ABSTRACT
Who undertakes care work? Who looks after children and the elderly? Who does the ‘dirty’ work of cleaning our homes and households? It has become almost axiomatic to state that demographic changes, an ageing population and declining birth rates, combined with the dismantling and restructuring of the welfare state, are radically transforming contemporary Western societies. However, these changes are even more pronounced in Southern European countries, especially in Italy. As a result, organising care and care services has become one of the most pressing questions for social scientists and policymakers. It is against this backdrop that migrant domestic and care work - i.e. employing migrant workers in private households to perform various care and welfare tasks - needs to be analysed. Researchers have argued that these changes have contributed to an increase in paid domestic and care work not only in many Southern European countries, but also globally (Ehrenreich & Hochschild 2003; Moya 2007; Parrenas 2001; see also Colombo 2005). In addition, migrant domestic labour presents social scientists an interesting case for studying the relations between the family, the state and the market. An outstanding phenomenon is live-in domestic work, where workers reside in their employer’s household, echoing pre-modern forms of labour relations. 2
