Universal basic income, services, or time politics? A critical realist analysis of (potentially) transformative responses to the care crisis

Abstract

Using an (eco-)feminist Marxist-Polanyian theoretical lens, this article explores the diverse relations between contemporary care-crisis symptoms in Western Europe and its generative structures. It investigates the potential of three possible responses to the crisis to transform rather than reproduce these structures: (un)conditional cash transfers, universal basic services, and time politics. Drawing upon critical realism and the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention, we seek to make sense of the dynamic between competing crisis construals and their effects on actuality. To answer our research question What are the transformative potentials of different responses to the contemporary care crisis in Western Europe?, we move from meta-theoretical abstractions to a theoretically grounded, concrete application of critical realism in the social sciences. We conclude that a symbiosis of time politics and universal basic services together with a universal, but not unconditional, guaranteed (minimum) income offers substantial transformative potentials.