Selling emotions in professional care
analysing discourses of home care companies in the Lisbon district
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-7289.2024.1.45080Keywords:
Home care services, Emotional work, Representations of care, PortugalAbstract
Based on an analysis of the discourses and visual representations of 71 home care companies’ websites in the Lisbon district, this article explores how these entities navigate the dominant discursive regimes in the Portuguese socio-cultural imaginary of the relationship between care and work, professionalism and affection. By addressing the dimension of emotional needs and affective relationships in care, several companies break boundaries in the idealised discursive constructions that place emotions and markets as untouchable poles. The discourses found vary between those that associate aspects of emotional labour with vocation, the family, the feminine, and those that seek to place aspects of emotional labour as skills that can be adapted to suit each client. Within a wide variety of approaches, it is possible to see how aspects of emotional labour that have historically devalued care are now mobilised to sell care as a commodity.
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