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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Legitimising the care market
— the social recognition of migrant care workers in Italy | | Author(s) | Marta Cordini, Costanzo Ranci |
| Journal title | Journal of Social Policy, vol 46, no 1, January 2017 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, January 2017 |
| Pages | pp 91-108 |
| Source | www.cambridge.org/JSP |
| Keywords | Immigrants ; Care support workers ; Care home staff ; Social policy ; Law ; Attitude ; Italy. |
| Annotation | The sizeable presence of migrant care workers in the private care market in many European countries is confirmed by several studies that have explained the phenomenon through functional arguments, stressing the economic convenience of transnational markets and the crucial role played by public regulation. This paper focuses instead on the public and institutional discourses that have contributed to legitimising this private care market, characterised by the worsening of employment conditions and the decrease in care quality. The main argument is that the social recognition of these workers provides the public with the new concepts and rationales that determine the actual shape of the private care market. Compared to other migrant workers, migrant care workers are usually more welcome in the host society and less targeted by xenophobic attitudes, especially where their labour helps to meet a lack of public provision as is happening in Southern European countries. Nevertheless, their rights are not fully granted, either as citizens or as workers. Basic requirements in the migrant care market include for instance reduced wages, great flexibility, and informal contracts. The authors test their hypothesis by content analysis of public discourse relating to the Migration Law in Italy (usually referred to as Bossi-Fini Law after its main proponents) over a 10-year period (2002-2012). Italy's two main national newspapers were also included in this content analysis. This analysis provides evidence on how market dynamics have been shaped by a deliberate political construction, which has relieved governments of the task of finding a public solution to care needs and has relegated migrant care workers to a subordinate social position, which is functional in making the care market work. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-170120234 A |
| Classmark | TJ: QRS: QRM: TM2: VR: DP: 76V |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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