Growing Pains: Childcare Markets in Neoliberal Times

Wednesday 23rd October 2019, 3.00-5.00pm
University of Liverpool

This seminar will feature Dr Aisling Gallagher (Senior Lecturer at the School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, New Zealand), who will outline the marketisation of childcare in New Zealand and the policy implications of this process.

Meeting the burgeoning demand for childcare poses a vexing problem for (neo)liberal governments and their policy communities, where responsibility for childcare has traditionally been assigned to the domain of the family. On the one hand it is deemed to be ideologically unpalatable in the current political moment to instigate a state provided system, as markets are positioned as the preferred means of delivering social services. On the other, childcare is being enveloped into a range of new policy agendas not only for employment ‘activation’ but also around the long term educational outcomes of young children, and so is becoming increasingly important for government. Within this context, this presentation will offer some key findings from a three year study of the marketization of childcare in NZ since 2000. In the process Aisling will ask: what do neoliberal childcare markets actually look like? What kinds of actors are involved in their creation? And what can this work tell us about the changing nature of care provision under the crisis of social reproduction more generally.

Aisling has researched and written extensively around issues of neoliberal governance, welfare restructuring and the marketisation of childcare. Most of her work has focused on the changing nature of childcare and social reproduction more generally under neoliberalism, notably in the contexts of Ireland and New Zealand. In 2014 she was awarded funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand to study the marketisation of childcare in New Zealand since 2000. Further information on her work is available here.

Admission to the seminar is free but it is essential to register your attendance by email to heseltine@liverpool.ac.uk