Conflicting temporalities and the unsustainability of the Italian model of migrant personal care assistant

In Southern Europe, the migrant-in-the-family model has become a structural component of the elderly care regime. However, home care work is, by its nature, poorly reconcilable with private and family life. In fact, several studies have denounced the limitations on the right to private and family life that these workers suffer. In this article, I use the migrant home care assistants’ experience of conflicting temporalities around the work–life balance as lens through which to show the social unsustainability of the Italian model of home care assistant. This paper is based on broader research conducted between 2018 and 2020 in Padua (Italy) on Moldovan female migrant workers. As part of this research, 30 semi-structured interviews were collected with Moldovan workers employed – at the time of the interview or in the past – in home care for elderly people, in a live-in or live-out regime.