The transformative potential of Social and Solidarity Economy in elder care: social needs, social relations and...

Across advanced capitalist economies, elder care has emerged as a critical fault line of social reproduction, as population aging, welfare retrenchment, and care commodification intensify pressures on households and care systems, while dominant responses increasingly rely on market-based provision and global care chains that redistribute social reproductive burdens across borders. Although Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) initiatives are often advanced as alternatives, their role in elder care remains theoretically underdeveloped and is frequently framed either as compensatory to welfare withdrawal or as inherently transformative. This paper explores the transformative potential of SSE practices in elder care without presuming their emancipatory character. It develops an exploratory conceptual framework drawing on Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) and care-centered approaches. Rather than integrating them into a unified framework, the paper mobilizes SRT and care approaches as distinct lenses that illuminate both the political-economic conditions under which care is devalued and the relational, affective, and ethical labor through which it is enacted and negotiated. The analysis reconceptualizes elder care as a contested system of social needs and social relations shaped by power asymmetries and institutional configurations, shifting attention from organizational forms to the capacity of SSE initiatives to repoliticize social needs and reconfigure social relations. Adopting an ecosystemic perspective that integrates care recipients, caregivers, and families or communities, the paper argues that SSE initiatives contribute to more collective and democratic forms of social reproduction only under specific institutional and relational conditions, while remaining constrained by broader political-economic structures.