A Comfort or a Threat? How Older Italians View Home Eldercare Assistants

Abstract

AbstractIncreasing life expectancy has led, in many countries, to new arrangements to meet the growing need for care in later life. In Italy, with the second oldest population in the world, family members, especially women, provide the majority of care. Paid care workers, however, are increasingly filling in where families cannot. Known as “home eldercare assistants” or badanti, most are middle‐aged women from Eastern Europe, South America, or the Philippines. Research on this phenomenon is limited by its almost exclusive focus on care workers rather than older adults who receive their care —or may do so in the future. Our study addresses this issue using interviews with 28 older adults living in northern Italy. Participants with friends or family members who had received support from these care workers often held positive views. Most, however, also expressed negative views that resonated with cultural discourses about aging, as well as immigration. These views reflected the high value placed on independence, along with the centrality of the home as a site for decision‐making and identity maintenance. Negative views also were shaped by dominant discourses that construct immigrants as threats to security, particularly regarding one's belongings. Another discourse that influenced views of home eldercare assistants centered on the construction of aging as a biomedical phenomenon that is better addressed by medical professionals in health care settings, including nursing homes. Such views influence older adults' willingness to receive help from care workers and its effectiveness—knowledge of which can improve care.