Seminar by Başak Akkan: "Care as an Inequality Creating Phenomenon: When Gender and Class Intertwine with Age, Young Carers in the Familialist Care Regime of Turkey"

As a contested concept, care has been instrumental on many analytical levels in addressing inequalities that cut across the social categories of gender, class, ethnicity, and others. One category that has received less attention in theories of caregiving is age. This study explores care as an inequality-creating phenomenon where the multiple inequalities of gender, class, and age are contemplated within the framework of a normative theory of justice. Presenting age/childhood as a social category alongside gender and class, it develops a critical analysis of intersectional inequalities with a particular focus on young female carers. The empirical research dwells on Turkey as a country case where the changing policy framework and the care arrangements of young female carers—specifically, older daughters who care for their younger siblings—provide rich knowledge for macro- and micro-level analyses.

Dr. Başak Akkan got her PhD degree in Interdisciplinary Social Science from Utrecht University, MS degree in European Social Policy from LSE and BA degree in Sociology from Boğaziçi University. She has been serving as an executive board member and a senior researcher in the EU Horizon 2020 project titled ETHOS-Towards a European Theory of Justice and Fairness, since 2017. She has also been a member of a multi-national research team (http://www.cuwb.org) conducting research on subjective well-being of children from a comparative perspective. She has several articles published in journals such as Social Politics, Feminist Theory, Journal of Gender Studies, Child Indicators Research, Children and Youth Services, and Romani Studies. Her research interests are care policies, childhood, child well-being and social policies targeting vulnerable groups.