Browsing by Author "Gallagher AM"

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Neoliberal governmentality and the respatialisation of childcare in Ireland
(PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 1/05/2012) Gallagher AM
While geographers have contributed greatly to knowledge of the unequal effects of childcare delivery for parents and children as service users, the changing form this provision has taken over the last 10. years has received much less attention. Drawing on the emergence of a formalised childcare sector in Ireland since the late 90s, this paper explores the considerable political work which has taken place to prioritise centre-based care services over an established informal childminding sector. Rather than view this change as the outcome of a capitalist logic which scripts the inevitable shift towards larger, more rationalised services under processes of neoliberalisation, this paper calls for a closer examination of the way in which childcare is being respatalised through policy. Justified through a discourse of 'sustainability', governmental intervention in Ireland has sought to produce a new marketised childcare infrastructure which will operate without continued state support. The emerging infrastructure has been premised on the creation of centre-based facilities, through which forms of neoliberal governance have been introduced into the sector. It is suggested that the prioritisation of centre-based care over existing informal provision has served to introduce significant financial vulnerabilities to the sector at a time of economic uncertainty. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.
The business of care: Marketisation and the new geographies of childcare
(SAGE Publications, 25/04/2017) Gallagher AM
The aim of this article is to outline a geographical research agenda for studying the marketization of childcare in Western neoliberal contexts. While childcare has been a key site of interrogation for feminist geographers, highlighting the profound inequities of marketized care for many who work in and use childcare, the contours of the childcare market as a situated and constructed economic entity has remained under-examined. I suggest that at a time when more families than ever rely on extra-familial childcare, an appreciation of how childcare markets function is urgently needed.
The caring entrepreneur? Childcare policy and private provision in an enterprising age
(PION LTD, 1/06/2014) Gallagher AM
Childcare has become a recent focus of government intervention. Concerns have been raised about the soaring costs for parents, patchy provision, and the often small and unprofitable nature of the services themselves. This paper will explore how the problem of sustainability in the childcare sector is being addressed through a neoliberal development rationale. Focusing on the Irish childcare sector and the childcare funding programme introduced in 2006, I will illustrate how a particular entrepreneurial subjectivity has been mobilised to remedy the perceived problems of private sector childcare. I refer to this subjectivity as the ‘caring entrepreneur’. After I outline the contours of this subjectivity, the final section of the paper will examine how it is being realised within a rural childcare market, in the process offering a more situated account of what ‘sustainability’ means in place.