**Abstract**

In this chapter, I discuss the significant challenges that migration constitutes in the eldercare work. The chapter emphasises work experiences, expressions of racism in eldercare services and how staff members deal with racism. The purpose has been to get eldercare personnel to reflect on the concrete actions they handle in their work and the results from interviews with eight women working in eldercare. Essed's theory of everyday racism provides the framework for analysing their stories. The results show how eldercare staff deals with discrimination and vulnerability in the workplace. Staff members also describe their encounters with people who humiliate them and continue working under challenging conditions. Their statements demonstrate aspects of the struggle in working life to maintain both the profession's status and value as a human being. With this knowledge in place, workplaces in eldercare services can actively determine work methods that promote an antiracist working life and equality in the workplace.

**Keywords:** eldercare work, challenges of migration, everyday racism, leadership, anti-racist social work

### **1. Introduction**

International migration has meant that the proportion of older adults with a migrant background who needs eldercare has increased. The ethnic diversity among the personnel in the welfare sector has at same time enlarged [1]. In eldercare today, caregivers and care recipients born in different countries worldwide meet. International migration thus has several implications for eldercare. Knowledge about how processes of globalization affect local practice can be an essential puzzle for understanding and designing care for the elderly. In such contexts, it can be of great importance to let those born abroad and who work with the older adults have a say in sharing their personal experiences. This is especially central as the knowledge described at best serve as a guide for further action. The referred eldercare work experiences will be fundamental in terms of both the potential for change and development in forthcoming improvements. But also, in matters concerning the management of working conditions, gender equality and antiracist social work.

A concrete solution to handle an ageing population in Europe has been to employ people from other parts of the world. It is about women migrating to the "developed" world to perform care work. The result of women's migration is that it provides care in the developed countries at the same time as developing countries are impoverished on care and the migration chain constitutes a kind of global 'care drain' [2]. The awareness of the phenomenon has meant that the global care chain has become an increasingly used concept in research since Hochschild introduced it in 2000. It is mainly used to identify several problems that arise in connection with migration and to understand its consequences [3]. In 2017, approximately 150,000 people worked with care and nursing in certain forms of housing for the elderly. Of them, 28 per cent were born in a country other than Sweden. In Stockholm County, 55 per cent of the personnel group were migrants [4]. This means that migrants are fundamental for nursing the older adults now and forewords.

There are various problem areas to analyse when it comes to the organisation of eldercare. There are quite small changes that have been made in the field over several decades in terms of the content and nature of the work. Of course, more people have training now than before, but the staff 's level of training, alignment, recruitment strategies and working conditions have not developed satisfactorily. It has also been noted that there is an imbalance between requirements and resources for first-line managers working in human treatment organisations [5] and in several of the Swedish Work Environment Authority's inspections, inadequacies are highlighted such as lack of routines for annual systematic environment work, weak introduction of new employees, too little operating resources, weak follow up of high workload for first-line managers and few supporting resources for the occupational group.

#### **2. Aim and research questions**

In this chapter, I will discuss progressions around eldercare that is based on the significant challenge that parallels with an increasing number of the older adults with nursing needs, and the shortage of labour is rising. Since there is a demand for work, and many new employees are migrants, I will make leaders aware of how racism and discrimination become issues within eldercare.

It has been known for a long time that eldercare work is considered a low-paid 'women's job for migrants' [6, 7]. Beyond this, are the risks of long-term illness high among all women in the care and nursing professions [8]. However, there is limited research on the organisation's role in environment work management and the research has mostly focused on the individual's ability to handle demands and resources at work [9]. Work environment issues are often handled as a separate task assignment and as an additional burden among many competing goals. This means that there are often deficiencies in the systematic environment work and the work against discrimination. There is, therefore, a need to integrate antiracist social work within the eldercare organisation. But to succeed in the work environment work, it should be handled with equal importance also in the highest management group in the organisation and not only at the lower levels of leadership [10, 11]. Due to these weaknesses in eldercare management, it becomes extra noteworthy to discuss how exclusion and racism are articulated in eldercare. And not least the importance of leadership to create an antiracist social work. The questions are:


## **3. Method**

The material in the following originates from a qualitative research project implemented in 2012. The research project was called The Challenges of Migration. The purpose was to explore the importance of ethnic relations in eldercare and was carried out through a collaboration between the university, the municipality's research department and care workers within the municipality's eldercare in a city in Sweden. The methodological approach was to conduct group interviews with eldercare staff, and the project resulted in some scientific articles [12–15]. Through an emphasis on race, it was possible to analyse the care workers' statements based on Essed's theory of everyday racism.

The research material develops from a completed research circle (recurrent group interviews) comprised of eight women working in eldercare services. A research circle is an established method of sharing understanding, built on mutual knowledge exchange between researchers and practitioners. A research circle, study circle or the democratic dialogue, as it sometimes is called, is characterised by meetings where interpretations, viewpoints and opinions are exchanged. Perhaps the most critical aspect is that all those who participate can present their own experiences [16]. Through regular meetings and knowledge sharing, the research circle can be viewed as a democratisation of research. The sessions are a mutual exchange of knowledge between researchers and practitioners [12, 17, 18]. No one in the circle has more expertise on the various topics for discussion than anyone else. The researcher's role is to be a facilitator and an interested and attentive participant [19]. The research project has followed ethical research rules, and all participants have consented to the research. The contestants have received information, both in writing and verbally, on the research beforehand. The participants got informed about the research plan, the research aim, the methods used, the consequences and the risks of the study. They have also apprized who the principal investigator is, that participation is voluntary and that the subject has the right to cease participation. Personal data is restricted to the data subject they agreed to and are not used for other purposes. At the beginning of the group interviews, the respondents were told that tape recording techniques were to be used for analysis purposes and that they would be heard only by the researcher working on the study. The respondents have also been allowed to attend relevant sections of the recordings.

Throughout the research circle, discussions have generated insight, understanding and knowledge of how care staff members perceive their working conditions and situations that might constitute inequality. Over four months, the women who regularly participated in the research circle, three hours every third week, which made 18 hours in total, examined the importance of various aspects of inequality and vulnerability in their work. Seven of the eight women were migrants and had moved to Sweden as adults. The circle provided the women with opportunities to describe how they dealt with their work difficulties related to their origins. The purpose of the circle was to encourage care workers to reflect on and discuss how they managed specific situations in their daily work. Examples of issues addressed in these meetings included: What do you do when confronting vulnerability and inequality in the workplace? What do you do in difficult situations?
