Dimensions of job precariousness and associations with workers’ health and well-being in Swedish homecare
Although international research has shown an increase in precarious work in recent decades, few of these studies have been devoted to paid care work. This article joins feminist research on care work with work–life oriented research on precarious work to study the work situation of Swedish homecare workers. The results show a high prevalence of multidimensional precariousness among the care workers and reveal how several indicators of job precariousness are associated with physical and mental strain, poor work–life balance, and intentions to quit the job, including time pressure, lack of job control and limited possibilities to develop and use skills, as well as to create and keep relations with users.
-
Adamson, M. and Roper, I. (2019) ‘Good’ jobs and ‘bad’ jobs: contemplating job quality in different contexts, Work, Employment and Society, 33(4): 551–9. doi: 10.1177/0950017019855510
-
Allvin, M., Mellner, C., Movitz, F. and Aronsson, G. (2013) The diffusion of flexibility: estimating the incidence of low-regulated working conditions, Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 3(3): 99–116. doi: 10.19154/njwls.v3i3.3013
-
Anttonen, A. and Sipilä, J. (1996) European social care services: is it possible to identify models?, Journal of European Social Policy, 6(2): 87–100. doi: 10.1177/095892879600600201
-
Aronsson, J., Denton, M. and Zeytinoglu, I. (2004) Market-modelled home care in Ontario: deteriorating working conditions and dwindling community capacity, Canadian Public Policy, 30(1): 111–25. doi: 10.2307/3552583
-
Benach, J., Vives, A., Tarafa, G., Delclos, C. and Muntaner, C. (2016) What should we know about precarious employment and health in 2025? Framing the agenda for the next decade of research, International Journal of Epidemiology, 45(1): 232–8. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyv342
-
Borchorst, A. and Siim, B. (2002) The women-friendly welfare states revisited, NORA: Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies, 10(2): 90–8. doi: 10.1080/080387402760262186
-
Campbell, I. and Burgess, J. (2018) Patchy progress? Two decades of research on precariousness and precarious work in Australia, Labour & Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations of Work, 28(1): 48–67. doi: 10.1080/10301763.2018.1427424
-
Cerdas, S., Härenstam, A., Johansson, G. and Nyberg, A. (2019) Development of job demands, decision authority and social support in industries with different gender composition – Sweden, 1991–2013, BMC Public Health, 19(1): 758. doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-6917-8
-
Cheng, Z., Nielsen, I. and Cutler, H. (2018) Perceived job quality, work–life interference and intention to stay, International Journal of Manpower, 40(1): 17–35. doi: 10.1108/IJM-08-2017-0208
-
Clarke, M. (2015) To what extent a ‘bad’ job? Employee perceptions of job quality in community aged care, Employee Relations, 37(2): 192–208. doi: 10.1108/ER-11-2013-0169
-
Corin, L., Pousette, A., Berglund, T., Dellve, L., Hensing, G. and Björk, L. (2021) Occupational trajectories of working conditions in Sweden: development trends in the workforce, 1997–2015, Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 47(5): 335–48. doi: 10.5271/sjweh.3955
-
Cortis, N. and Eastman, C. (2015) Is job control under threat in the human services? Evidence from frontline practitioners in Australia, 2003–2012, Competition & Change, 19(3): 210–27. doi: 10.1177/1024529415580260
-
Dahl, H.M. (2010) An old map of state feminism and an insufficient recognition of care, NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 18(3): 152–66. doi: 10.1080/08038740.2010.498325
-
Davies, K. (1994) The tensions between process time and clock time in care-work, Time & Society, 3(3): 277–303. doi: 10.1177/0961463X94003003002
-
Delegation for Gender Equality in Working Life (2015) Hela lönen, hela tiden – Utmaningar för ett jämställt arbetsliv [Full salary, all the time – challenges for an equal working life, Statens offentliga utredningar (SOU), Swedish government official reports.
