Multi-local and cross-border care loops: Comparison of childcare and eldercare policies in Slovenia

Abstract

This article provides a comparative analysis of two different care systems, childcare and eldercare, in Slovenia, an Eastern-European post-transition country, with a dual-breadwinner full-time employment regime, a relatively low level of migration and a fast growing share of the 65+ population. The analysis shows that both care systems follow two different kinds of logic of egalitarianism, which means that the national care regime is internally diversified. While care for children is public, universally accessible and defamilialistic, care for the elderly follows the principles of marketization, economy-based inequality in access and familialization. Such policies also have different implications for care mobilities: while childcare demands daily transfers between multi-local sites of care, which remained confined within the state borders, eldercare increasingly demands cross-border care loops. The comparison of both care systems along with the empirical evidence on the presence/absence of migrant care workers in care support the thesis that cross-border care mobilities emerge at points where the state with its policies is failing to adequately meet care needs of the citizens.

Long-Term Care and Gender Equality: Fuzzy-Set Ideal Types of Care Regimes in Europe

“…In addition, political narratives, cultural models, and traditions of intergenerational solidarity all shape the configurations of policy paradigms and social practices in LTC. Hrženjak's (2019) qualitative case study on Slovenia invites large-N and comparative investigations to test her findings in wider regional settings. She argues that the actual familialization of elderly care is conditioned by traditional patterns of informal family care of state socialism and transitional conditions.…”

Care Migration in Care Homes for Older People in the European Semi-Periphery Between Slovenia and Former Yugoslav Countries

“…However, the collapse of the socialist welfare states, a high share of full-time employed women, and the feminisation of migration have caused a care deficit and established structural conditions leading to an increasing appeal to care migration in Eastern European countries, too (Tkach & Hrženjak 2016;Katona & Melegh 2021). Although studies of East-to-East care migration are rare, they point out that many states switched from being exclusively sending countries and started to accept migrants in households and formal care services (Kindler 2008;Souralová 2015;Hrženjak 2019;Gábriel 2022). Whether care migration in Eastern European countries -countries of the global semi-periphery -has some structural characteristics that determine its specificity compared to the other European contexts has yet to be answered.…”

“…In the 1990s, the state opened the provision of institutional care to private enterprises; it introduced "controlled privatisation" by retaining control over the quality standards and prices through issuing concessions and business permits. The number of care homes doubled in the last twenty years; in 2020, there were 99 care homes: 54 public and 45 private (Hrženjak 2019).…”

“…Such a funding system implies that pay raise in care homes directly results in a higher price for users, limiting the access to care of older people who are the most exposed social group to poverty in Slovenia (Leskošek 2019). Therefore, the state avoids raising salaries (Hrženjak 2019).…”

Tartós gondoskodás és nemek közötti egyenlőség az európai jóléti rendszerekben

“…Emellett a gondoskodási feladatokat is figyelembe vevő foglalkoztatásnak eltérő mintázatai alakultak ki. Országspecifikus ideológiai harcok, kulturális normák és a generációk közötti társadalmi szolidaritás hagyományai is formálják az idősekről való gondoskodás közpolitikai elképzeléseit és gyakorlatait (Hrženjak 2019, Fedyuk 2021.…”