Researching labor migration in the German elderly care sector using semi-structured interviews : The Perspective of the Employer in a Transnational Context / Marlene Neumann, Uwe Hunger
The elderly care sector in Germany is faced with a serious decrease in worker supply while the demand for the services increases. The service gap is partly being filled with the employment of migrant workers, many of them so-called "live-ins" who are immigrants mostly from Eastern Europe who live with the people they take care of. Their work contract is international because they are employed by agencies in the sending countries while working in Germany. The study used the method of semi-structured interviews to explore the perspective of employers in this transnational space. The interviews have shown that there is a wide gray area surrounding the employment of live-ins in which minimum standards of labor rights are being breached. The circulation of live-ins between their countries of origin and Germany keeps them from adjusting to the local labor market and claiming their rights