<Abstract>
This article critically examines the ways in which the current legal order fails to sufficiently mitigate, and instead reproduces, the vulnerability of care work, despite the fact that such work constitutes an essential form of labor that enables social reproduction. Care work is grounded in the universal dependency and relationality of human beings and serves as the foundation that makes public waged labor possible. Yet it has long been relegated to the private sphere. As a result, care work has been marginalized as women's unpaid labor within the household and as low-paid, low-status, feminized labor in the market, while forming multilayered vulnerabilities through its intersections with class, migration status, and forms of employment. Against this background, this article analyzes the ways in which the current legal order protects care work through the concept of "fragmented inclusion." Fragmented inclusion refers to the way in which the legal order selectively draws the boundaries of protection according to spheres of work, contractual forms, and the mediation of employment relationships, thereby incorporating some care workers into the scope of legal protection while leaving others outside it. Operating along a spectrum from complete exclusion to selective inclusion and incomplete inclusion, fragmented inclusion has resulted not in the substantive alleviation of the vulnerability of care work, but rather in its redistribution to particular groups. To substantiate this argument, the article first establishes a theoretical framework based on the dependency and relationality of care work, the interdependence between the public and private spheres, intersectional vulnerability, and the idea of a responsive state. It then analyzes, in sequence, the Constitutional Court's decision on the exclusion of domestic workers from retirement benefits, the Act on the Employment Improvement of Domestic Workers, and the Supreme Court's decision concerning the worker status of child caregivers. The Constitutional Court's decision reveals the complete exclusion of care work performed within the household from labor-law protection; the Act on the Employment Improvement of Domestic Workers demonstrates selective inclusion limited to employment relationships mediated by service-providing agencies; and the Supreme Court's decision on child caregivers illustrates incomplete inclusion, in that it recognizes worker status while failing to fully capture the relational and emotional characteristics of care work and the complexity of multiple user relationships. In conclusion, this article seeks to reveal the structure through which the current legal order reproduces the vulnerability of care work by excluding it from, or incorporating it only partially into, legal protection. The relationality and fluidity of care work have long functioned as grounds for excluding it from labor-law protection. This article argues, however, that these features instead demonstrate the need to reconsider existing legal standards that have treated care work as exceptional and peripheral, and to revise and supplement the standard model of waged labor. This requires the reconstruction of protective frameworks that go beyond the individual protection of care workers and consider the interdependence between care providers and care recipients. It also calls for a shift from a legal language centered on waged labor to one capable of responding to the universal vulnerability of human beings.
<Keywords>
Care work, Vulnerability, Fragmented Inclusion, Domestic Workers, Child Caregivers
<Abstract>
This article critically examines the ways in which the current legal order fails to sufficiently mitigate, and instead reproduces, the vulnerability of care work, despite the fact that such work constitutes an essential form of labor that enables social reproduction. Care work is grounded in the universal dependency and relationality of human beings and serves as the foundation that makes public waged labor possible. Yet it has long been relegated to the private sphere. As a result, care work has been marginalized as women's unpaid labor within the household and as low-paid, low-status, feminized labor in the market, while forming multilayered vulnerabilities through its intersections with class, migration status, and forms of employment. Against this background, this article analyzes the ways in which the current legal order protects care work through the concept of "fragmented inclusion." Fragmented inclusion refers to the way in which the legal order selectively draws the boundaries of protection according to spheres of work, contractual forms, and the mediation of employment relationships, thereby incorporating some care workers into the scope of legal protection while leaving others outside it. Operating along a spectrum from complete exclusion to selective inclusion and incomplete inclusion, fragmented inclusion has resulted not in the substantive alleviation of the vulnerability of care work, but rather in its redistribution to particular groups. To substantiate this argument, the article first establishes a theoretical framework based on the dependency and relationality of care work, the interdependence between the public and private spheres, intersectional vulnerability, and the idea of a responsive state. It then analyzes, in sequence, the Constitutional Court's decision on the exclusion of domestic workers from retirement benefits, the Act on the Employment Improvement of Domestic Workers, and the Supreme Court's decision concerning the worker status of child caregivers. The Constitutional Court's decision reveals the complete exclusion of care work performed within the household from labor-law protection; the Act on the Employment Improvement of Domestic Workers demonstrates selective inclusion limited to employment relationships mediated by service-providing agencies; and the Supreme Court's decision on child caregivers illustrates incomplete inclusion, in that it recognizes worker status while failing to fully capture the relational and emotional characteristics of care work and the complexity of multiple user relationships. In conclusion, this article seeks to reveal the structure through which the current legal order reproduces the vulnerability of care work by excluding it from, or incorporating it only partially into, legal protection. The relationality and fluidity of care work have long functioned as grounds for excluding it from labor-law protection. This article argues, however, that these features instead demonstrate the need to reconsider existing legal standards that have treated care work as exceptional and peripheral, and to revise and supplement the standard model of waged labor. This requires the reconstruction of protective frameworks that go beyond the individual protection of care workers and consider the interdependence between care providers and care recipients. It also calls for a shift from a legal language centered on waged labor to one capable of responding to the universal vulnerability of human beings.
<Keywords>
Care work, Vulnerability, Fragmented Inclusion, Domestic Workers, Child Caregivers