Caring for a Living: Migrant Women, Aging Citizens, and Italian Families
Francesca Degiuli
Abstract
The world of today is aging and is doing so at a great speed. People are living longer and this represents one of the greatest achievements of the past century, but often an extension of life expectancy does not correspond with an extension of healthy lives. Aging populations, particularly those with a high percentage of oldest old, are often burdened with chronic conditions that require extended long-term care. Who is going to provide this care and in what forms are key problems that will soon affect a growing number of postindustrial and mid-income countries. This book explores the organizat ... More
The world of today is aging and is doing so at a great speed. People are living longer and this represents one of the greatest achievements of the past century, but often an extension of life expectancy does not correspond with an extension of healthy lives. Aging populations, particularly those with a high percentage of oldest old, are often burdened with chronic conditions that require extended long-term care. Who is going to provide this care and in what forms are key problems that will soon affect a growing number of postindustrial and mid-income countries. This book explores the organization of long-term care in Italy, a country already in the midst of an eldercare crisis. There the answer to this problem has taken the shape of home eldercare assistance, an arrangement whereby long-term care services are bought in the market in the form of private and individualized assistance by families sometimes with economic support provided by the state. The providers of these services, commonly known as badanti (minders), are, for the most part, immigrant women, less often men, coming from different areas of the world. Caring for a Living analyzes the global, regional, and local processes that participated in the development of this new organization of care, paying close attention to the role that the state, Italian families, and the workers themselves play in shaping and in defining it.
Keywords:
aging,
long-term care for the elders,
care work,
immigration,
welfare state,
globalization,
gender,
race/ethnic relations,
families
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199989010 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: June 2016 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199989010.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Francesca Degiuli, author
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, CUNY, College of Staten Island
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