The state of community care in Japan: Mobilizing “community” as a resource in the care system

Organizers: Sébastien Lechevalier (EHESS, Paris/DIJ) and Hanno Jentzsch (University of Vienna)

Outline

This workshop focuses on the promotion of community-based care in Japan as a political project. As rising costs, the growing number of care recipients, and acute and projected labor shortages put pressure on Japan’s long-term care insurance system (LTCI), the government has been promoting the concept of “community-based integrated care”. The concept aims to connect various stakeholders at the local level to prevent or at least postpone the reliance on institutionalized care, including local administrations, professional care providers, but also informal care givers and volunteers.

The existing literature on community-based care in Japan has mostly focused on the potential and/or constraints of the concept to improve care provision and reduce the fiscal pressure on the LTCI system. In contrast, this workshop aims to develop a perspective on community care as a political project, which raises questions about the social, political, and economic relationships of different groups and community actors with the (local) state and for-profit actors, preexisting and emerging patterns of exclusion and inclusion, or the political and historical construction of what is perceived as legitimate roles and responsibilities for communities in the care system. As similar political projects occur elsewhere in the world, Japan also constitutes a particularly productive case to enhance the theoretical understanding of community-based care across different welfare regimes.

Program

3:30-4:00 | Opening remarks

The state of community-based care: Aims and objectives (Hanno Jentzsch/Sébastien Lechevalier)

 4:00-4:45 | Research presentation I

Examining the community-based integrated care system in an international comparative perspective (Yukie Shimizu, EHESS Paris)

*Coffee Break*

 5:00-5:45 | Research presentation II

Evoking the past? The intersection between community care and civic self-governance in Japan’s aging rural peripheries (Hanno Jentzsch, University of Vienna)

5:45-6:30 | Research presentation III

Community as infrastructure: Reconsidering preventive care policy in Japan

 (Wako Asato, Kyoto University)

6:30-7:00 | Open discussion on special issue proposal