Caringscapes of Swedish grandparents of disabled grandchildren: informal care in times of refamilialisation

In the context of welfare retrenchment, families in Sweden increasingly absorb responsibilities once carried by the state. This article examines informal care provided by Swedish grandparents of disabled grandchildren. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 26 grandparents, the study explores how everyday caregiving is organized and shaped by past experiences and future-oriented imaginaries. The analysis combines the caringscape/carescape framework with time geography to demonstrate how constraints and resources at various scales interact to shape informal care. Findings reveal that grandparents’ moral responsibilities and lifecourse-acquired capabilities shape their engagement in care and how they structure everyday life around caregiving. Their involvement extends beyond the private sphere into schools, disability organizations and local planning processes, contributing to the identification and challenge of disabling barriers across a range of social environments. The paper advances debates on austerity and shifting cultures of care by offering an intergenerational perspective that challenges assumptions of a primarily nuclear, state-dependent family model in Sweden. It further contributes theoretically and methodologically to social and cultural geography by presenting a transferable visualization of the caringscape/carescape framework, rendering the spatio-temporal organization of care analytically tangible.