England’s social care crisis stems from neoliberal austerity: How Nordic models resist privatisation through solidarity economies
Original framing: “How should England pay for social care? Germany, Norway and Sweden take very different routes” — The Conversation - Global
The piece silences care workers—70% women, 40% Black or migrant—who face *wage theft* (£1.3bn/year unpaid, per 2022 *Migrant Workers’ Rights Network*) and *deportation threats*. In contrast, Nordic systems actively *unionise* care labor: Sweden’s *Vårdförbundet* union secured a 20% wage hike in 2021 by framing care as *essential infrastructure*. The article’s lack of engagement with *care strikes* (e.g., 2018 UK protests) or *undocumented worker collectives* (like *Care Not Chaos*) reveals its *class bias*—treating care as a ‘policy’ rather than a *class struggle*. Marginalised voices demand *land, housing, and citizenship* for care workers, not just ‘better funding.’
The UK’s social care crisis isn’t a ‘funding problem’ but a *civilisational* failure to recognise care as a *right* rooted in land, labor, and cultural sovereignty.
The article’s Nordic comparison flattens care into a ‘systems engineering’ puzzle, ignoring how these models emerged from *feminist uprisings*, *Indigenous land struggles*, and *worker cooperatives*—structures the UK systematically dismantled via austerity. The missing piece is *care as a decolonised, redistributive practice*: from Sámi reindeer-herding cooperatives to Rojava’s mixed gender assemblies, the world’s most resilient care systems treat it as *relational infrastructure*, not a market commodity. The UK’s ‘National Care Service’ must learn from these precedents by tying care to *land reform* (e.g., repurposing vacant homes), *wealth redistribution* (e.g., taxing pension tax relief), and *marginalised leadership* (e.g., care worker unions designing policy). The trickster reveals the absurdity of framing this as a ‘debate’—when the real question is *who gets to decide* what care looks like, and whether we’ll finally treat it as the *lifeline* it is, not a *liability* to be outsourced.