Dilemmas around temporariness and transnational recruitment agencies: the case of migrant caregivers in Taiwan and Germany

The precarious nature of caregivers’ migration is one of the fundamental characteristics of the growing marketisation of home-based care at the transnational level. Against this background, scholars have dedicated increasing attention to the role of private actors involved in the transnational recruitment/ employment of migrant caregivers, such as the for-profit agencies, asking whether these intermediaries are a good or a bad thing. In order to understand the dilemmas facing this complex scenario, we interviewed trade unionists, activists, and academic experts in Taiwan and Germany, both of which are countries where the growing care needs of the ageing population are addressed by employing caregivers from abroad. In these interviews, research participants in both countries strongly criticised the emergence of transnational agencies as influential actors in the field and accused them of reproducing an exploitative temporariness of work for migrant caregivers and of the care services they provide, grounded in the temporary dimension of their mobility patterns. The research participants also evaluated the current situation as they tried to imagine alternative arrangements. Advocates for migrant caregivers’ rights expressed intense frustration at the widespread acceptance of today’s situation but they also suggested that other forms of intermediaries and of temporariness might be developed.