VIRTUAL Lisbon Livable Cities

Abstract

Drawing on the concept of care municipalism, this paper aims to develop an understanding of municipally-led care infrastructures and everyday care practices in urban communities with growing care needs. Austerity and market-driven policies have attempted to ‘fix’ the care crisis by shifting responsibility from public institutions to private individuals and informal networks. Türkiye is taken as an example of a country under the influence of the twin forces of neoliberalism and religion, which also supports home care for ideological and political reasons, with growing social inequalities and care needs that are not being met by the national care infrastructure. Indicators such as the relative poverty rate and the poverty risk or social exclusion rate, people living in inadequate housing and having loans other than mortgages are social problems of the country. Under these circumstances, the gap between the demand and supply of formal state care is to some extent filled by municipal care practices, if not by home care, and the recent debate in Türkiye over the kindergartens provided by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality shows that there are indeed conflicts between the national and local governments over the issue of care. In order to achieve a more equitable distribution of the care burden among urban residents, this paper argues that further public care infrastructures need to be developed at the municipal level and highlights the possibility of providing everyday care through existing practices of care municipalism in large Turkish cities through the case of childcare.