The Bonds of Labor: The Role of Emotions in Home Eldercare Assistance

• In Event: 220 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 18. Conceptualizing Carework

Abstract

Abstract: This paper investigates the role of emotions in home eldercare assistance in Italy and the role they play in renegotiating the relationships of power between immigrant home eldercare assistants, the elders they care for and the families who hire them. The research is based on thirty-five interviews with home eldercare assistants working in Turin, Italy and on eighteen months participant observation at Tierra Madre an NGO that organize courses to train immigrant women with no previous experience to work with elderly people. The analysis of the interviews reveals that while it is true that emotional bond and the rhetoric of “one of the family” allow the family employers to extract more work from the immigrant workers, at times this same emotional bond may work in favor of the workers and guarantee them a stronger bargaining power in terms of wages, work hours and help in obtaining a ex post facto regularization

Author

• Francesca Degiuli, Fairleigh Dickinson University