European Union economic policy on social reproduction – Differentiating between Central-Eastern Europe and the West

Abstract

The economic policies of the European Union can deepen the crisis of social reproduction in its member states by impacting the availability of (paid) public or market-based services of childcare, healthcare, long-term care and domestic work and the (unpaid) reproductive labour provided by individuals. Western European Union member states increasingly address the crisis of social reproduction by outsourcing the provision of reproductive labour to migrant workers, often from countries in Central-Eastern Europe, many of which in turn suffer from reproductive labour shortages caused by emigration. In this context, it is pertinent to assess to what extent European Union economic policy recognises the existence of crises of social reproduction in its member states and if the solutions proposed to address these differ for Western and Central-Eastern Europe countries. This article achieves this through a critical frame analysis of European Union economic policy documents issued between 2011 and 2023 to four countries selected due to their position in the reproductive labour migration chain: Belgium and Austria (as examples of destination countries which rely on Central-Eastern Europe labour migrants for care and domestic work), Poland (as example of both an origin and destination country), and Slovakia (as an example of an origin country).

Keywords

Care childcare domestic labour economic policy EU healthcare labour migration long-term care reproductive labour social reproduction

Introduction

The economic policies of the European Union (EU) can deepen the crisis of social reproduction in its member states by impacting the availability of (paid) public or market-based services of childcare, healthcare, long-term care (LTC) and domestic work and the (unpaid) reproductive labour provided by individuals. This has been demonstrated in the aftermath of the 2008 economic and Eurozone crisis, as EU fiscal discipline required countries to reduce public spending by cutting expenditure on social and health services (Bruff and Wöhl, 2016). The European Commission and Council of the EU continue to provide policy recommendations to member states, including on social policies, via an economic governance instrument introduced in the aftermath of the crisis, the European Semester.

Social reproduction is a process of the simultaneous reproduction of life and capitalist relations, including both labourers and labour power (Mezzadri, 2019). This process has been argued to be in crisis, with scholars such as Nancy Fraser (2016) demonstrating that the capitalist system is destabilising it, challenging the ability of society to sustain and reproduce itself. In particular, the crisis affects the availability of reproductive labour – which encompasses the biological reproduction of the species, the reproduction of the labour force through subsistence, education and training; and the reproduction and provisioning of caring needs (Bakker, 2007). Historically, EU policy has either turned a blind eye to this type of labour (Zacharenko and Elomäki, 2022) or at best saw its unpaid provision as an obstacle to (women’s) employment (Lewis, 2001), prescribing the outsourcing of reproductive responsibilities to public institutions (Daly, 2011) or market-based services (Estevez-Abe and Hobson, 2015). The supply of a reproductive labour force in public and private markets in the EU has been ensured, in part, by labour migration (Plomien and Schwartz, 2023). However, using transnational migration flows to address domestic deficits of social reproduction is not a solution available in equal measure to all EU member states. Western EU states can more easily attract a migrant workforce to mitigate the deficit of reproductive labour that they are facing (Heindlmaier and Kobler, 2022). The same cannot be said of Central and Eastern European (CEE) states, which tend to be the origin countries of migrant workers, many of whom migrate to better address their social reproductive needs when these fail to be met locally (Plomien and Schwartz, 2023).

While there is an emerging body of research on the EU’s policies on care labour (Caracciolo di Torella and Masselot, 2020; Zacharenko and Elomäki, 2022), care services (Daly, 2023; Zacharenko, 2023) and domestic work (Estevez-Abe and Hobson, 2015; Morel, 2015; Shire, 2015), these focus predominantly on social and gender equality policies. The impact of EU policy on social reproduction and reproductive labour is rarely researched and EU economic policy has rarely been analysed from a feminist political economy perspective (see Cavaghan and Elomäki, 2022 and Bruff and Wöhl, 2016 for exceptions). In addition, while uneven economic relations between EU member states and their impact on creating labour migration flows are well documented (Felbo-Kolding et al., 2019; Heindlmaier and Kobler, 2022; Meardi, 2012), the relationship between the deficit of social reproduction and reliance on labour mobility within the EU as a compensatory mechanism is less often tackled (see Plomien and Schwartz, 2020, 2023, for exceptions), even less so when it comes to the potential impacts of EU economic policy on this reliance. It is thus pertinent to investigate if EU economic policy recognises the asymmetries in how its member states address their reproductive deficits, and with what consequences for recommendations made to destination and origin countries of reproductive labour migrants.

This article will address these gaps by answering the following research questions:

To what extent does the EU’s main economic governance tool, the European Semester, recognise the importance of reproductive labour (both the provisioning of caring needs through paid public or market-based services of childcare, healthcare, LTC and domestic work, and the unpaid reproductive labour provided by individuals) when it comes to member states’ economic performance?

