Annamaria Simonazzi

Change in care regimes and female migration: the ‘care drain’ in the Mediterranean

Concern over the need to provide long-term care for an ageing population has stimulated a search for new solutions able to ensure financial viability and a better balance between demand and supply of care. There is at present a great variety of care regimes across industrial countries, with Mediterranean countries forming a distinctive cluster where management of care is overwhelmingly entrusted to the family. In some of these countries elderly care has recently attracted large flows of care migrants, ushering in a new division of labour among family carers (mainly women), female immigrants, and skilled native workers. The article explores the interconnections between the feminization of migration, on the one hand, and ongoing change in the Southern European care regimes, on the other hand. Different strands of the literature are brought together and reviewed to illustrate ongoing developments. One main objective is to identify issues of efficiency, equity and sustainability raised by this new ‘model’ of care. The results of recent surveys on provisions and costs of long-term care are accordingly reviewed to set the stage for discussion on the optimal mix of long-term care provisions in place of traditional family care.

Continuity and Change in the Italian Model

The Italian model does not fit well with the existing classifications of production and welfare regimes. According to the varieties of capitalism approach, Italy is a ‘deviant case, characterized by’ a mix of logics, a high degree of institutional incoherence and an apparent absence of complementarities’ (Molina and Rhodes, 2007, p. 223). A predominance of small, family firms, a large state-enterprise sector and a familistic welfare state place Italy firmly within the southern European model (Karamessini, 2008). However, in the industrial district economy of northern Italy a different dynamic interaction of economic, social, political and cultural factors is found that conforms more to the continental model of coordinated market economies (Becattini, 1987; Brusco, 1989). Two production systems are thus nested within the Italian production model. Over time the economic divide has trickled down to the social sphere so that two varieties of social services have been developed within the national familistic welfare system. This latter divide, evident in education, health and social care, is characterized by a northern model of local services, which for quality and quantity tends towards the continental model, and a southern model which is struggling with economic, structural and political difficulties. The North-South dualism of the production and social models is the most distinctive trait of the Italian model. These models, at the national and local level, are confronted by various challenges.

The middle class in Italy: Reshuffling, erosion, polarization

While recent studies have highlighted the phenomenon and risks of increased inequalities between the top and the bottom of society, little research has so far been carried out on trends relating to the median income range that generally represents the middle class. This volume examines the following questions: what are the main transformations in the world of work over the last 20 years in terms of the labour market, social dialogue, and conditions of work, wages and incomes that may have affected the middle class? How has the middle class been altered by the financial and economic crisis? What are the long-term trends for the middle class in Europe?

Europe at a crossroads: what kind of structural reforms?

The Great Recession impacted strongly on the European Union (EU), and especially on the peripheral countries of the eurozone. In the first phase of the crisis, the fall in GDP resulted in job destruction only partly offset by the European Economic Recovery Plan. Its outbreak coincided with the end of the Lisbon Strategy and the launch of Europe 2020, which set the goals for the new decade.