Oksana Dutchak participated in the section “Care and contradictions: exploitation and resistance”, presenting her research on hierarchies of care in Ukraine. In the presentation she elaborated on the concept of hierarchies in the Social Reproduction Theory and its meaning for care labor inequalities. She argued that in modern societies social reproduction and care become hierarchies of their own, influencing material reality and policies of care, its accessibility for people and the lives of care workers involved. Researching hierarchies of care and how they manifest themselves in a particular society allows tracking how they are formed and transformed through actual politics and policies, as well as how they impact social reproduction and social struggles under particular circumstances.
Oksana Dutchak applied this theoretical framework to the case of Ukraine to demonstrate how care hierarchies, neoliberal policies and war impact access to care provisioning and the situation of labor in public care sector, having especially negative outcomes for those segments at the bottom of care hierarchies: senior care and care for people with disabilities. She showed how care hierarchies are both cemented and challenged by war, and manifest themselves in the mainstream narrative of post-war reconstruction. In the light of the huge demographic shift and other radical changes in Ukraine, the latter becomes impotent to answer the challenges, created by the years-long neoliberal policies and the invasion.
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