(Self-)Organizing of Migrant Live-in Care Workers in Switzerland

Due to privatization of care services, changing migration patterns and transformations in the gender regime, the home care market in Switzerland has expanded in recent years. In private households of elderly people in need of care, a highly gendered and racialized low-wage sector has emerged. Especially around the clock care is increasingly organized by transnational for-profit agencies. Women from Eastern European countries work as live-ins and regularly commute between their family back home and their workplace in a Swiss household. Their work is characterized by low wages, long working hours and blurring boundaries between work and non-work.

Despite political and trade union efforts to regulate this labor sector, there is a general difficulty to enforce legislations in private households due to strong power hierarchies and lack of controls. In my paper, I ask about the possibilities and challenges of the politicization of commercialized care work through migrant (self-)organizing. Taking the example of the network Respekt@vpod in the city of Basel (Switzerland), I investigate how migrant care workers’ empowerment can succeed despite a situation of social isolation, limited citizenship and insufficient institutional support by conventional unions. I therefore identify different enabling factors: a) ‘sociabilities’ and (virtual) networks within migrant communities; b) ‘space/place-making activities’ in sites like churches and public places; c) strategic law suits and practices to raise legal consciousness; and d) successful collaboration between migrant networks and trade unions at eye level. Based on my empirical work, I draw the conclusion that the private sphere is more and more contested by the commercialization of care work and the emergence of for-profit care agencies. This development is also caused by the fact that it is easier for the concerned workers to organize themselves and claim their rights when facing a care agency rather than a private employer.