Abstract
Over the last decades, the marketization of live-in care for the elderly in Austria has been accompanied by new forms of regulation and the contestation surrounding this type of care provision. The article analyzes this process as a Polanyian double movement – the movement of a market-driven provision of care and organization of care work, and countermovements seeking protection from its effects – and asks to what extent the provision of decent care and decent work are affected. Drawing on policy and media analyses as well as interviews with representatives of brokering agencies and other stakeholders in the field, we show how live-in care is embedded in the Austrian care regime, how its marketization entails contradictions between decent care and poor working conditions and how care disputes and attempts to regulate the model have emerged.
Highlights
Over the last decades, many countries have witnessed an economic shift in the field of caring and care work, including domestic work and care
On the other hand, considering both the increasing number of agencies based in Austria and an undocumented number of brokers in sending countries, it is a highly competitive market where the mechanisms of supply and demand are effective for two reasons: first, the less protected self-employed status of the care workers compared to regular employment; second, the limited quality control of care services in the cash-for-care scheme compared to other forms of public care provision
From a Polanyian perspective, we have demonstrated that the mechanisms of supply and demand and “the signals of prices, costs and profits” (Deutschmann 2019: 22) regulate the brokering of live-in care in theembedded care market with the effect of producing a fundamental contradiction between decent care and decent work and jeopardizing the fictitious commodities labor and care
Summary
Many countries have witnessed an economic shift in the field of caring and care work, including domestic work and care. Thereafter, we analyze the neoliberal Austrian self-employment model of live-in care as part of the market-driven care provision and show how it has led to countermovements like protests of care workers and attempts of stakeholders to modify the model by implementing a quality seal.
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