Where’s the community in community, work and family? A community-based capabilities approach

Abstract

Community is a key dimension in the work–family interface as highlighted by the recent Covid-19 pandemic. Yet it is critically understudied by much work–family scholarship. We highlight and address crucial barriers preventing the integration of the community concept, developing an interdisciplinary community-based capabilities approach. This approach conceptualizes three components of community: local relationships, local policies and locality (place, space and scale). Local relationships include formal and informal relationships, networks, and a sense of belonging. Dependent on the broader socio-economic context, local policies and services can provide important resources for managing these relationships and work–life situations more generally. These relationships and policies are embedded in specific geographical localities, shaping and being shaped by social action. This interdisciplinary conceptualization of community allows relational, spatial, structural and temporal aspects of community to be integrated into a more broadly applicable conceptual approach. We base this approach on the capability approach, which allows for a pluralistic work–life framework of what individuals value and do. We further argue for a conceptualization of family as community, moving towards a work–community interface. The resulting conceptual approach is useful for explaining work–life processes for individuals with and without care responsibilities, and offers a new framework for studying the social trends intensely and rapidly highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.