Towards a Scarcity of Care? Tensions and Contradictions in Transnational Elderly Care Systems in Central and Eastern Europe

0537073 - SOÚ 2021 RIV CZ eng M - Monography Chapter
Uhde, Zuzana - Ezzeddine, P.
The political economy of translocal social reproduction: cross-border care mobility in the Czech Republic.
Towards a Scarcity of Care? Tensions and Contradictions in Transnational Elderly Care Systems in Central and Eastern Europe. Budapest: Fridrich Ebert Stiftung, 2020 - (Katona, N.; Melegh, A.), s. 26-47. ISBN 978-615-6289-00-1
Grant - others:AV ČR(CZ) StrategieAV21/15
Program: StrategieAV
Institutional support: RVO:68378025
Keywords : migrant care workers * borders * social reproduction * Central Europe
OECD category: Sociology

The chapter analysis transnational care practices and their local manifestation in Central Europe, concentrating on the Czech Republic and neighbouring countries. The authors analyse how migrant care workers are positioned within the bordered landscape of the political economy of translocal social reproduction and illustrate the analysis with rich empirical data based on several research projects that were carried out between 2007 and 2017. Based on ethnographic and biographical research on women migrants from Ukraine to the Czech Republic, and Czech women migrants to Austria, the authors interrogate everyday manifestations of borders and how they are related to the transnational political economy of social reproduction. On the background of this analysis, the authors then focus on dual bordering processes and the role of borders in the political economy of social reproduction in global capitalism. They argue that a naturalised idea of borders and dual bordering processes are instrumental in reproducing the undervaluation of care in global capitalism. Lastly, they apply the analysis to the current situation amidst COVID-19 pandemic measures, which in fact shed more light on the role of borders in the marketisation of care in general and of eldercare in particular.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0314820