The Promise of Decent Care and the Problem of Poor Working Conditions. Double Movements Around Live-In Care In Austria

Abstract

Over the last decades, the marketization of live-in care for the elderly in Austria has been accompanied by new forms of regulation and the contestation surrounding this type of care provision. The article analyzes this process as a Polanyian double movement – the movement of a market-driven provision of care and organization of care work, and countermovements seeking protection from its effects – and asks to what extent the provision of decent care and decent work are affected. Drawing on policy and media analyses as well as interviews with representatives of brokering agencies and other stakeholders in the field, we show how live-in care is embedded in the Austrian care regime, how its marketization entails contradictions between decent care and poor working conditions and how care disputes and attempts to regulate the model have emerged.