Financialization and non-disposable women: Real estate, debt and labour in UK care homes

Abstract

This paper contributes to debates on financialization, neoliberalism and labour by investigating the ownership of UK care homes by investment funds. This form of financialized ownership has been driven by debt financing and the realization of value from property assets. Financialization has also been shaped by labour. First, the low status of the mostly female workforce enabled investor buyouts. Second, growing financial pressures have been partly absorbed by the interactive labour of care. This reflects a neoliberal model of investment and regulation, which treats workers as disposable – unskilled and replaceable. Yet many carers reject this, and by continuing to care under deteriorating conditions, they provide a source of value to investors. Third, however, carers’ refusal of disposability can also provoke resistance to financial discipline. This is one of several ways in which caring labour limits financialization. Despite recurrent crises, the system has been condoned by governments as it displaces responsibility for the failures of neoliberal welfare onto financialized corporations. Overall, the paper argues that financialization must be understood as constituted not only by financial practices, property assets and regulation, but also by specific forms of labour.