Resisting Crisis at What Cost? Migrant Care Workers in Private Households

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increase of care work in private households. As has been widely shown in recent research in Europe the expansion of the household sector has been particularly strong in Southern European countries and this expansion has largely depended on migrant labour (León, 2010; Lutz, 2008). The strength of this new trend at the beginning of the century prompted Francesca Bettio and others to proclaim a shift in Southern Europe from a ‘familialistic’ to a ‘migrant-in-the-family’ model of care (Bettio et al., 2006). The reasons for this have been widely reported (Rubio, 2003; Bettio et al., 2006; Simonazzi, 2009; León and Migliavacca, 2013). On the demand side, three of the most important factors behind this growth of care-related work in the household sector are population ageing, rapid incorporation of women to the labour market and insufficient state support to cover increasing demand for care provision.