ABSTRACT
The second chapter offers the reader a theoretical background to the book, centering on the concept of care as used in the subsequent analysis and displaying it within the conceptual context of ethnomoralities of care framework. Building upon the current literature on elderly care and care in transnational families and upon the sociological evidence collected by the authors during the fieldwork in Poland and the UK, the authors put forward a care-contact continuum approach and propose to understand care as diverse, processual, relational, context specific and morally embedded. The chapter presents the concept of ethnomorality of care that envisages care as outstretched between lived social norms defined in moral terms (moral beliefs), intentions and actions (care arrangements). The introduction of the intentions to care (or not) and intentions concerning being taken care of is important because it brings us closer to understanding the experience of care from the point of view of engaged social actors. The authors argue that it is necessary to take into account also other contexts than the national culture of care, as many factors structure the lived experience of care: regional and local contexts, as well as economic inequalities, gender, care and migration regimes and (intergenerational) relations in a given family.