What are the solutions proposed to address the crisis of social reproduction by European Semester documents, and to what extent do they differ for Western European and Central Eastern European countries?

The article will answer these questions by analysing European Semester documents issued over 2011-2023 to four countries selected due to their position in the social reproductive labour migration chain: Belgium and Austria (as cases of destination countries that rely on CEE labour migrants for care and domestic work), Poland (as example of both an origin and destination country) and Slovakia (as an example of an origin country). The documents were subjected to critical frame analysis (Verloo, 2016), looking for diagnostic (identification of a problem) and prognostic (proposing solutions) mentions of reproductive labour.

The article is structured as follows: the first section presents the theoretical approach taken. The second provides the context of EU policy making on social reproduction and outlines existing academic debates on EU economic policy impact on member states. The following section explains the choice of case studies, materials and methods applied. This is followed by two analytical sections presenting first the diagnosis of the crisis of social reproduction found and second the solutions proposed by EU policy. The discussion section outlines the main findings.

The crisis of social reproduction

Social reproduction can be defined as the process of the simultaneous reproduction of life and capitalist relations (Mezzadri, 2019). The reproductive labour that goes into this process encompasses the biological reproduction of the species, the reproduction of the labour force through subsistence, education and training; and the reproduction and provisioning of caring needs (Bakker, 2007). The increasing scarcity of this labour – due to state disinvestment from public services and policies forcing women to enter the labour market – has resulted in an ongoing crisis of social reproduction (Fraser, 2016). The crisis is increasingly mitigated through the commodification and outsourcing of reproductive labour, often to migrant workers arriving from poorer countries (Anderson, 2012).

This article focuses on the availability of two types of reproductive labour: the provisioning of caring needs through (paid) public or market-based services of childcare, healthcare, LTC and domestic work, and the unpaid reproductive labour provided by individuals. The former broadly includes what Folbre (2006) identifies as informal market work and paid employment, while the latter refers to unpaid services and unpaid work that meets subsistence needs; each of these categories may be further divided into ‘direct’ activities, involving personal and emotional engagement, and ‘indirect’ activities, such as cooking and cleaning. While it is hard to disentangle the two in daily practices, ‘direct’ aspects of social reproduction tend to be privileged in discussions about care work (Duffy, 2005). The additional devaluation of work which is unpaid or is otherwise perceived to be ‘unproductive’ (Bruff and Wöhl, 2016), contributes to the creation of a false hierarchy of social reproductive activities, which places paid services above unpaid labour.

Social reproduction in EU policy

The EU can impact social reproduction and the availability of reproductive labour in its member states through its economic policy, which prescribes solutions such as budgetary cuts affecting public services or policies relating to leave or welfare payments (Erne et al., 2024). The EU’s main economic policy coordination tool, the European Semester, which was launched in response to the 2008 financial and Eurozone crisis, is a system of economic governance designed to strengthen coordination and surveillance around the EU’s fiscal and macroeconomic policies. As part of the European Semester process, the European Commission issues annual country reports which outline the perceived performance of a country’s economy. Based on these reports, the European Commission drafts shorter documents summarising what it perceives as challenges and issuing country-specific recommendations (CSRs) which indicate desired policy reforms to member states. These shorter reports and recommendations become binding after being formally approved at ministerial level by the Council of the EU, and by the EU heads of state within the European Council (Dawson, 2015).

There is a debate among scholars about whether the CSR recommendations should be analysed as a top-down exercise, whereby the European Semester process imposes legislative solutions on member states, or rather an interplay of influence between national and EU levels (Verdun and Zeitlin, 2018). Bokhorst (2022) suggests that despite the availability of binding measures, the Semester primarily operates through ‘soft’ tools, such as influencing the dominant modes of thinking, entrenching a particular economic logic and raising the political cost of inaction on given issues.

Whether directly or via ‘soft’ tools, the Semester shapes member states’ social policies in particular ways: Copeland and Daly (2018) show that CSRs relating to this area predominantly promote a market-based logic over social goals. Nevertheless, a change in approach towards social issues in the European Semester has been noted by scholars over time, as EU policy took a social turn around 2014 (Zeitlin and Vanhercke, 2018), and provided funding for extensive public sector investments in the pandemic recovery period, as of 2020 (Vanhercke and Verdun, 2022).

Predominantly, EU economic policy sees unpaid reproductive labour as an obstacle to (women’s) labour market participation (Zacharenko and Elomäki, 2022), whereas the paid provision of reproductive labour, for example, healthcare services, is framed as a challenge for financial sustainability (Azzopardi-Muscat et al., 2015). This is, as feminist political economists demonstrate, because the dominant economised paradigm underlying EU fails to recognise the value and input of reproductive labour (Cavaghan and Elomäki, 2022). Furthermore, since 2012, the European Commission has promoted the development of a personal and household services sector, covering direct and indirect care activities, with the goal of outsourcing the unpaid reproductive labour performed by individuals in their households to the market, thus hoping to on the one hand, reduce public spending on services, and on the other stimulate economic growth by increasing women’s employment rates (Morel, 2015).

