Dilemmas of professionalism in care work for older people

Care work for older people is an emerging field of employment in a European context that is traditionally not seen as professional work. Various forces push for professionalizing with concerns such as quality, recruitment, and gender equality. Simultaneously, there are countervailing forces e.g., neo-liberalizing that work to de-professionalize the field. These struggles take place on a ground crisscrossed by old dichotomies that make up a barrier to professionalizing care work.It is argued that understanding professionalism in LTC must be done against the classic sociology of professions. Instead, I introduce an alternative ideal of professionalism, the specialized generalist, to understand the conditions of professionalization at the bottom of the occupational ladder and to overcome dilemmas. To understand the complex conditions, a dual perspective is introduced to consider both state strategies facilitating or hampering professionalizing and social and political forces that indirect impact the field.