Simmons Cassandra, Rodrigues Ricardo, Szebehely Marta
European Centre for Social Welfare Policy & Research, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Social Work, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
Health Soc Care Community. 2022 Sep;30(5):e2191-e2202. doi: 10.1111/hsc.13657. Epub 2021 Nov 25.
Increased demand for long-term care (LTC) services alongside precarious working conditions has resulted in labour shortages in the LTC sector, which has led to an increasing share of workers of migrant origin filling these jobs. Previous research on migrant care workers has also highlighted the seeming gap in working conditions relative to native workers. However, lack of disaggregated data on migrant and native care workers, alongside single-case studies, may have concealed potential disadvantages faced by certain groups and insufficiently accounted for differences in migration regimes and organisation of LTC sectors. To address these gaps, we carried out a comparative study on various working conditions of migrant and native LTC workers in Austria and Sweden. Using the international Nordcare survey on care sector working conditions, carried out in Austria in 2017 (n = 792) and in Sweden in 2015 (n = 708), we employed t-tests and multivariate logistic regressions to compare the working conditions of migrant and native carers in home and residential care in each country. We found that worse working conditions in Sweden compared to Austria may be explained by differences in training requirements of the LTC workforce and the relatively large for-profit private sector. Country of origin also plays a paramount role in the differences in working conditions experienced by migrants compared to native care workers, with non-European migrants being more likely to face a number of precarious working conditions. Our findings highlight the need to continue addressing precarious working conditions across the sector, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic where poor working conditions have been linked to increased COVID-related deaths in nursing homes. Our findings also emphasise the importance of policies that consider the various challenges experienced by different migrant groups in the LTC sector, who may particularly be at risk of presenteeism during the COVID-19 pandemic.
对长期护理（LTC）服务需求的增加以及不稳定的工作条件导致了长期护理部门的劳动力短缺，这使得越来越多的移民工人填补了这些岗位。此前关于移民护理工人的研究也强调了与本地工人相比，他们在工作条件上似乎存在差距。然而，缺乏关于移民和本地护理工人的分类数据，再加上单一案例研究，可能掩盖了某些群体面临的潜在劣势，并且没有充分考虑移民制度和长期护理部门组织方式的差异。为了填补这些空白，我们对奥地利和瑞典的移民和本地长期护理工人的各种工作条件进行了一项比较研究。利用2017年在奥地利（n = 792）和2015年在瑞典（n = 708）进行的关于护理部门工作条件的国际Nordcare调查，我们采用t检验和多元逻辑回归来比较每个国家居家护理和机构护理中移民和本地护理人员的工作条件。我们发现，与奥地利相比，瑞典较差的工作条件可能是由长期护理劳动力的培训要求差异以及相对较大的营利性私营部门造成的。与本地护理工人相比，移民的原籍国在其工作条件差异方面也起着至关重要的作用，非欧洲移民更有可能面临一些不稳定的工作条件。我们的研究结果强调了继续解决整个部门不稳定工作条件的必要性，特别是在新冠疫情期间，恶劣的工作条件与养老院中与新冠相关的死亡人数增加有关。我们的研究结果还强调了政策的重要性，这些政策应考虑到长期护理部门中不同移民群体所面临的各种挑战，在新冠疫情期间，这些群体可能特别面临带病上班的风险。
