This dissertation takes social reproduction as the foundation of human life. Our bodies and lives are interdependent where socially reproductive labour responds to the needs that must be met in order to sustain life and for social relations to be created and maintained. Taking home care work as its point of departure, (un)waged socially reproductive labour performed primarily for older people, the dissertation examines and advances the understanding of the everyday practices and processes through which inequality is organised within the municipal labour organisation of the city. The dissertation focuses on the municipal labour organisation because the welfare state—here, the welfare municipality—plays a particular role in the organisation of social reproduction. The study is situated in Malmö, where the municipal organisation under examination is the City of Malmö.

The dissertation addresses the following questions: 1) What experiences do home care workers (assistant nurses and care assistants) in the City of Malmö have of the everyday practices and processes through which inequality is organised in home care work in relation to the social relations of class, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and age? (2) What consequences does the organisation of inequality in home care work have for home care workers? Inequality is also examined as exploitation and expropriation of home care workers, and the dissertation develops the concept of ‘differential exploitation’, that is, how the exploitation varies among workers based on their social relations of difference. Finally, the dissertation analyses how the City of Malmö's differential exploitation of home care workers and its expropriation of them causes a crisis in the city's social reproduction.

Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s expanded understanding of capitalism as an institutionalised social order, the dissertation centres on two of the constitutive institutional separations she identifies within capitalism: (1) from commodity production to social reproduction, and (2) from exploitation to expropriation. These are developed in dialogue with Karl Marx’s conceptualisation of exploitation and with scholars who theorise ‘differential exploitation’ and exploitation as violence. The first institutional separation is further developed through Social Reproduction Theory and theories of the city’s social reproduction. The dissertation is also inspired by Joan Acker’s theory of ‘inequality regimes’ in organisations, which serves as a means of operationalising the concept of ‘differential exploitation’ and examining home care workers’ experiences of the organisation of inequality.

The empirical material consists of fifteen semi-structured interviews and one group interview with home care workers in the City of Malmö. It demonstrates how home care workers’ social relations of difference both shape and are shaped by various practices and processes through which inequality is organised in home care work. These include the composition of the labour force, forms of employment, and the allocation of home care workers’ work tasks. They also concern home care workers’ opportunities to influence their work and expectations regarding who the home care worker is assumed to be. Further, they involve interpersonal relations and the segregated city, the rendered invisible content and competencies of home care work, wages, managerial practices, and other mechanisms of control. They also concern the specific character of socially reproductive labour, which gives rise to forms of internalised control. These practices and processes of the organisation of inequality in home care work are analysed as forms of differential exploitation of home care workers. The dissertation also demonstrates how home care workers perform unwaged labour beyond the boundaries of the normal working day, which is analysed as expropriation of home care workers. Some of the consequences of the organisation of inequality for home care workers are described as the boundlessness of work and the breakdown of home care workers’ bodies.

The dissertation subsequently analyses how the City of Malmö's differential exploitation of home care workers and its expropriation of them cause a crisis in the city's social reproduction. The City of Malmö’s differential exploitation of home care workers is analysed as a fragmentation of the working collective that leads to an accelerated exploitation of them. The City of Malmö’s expropriation of home care workers is analysed as a deregulation of the welfare municipality that creates new and more fragile forms of unwaged socially reproductive labour. The dissertation also identifies two specific conditions that make the City of Malmö’s differential exploitation of home care workers and its expropriation of them possible: the existence of the city’s industrial reserve army and regular army of labour. Finally, the dissertation analyses how exploitation and expropriation results in the depletion of home care workers’ labour power, and how the crisis in the city's social reproduction can be found in—and is embodied by—the bodies of home care workers.