Covid-19 and the retreat of state childcare provision: a cross-national overview

I am delighted to say that our special issue proposal on COVID-19 and childcare has been accepted by Critical Social Policy. The proposed themed section focuses on care in countries across the North and South, that were both badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and have mixed care regimes. The country contexts include: South Africa, Italy, the UK, the US and Brazil. The proposal draws on four research papers that contribute to understanding and influencing current issues around care, social reproduction and the pandemic in a world marked by changing dynamics in care provision, with the increasing ‘privatisation of care’. By ‘privatisation of care’ we grapple with both the marketisation of care provision and the pushing of care back into the ‘private sphere’ of the home and the community. Specifically, we consider the effects a global pandemic has when colliding with what are often quite finely balanced ‘jigsaws of childcare arrangements’.