Italy's alternative to nursing homes: Ukrainian caregivers
Italians have embraced Ukrainian immigrants as an answer to a shortage of in-home caregivers.
By Davide Berretta | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitorfrom the March 15, 2007 edition
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PERUGIA, ITALY - Each Saturday, as vendors at this city's biggest open market clear out their stalls to head home, dozens of middle-aged women, too blond to be Italian, do their own kind of packing up.
Out in the dusty parking lot, the women load slightly outdated clothes, cellphones, linens, and appliances into white vans. Tucked in with letters and packets of money, the goods are destined for the families in Ukraine these women have left behind. It's a voluntary exile that is driven by economic need at home – and a host country desperate for their skills as live-in companions for the elderly.
An average life expectancy close to 80 years has left many families struggling with how to care for aging parents while keeping up with two careers. Wary of retirement homes, Italians have embraced the Ukrainians with gusto as an answer to a shortage of in-home caregivers, a professional role snubbed by many.
Over the past five years, the migrants, attracted by Italian wages, have filled the gap, bringing economic benefits to both their home and host countries.
"Italy has created this demand, and it has invented this solution," says Alessandro Castegnaro, statistics professor at the University of Padua and one of the few scholars to have given academic attention to what he calls a "hidden revolution." He estimates that immigrant caregivers are saving the Italian economy around $1 billion yearly.
"Without them, the national health system would edge towards collapse" Sergio Pasquinelli, a social researcher, told the newspaper La Repubblica last fall.
New deal on salaries, but illegals still work for less
With many immigrant caregivers believed to be working or residing in Italy illegally, estimates of their numbers range broadly, from 600,000 to 1 million.
Depending on whether they work in the south or in the wealthier north, most caregivers make between $750 and $900 a month.
Only over the last few years have Italy's powerful labor unions taken interest in this professional category, attempting to protect workers in it from the long hours and low wages many employers impose on needy immigrants.
A recent deal on caregiving contracts brokered with the federation of domestic employers set the minimum monthly wage at $715, the maximum number of weekly hours at 54, and paid vacations at 26 working days a year, according La Repubblica Metropoli, a weekly supplement aimed at immigrants that is published by one of Italy's largest circulating newspapers.
But many workers overlook the strict regulations in order to land a job.
"Clandestinity [living and working illegally] is caused not only by laws that complicate regularization, but also by Italian families' demand for low wages," says Professor Castegnaro.
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