Abstract

SOEIRO, José  and  ARAUJO, Mafalda. Breaking a legal clandestinity: Genesis and evolution of the caregiver movement and informal caregivers in Portugal. CIDADES [online]. 2020, n.40, pp.47-66. ISSN 2182-3030.  https://doi.org/10.15847/cct.jun2020.040.doss-art04.

Capable of forcing a political discussion around a crucial dimension of unpaid reproductive work, the informal carers' movement in Portugal disrupted the logic of invisibility that was circumscribing its existence, rescuing its free-work from a “taken for granted” existence, which entailed serious restrictions, in practice, to their social freedom. In this article, we seek to historicize the recent past of the informal carers' in Portugal, analyzing its process of formalization, its social alliances and its media strategies, its claims and repertoires of action. From the study on this collective action experience, it is traced the trajectory of the recent evolution of informal care as a social problem, which mobilized several political agents, and triggered a legislative process that led to the approval of an Informal Caregiver Statute.

Keywords : informal care; social movements; associativism; acknowledgement; feminism; Informal Caregiver Statute.

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