Who shapes migration in open labour markets? Analysing migration infrastructures and brokers of circularly migrating home care workers in Switzerland

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fostered by the free movement of workers agreement in the Schengen area, a new market for live-in care work has emerged. Private for-profit care agencies recruit circular migrant women from Eastern Europe and place them in private households for senior care in Western Europe. This paper looks at the recruitment and placement practices of these agencies. Drawing on concepts on migration infrastructures and a politics of mobility, we argue that these agencies are key drivers in the production of new migration infrastructures tailored to live-in carers’ circular mobility patterns. This infrastructure intersects with existing work, gender and care regimes, and works in ways that enclose care workers in the households, ensuring their return home after an assignment. It shapes their migration as a form of movement characterized by repeated short-term and ‘just-in-time’ jobs. This requires care workers to be mobile, flexible and disposable. Hence, care agencies play an important role in perpetuating an unequal distribution of care along lines of gender and socio-economic inequalities. The findings point to fundamental changes in migration control in the Schengen area with private actors such as care agencies gaining new powers in determining who and under which conditions workers migrate.