-
Doniol-Shaw, G. and Lada, E. (2011) Work schedules of home care workers for the elderly in France: fragmented work, deteriorating quality of care, detrimental health impact, Work, 1(40): 31–46. doi: 10.3233/WOR-2011-1266
-
Ede, L. and Rantakeisu, U. (2015) Managing organized insecurity: the consequences for care workers of deregulated working conditions in elderly care, Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 5(2): 55–70. doi: 10.19154/njwls.v5i2.4793
-
Elstad, J.I. and Vabø, M. (2008) Job stress, sickness absence and sickness presenteeism in Nordic elderly care, Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 36(5): 467–74. doi: 10.1177/1403494808089557
-
England, P. (2005) Emerging theories of care work, Annual Review of Sociology, 31(1): 381–99. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.31.041.304.122317
-
Eurofound (2020) Long-Term Care Workforce: Employment and Working Conditions, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.
-
Fisher, B. and Tronto, J. (1990) Toward a feminist theory of caring, in E.K. Abel and M.K. Nelson (eds) Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, pp 35–62.
-
Folbre, N. (2012) Should women care less? Intrinsic motivation and gender inequality, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 50(4): 597–619. doi: 10.1111/bjir.12000
-
Folbre, N. and Nelson, J. (2000) For love or money – or both?, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(4): 123–40. doi: 10.1257/jep.14.4.123
-
Gallie, D. (2007) Production regimes and the quality of employment in Europe, Annual Review of Sociology, 33(1): 85–104. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.33.040406.131724
-
Gauffin, K. (2020) Precariousness on the Swedish labour market: a theoretical and empirical account, Economic and Labour Relations Review, 31(2): 279–98. doi: 10.1177%2F1035304620919206
-
Hacker, J. (2006) The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care and Retirement and How You Can Fight Back, New York: Oxford University Press.
-
Himmelweit, S. (1999) Caring labor, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 561(1): 27–38, doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/000271629956100102
-
Hirdman, Y. (1994) Women – From Possibility to Problem?, Research Report Series No. 3, Stockholm: The Swedish Center for Working Life.
-
Hirvonen, H. and Husso, M. (2012) Living on a knife’s edge: temporal conflicts in welfare service work, Time & Society, 21(3): 351–70. doi: 10.1177/0961463X12454382
-
Hochchild, A.R. (1995) The politics of culture: traditional, cold modern, and warm modern ideals of care, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2(3): 331–46. doi: 10.1093/sp/2.3.331
-
Hrzenjak, M. (2017) Precarious situations of care workers in home-based elder care in Slovenia, New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, 27(4): 483–500. doi: 10.1177/1048291117740682
-
Hussein, S. (2018) Job demand, control and unresolved stress within the emotional work of long-term care in England, International Journal of Care and Caring, 2(1): 89–107. doi: 10.1332/239788218X15187915863909
-
James, N. (1992) Care = organisation + physical labour + emotional labour, Sociology of Health & Illness, 14(4): 488–509. doi: 10.1111/1467–9566.ep10493127
-
Juliá, M., Vanroelen, C., Bosmans, K., Van Aerden, K. and Benach, J. (2017) Precarious employment and quality of employment in relation to health and well-being in Europe, International Journal of Health Services, 47(3): 389–409. doi: 10.1177/0020731417707491
-
Kalleberg, A.L. (2009) Precarious work, insecure workers: employment relations in transition, American Sociological Review, 74(1): 1–22. doi: 10.1177/000312240907400101
-
Kalleberg, A.L. (2018) Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well-Being in Rich Democracies, London: Polity.
-
Karasek, R.A. and Theorell, T. (1990) Healthy Work: Stress, Productivity and the Reconstruction of Work Life, New York: Basic Books.
-
King, D. (2012) It's frustrating! Managing emotional dissonance in aged care work, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 47(1): 51–70. doi: 10.1002/j.1839-4655.2012.tb00234.x
-
King, D., Wei, Z. and Howe, A. (2013) Work satisfaction and intention to leave among direct care workers in community and residential aged care in Australia, Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 25(4): 301–19. doi: 10.1080/08959420.2013.816166
-
Kirchhoff, J.W. and Karlsson, J.C. (2013) Expansion of output: organizational misbehaviour in public enterprises, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 34(1): 107–22. doi: 10.1177/0143831X12439113
-
Kommunal (2016) Status: Prekär. En rapport om Tidsbegränsat Anställda [Status: Precarious, A Report on Temporary Staff], Stockholm: Kommunal.
