Impacts and Particularities of Care Migration Directed towards Long-term Care: Zooming in on Slovakia and Romania
April 3, 2018
Literature Review
Long-term care for the elderly and disabled – including the provision of such care in Western European countries by migrants from Central and Eastern Europe – has recently become a central concern in a variety of academic fields ranging from migration studies to social policy research. This literature review, which is the first piece of work of work package 6, looks at the home care industry and the provision of such care by migrants in private households.
Focusing on two receiving countries – Austria and Italy – and their respective sending countries -Slovakia and Romania, the authors provide a comprehensive literature review and highlight cross-national variations in terms of care migration. Apart from factors such as historical ties and geographic proximity, the migration time-span is influenced by the characteristics of long-term care systems in receiving countries and by formal and informal labour arrangements. As a result, Slovakia supplies short-term circular migrants while Romania exhibits more-diverse patterns.
The piece predicts that due to its extensive growth, care migration is expected to have a great effect on sending countries such as Slovakia and Romania. Whilst the impact of care migration on sending countries, in particular with regards to the phenomenon of ‘care drain’, has been widely studied, its effects on institutional responses in the European context have been neglected and government responses have been slow.
