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Home Care for Sale
The Transnational Brokering of Senior Care in Europe

Edited by:


February 2024 | 352 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

The world of senior care provision and care work is changing rapidly. Across Europe, brokering agencies for live-in care workers have become powerful players in reshaping welfare systems, transnational care chains and working conditions. This volume draws together the latest research on live-in home care for seniors in Europe, exploring processes of commodification and marketisation, the transnationalisation of care work, the private household as a workplace, and workers’ contestation of the live-in care arrangement. Together, they depict far-reaching challenges in care provision and care work.


"A must-read for anyone wishing to understand the changes in the political economy of care in the 21st century. A compelling exploration of the emergence of care brokerage and agency intermediation in Europe with a variety of examples from different countries and care settings."
- Professor Sabrina Marchetti, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

"Essential reading. Rich empirical and conceptual work provides an exhaustive account of the commodification, marketisation, transnationalisation and exploitation in the care industry, all in the context of global and local inequalities. This is a group of amazing critical analysts who dare to confront some of the key contradictions of our current painful social transformation in European terrains."
- Professor Attila Melegh, Corvinus University Budapest

"An encyclopaedic account of the commodification and marketisation of transnationally-brokered senior home care provision across Europe. It pays close attention to the economic and social inequalities, as well as state policies, that underlie this new migration industry, and the collective efforts to contest and improve conditions of work and care. Home Care for Sale documents the geography of care chains within a divided Europe - a geography that both complements and disrupts conventional understandings of international care chains between the Global North and South. A must-read for those interested in senior home care, social reproduction, migration, border studies and the workings and repercussions of neoliberal state policies."
- Professor Géraldine Pratt, University of British Columbia

Brigitte Aulenbacher, Helma Lutz, Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck, Karin Schwiter
Introduction — Senior home care for sale: agency-brokered transnational live-in care in Europe
 
Part I: Care markets, care provision, working conditions, and the role of brokering agencies
Ewa Palenga-Möllenbeck
Divided Europe? The role of home care agencies from Poland, and how the ideal of decent work gets lost along transnational value chains
Julien Mercille
Business preferences in long-term care: the case of live-in home care in Ireland
Martina Cvajner
The effectiveness of informal care-work brokering in Italy
Dóra Gábriel and Noémi Katona
Diversification of the senior home care market in Hungary: informality and the operational modes of intermediaries
Brigitte Aulenbacher and Veronika Prieler
The ‘good agency’? On the interplay of formalization and informality in the contested marketization of live-in care in Austria
 
Part II: Transnationality, mobilities, border regimes and global care chains
Majda Hrženjak and Maja Breznik
Multiple interacting migration patterns in senior care on Europe’s semi-periphery
Zuzana Uhde
Distorted Emancipation and the Transnational Political Economy of Social Reproduction
Petra Ezzeddine
‘Care Bonds’ in Times of COVID-19
Raquel Martínez-Buján, Paloma Moré
Transnational migration and brokering agencies in the home care sector in Spain
 
Part III: Worlds apart: the household as a workplace
Chiara Giordano
‘As I always say, you really need to tame them!’ The working conditions of migrant senior care workers employed by brokering agencies in Belgium
Lucia Amorosi
Brokering agencies as managers of conflicts and emotions in live-in senior care
María Bruquetas-Callejo
Shaping working hours in the shadow of the law? Experiences of live-in migrant care workers, brokering agencies and family care managers in the Netherlands
Shereen Hussein, Agnes Turnpenny and Caroline Emberson
Shaping the social and work-related well-being of migrant live-in carers: the ambiguous role of labour market intermediaries in England
Helma Lutz and Aranka Benazha
At home with the employer? — Contradictory notions of the care client’s home as a workplace and living space
 
Part IV: Contested labour rights, fair-care initiatives and labour organizing
Bernhard Emunds
Ethical comments on the working-time regime of live-in care
Karin Schwiter and Anahi Villalba Kaddour
Fair care? On the prospects of (and limits to) implementing ‘fairness’ in live-in care
Theodoros Fouskas
Invisible, yet one of the family? Unravelling the precarious employment conditions of migrant Filipina live-in domestic workers and caregivers in Greece
Sarah Schilliger
Breaking out of the ‘prisoner of love’ dilemma: infrastructures of solidarity for live-in care workers in Switzerland
 
Part V: Afterword
Ito Peng
Brokering care migration – a new element in the transnational care worker supply chain

This book is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand the changes in the political economy of care in the XXI century. It offers a compelling combination of classic and cutting-edge approaches that sheds light on the emergence of brokerage and agency intermediation in Europe and provides an excellent variety of examples from different countries and care settings.

Sabrina Marchetti
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

When within a capitalist institutional framework accelerating ageing leads to the crisis of social care and to further transnational marketization of household services 'Home Care for Sale' is an essential reading. The rich empirical and conceptual work points toward an almost encyclopedic outcome, where commodification, marketization, transnationalization, exploitation in care industry is explained in a complex manner within the context of global and local inequalities. This work is performed by a group of amazing critical analysts, who dare to confront some of the key contradictions of our current painful social transformation in European terrains.

Attila Melegh
Hungarian Demographic Research Institute and Institute of Sociology, Corvinus University Budapest

‘Home Care for Sale’ provides an encyclopedic account of the commodification and marketization of transnationally-brokered senior home care provision across Europe, including the UK. It pays close attention to the economic and social inequalities, as well as state policies, that underlie this new migration industry, as well as collective efforts to contest and improve conditions of work and care. ‘Home Care for Sale’ documents the geography of care chains within a divided Europe. This is a geography that both complements and disrupts conventional understandings of international care chains between global north and south. Theoretically and empirically rich, this is a must-read collection for those interested in senior home care, social reproduction, migration, border studies, and the workings and repercussions of neo-liberal state policies.   

Géraldine Pratt
Canada Research Chair in Care Economies and Global Labour, University of British Columbia

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ISBN: 9781529680140
£75.00