“Short-Term Band-Aid Solutions”: A Feminist Analysis of Family Caregiving and Caregiver Immigration Policies in Canada

Throughout Canada, the need for care provision services is on the rise. The number of people willing and able to provide these care services is insufficient to address the growing need for care. Care work is provided by a mix of paid workers and unpaid family members. The majority of both these groups of care workers are women. Care work has long been undervalued as feminized labour, resulting in insufficient government support for family caregivers, and persistent labour issues within paid care sectors. In this thesis, I explore two distinct sets of Canadian federal policies related to care provision – Employment Insurance (EI) benefits for unpaid family caregivers, and the Home Child Care Provider and Home Support Worker Pilot Programs, which facilitate the immigration of private in-home caregivers to Canada – in order to discover whether they are underpinned by a shared set of similar assumptions about the nature of care work, who is best suited to perform it, and how it should be provided. In examining the assumptions about care that underpin and shape these policies related to care provision in Canada, I identify a number of consistent gendered themes about care and care providers and analyze their impact on policy outcomes.

Accepted: 2023-12-18T23:35:35Z