Shaping the social and work-related well-being of migrant live-in carers: the ambiguous role of labour market intermediaries in England

Hussein, Shereen; Turnpenny, Agnes; Emberson, Caroline

Abstract

Live-in care is an increasingly common form of care in England. It relies, to a significant extent, on the labour of migrant women who are increasingly recruited through market intermediaries either in the UK or their home countries. The literature indicates a particular vulnerability of care workers’ well-being linked to the challenging, live-in, working conditions combined with the emotional nature of care work. Migration represents another dimension that affects workers’ well-being in both negative and positive ways. Only very few studies investigate the well-being of live-in care workers or the role of intermediary agencies in safeguarding or hindering individual workers’ well-being. This chapter utilises primary qualitative data to investigate this specific aspect. Its structure consists of four sections. Following this introduction, section 1 introduces the context of migrants working in the care sector in England with a specific focus on the increasing role of live-in care, current evidence on care workers’ well-being and its intersectionality with migration and live-in care. In section 2, we present the data and methods used. In section 3, we discuss the findings with a particular view of the role of intermediary agencies in shaping migrant live-in care workers’ well-being, followed by a conclusion in Section 4.

Citation

Hussein, S., Turnpenny, A., & Emberson, C. (2024). Shaping the social and work-related well-being of migrant live-in carers: the ambiguous role of labour market intermediaries in England. In B. Aulenbacher, H. Lutz, E. Palenga-Möllenbeck, & K. Schwiter (Eds.), Home Care for Sale: The Transnational Brokering of Senior Care in Europe. SAGE Publications

• Publication Date: 2024-02
• Deposit Date: Feb 14, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 1, 2026
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Series Title: SAGE Studies in International Sociology
• Book Title: Home Care for Sale: The Transnational Brokering of Senior Care in Europe
• ISBN: 9781529680140
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/31445767
• Related Public URLs: https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/home-care-for-sale/book287968
• Contract Date: Apr 21, 2023