ABSTRACT
It is widely accepted that political economies underpin the organisation of healthcare services and affective economies shape informal care delivery. This chapter offers an exploration of how these forces interconnect. It offers an exploration of how political, economic, gendered, raced, and affective forces work together to underpin the organisation of formal health services and informal family care in diverging ways. Drawing on examples from the United States of America, United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Sweden, and Australia, the chapter expands the critical discussion of the political and economic organisation of healthcare services and care from a macro-level focus on national policies to a multifocal appreciation of the intersections across policies, ideologies, and emotions. The presented analysis demonstrates how politics converge with gendered ideologies and debunked notions of emotions as inherently feminine to constrain who performs (un)paid caregiving and how.
