The detection of labour exploitation within European domestic care services.

What is it about?

In the article, I identify a range of municipal activities including whistleblowing procedures; care-worker professionalisation; the expansion of employee’s roles and inter-agency data analysis. Yet my findings show that significant gaps still exist in the regulation of labour exploitation among domestic workers, particularly in relation to live-in care workers who are usually beyond the reach of national labour inspectorates. I investigated municipal practices in four European countries: France, Italy, Sweden and The Netherlands. These countries allow paired comparison of practices in different welfare regime trajectory types. For example, long-term care in France and Italy has evolved from a tradition of conservative familialism – where the family is seen as the main support provider. Whereas in Sweden and The Netherlands, welfare services have followed universalist egalitarianism principles: where the state aims to provide access for all those in need. In each of these different contexts, I asked: what actions have municipal government and other regional actors taken to mitigate the risks of labour exploitation among domestic care workers and what barriers remain?

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Why is it important?

These are important questions. Policy instruments such as Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings (ECAT) place human rights protections at the centre of European policymaking. Recent horizontal policy developments open up the possibility for the development of public procurement mechanisms to achieve these social policy aims. However, legal scholars have identified both risks and dilemmas for the state as it attempts to leverage its role as a ‘buyer’ to improve human rights. EU regional governments, sometimes in the guise of the local municipality, are important procurers and administrators of domestic care, a service which is, increasingly, delivered in the home.

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