EU Citizens Working in the Long-Term Care Sector in the Netherlands. Employment Strategies in Blurred Spaces of Belonging

Within the framework of free movement, EU citizens are entitled to reside and work in other member states as employees, as posted workers, or as self-employed persons. However, depending on the modality of employment that they have, their rights are regulated with regard to different bodies of EU legislation (freedom of movement of citizens, posting of workers, or self-employment). This diversity of statuses and entitlements among EU workers creates a blurred space of belonging, where EU citizenship splits in different opportunities for integration. This paper analyzes the strategies of Eastern European citizens employed in the long-term care sector in the Netherlands. In the last two decades long-term care in the Netherlands undergoes a strong process of reform, leading to a diversification of care arrangements, along the formal-informal axis. This makes it an interesting case, in order to analyze how EU migrant care workers incorporate in such complex employment sector with new opportunities such as live-in care jobs. We understand EU citizenship as an “in-between” status (non-citizen, non-migrant) that opens a grey area in the access to labor rights and welfare entitlements. Based on interviews with EU migrant care workers the paper analyzes the specific labor segmentation developed in this sector and the strategies that workers apply to navigate it. The paper compares care workers in different modalities of employment. The focus is on care workers’ migration and employment strategies for finding, keeping and changing jobs and their considerations about different employment modalities and their corresponding labor and social rights.