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Imagining Care: Transnational Inequality and Older Age Prospects for Ukrainian Caregivers in Italy
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Abstract: This article explores how Ukrainian migrant care workers in Italy imagine their own future care in older age while sustaining aging societies through paid work. The analysis is conceptually grounded in the critique of gendered transnational care chains. We ask how women working in senior care define sustainable care for themselves, how these visions relate to their professional trajectories and transnational family experiences, and how they negotiate dignity and security in later life. Empirically, the study draws on 16 biographical interviews with Ukrainian women aged between 37 and 72, conducted in Italy in 2024. We argue that a prolonged engagement in senior care produces both a critical awareness of care inequalities and volatile prospects for their own old age. This results in individualized strategies alongside emerging collective imaginaries of self‐organized care.
Keywords: care inequality; migration; professionalization; senior care; transnational care chains
Published:
Issue:
Vol 14 (2026): Transnational Organization of Labour, Mobility, and Senior Care in Central and Eastern Europe (In Progress)
© Oksana Dutchak, Olena Fedyuk, Anna Oksiutovych. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.