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This paper examines the U.S. private sector of elder care services, specifically related to gendered, immigrant care economies and the home care industry. We interviewed 45 immigrant Filipino women who have been care workers for older adults with chronic health conditions in Southern California for at least 10 or more years. Our major findings pertain to the new forms of domestic servitude in this sector. This phenomenon is exemplified by the 1) complex combinations of oppression and privilege given the social location of both the care recipient and care provider; 2) a unique and highly undervalued labor of companionship; and 3) the formation of a triangular relationship occurring between the care worker, care recipient, and home care agency. These findings underscore the continued consequences of economic globalization alongside new relations of oppression and privilege as global inequalities intersect with the privatization of the U.S. welfare state. We argue that they require an extension of intersectional theory to incorporate the nuances of the immigrant elder care economy in the U.S today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand how (im)migrants are incorporated into a racialized division of reproductive labor, this paper synthesizes key insights from scholarship on migrant reproductive labour with an exciting new framework conceptualizing the intersection of care, migration and employment regimes. A tighter conceptualization of the employment regime for immigrant care workers is a key goal of this paper. The migration and care regimes intersect with the employment regime to shape immigrants' incorporation into precarious jobs. I build this framework to broaden our understanding of the incorporation of (im)migrant labour into reproductive labour, through an analysis of personal home care (PHC) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In Toronto, the majority of personal home care workers are immigrants but they are highly diverse, hailing from countries from nearly every continent and with various class backgrounds and citizenship statuses. This prompts the following questions: how can groups with such varied migration and work histories all end up in para-professional long term care work? More broadly, how does the migration, care and employment regime work together to shape immigrants' incorporation into the receiving economy? In what ways does entry into PHC represent continuity or change in the division of reproductive labor, and for whom? I begin to answer these questions using data from a qualitative comparative study to analyze how (im)migrants are incorporated into Toronto personal home care. I conclude with a discussion of what an expanded conceptualization of (im)migrants' racialized incorporation into caring reproductive labour would look like, in light of the empirical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible work organization often results in labor market insecurity for workers, prompting some scholars to consider policies and organizational practices that support flexibility with security. This paper conceptualizes the potential for combining flexibility with security for workers through a comparison of immigrant women workers in two publicly-funded personal home care models. Most studies examine the relationship between flexibility and insecurity in the labor market. Immigrant workers, however, also face a more intimate insecurity of person linked to racialized relations in the daily labour process, as documented in studies of domestic work. This analysis finds that workers' responses to micro-level racialization vary with social and organizational policies. In the Medical Model, where funding levels and social policies shape a decentralized and competitive work organization, employers' pursuit of numerical flexibility results in the classic flexibility-security trade-off for workers documented i the literature. In this context, immigrant workers value labor market flexibility, despite the consequence of labor market insecurity, in order to avoid insecurity of person through racialized interactions. In the Independent Living Model, where social policies shape a more centralized and uncompetitive work organization, employers do not seek labor market flexibility, or permit it for recipients or workers. In this setting, workers do not value flexibility but instead draw on employer and union policies and supports to resist insecurity of person. The comparative analysis demonstrates the importance of conceptualizing the relationship between flexibility and security at multiple levels if we are to achieve flexibility with security for workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]