USA: Professor Yiran Zhang on care work

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Professor Yiran Zhang is a prominent emerging voice in the field of labor and employment law, focusing on how care work is governed at the complicated intersection of informal labor markets, the welfare state, and the household. At Cornell’s ILR School, where she is also an Associate Faculty Member at Cornell Law School, she examines the rapidly shifting terrain of U.S. care-subsidy programs and what these changes mean for workers, families, and the law.

Her scholarship, which spans top journals including Boston University Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, and Stanford Law & Policy Review, explores fundamental questions about gender, caregiving, and the very boundaries of what society counts as “work.”

In this interview, Professor Zhang discusses her current research, the rise of paid family caregiving, and the new forms of worker organizing emerging in home-care labor. She closes with powerful reflections on why care workers, often overlooked, are central to the future of the labor movement.

The interview was conducted by Joanna Lee, a LabourStart intern.

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