Birgit Pfau-Effinger is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Globalisation and Governance Centre, University of Hamburg. She was working group co-ordinator of the COST A13 Action Programme, Changing Labour Markets, Welfare Policies and Citizenship.Birgit Geissler is Professor of Sociology of Work in the Department of Sociology, University of Bielefeld. Her research interests centre on women's labour market participation, gender specific forms of the life course and life planning, and the interdependence of the welfare state, labour market and family structures.

• Contents: Part 1: Care arrangements in European societies: Change in European care arrangements ~ Birgit Geissler and Birgit Pfau-Effinger; Development paths of care arrangements in the framework of family values and welfare values ~ Birgit Pfau-Effinger; Part 2: New forms of informal, semi-formal and formal care work: Gender, labour markets and care work in five European funding regimes ~ Clare Ungerson; Changing long-term care regimes: a six-country comparison of directions and effects ~ Ute Behnin; Migrants' care work in private households, or: The strength of bilocal and transnational ties as a last(ing) resource in global migration ~ Felicitas Hillmann; Part 3: Welfare state policies towards care work: Comparative approaches to social care: diversity in care production modes ~ Anneli Anttonen and Jorma Sipilä; Social rights and care responsibility in the French welfare state ~ Jeanne Fagnani and Marie-Thérèse Letablier; Childcare policies of the Nordic welfare states: different paths to enable parents to earn and care? ~ Gudný Björk Eydal; Informal family-based care work in the Austrian care arrangement ~ Margareta Kreimer and Helene Schiffbänker; Part 4: The formalisation of care work and the labour market: Labour market participation of women and social exclusion: contradictory processes of care employment in Sweden and Germany ~ Hildegard Theobald; Women's work between family and welfare state: part-time work and childcare in France and Sweden ~ Anne-Marie Daune-Richard; Labour market integration of women and childcare in Slovenia ~ Nevenka Cernigoj Sadar; Family leave and employment in the EU: transition of working mothers in and out of employment ~ Anita Haataja; Part 5 Conclusions: Political actors and the modernisation of care politics in Britain and Germany ~ Traute Meyer; Welfare state and the family in the field of social care ~ Birgit Geissler.

" ... the book provides many intriguing insights." European Journal of Social Security