Project description
Making care work visible, fair, and sustainable
While care work is essential, undeclared and underdeclared employment practices undermine workers’ rights and the sustainability of social welfare systems. The EU-funded Rights4CareWork project explores how diverse employment models, including informal, hybrid, and transnational arrangements, affect care workers’ access to social rights. Its focus is on mobile and migrant workers employed in home-based, live-in, agency, and platform care. Through comparative research, participatory methods, and stakeholder co-creation, it will develop policy recommendations, fairness frameworks, and practical tools to support regulation and promote fairer, more inclusive care employment systems across Europe.
Objective
Undeclared and underdeclared employment in the European care sector undermines both the rights of workers and the sustainability of social protection systems. Rights4CareWork investigates how different employment arrangements — including hybrid, semi-formal, and transnational models — shape care workers’ access to social protection and social citizenship. Focusing on seven countries representing diverse welfare regimes and care systems (Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine), the project maps employment arrangements across home-based, live-in, agency-mediated, and platform care, and examines how formal and informal practices interact. A particular focus is placed on migrant and mobile care workers whose transnational employment trajectories challenge the effectiveness of nationally bounded regulations.
Combining legal, policy, and empirical analysis, Rights4CareWork will develop a comparative typology of employment relationships, analyse their risks and exclusions, and assess how dynamic forms of informality and fragmented social rights are reproduced. Through participatory research, including narrative interviews, group discussions, and stakeholder engagement, the project will centre workers' perspectives, life trajectories, and imagined futures. Structured Policy Labs and co-design workshops will bring together care workers, CSOs, unions, employers, and policymakers to prototype context-sensitive reforms.
The project will deliver actionable policy briefs, a transnational fairness framework, and a public dashboard visualising employment models and social protection access. In doing so, Rights4CareWork contributes to reducing inequality and labour exploitation, strengthening evidence-based policymaking, and advancing fairer employment regimes and social rights in the European care sector.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology industrial relations
- social sciences economics and business business and management employment
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.2 - Culture, creativity and inclusive society
MAIN PROGRAMME
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HORIZON.2.2.3 - Social and Economic Transformations
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL2-2025-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
35122 Padova
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.