D3.3 Comparative activism and policy in the US and in Italy report. Deliverable D3.3 within the MAJORdom project

Italy and United States are countries representing very different welfare regimes and approaches to care by the state. United States is a liberal welfare state, relatively younger but rapidly aging, and already dedicating almost twice as much as Italy to long term care in terms of the GDP share. Italy is the Europe’s oldest country and second oldest country in the world after Japan, it represents a Mediterranean welfare regime with big role of family care that is however subsidized with cash transfers; overall spending on LTC remains very low, below 1% of the country’s GDP. In Italy, the unionization of domestic workers has been high, with the main unions being ACLI-COLF, CGIL, and CISL. However, the political position of said organizations is not very strong overall at present (Marchetti et al. 2021); other institutional actors also promote rights in the care sector, including employers’ organizations such as DOMINA. Moreover, there are relevant popular and active social media groups.14 In the United States, domestic workers activism first began through the efforts of African-American women at the end of the 19th century, and Black women led the efforts to organize throughout the Civil Rights movement (Nadasen 2015). In response to shifting demographics in the sector, leaders from immigrant communities then began to emerge in the 1990s (Tracy et al. 2014, Boris and Nadasen 2018). When we compare the general policy response of Italy and the United States based on the on-going policy review paper by World Bank, we notice a similar general approach and presence of actions within the social assistance and social insurance, however lack of any programs pertaining to labor markets in the US contrary to the situation in Italy.