Crossborder Care, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2019 Lessons from Central Europe

This book analyses the circular migration of care workers in Central Europe using the example of Slovak carers in 24-hour care provision for the elderly in Austria. Challenging analyses that focus primarily on care drain and care regimes, Bahna and Sekulová supplement quantitative methodology with qualitative fieldwork to demonstrate the importance of the sending country?s economic context. The authors discuss the dynamics of economic differences between Austria and its post-communist neighbors as preconditions of the crossborder care provision, bridging analyses of policy and legal frameworks with approaches from labor migration study. Even as they scrutinize the relevance of care drain-based analyses, Bahna and Sekulová bring to the fore the interplay of economic differences, social policies, gender and migration regimes with geographic proximity to study long-term impacts of care work, including an analysis of employment after care work.

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Slovak Care Workers in Austria: An Overview

Chapter 3. Care Workers as Economic Migrants

Chapter 4. Does the Family Suffer?

Chapter 5. Care-work and the Life Project of the Carers: Intersections between Age and Gender

Chapter 6. Leaving Carework: Career Prospects in a Secondary Labor Market

Chapter 7. Conclusion: Labor Migration After All?

Miloslav Bahna is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
 
Martina Sekulová is a researcher with background in anthropology and expertise in migration, gender and human rights.

Provides new insights into the phenomenon of care migration beyond the typically studied cases in Central Europe

Refocuses scholarship on the source or sending country of migrant care workers

Uses quantitative survey methods in combination with qualitative interviews and theories of migration and labor