Migrant Care Workers: Searching for New Horizons

by Karen Christensen, Ingrid Guldvik

Overview

Cristensen and Guldvik’s Migrant Care Workers provides insight to the historical context for public care work and shows how migration policies, general welfare and long-term care policies as well as cultural differences in values in the UK and Norway set the context for how migrant care workers can realise their individual life projects. The authors discuss what might be called ‘a new type of migrant’ one who is neither a victim of the divide between the global north and the global south, nor someone leaving family behind, but individuals using care work as a part of their own life project of potential self-improvement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472415486
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	10/28/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Karen Cristensen, University of Bergen, Norway. Ingrid Guldvik, Lillehammer University College, Norway.

Table of Contents

Contents: Contextualizing migrants in care work, Karen Christensen; The study’s empirical ground: access, collection, analyses and ethics, Karen Christensen; The life trajectories of migrant care workers, Karen Christensen; Social mobility - downwards to care work, Karen Christensen; Gendered pathways and care worker profiles, Ingrid Guldvik; Negotiating cultural differences, Karen Christensen; Facing challenging intimate relationships, Ingrid Guldvik; The global cross of independence, Karen Christensen; Appendix; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Overall, I found this study to be positive antidote to the literature and media...Christensen and Guldvin's research provides us with useful details about the welfare and migration contexts within which social care workers operate in England and Norway." David Anderson, Dundee University

’This is a wonderfully clear cross-national study of the working lives and aspirations of migrant care workers in Norway and the UK - lives both enabled and constrained by differing social, cultural, legal and welfare contexts. The analysis illuminates and challenges existing research in migration and care work. Essential reading for students, researchers and teachers in both these areas.’ Fiona Williams, University of Leeds, UK ’Christensen and Guldvik bring an insightful migrant-centred perspective to scholarship on the contemporary intersections of migration and care. Their life-course and comparative approach illuminates not only the trajectories and contributions of migrant care workers in Norway and the UK but also the meanings of assistance and care in supporting the independent lives of both migrants and welfare users.’ Rosa Mas Giralt, University of Leeds, UK

From the Publisher