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Labouring lives: the making of home eldercare assistants in Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

Francesca Degiuli
Francesca Degiuli*
Affiliation:
Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, CUNY College of Staten Island, Staten Island NY, New York, USA
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Abstract

This paper explores how im/migrant women coming to Italy from all corners of the world and from very different backgrounds in terms of class, education and work experience are transformed into home eldercare assistants. The paper explores how these workers are created through discourses and every day practices enforced at different levels: from the state to the employers, from the mediators to the workers themselves. The creation of these workers has a double function: one is to fill the needs of a welfare state that otherwise would have to radically transform itself in order to provide effective services to the elders and, the other, is to alleviate the pressures of those of the family caregivers, mostly women, who otherwise would collapse under the burden of extended care.

Keywords

care workglobalisationimmigrationgenderrace/ethnicity
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , August 2011 , pp. 345 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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