Precarious Situations of Care Workers in Home-Based Elder Care in Slovenia.

Based on policy analysis and individual interviews, the author analyzes the care workers' precarious situations in home-based elder care in Slovenia, a post-socialist, European Union country characterized by a rapidly aging population and delays in adapting a long-term care system to this new social risk. Employment and quasi-employment positions which coexist in home-based care can be sorted along two continuums: between public and market service; between formal and informal work. The author argues that working conditions in home-based care differ according to the position of the care worker on these two continuums, that is, being employed in public services, being self-employed, working in informal care markets, holding a status of family assistant, or being an informal family caregiver. Although the working conditions in public services are deteriorating, the analysis shows that precarity is more severe in market and informal care, while formalization and socialization of care bring about less precarious conditions.

Hierarchization and segmentation of informal care markets in Slovenia.

The article is the result of qualitative research of informal care markets in Slovenia in the field of childcare, elder care, and cleaning. The author assesses Slovenia's position in the "global care chain" and finds that "local care chains" prevail in the field of childcare and elder care, while a co-occurrence of female gender, "other" ethnicity, and poverty is typical in the field of household cleaning. The main emphasis of the article is on the analysis of hierarchization of the informal market of care work according to following two criteria: social reputation of individual type of care work and citizenship status of care workers.