EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The COVID-19 pandemic has made unpaid care more visible through its absence, while also increasing the need for it. Drawing on a range of research projects covering Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the UK and the US, this book documents a broad spectrum of unpaid work performed by residents, relatives, volunteers and staff in nursing homes. It demonstrates how boundaries between paid and unpaid work are flexible, varying considerably with conditions, time, place and intersectional populations. By examining the complex labour process within nursing homes, this book provides insight and understanding which will be critical in planning for nursing home care post-pandemic.

Creative Team Work describes a new way of doing rapid ethnography to capture the rich complexity and contradictions of social relations. It is about the imagination, stimulation, and reflection that can come with international, interdisciplinary teams sharing the development, application, analysis, and dissemination of research. Although the book is based on a large, seven-year project studying care homes to search for promising practices and is guided by feminist political economy, the lessons we have learned are relevant for everyone undertaking empirical investigation. All research needs to consider theory - the organization of information, ethics, and dissemination, for example. The specific techniques and approaches the authors discuss can be applied to a wide range of qualitative methods and are not exclusive to this kind of ethnography. By dissecting experiences and uniting chapters through the theme of creative, reflexive team work, the book considers issues and methods of interest to all those struggling through the research process, with or without team support.