1. The European Care Wall.
Understanding Migrant Workers
and European Integration from a
Gender Perspective
Stockholm, June 2012 Helma Lutz

2. ”Effective and responsible integration of
immigrants in the labor market and in
society is one of the key factors for success
in reaching the Lisbon targets. The gender
perspective is to a large extent lacking in
integration policies, which hampers the
possibilities of fully utilize the potential of
immigrant women in the labor market.”
European Commission’s Report on the Equality between
Men and women. 2005

3. Overview
- Domestic and Care as Work
- Types of Migrant Care Work (domestic
work, childcare and elderly care)
- The European Care-Curtain – a geo-
political aspect of the Global Care-Chain
- Welfare and Migration Regimes
- The ILO convention “Decent Work for
Domestic Workers”
- Debate

5. Care as Work
Domestic and Care Activities = Reproduction/
Consumption ≠ productive WORK
Modernity labeled care/domestic work as
unproductive
Binary: care/domestic work paid
employment
“Adam Smith and Karl Marx shared a contempt for
menial servants and despised their toil as
parasitical, actually a perversion of labor, as
though nothing were worthy of this name which did
not enrich the world” (Hannah Arendt 1958:86).

6. Care as Work
4 characteristics of current debates:
b)Asymmetric evaluation of care and remunerated work is
still valid » domestic/care work is considered unqualified
work» low payment;
c)Care/Domestic work outsourced to migrant women from
economically poorer countries »rise of a global market for
low paid migrant care workers;
d)Equal distribution of domestic/care work in the private
household between the genders unsolved;
e)Extrication of domestic and care work from the private
sphere as one of most insuperable challenges of 21st
century.

7. Specificities of the domestic and care work
sector
Distinction from other markets:
- Intimate character of the work sphere;
- Social construction of d.m. as female gendered
area;
- Highly emotional relationship between employer
and employee;
- Highly personalized mutual dependency;
- Logic of care work ≠ logic of other employment;
- Cannot be reduced to replacement and
substitution.

8. Care
Paradox:
Western & Southern European countries
have huge demand for migrant care
workers while politically denying and
ignoring this deficit.
Mismatch of demand and restrictive
migration policies resulting in large sector
of undeclared work.
Consequence: Legal care services and
irregular migrant care work exist side by
side.

9. Scale and numbers
• Exact data missing; informed guesses:
Three mill. migrant women from Central
and Eastern Europe work in Southern and
Western Europe.
• Sector undergoes quick changes within
short time periods;
• Unwillingness of sending and receiving
countries to acknowledge care migration:
• In receiving countries: hidden (dirty)
secret; in sending countries: female
migrants are characterized as ‘temporarily’

10. Types of Care work
Domestic work (live-out) – cleaning, ironing, cooking etc.
~ est. 10% - 20% of all households purchase; irregular
work-service check systems are existent – low level of
take up.
Child care - au pairs (live-ins); despite au-pair regulation
(contract for one year) many overstays (irregularity);
Elderly long term care (live-ins)
- 24 hours personal care worker
- From self-organized (6-10 weeks) to regularized rotation
system;
- Majority from Eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine,
Georgia, Moldavia, Bulgaria).

11. Global Care Chains:
“Global Care Chains” by A. Hochschild:
Care gain and Care drain
Three views on Global Care Chains:
Critical feminist position
Celebrating globalization: “win-win” situation of migrants and
employers
Traditionalist attitude
The Care Curtain of Europe
Care chains are embedded in geo-political and historical
formations; they have non-identical outcomes: transnational
care arrangements are at stake.

12. state
migrant
workers in
the family
family market

13. ILO Convention June 2011

15. DEBATE
- Cash for Care: Care receivers = employers
(intimate and precarious relationship).
- Various European countries: tacit toleration of
irregularity (open secret, state semi-compliance
with irregularity as a tool for flexibly solving the care
deficit).
- Various European countries: Two sector model -
side by side: expensive regular care services next
to (regularized) cheap migrant care worker –
Downgrading of social standards and labor rights.
Care-drain in sending countries.
- Will the ILO convention be implemented in national
law? Who are the actors to push this?

18. A (not so) hidden affair
- Non recruitment policy for the low waged
domestic work sector;
- Exceptions: au pair and care work for the elderly
through ZAV;
- Since May 2004: migrants from Eastern Europe
use “free movement of services” (Guide line
96/71/EC);
- Result:
a) distinction between legal and illegal
employment is blurred;
b) non discrimination of employers and non
decision (laissez faire) policy.