Long-term care in EU policy: women’s responsibility, migrants’ work?

The population of the EU is rapidly ageing, precipitating concerns about the growing demand for long-term care (LTC). Despite this, the right to give and receive LTC has only recently been explicitly recognised in EU policy (Caraciollo di Torella and Masselot 2020) and continues to lack policy tools that would allow to enforce it. As the care crisis, defined as the inability of those who need care to have their needs met and the inability of those who provide it to do so adequately (Dowling 2021) deepens in the EU, it is unclear how it will be addressed, and specifically, who will provide the necessary additional care. The conceptualisation of care in EU policy is one of a cost and a strain on public finances (Cavaghan and Elomäki 2022). This results in the introduction of policy solutions which promote the individualisation and marketization of care services (Zacharenko and Elomäki 2022). One of the consequences of the increasing commodification and marketization of care is the relegation of reproductive labour to migrant women from poorer countries, a process termed the international division of reproductive labour by Parreñas (2015) which results in the ever-greater dependence on migrant labour in formal and informal care sectors, or the ‘migrantisation’ of care (Safuta et al 2022). This paper will assess how different EU institutions (European Commission, Council and European Parliament) allocate responsibility for LTC provision between individuals and the state and how and if this results in a greater dependence on care labour migration as a source of cheap LTC personnel supply. It traces the process of EU policy development over 1999-2022 and identifies three phases: the early (1999-2011) phase, where LTC was not yet seen as a distinct policy area but rather part of policies on demographic change and ageing; the middle (2012-2018) phase, where the provision of LTC became more of a policy concern but without distinct policy tools to enforce it, and the current phase (2019-2022), with LTC being perceived as an important policy area and part of a flagship initiative of the European Commission.