Filipina Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the Secondary Market of the U.S. Long-Term Care Industry

• In Event: 275 - Regular Session. Transnational and Racial Dimensions of Care Work/Caring Labor

Abstract

To date, the United States (U.S.) has no universal, long-term care insurance model. Instead, I argue that we have an increasingly bifurcated long-term care system that mirrors the growing social inequalities and wealth disparities that characterize the U.S. population. A two-tiered, two-class system has formed in which the majority of elderly and disabled populations must rely on an insecure welfare state system that undergoes pertinent defunding threats, despite the growing demand for services. The lack of universal long-term care policy and the increasing privatization of formal long-term care services in the U.S. signify an economic restructuring toward a scaled-down welfare state that advances a globalized, neoliberal agenda. In my study in Southern California, my findings indicate that Filipino immigrant women became entrepreneurs by becoming private owners and operators of peripheral government subsidized businesses located in the secondary market of the long- term care industry. Many of these businesses are predicated on providing care to some of the most impoverished, mentally and physically disabled elderly populations. I also found that a minority of Filipino immigrant owners had also developed businesses in the privately-funded long-term care market that do not rely on government subsidiaries. The sustainability of their operations was still based on providing cheaper care services in comparison to already established corporate owned long-term care businesses. Due to the bifurcation of the U.S. long term care system, my findings indicate that Filipino immigrants have created an entrepreneurial market niche by accepting lower, fixed reimbursements and decreased profit margins.

Author

• Jennifer Nazareno, University of California-San Francisco