Who Cares the Elderly? Migrant Women at the Crossroads Between Family and Welfare State

Drawing on qualitative interviews in ten households in southern Turkey, Antalya with employers of live-in migrants who care the elderly in the family, as well as the migrant caretakers, this paper examines the dynamic relationship between migrant caretakers and the elderly with an intersectional perspective taking into account of age, gender, class, and ethnicity. Given the country’s changing migratory patterns from being an emigration country to an immigration and transit country, Turkey attracts migrants from its neighboring countries at a steady increase rate, which makes it as an interesting case. 

Elderly care is closely interlinked with a country’s formal welfare provisions and informal protective schemes. Turkey is usually described as having Southern welfare model, characterized by low level state penetration into the social sphere as well as lack of social assistance provisions. However, with the introduction of recent healthcare reforms, this perspective needs further elaboration not only on the formal regulations level but also at the access and use of such regulations of the individuals. Therefore, family and welfare policies in the area of domestic work and care will be elaborated. Despite novel social assistance schemes, the existing cultural system in Turkey still favors caring the elderly at home particularly by women, who are usually daughters, daughter-in-laws and recently migrant women to some extent. Migrant women are usually from former Soviet Union such as Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, the Central Asian Republics and to a lesser extent Russia and Ukraine, who often work undocumented in tourism and household sectors.