-
Lambert, J.S., Henly, R.J. and Kim, J. (2019) Precarious work schedules as a source of economic insecurity and institutional distrust, RSF: The Russel Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 5(4): 218–57. doi: 10.7758/RSF.2019.5.4.08
-
Leira, A. (1994) Concepts of caring: loving, thinking, and doing, Social Service Review, 68(2): 185–201. doi: 10.1086/604046
-
LO (Landsorganisationen i Sverige) (2015) Facklig anslutning år 2015 [Union affiliation in 2015].
-
McDonald, A., Lolich, L. and Warters, A. (2019) "Time is more important than anything else": tensions of time in the home care of older adults in Ireland, International Journal of Care and Caring, 3(4): 501–15. doi: 10.1332/239788219X15622468259858
-
Meagher, G. and Szebehely, M. (2013) Long-term care in Sweden: trends, actors and consequences, in C. Ranci and E. Pavolini (eds) Reforms in Long-Term Care Policies in Europe: Investigating Institutional Change and Social Impacts, New York: Springer.
-
Meagher, G., Szebehely, M. and Mears, J. (2016) How institutions matter for job characteristics, quality and experiences: a comparison of home care work for older people in Australia and Sweden, Work, Employment and Society, 30(5): 731–49. doi: 10.1177/0950017015625601
-
Moberg, L., Blomqvist, P. and Winblad, U. (2018) Professionalized through audit? Care workers and the new audit regime in Sweden, Social Policy & Administration, 52(3): 631–45. doi: 10.1111/spol.12367
-
NBHW (2017) Vård Och Omsorg Om äldre – Lägesrapport 2017 [Health and Social Care of Elderly – Status Report 2017], Stockholm: National Board of Health and Welfare.
-
NBHW (2020) Vård Och Omsorg om äldre – Lägesrapport 2019 [Health and Social Care of Elderly – Status Report 2019], Stockholm: National Board of Health and Welfare.
-
NBHW (National Board of Health and Welfare) (2016) Statistics on Care and Services for the Elderly 2015, Stockholm: National Board of Health and Welfare.
-
Olsen, M.K. and Dahl, S.Å. (2010) Working time: implications for sickness absence and the work–family balance, International Journal of Social Welfare, 19: 45–53. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2397.2008.00619.x
-
Olsthoorn, M. (2014) Measuring precarious employment: a proposal for two indicators of precarious employment based on set-theory and tested with Dutch labor market-data, Social Indicators Research, 119(1): 421–41. doi: 10.1007/s11205-013-0480-y
-
Palmer, E. and Eveline, J. (2012) Sustaining low pay in aged care work, Gender, Work & Organization, 19(3): 254–75. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0432.2010.00512.x
-
Puig-Barrachina, V., Vanroelen, C., Vives, A., Martinez, J.M., Muntaner, C., Levecque, K., Benach, J. and Louckx, F. (2014) Measuring employment precariousness in the European Working Conditions Survey: the social distribution in Europe, Work, 49(1): 143–61. doi: 10.3233/WOR-131645
-
Pulignano, V. (2017) Precarious work, regime of competition, and the case of Europe, in V. Pulignano, A.L. Kalleberg and S.P. Vallas (eds) Precarious Work, Vol 31, Bingley: Emerald, pp 33–60. doi: 10.1108/S0277-283320170000031001
-
Rodgers, G. and Rodgers, J. (1989) Precarious Jobs in Labour Market Regulation: The Growth of Atypical Employment in Western Europe, Brussels: Free University of Brussels.
