Migrant Care Workers Versus Brides: Different Responses to Care Crisis in Southern European and East Asian Countries

The ways in which Southern European and East Asian societies are responding to their elderly care crisis share interesting similarities and differences not explored in the literature. Although we observe the “migrant-in-the-family model” in some East Asian countries (i.e. Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan), the legal foundation on which the model is built differs significantly. The “migrant-in-the-family” model developed in Southern European countries is heavily based on the work of migrant women often undocumented, while the East Asian version of the model is based on a much stricter and deliberately pre-planned immigration policies towards migrant care workers and the entry of large numbers of women from poorer countries as "brides", who provide both paid and unpaid familial care. Our paper explores how the differences in the citizenship status and rights of migrant women in Southern Europe and East Asia impinge on migrant womens’ migratory trajectories and shape different varieties of ‘migrant in the family model’.