Isabel Shutes

Migrant labour and the marketisation of care for older people: The employment of migrant care workers by families and service providers

This article contributes to an understanding of how different institutional contexts produce similar outcomes as regards the employment of migrant workers in care work. It examines how the employment of migrant care workers in both the familial provision of care and the formal provision of care services for older people is shaped, first, by the marketisation of care and, second, by immigration controls. The analysis draws on data on the employment of migrant care workers by families in Italy and by providers of residential and home care services in the UK. It is argued that marketisation processes and immigration controls have contributed to the employment of migrant workers across so-called informal/formal types of care provision, and irregular/regular types of care work and migration. While the institutional contexts in which migrant care labour is located may differ, converging outcomes are evident regarding the structural positioning of migrant workers within the provision of care for older people.

Care relationships, quality of care and migrant workers caring for older people

ABSTRACT Migrant care workers make a substantial contribution to older adult care in Ireland and the United Kingdom (UK). However, little is known about the relational aspects of care involving migrant care workers and older people. Given that the care relationship is closely linked to quality of care, and that the Irish and UK sectors are increasingly restricted by economic austerity measures, this lack of information is a concern for care practice and policy. Our paper explores the relationship between migrant care workers and older people in Ireland and the UK and draws on data collected in both countries, including focus groups with older people (N = 41), interviews with migrant care workers (N = 90) and data from a survey of and interviews with employers. The findings illustrate the complexity of the migrant care worker–older person relationship; the prevalence of need orientated, friendship and familial-like, reciprocal, and discriminatory interlinking themes; and the role of individual, structural and temporal factors in shaping these relationships.

The Employment of Migrant Workers in Long-Term Care: Dynamics of Choice and Control

The employment of migrant workers in long-term care is increasingly evident across western welfare states. This article examines the ways in which immigration controls shape the exercising of choice and control by migrant care workers over their labour. It draws on the findings of in-depth interviews with migrant care workers employed by residential and home care providers and by older people and their families in the UK. It is argued that the differential rights accorded to migrants on the basis of citizenship and immigration status shape, first, entry into particular types of care work, second, powers of ‘exit’ within work, and, third, ‘voice’ regarding the conditions under which care labour is provided.

Work-related conditionality and the access to social benefits of national citizens, EU and non-EU citizens

This article contributes to an understanding of how conditionality applies across social security and immigration policies in restricting the access to social benefits of national citizens, EU and non-EU citizens. Specifically, the article builds on Clasen and Clegg’s (2007) framework of conditionality in the context of welfare state reform by extending that conceptual framework to include migration. The framework is applied to examine how different levels of conditionality have been implemented in UK policy reforms to restrict access to rights of residence and to social benefits. It is argued that a conditionality approach moves beyond a binary of citizens and migrants in social policy analysis, contributing to an understanding of the dynamics and interactions of work-related conditions in restricting access to social benefits, with implications for inequalities that cut across national, EU and non-EU citizens in terms of the relationship of particular groups to the market.

Welfare-to-Work and the Responsiveness of Employment Providers to the Needs of Refugees

Improving the responsiveness of service providers to the needs of users has been a principal aim of welfare state reform. In the context of employment provision, this article explores the effects of a job outcome-oriented performance system on the responsiveness of providers to the needs of unemployed refugees. These effects concern, first, the type of refugees to whom providers are responsive and, second, the type of employment assistance provided. It is argued that an emphasis on short-term job outcomes may conflict with supporting refugees who are ‘harder to help’, particularly those with English language needs. It may also conflict with supporting refugees to access employment related to their skills and interests by encouraging providers to focus on placing refugees in ‘easy to access’, low-skilled and low-paid jobs. The effects may, therefore, serve to reproduce labour market inequalities experienced by refugees.

Gender and free movement: EU migrant women’s access to residence and social rights in the U.K.

ABSTRACT This article examines the gendered effects of restricting EU migrants’ access to rights to residence and to social benefits in relation to work, self-sufficiency and family. It draws on the findings of qualitative research on EU migrant women’s access to social benefits in the U.K. on the basis of residence rights as an EU citizen-worker or family member of an EU citizen-worker. The research included qualitative interviews with providers of advice services on social benefits claims and with EU migrant women in the U.K. The findings point to the ways in which the status of the EU citizen-worker is defined and implemented limits women’s access to and ability to maintain that status and, at the same time, their reliance on the status of family member of an EU citizen-worker. Both have gendered effects in terms of women’s potential exclusion from access to residence and social rights as mobile EU citizens.

Divisions of Care Labour: Care for Older People and Migrant Workers in England

Cross-national analyses of care for older people have sought to identify different models of care according to the role of the state in the public provision of paid or ‘formal’ care services and benefits, and the role of the family in the provision of unpaid or ‘informal’ care (Anttonen and Sipila, 1996; Carrera et al., 2013; Timonen, 2005). The role of the market in the provision of care for older people is likewise increasingly evident across European countries (Brennan et al., 2012; Pavolini and Ranci, 2008). The ‘welfare mix’ of care for older people, regarding the roles of the state, market, voluntary sector and family has implications both for those receiving care and those providing care (Daly and Lewis, 2000). Variation in the welfare mix, not only across countries but within systems of care for older people in different national contexts, have implications for who provides care and the conditions under which care is provided within that system. Care for older people depends both on a paid workforce and on unpaid carers and volunteers — paid and unpaid work which is highly gendered. The provision of care is labour intensive: within paid care services, labour costs are estimated to make up half the costs of home care provision and between half and two thirds of the costs of residential care (Beesley, 2006). The quality of care is likewise relationship intensive: social relations in giving and receiving care being integral to the quality of provision (Glendinning and Bell, 2008). The costs and the quality of the care system are therefore highly dependent on the care workforce.

Immigration and the Gendered Worker Citizen

Chapter 3 by Anderson brings into focus the ways in which immigration controls are as much about the construction of the internal borders of nation states as they are about the construction of external borders. With respect to labour markets, immigration controls determine not only who is permitted entry to the nation state as a worker but the terms and conditions of their entry, shaping not only access to the labour market but also the social relations of labour. With respect to welfare states, immigration controls likewise determine not only who is permitted access to social provisions but also the terms and conditions of access, shaping the social relations of welfare. The chapter also highlights the ways in which immigration controls are not simply about ‘us and them’ (to quote Anderson’s earlier work, 2013) — about citizens vs non-citizens — they profoundly shape the social relations of citizenship. While the development of welfare states may have granted citizens social rights, those rights were underpinned by different assumptions about the relationship between work and welfare, conferring minimal rights to the poor, compensatory rights to workers or more universal rights to citizens (Dean, 2002; Esping-Andersen, 1990).