-
Rostgaard, T., Timonen, V. and Glendinning, C. (2012) Guest editorial: reforming home care in ageing societies, Health & Social Care in the Community, 20(3): 225–7. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2524.2012.01071.x
-
Rubery, J. and Urwin, P. (2011) Bringing the employer back in: why social care needs a standard employment relationship, Human Resource Management Journal, 21(2): 122–37. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-8583.2010.00138.x
-
Rubery, J., Grimshaw, D., Hebson, G. and Ugarte, M.S. (2015) ‘It’s all about time’: time as a contested terrain in the management and experience of domiciliary care work in England, Human Resource Management, 54(4): 753–72. doi: 10.1002/hrm.21685
-
Scott-Marshall, H. and Tompa, E. (2011) The health consequences of precarious employment experience, Work, 38(3): 369–82. doi: 10.3233/WOR-2011-1140
-
SOU 2017:21 Utredningen om nationell kvalitetsplan för äldreomsorgen (2017) Läs mig! Nationell Kvalitetsplan för vård Och Omsorg om äldre Personer. [Inquiry About a National Quality Plan for Eldercare (2017) Read me! National Quality for Health Services and Care for the Elderly], Stockholm.
-
Stacey, L.C. (2005) Finding dignity in dirty work: the constraints and rewards of low-wage home care labour, Sociology of Health & Illness, 27(6): 831–54. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00476.x
-
Strandell, R. (2018) Lika olika hemtjänst: Omsorgspersonalens arbetssituation i stad och land [Equally different homecare: the care staff’s work situation in the city and in the countryside], in H. Jönson and M. Szebehely (eds) Äldreomsorger i Sverige. Lokala Variationer Och Generella Trender [Eldercare in Sweden. Local Variations and General Trends], Malmö: Gleerups.
-
Strandell, R. (2020) Care workers under pressure – a comparison of the work situation in Swedish home care between 2005 and 2015, Health and Social Care in the Community, 28(1): 137–47, doi: doi: 10.1111/hsc.12848
-
Stranz, A. (2013) Omsorgsarbetets Vardag Och Villkor i Sverige och Danmark: Ett Feministiskt Kritiskt Perspektiv [The everyday realities and conditions of care work in Sweden and Denmark: a feminist critical perspective], PhD thesis, Sweden: Stockholm University.
-
Szebehely, M., Stranz, A. and Strandell, R. (2017) Vem Ska Arbeta i Framtidens äldreomsorg? [Who will work in eldercare in the future?], research report, Sweden: Department of Social Work, Stockholm University.
-
Theobald, H., Szebehely, M., Saito, Y. and Ishiguro, N. (2018) Marketisation policies in different contexts: consequences for home-care workers in Germany, Japan and Sweden, International Journal of Social Welfare, 27(3): 215–25. doi: 10.1111/ijsw.12298
-
Tompa, E., Scott-Marshall, H., Dolinschi, R., Trevithich, S. and Battacharyya, S. (2007) Precarious employment experiences and their health consequences. Towards a theoretical framework, Work, 28(3): 209–24.
-
Tronto, J. (1993) Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care, New York: Routledge.
-
Trydegård, G.B. (2012) Care work in changing welfare states: Nordic care workers’ experiences, European Journal of Ageing, 9(2): 119–29. doi: 10.1007/s10433-012-0219-7
-
Tufte, P. and Dahl, H.M. (2016) Navigating the field of temporally framed care in the Danish home care sector, Sociology of Society and Globalisation, 38(1): 109–22. doi: 10.1111/1467–9566.12343
-
Twigg, J. (2006) The Body in Health and Social Care, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan and Cambridge University Press.
-
Vosko, F.L., MacDonald, M. and Campbell, I. (2009) Gender and the concept of precarious employment, in F.L. Vosko, M. MacDonald and I. Campbell (eds) Gender and the Contours of Precarious Employment, New York: Routledge.
-
Vosko, L.F. (eds) (2006) Precarious Employment: Understanding Labour Market Insecurity in Canada, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, pp 43–66.
-
Young, C.M. (2010) Gender differences in precarious work settings, Industrial Relations, 65(1): 74–97. doi: 10.7202/039528ar
-
Zeytinoglu, U.I., Denton, M., Davies, S. and Plendereith, J.M. (2009) Casualized employment and turnover intention: home care workers in Ontario, Canada, Health Policy, 91(3): 258–68. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2008.12.004
| May 2022 onwards | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 19 | 19 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 18 | 18 | 8 |
| PDF Downloads | 19 | 19 | 12 |
We are a leading social science publisher
committed to making a difference.
Bristol University Press and
Policy Press
bristoluniversitypress.co.uk