Immigration and Elderly Care in Italy and Brazil

This paper focuses on the migration of women from Latin America and Eastern Europe to work with home care of the elderly in Italy. Through an ethnographic approach and based on field research conducted in Bologna with caregivers and their employers the aim of this paper is to discuss: (1) the configuration of this new growing market that responds to the rapid aging of the world’s population;(2) how gender, age and nationality produce categories of differentiation and inequality; (3) how the visibility gained by the duo combining two unwanted populations - the elderly and immigrants - redefines forms dependence,  gives new meaning to family relationships, to obligations of the state and to domestic life. The discussion of each of these topics is guided by a doubly comparative perspective: family relations in Brazil marked by the presence of domestic workers and the transnational sex industry and the global care industry.