This chapter presents the experiences of a country with a well-established welfare state during the Covid crisis. Austria’s labour market, key infrastructures and health system were stabilised by unprecedented policy measures. However, the pandemic also highlighted a number of major shortcomings of the regulatory framework of social and health policy responses. A special focus is being put on long-term care as this sector has been hit particularly hard in terms of mortality, related structural shortcomings and political debates. On average, 25% of deaths during the pandemic have occurred in residential care settings, long-term care settings were badly equipped with protective gear, and the isolation of residents in care homes triggered ample discussions about human rights. One of the idiosyncrasies of the Austrian long-term care system is its reliance on migrant care workers both in the formal delivery of services and in the sector of so-called private live-in care. Although Austria is one of few countries where some kind of regulation of personal carers was implemented, this “dualisation of the workforce” keeps low-skilled migrant personal carers in the secondary labour market and continues to divide the care workforce. While working conditions and wages are already critical in formal care delivery, the situation of migrant live-in carers, in their majority female, is often precarious. The chapter exposes this specificity in quantitative terms as well as in its partly dramatic consequences during the pandemic, when lockdowns and travel restrictions showed the limits of this type of care delivery. In the long run, it is argued, shortages of the workforce in long-term care have to be addressed by systemic reforms that strengthen integrated care delivery with decent working conditions, and ethical recruitment strategies that ensure equal rights for all care workers.
The book, edited by Christian Aspalter, presents an overview of social and health problems, which arose out of, or were flared up by, the global COVID-19 pandemic. It addresses most vital problems in developed and developing countries from literally around the world, by top country experts in their respective fields of study. First, the book debates certain overall thematic topics and then analyses a number of key country case studies. Apart from a set of problem-based chapters, the country case studies from major-hit countries in the world are yet another highlight of the book. In addition to analysing the pandemic and policy responses per se, they each feature one extra special focal point. The book hence covers the core of most severe social problems, including health problems, that have been spurred or set off by the COVID-19 pandemic. An overall theory chapter, which uses a global data analysis and a short theoretical appraisal on the 'human face' of the pandemic, is also offered at the beginning of the book, to bring back humanity and human decency (i.e. decency of the human condition) into the scientific debate as well as policy-making arena, which is utterly needed at this point of human development. Get full access by clicking here.
