Migrant care work has emerged as an increasingly important solution to the challenges of growing eldercare needs in both the private and the public sphere. Migrant workers are employed in domestic services in Southern European and in some continental European countries, and they are a significant part of the work force in the formal care sector in many national contexts. The article provides an exploratory cross-country analysis of the phenomenon. After assessing the extent of migrant care work based on individually contracted workers in the domestic sector vs. organization-based care workers in nine European welfare states, it investigates which conditions sustain specific national patterns. Using fuzzy-set analysis the article demonstrates how the intersection of care, migration and employment regimes shapes different patterns of migrant care work. © The Author(s) 2013

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This article analyses and challenges the categories of dependency and independence as they feature in discourses on care for older people in two countries, Austria and the UK. Using critical discourse analysis of newspaper extracts and transcripts of focus group discussions, I demonstrate how independence and selfsuffi ciency are constructed as ideals for human existence. Being dependent, on the other hand, is seen as the expression of an inferior state of life. Three possible challenges to the ideal of independence in the literature on care are then discussed. The paper shows how, through their focus on empowerment, mutuality and reciprocity, they each reproduce aspects of dependency as anathema to contemporary ideas of personhood, to fall short of a fruitful critical intervention into orthodox discourses on older people and care. In contrast, this article argues for embracing a notion of dependency built upon new conceptualizations of the body, of relating and of the conditions of a good life.

In England there has been substantial policy development and an academic drive to promote the goal of 'living well' for people with dementia and their family members. This article critically evaluates the feasibility of this intention, with reference to the experience of those caring for people with the condition. Qualitative data are utilised from a study which explored how couples negotiate relationships and care. The focus of this paper is the perspectives of spousal carers and the challenges they encounter within their caring role. Views were obtained via semi-structured joint interviews where the carer participated alongside the person with dementia. The extent to which living well with dementia is a credible aspiration for carers is examined via three themes: identity subsumed under care responsibilities; the couple as an isolated family unit; and barriers to professional support. The findings highlight that experience of caring is highly complex and fraught with multiple practical, emotional and moral pressures. It is asserted that research into dementia and care relationships must avoid a zero sum situation, prompted by living well discourses, where attempts to bolster the position of people with dementia compound the marginalisation and stigmatisation of informal carers.

An understanding of dementia requires sensitivity to the complex breadth of factors that comprise the person's experiential and social context. This is necessary to ensure that academic and public perspectives on dementia are not subsumed under homogenising discourses that prioritise the neurodegenerative basis of the condition. Gender is one such factor of this 'social location' that must be acknowledged. Cultural standards of masculinity have particular impacts upon men with the condition, thus generating distinctive challenges. This article draws upon qualitative research that included joint interviews with 14 men with dementia and their carers. The analytical focus is on the perspectives of the men with dementia and the strategies with which they respond to the condition. These perspectives are organised via four themes: remaining unmoved, fighting back, emphasising social contributions, and redefining services. This enables exploration of how men adopt particular strategies to preserve their own personhood, which include equable resilience, but also more agential measures to counter the influence of the condition. It is concluded that an approach to dementia research that is more sensitive to masculine-gendered experience is required so that the experience of men with the condition can be conveyed more cogently.