Choice of case studies, methods and materials

This article analyses European Semester documents issued by the European Commission and Council of the EU to four EU member states. The countries were selected as they form two dyads of labour migrant origin and destination countries linked by reproductive labour migration, differing in their care regimes but belonging to the EU’s area of the freedom of movement of labour. These are two Western destination countries (Austria and Belgium) and two CEE countries – one which is both an origin and destination country (Poland) and one solely origin country (Slovakia).

Austria is characterised as an explicitly familialistic care regime (Leitner, 2003) which largely depends on informal care provision, with state financial support (Bettio and Plantenga, 2004). The introduction in 2007 of a live-in care fund which provides cash-for-care benefits to those in need, to be spent at their discretion (either to cover the costs of institutional care, live-in care or to compensate an informal carer), has resulted in an increase in outsourcing of this labour to migrants (Österle and Bauer, 2016), a large segment of whom are Slovak women (Sekulová and Rogoz, 2017).

In turn, Belgium is categorised as an optionally familialistic care regime (Leitner, 2003), as it has a strong formal coverage of both childcare and LTC (Bettio and Plantenga, 2004). The purchase of domestic work is heavily subsidised through a service voucher system (introduced in 2001) and staffed in 24% by migrant workers (Goffin et al., 2018); Polish women are the most numerous foreign group within the system (Safuta, 2018). Despite being designed to only cover domestic labour (Sansoni, 2009), the system appears to address the broader crisis of social reproduction: users of the system are more likely to have higher-than-average social reproductive needs (Goffin et al., 2018), suggesting that the service voucher scheme effectively subsidises additional leisure and (direct) care time for relatively affluent households (Marx and Vandelannoote, 2015).

The limited state provision of childcare in Poland results in (predominantly) mothers dropping out of the labour market to look after pre-school age children (Szelewa and Polakowski, 2008). The introduction of a universal childcare benefit of around 120 EUR per child in 2016, when combined with the continued lack of investment into early childhood education and care (ECEC), may have shifted the country from the implicitly (Szelewa and Polakowski, 2008) to the explicitly familialistic category (Szelewa, 2017). Public LTC facilities are underfunded and underdeveloped (Matuszczyk, 2020). As a result, more affluent families increasingly address their social reproduction deficits through the employment of migrant women, mainly from Ukraine (Keryk, 2010). Since simultaneously, Polish women migrate to undertake domestic work in countries such as Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom (Kindler et al., 2016), Poland is both an origin and a destination country in the reproductive labour migration chain.

Slovakia is characterised by an explicitly familialistic care regime, as women are expected to be the primary providers of care to their children before school age (Szelewa and Polakowski, 2008). Only 1.7% of the population over 65 is cared for in formal institutions, with the majority relying on support from family members, who receive a modest allowance (Bahna, 2020). As Slovakia remains primarily a country of origin of labour migrants (IOM, n.d.), outsourcing reproductive labour to migrants is not widely available. The top migration destinations of Slovak workers are Austria, Czechia and the United Kingdom (Bahna, 2013).

The analysis includes European Semester documents including annual country reports and Council recommendations (including CSRs), issued to Austria, Belgium, Poland and Slovakia over the period of 2011-2023. In total, 100 documents were analysed. The country reports provide detailed assessments of the member states’ economies made by the European Commission. While they do not carry the same weight as the Council documents and the CSRs themselves, which are approved at the level of heads of state, their analysis allows to contextualise the basis for the formal recommendations made.

The analysed texts were subjected to a qualitative investigation using critical frame analysis (Verloo, 2016) with the help of the Atlas.ti software. A coding matrix developed ex-ante was used to look for diagnostic (i.e. describing policy problems) mentions of reproductive labour (childcare, LTC, healthcare, domestic labour) within all documents (annual reports and CSRs). A coding matrix developed ex-post identified prognostic mentions (i.e. prescribing solutions), for example, outsourcing, reliance on migrant labour, commodification, cost reduction, equal sharing between men and women, work-life balance solutions, improving working conditions in the care sector, or investment. In looking for prognoses, particular attention was paid to whether a proposed solution was a CSR recommendation, if it was included in the Council recommendation document or mentioned only in an annual report issued by the European Commission.

The analysis section presents the findings in two parts: first, diagnostic mentions of social reproduction are described, presenting the main focus of the European Semester documents in connection to different types of social reproduction in Western EU and CEE countries respectively. A second section presents the solutions which Semester documents propose (prognosis) and how these differ in relation to the two sets of countries.

Diagnosis: Which aspects of social reproduction are visible?

