The caring entrepreneur? Childcare policy and private provision in an enterprising age
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Date
2014-06-01
DOI
Open Access Location
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
PION LTD
Rights
PION LTD
Abstract
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.
Description
Keywords
Science & Technology, Social Sciences, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Environmental Studies, Geography, Environmental Sciences & Ecology, childcare, subjectivity, entrepreneurship, place, Ireland, WOMEN BUSINESS OWNERS, WELFARE-REFORM, WORK, GENDER, GOVERNMENTALITY, NEOLIBERALISM, UK, PARTNERSHIPS, GEOGRAPHIES, PARENTS
Citation
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING A, 2014, 46 (5), pp. 1108 - 1123 (16)