Care facilities for Germans in Thailand and Poland: making old age care abroad legitimate

Abstract

This article looks at old age care facilities abroad that target people who live in Germany. Such facilities have been established in Southeast Asia (mainly Thailand) and in Eastern Europe (mainly Poland). Given that they challenge central guiding orientations for old age care in Germany, considerable criticisms are levelled at them, and their use is viewed with distinct scepticism. Nevertheless, some of these facilities succeed in sustaining considerable demand from Germany over quite a few years. In this article, we therefore ask what strategies and arguments they use to make them a legitimate option for people in Germany and to be established on the German market. Based on two case studies of an old age facility in Thailandand Poland, we will show how they skilfully position themselves as “better” options for residential care even though their strategies considerably vary and result in very different models of old age care. Drawing on neo-institutional organisation theories, we will show how these strategies are essential for the facilities’ emergence as new players in the care market for older people from Germany.

‘Sometimes you gotta get out of your comfort zone’: retirement migration and active ageing in Cuenca, Ecuador

“…Opportunities to increase autonomy and lifestyle through geographical mobility has a longer history, but its manifestation in contemporary retirement migration to Latin America should be understood against the changing backdrop of state responsibility for provision of elder-care, as well as the shift in the household from producer to consumer of care (Hochschild, 2013). As Bender et al (2018) point out, provision of care is an important amenity for some older migrants, spawning a growing industry in lower-income countries ( see also Bender and Schweppe, 2019).…”

Granny-Export? The Morality of Sending People to Care Homes Abroad

“…Still, there exists evidence, even if a lot of it is testimonial (Schwiter, Brütsch, and Pratt 2020;Bally-Zenger, Eckenwiler, and Wild 2017), that the care that they are providing is often not only not worse than the one available in care homes within higherincome countries but better thanks to their superior staff-to-resident ratios. For example, the Polish town of Zabelków has a care home with seventy-five German residents which, according its German manager, can pride itself on a staff-to-resident ratio of one to five or one to six (by comparison, the ratio for people with moderate care needs in Germany is one to thirteen according to estimates by Alzheimer Europe (2020)), as well as on a workforce that is alleged to be as highly trained as staff in German care homes (Großmann and Schweppe 2020;Bender and Schweppe 2019). In a video report by the Rheinische Post, several German residents and their family members express high levels of contentment about how the Polish care home is run.…”

“…Fourth, any linguistic differences and cultural differences that end up being manifested within foreign care homes might not be (fully) noticed by, or simply be inconsequential for, care home residents with severe cognitive impairments as a result of these impairments (cf. Schwiter, Brütsch, and Pratt 2020;Bender and Schweppe 2019). In particular, it has been suggested that linguistic differences matter little when people with dementia have (largely) lost the ability for verbal communication (cf.…”

“…In recent years, some Germans have responded to this situation by sending their relatives to relatively high-end care homes in lower-income countries. Besides being cheaper (Bender and Schweppe 2019;Großmann and Schweppe 2020), these care homes tend to have much better staff-to-resident ratios than in German care homes, which gives their workers more time to look after individual residents (Schwiter, Brütsch, and Pratt 2020;Bender and Schweppe 2019). Although precise figures are lacking, a few thousand Germans are believed to have moved into foreign care homes (Bally-Zenger et al, 2017), which is a number that is bound to increase as the German population continues to age (see the previous paragraph) and as transferring pensions and care allowance from Germany to other countries has become much easier recently, especially to other EU countries (Großmann and Schweppe 2020;Horn et al 2020).…”

“…Portugal, Spain) and within South-East Asia (e.g. Thailand) (Bender & Schweppe, 2019;Großmann & Schweppe, 2020;Horn et al, 2020).…”