Vital Yet Vulnerable: Europe’s Intra-EU Migrant Caregivers

Policy Study

In this first article of the FEPS-FES Care4Care Policy Brief Series, Dr Petra Ezzeddine (Charles University, Prague) questions the migration angle in the face of late modern societies’ chronic care shortage.

Populations are ageing, and the traditional assumption that families (and predominantly their female members) represent an unlimited, endlessly flexible reservoir of care has been challenged. There is an indisputable social need for institutions to care for elderly people and for hired domestic care workers.

The author explores how the EU relies on internal (predominantly female) migrants to provide much of the workforce to meet these needs. In view of how current care policies put them in a highly vulnerable labour position, this policy brief concludes with a set of short- and long-term conclusions.

Read the Article

  “Vital Yet Vulnerable: Europe’s Intra-EU Migrant Caregivers” is the first article of a new Care4Care Policy Brief Series by FEPS and FES. It is produced in the framework of the long-standing commitment of FEPS on the issue of care, the Care4Care project.