Migrant Care Work in Austrian Families – a Win-Win-Situation for Everyone? Eva Fleischer 1 Abstract: Migrant care labor provided in private households based on a living-in-model is of growing importance to maintain the provision of care for elderly people in Austria. The so called 24-h care is done by live-in mainly female migrant care workers from Eastern Europe on a rotational basis. The legalization in 2007 was focused on affordability, not on improvement of the working conditions of these care workers. Legalization opened a door to exploitation by enabling to conduct that sort of care work on a self-employment basis. The working conditions of the care workers are hardly discussed in public debate, one reason for that could be coexistence of concurrent values concerning care. 1 Introduction Transnationalization of care is a phenomenon in many countries which is related to different dimensions: (1) migrants pay for care and organize care for elderly family members in their countries of origin (Soom Ammann, Holten & Baghdadi 2013), (2) care receivers leave their countries to live in residential homes in countries with lower cost for care like Hungary, Poland or Thailand (Winroither & Özkan 2013, Reis 2013), (3) migrants are an important group as employees within formal residential and non-residential long term care (da Roit & Weicht 2013), and (4) legal and illegal migrant care labor provided in private households based on a living-in-model. This article discusses the latter aspect of the home care sector as it is of growing importance to maintain the provision of care for elderly people: the so called 24-h- care in Austria. The legalization in 2007 of migrant care work based on a living-in-model led to the establishment of an additional pillar within the Austrian care system based on transnationalization. An emerging market for care work has developed which is dominated by profit orientated companies acting as agents between families with people in need of care and migrant care workers. The focus of the public discussion lies on questions regarding quality of care and the impacts on professional care provided by Austrian social services, however, the situation of the care workers seems to be negligible. 24-h care workers (who are mainly migrant women from Central Eastern European countries) work on a rotational basis in a pendulum or shuttle migration. Two care workers share the work in one household, commuting on shifts between two weeks and one month, some of them from more distant countries stay up to three months. In public opinion and in law regulations as well, the perception of 24-h care work seems to oscillate between professional care and unprofessional family care. On the one hand 24-h-care is treated as a service like any other which should be supplied according to quality standards. On the other hand care work based on the living-in-model is treated like informal care provided by family members who do their work based on love but not on qualification. The result is a legislative framework promoting a care market where the situation of migrant care workers can be described as precarious and exploitative. Austrian standards of occupational health and safety (e.g. working times, periods of rest) as well as employment rights (e.g. minimum wages, payments in case of illness) are overruled by a regulation supporting contracts based on a self-employment basis. Within the framework of self-employment, conditions of work are subject to negotiations without restrictions, labor regulations are not applicable. This paper is divided into three parts. First, after briefly summarizing the history of the development of 24-h-care work in Austria, the current situation will be outlined. Second, the article analyses how 1 Fleischer, Eva (2017 in press): Migrant Care Work in Austrian Families – a Win-Win-Situation for Everyone? In: Gebrewold Belachew, Andreas Th. Muller und Johanna Kostenzer (Hg.): Human Trafficking and Exploitation. Lessons from Europe. London: Routledge.