘environmental morale’ variables as indirect measures, we analyze the impact of social norms on the incidence of unpaid work in environmental organizations. In addition, we test whether violation of a specific environmental norm initiates a conditional cooperation response. We explore a large individual data set covering 32 countries from both Western and Eastern Europe, and extend the number of countries investigated to test the robustness of the relationship at the macro level. Our results indicate a strong positive relationship between the proxies for environmental social norms and volunteering in environmental organizations. The relationship persists despite our various robustness checks.     

Working mothers,injury and embodied care work

In this article, we examine how mothers respond when injury interrupts maternal care, using the lens of embodied care, which we conceptualize as a form of ‘body work’. We draw on findings from a qualitative research project with two organizations in Australia that help people with injuries to return to work, examining the experiences of workers who are also mothers of dependent children. Mothers' inability to care for children during periods of injury was a significant concern for our interviewees; constraints on physical labour and physical affection were particularly troubling, indicating the importance of embodied maternal caregiving to maternal roles. Yet, while these mothers inhabited the spheres of paid work and unpaid care work simultaneously, service providers did not consider embodied care work or its relevance to injured women's ongoing needs for support. While our findings reflect the experiences of injured women, they also suggest the need for a materialist analysis of the ways that both paid work and care activities are deeply enmeshed in and through the bodies of those doing the work. Employers and service organizations still fail to recognize maternal ‘body work’, and this may be typical of social attitudes more widely.     

The White Management of ‘Volunteering’: Ethnographic Evidence from an Israeli NGO

The article examines the recent emergence of ‘volunteering’ as a publicly significant notion and practice. Based on an extensive fieldwork in a prominent intermediary NGO in Israel, the article follows the efforts to promote and expand ‘volunteering’ pursued by the organization’s board and staff members. Affiliated with the privileged social strata of Ashkenazi (European) Jews, whose hegemonic position has been eroded during the neoliberal transformations in Israel, the NGO staff seek to retain their privileged status through a managerial activity in the field of ‘volunteering’. They promote a particular, liberally inspired construction of ‘volunteering’, while universalizing it as a professional, a-political and consensual realm. Inspired by critical studies of ‘whiteness’, the article describes how the privileged character of this managerial activity is being successfully obscured through the representation of ‘volunteering’ as an all-inclusive aspiration.     

The concept of social movement

Recent developments in social movement research have evidenced a greater underlying consensus in the field than one might have assumed. Efforts have been made to bridge different perspectives and merge them into a new synthesis. Yet, comparative discussion of the concept of ‘social movement’ has been largely neglected so far. This article reviews and contrasts systematically the definitions of ‘social movement’ formulated by some of the most influential authors in the field. A substantial convergence may be detected between otherwise very different approaches on three points at least. Social movements are defined as networks of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups and/or organizations, engaged in political or cultural conflicts, on the basis of shared collective identities. It is argued that the concept is sharp enough a) to differentiate social movements from related concepts such as interest groups, political parties, protest events and coalitions; b) to identify a specific area of investigation and theorising for social movement research.     

Cultural Studies and Deleuze-Guattari,Part 2: From Affect to Conjunctures†

This paper considers the state of the ‘field’ of affect studies and its development – partly through the involvement of one of its authors – over the course of decades. It argues that rather than identifying affect as the ‘other’ of signification and representation, thus ‘subtracting’ it from the conjuncture, one should understand the question of affect to point to the multiplicity of forms of sign behaviours – or, better, of forms of expression or collective assemblages of enunciation (in the terms of Deleuze and Guattari) that constitute a conjuncture in all its complexity. This article attempts to map this multiplicity by refining and expanding Guattari’s ‘mixed semiotics’. Finally, it offers a brief example of how such multiplicities (and their resulting hybridities) might be used to compare the ‘affective topographies’ and structures of feelings that have differentially enabled oppositional movements in the 1960s and the current moment.