Migration for Domestic Care Work
Europe is experiencing a huge demand for care workers, as the number of children, aged, sick and disabled needing care has grown due to the changing demographic profile of the European population and women's entrance into the labor market. Women in the post-colonial and post-socialist world have been encouraged to fill this need and today migration for care work offers one of the main ways in which they can access the labor market in the Western World. Much of this care work is located in the private sphere and therefore poorly protected by labor laws. Furthermore, it is often subject to immigration laws that place severe restrictions on these migrant care workers' employment opportunities. For this reason the social and economic condition of migrants who perform domestic care work depends, to a great extent, on the nature of the inter-personal relations that they develop with their employer and those they care for. At the same time, the care workers' general situation is influenced by their continued close ties with family left behind in the country of origin, often including children of their own, that they are expected to support.
This seminar will focus on the complex web of local, national and transnational relations in which migrants performing domestic care work are entangled. How do migrant care workers experience this field of varying and often contradictory relations? And how do they navigate the barriers against - and opportunities for - social and economic mobility that it entails?
The seminar will begin with a keynote lecture by Helma Lutz, professor of sociology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, who in 2008 published an edited volume, Migration and Domestic Work. Her presentation will be followed by a number of shorter papers, with particular focus on migration for domestic care work in Scandinavia under the au pair scheme.
For more information and registration click here.