Abstract
Extensive numbers of Slovak caregivers are compensating for a lack in long-term care capacities in Austria. Circular cross-border commuting is a life strategy for many of them. This chapter focuses on the long-term effects of the migration from Slovakia directed toward 24-hour personal home care for seniors and dependent persons in Austria. The analysis uses research data collected in two fieldwork rounds within a period of seven years. We explore how these care workers’ life projects are impacted by mutual interconnections between gender, age, and temporal circularity. Their personal biographies reflect the diverse ways in which care migration challenges their finances, health, social life, and gender across life-cycle stages.
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Notes
- 1.
Reproductive care refers to all tasks associated with household maintenance, support, and provision for the needs of the family members (Michalitsch, 2010).
- 2.
24-hour home personal care is an easy-to-enter legal option for caregivers mainly from the EU countries. The position of a 24-hour care worker in Austria requires minimum qualifications consisting of basic care and language training. Regardless of the professional background, the basic qualifications consist of 230 hours of training, which is equivalent to the theoretical training of a domestic helper (see more in Winkelmann et al., 2015). A second precondition is language proficiency, at least on a basic communication level; however, migrant caregivers often achieve only limited German language proficiency. This limited language proficiency contributes to conflicts and problems in the workplace as self-employment status implies personal negotiations between employers and caregivers. Furthermore, if the employer does not apply for financial support to hire a carer, there are no qualification requirements at all (Ibid.).
- 3.
For a consideration, placing agencies most commonly offer job opportunities and help caregivers to find employing families, organize travel, support caregivers with certain administrative tasks (establishing a trade license, etc.), and not exceptionally, also organize trainings and language courses. The placing agencies are criticized for implementing exploitative procedures toward caregivers. Among the main subjects of criticism are high payments for the services charged by the agencies, double payments, low wages, unsatisfactory services, a lack of assistance and little involvement in the mutual relations of caregivers with their employers, forced commuting travel arrangements or unprofessional communication, to name a few (Gendera, 2011; Sekulová, 2013a). Caregivers are forced to utilize services provided by the agencies. The share of care workers who found their last job using placing agencies can be found in Chap. 2. Recently, Slovak institutions have started to examine the practices of placing agencies (MPSVR, 2017).
- 4.
For specific levels of family benefits, see information from the Federal Ministry of Families and Youth: https://www.bmfj.gv.at/familie/finanzielle-unterstuetzungen/familienbeihilfe0/familienbeihilfenbetraege.html
- 5.
For details on family benefit entitlement, see information from the Federal Ministry of Families and Youth: https://www.bmfj.gv.at/familie/finanzielle-unterstuetzungen/familienbeihilfe0/anspruch-fuer-buerger-aus-dem-eu-ewr-raum-und-der-schweiz.html
- 6.
For specifics on the family benefit in Slovakia: https://www.employment.gov.sk/sk/rodina-socialna-pomoc/podpora-rodinam-detmi/penazna-pomoc/pridavok-dieta/
- 7.
For details on the actual number of recruiting agencies, see the register of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce: http://www.daheimbetreut.at/de/firmen-a-z
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Bahna, M., Sekulová, M. (2019). Crossborder Care in the Long Term: Intersections of Age, Gender, and Circularity. In: Crossborder Care. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97028-8_5
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