Abstract
This chapter introduces the case of circular migration of care workers from Slovakia to Austria. It provides a historical overview of the welfare and migration policy settings that have shaped this migration flow since the opening of borders between Austria and its post-communist neighbors—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 1989. Chronically high unemployment is identified as an explanation for the dominant position of Slovak care workers. The reliability of data on care workers from Austrian sources and from the Slovak Labor Force Survey is discussed. Quantitative research data comprising two studies conducted in 2011 and 2016 on a sample of active and inactive (in 2016) female carers from Slovakia are presented together with two periods of qualitative fieldwork in 2011 and 2017.
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Notes
- 1.
However, due to the introduction of the transitional employment restrictions for the next seven years, much of this setting remained similar even after 2004.
- 2.
- 3.
The Schengen area consists of selected EEA member countries who agreed to remove border controls on border crossings between two member countries. Austria and its post-communist neighbors are all part of the Schengen area.
- 4.
- 5.
Some Austrian states (Bundesländer) introduced a higher subsidy level (see Prochazkova et al., 2008).
- 6.
The incomes of most retired in Austria are below this threshold. According to Statistics Austria, the average old age pension in Austria in 2016 was €1254 (€982 for women).
- 7.
A Pflegestufe level of one or two is considered eligible if the care receiver is diagnosed with Dementia (BMASK, 2016).
- 8.
This share was even higher in Vienna, where—according to figures from November 2011–83% of the 5971 care workers were from Slovakia (Richter, 2011).
- 9.
These surveys will be introduced in detail in the next part of this chapter.
- 10.
Figures were provided via an email request from the WKO. Besides the mentioned nationalities, there were 4.6% Croatian, 2.4% Bulgarian, 1.6% Austrian, and Polish care workers working in 24-hour care provision in Austria at the end of 2017.
- 11.
A counter-argument can be made using the very weak placement of Slovakia in the healthy life years indicator. While there might be few people in the upper age categories, as the indicator suggests, they are suffering from bad health. There, however, seems to be a methodological problem with this measurement, which suggests that elderly in Slovakia do not suffer from worse health than their counterparts in the post-communist neighbors (Piscová, Klobucký, & Bahna, 2015).
- 12.
- 13.
A particular group of carers in this regard could be carers working in Austria only for a short time. If their income is below the threshold where social security contributions are paid, there is little incentive for the carer or the family to regularize such arrangement.
- 14.
This figure was provided via an email request from the WKO.
- 15.
- 16.
Passing the exam is a precondition for entry to tertiary education, similar to the A-Level exams in the UK or the Abitur in Germany.
- 17.
This is in line with the share of nurses among the 24-hour carers working in Austria referred to by local sources (Winkelmann et al., 2015).
- 18.
We would like to thank Miroslava Hlinčíková, an anthropologist from the Institute of Ethnology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, for her participation in the research design as well as for conducting part of the interviews in both qualitative research fieldworks in 2011 and 2017.
- 19.
The research sample from the 2011 fieldwork round was part of the doctoral research of Martina Sekulova, where 21 respondents participated. The sample included 17 active female carers, two male care workers, one ex-carer, and one interviewee was from a placing agency. Of the 17 female care workers from the 2011 fieldwork, nine were available to be re-interviewed in 2017. The unavailability of the carers from the first round is also the reason why three new carers were added in the 2017 interview round.
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Bahna, M., Sekulová, M. (2019). Slovak Care Workers in Austria: An Overview. In: Crossborder Care. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97028-8_2
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