Relocating Care within Europe: Moving the elderly to places where care is more affordable

Project Information

ReloCare

Grant agreement ID: 949200

DOI

10.3030/949200

EC signature date 25 November 2020

Start date 1 January 2021

End date 31 July 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 978,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 978,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ReloCare (Relocating Care within Europe: Moving the elderly to places where care is more affordable)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

ReloCare is a multi-sited ethnographic study which takes as case studies care homes in Central Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) that recruit German speaking patients from Germany and to a lesser extend from Switzerland and Austria, and offer care at roughly one-third of the cost of similar institutions in the home countries. It asks what relocating care to poorer neighbouring does to people and places involved by talking with all parties involved. The aim is to gain a comprehensive picture of this small but contested trend and to learn whether, and if yes, how, relocation of care could perhaps be a solution to urgent questions about senior care.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project started in January 2021. Since then a project team has been recruited which complements each other in regard to language skills and knowledge of the countries covered in the study.
The research so far consisted of two phases: Since care relocation in Europe is an emergent and small phenomenon, we mapped the phenomenon through desk research and a phone survey (step 1). In a second step we visited as many care homes as possible (step 2) in order to identify sites for possible in-depths studies and introduce the project in person. In step 3 (still ongoing), the team conducts in-depth ethnographic studies of the daily life in care homes, including how cases of death are handled, interviews family members and agencies and investigates the nexus of care entrepreneurship, state insurances, and the histories of places and regional migration.
Due to the Covid19 pandemic, negotiation of access to the field and ethnographic in-depths fieldwork started slightly delayed.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Within care studies, the transnationalization of care has been mainly understood as drawing on (female) migrant care workers and resulting in a ‘care gap’ in the places such workers leave behind. This project looks at the reverse phenomenon: care relocation, in which the ageing body is relocated to places where care is more affordable. This small but contested trend, described as ‘grandmother deportation’ or ‘geriatric colonialism’, can be seen as emblematic of the marketization of care, and entangling welfare states as entitlements are carried across national borders within Europe.
Most of the care homes are located in regions characterized by a long German and Habsburg-Hungarian history, adding historical complexity to the story. Some serve only German-speaking patients, others serve local, wealthier elderly people as well. They are run by former migrant care workers and by international companies, bringing labour migration and real estate investment into the picture. ReloCare breaks new ground by encompassing all these different aspect in one study.
In perceiving care relocation as both part of future making and a response to the privatization and marketisation of care landscapes in the region, it asks what it means to become old and in need of care in an increasingly intertwined Europe.
The project will result in non-academic reports translated into five languages (target audiences: policy makers and politicians, insurances, entrepreneurs, care workers, municipalities, families, elderly), two PhD dissertations, articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, a peer reviewed special issue, and an international workshop.

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