Migrant home care workers caring for older people: fictive kin, substitute, and complementary family caregivers in an ethnically diverse environment

This paper introduces the topic of migrant home care workers in Europe and Canada. It gives an overview of demographic situation of an ageing world and points out the rapid ageing of the oldest old, with increasing levels of care need in this segment of population. More and more often those needs are met by migrant care worker, which creates new solutions as well as possible new conflicts in both society and family. In the context of dynamic migration trends various dichotomies are addressed: family and state care provision; care giver and care receiver; sending vs. receiving countries. Further issues related to values, expectations, representations and legal system are touched upon.