The politics of care work and migration

Abstract

Across Europe, migrants are often employed as providers of care or domestic services, thus forming an alternative for public care provision or contributing to the supply of publicly financed care. This chapter discusses how the growing demand for migrant care workers is related to transformations of European care systems. While public policies stimulate the development of care and domestic services, these policies often contribute to precarious employment and poor working conditions. The chapter also shows how migrant care work is shaped by colonial legacies and stratified systems of entry routes and citizenship within Europe, with specific attention for east-west migration. Finally, the chapter highlights the importance of the politics of migrant care work in relation to social care and migration policy. In this context, political actors at the supra-, trans-and national level are of critical relevance, but they have so far received only little attention in contemporary research on the politics of migrant care work.

Migrant Home Care Workers in the UK: a Scoping Review of Outcomes and Sustainability and Implications in the Context of Brexit

“…food processing, retail, and hospitality). Van Hooren et al (2019) highlight three points: first, "migrants directly enter the sphere of the welfare state"; second, it is a "distinctly gendered segment of labour migration, not only because many of the migrants involved are women but also because the politics of care is often strongly gendered" (see also Hayes, 2018); and third, much migrant care work "takes place within the intimate sphere of the home", which can create a demand for undocumented migration even in countries where this is relatively limited (p. 364). The UK social care sector is already vulnerable to risks of exploitation and modern slavery due to its purchaser-provider split and the use of complex tendering (commissioning) practices with weak oversight over labour supply chains (Emberson & Trautrims, 2019).…”

Fractures in the Austrian Model of Long-Term Care: What are the Lessons from the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

“…A specific feature of the Austrian LTC realm over the past 25 years has been the partial replacement (or supplementation) of family care by live-in personal carers, mainly from neighbouring Eastern European countries. Although live-in migrant care is a widespread phenomenon across Europe (Bettio et al, 2006;Van Hooren et al, 2018), the so-called '24-hour care' model in Austria has had a special status with dedicated legal regulations and funding since 2007 (see Winkelmann et al, 2015;Schmidt et al, 2016). 'Personal carers' are registered as self-employed at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, although most of them are also dependent on specialised brokering agencies in their home country or in Austria.…”