When they refer to social reproduction, the European Semester documents relating to the four case study countries predominantly mention unpaid childcare, paid childcare services, LTC and healthcare services. Across the entire period studied, unpaid childcare and its alternative – paid childcare services – are by far the most frequently mentioned types of reproductive labour, with healthcare and LTC services being a secondary concern. While (spending on) healthcare services are mentioned as a concern for all countries across the entire period, mentions of LTC services in the Semester documents increase after 2014, as the EU’s concerns over the impact of demographic ageing on the economy rises (Zacharenko, 2023). The mentions problematise two aspects: the (unpaid) labour of LTC as a hinderance to women’s labour market participation and the cost of healthcare and LTC services to the economy, especially in view of the projected increases of government spending on ageing populations. References to either paid or unpaid domestic labour, such as cooking and cleaning, are nearly entirely absent in the analysed documents, even for services within the formal economy.

The extent to which the diagnosis in the European Semester documents differs for Western European and CEE countries is described below.

Austria is deemed to have significant challenges in relation to the availability of both (paid) childcare and LTC services, and an unequal sharing of unpaid reproductive labour between women and men. Unusually, Austria’s underdeveloped LTC sector is identified as an even greater challenge to women’s employment than the lack of childcare provision. This is pointed out in EC reports throughout the period studied, for example: ‘Austria does not meet . . . targets for childcare and its LTC system is characterised by a large informal sector in which women perform the bulk of unpaid care work’ (European Commission, 2011: 13). However, the more fiscally strict Council recommendations and CSRs focus on the perceived excessive cost of LTC (e.g. Council of the EU, 2013a, 2023a). After the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, concerns about the severe labour shortages faced by the Austrian LTC sector also begin to appear in both EC reports and Council recommendations (Council of the EU, 2023a; European Commission, 2023a,), although CSRs on LTC continue to focus on cost reduction – for example, ‘ensure the adequacy and fiscal sustainability of the long-term care system’ (Council of the EU, 2023a: 19) – even in the period of a discursive shift towards valuing LTC provision (Zacharenko, 2023).

Comparatively, Semester documents relating to Belgium appear to be less concerned about crises of social reproduction. This appears to be in large part as Belgium exceeds the EU targets for the number of children in ECEC, for which it is repeatedly praised (e.g. European Commission, 2015a). However, Belgium is considered to be spending too much on LTC and encouraged to seek cost-saving (Council of the EU, 2013b) and efficiency measures in this area (Council of the EU, 2023b) – this remains stable across the analysed period. The role which Belgium’s heavily subsidised service voucher scheme plays in addressing the country’s social reproductive deficit remains unaddressed, implying that a strategic silence is being employed in relation to paid domestic work and both its contribution to the economy and addressing the crisis of social reproduction.

EU policy concerns with regards to the two CEE countries studied are similar at the level of diagnosis. In both Poland and Slovakia, the Semester documents primarily focus on the lack of an adequate supply of (paid) childcare services. This is seen as problematic due to the same reasons as in the Western EU countries – women’s low labour market participation and the poorer educational performance of children who did not participate in ECEC, for example, in Slovakia, ‘the persistently low provision of good quality early childhood education and care weighs on educational achievements’ (Council of the EU, 2014: 3). In its annual report, the EC suggests that these supply challenges are a result of underinvestment into ECEC and governments’ familialistic policies which promote unpaid (although subsidised by public transfers) reproductive labour. These policies are ‘overly lengthy’ parental leaves in Slovakia (European Commission, 2013) and the newly introduced child benefits in Poland, which are perceived to disincentivise labour market participation: ‘the new child benefit is expected to reduce poverty and inequality, but it may also have a negative effect on labour market participation of . . . women’ (Council of the EU, 2017: 2). This suggests that the core concern of EU economic policy in relation to childcare is not combating its deficit or meeting care needs as such, but the promotion of paid childcare services over informal reproductive labour, since the former are seen as more conductive to economic growth.

The approach towards CEE countries’ healthcare and LTC systems changes over time. Initially, the focus is on the rising costs associated with an ageing population, for example,

‘the health sector in Poland is confronted with limitations in access to care and cost-inefficiencies, while healthcare spending is expected to grow considerably in the medium to long term because of an aging society, increasing the burden on public finances’ (Council, of, the, and EU, 2013c: 2).

After 2014, the EC’s reports nuance this analysis, pointing out that the underfinanced LTC systems have a negative impact on women’s employment levels, for example, in Slovakia ‘public expenditure for long-term care is among the lowest in the EU . . . Consequently, care has to be provided by relatives – often women – with negative effects on their participation in the labour force (European Commission, 2016c: 19). The focus on the link between women’s employment and investment in LTC facilities remains strong in the post-Covid pandemic phase – for example, Poland receives a CSR to ‘increase labour market participation . . . by improving access to long-term care’ (Council of the EU, 2022: 11).

European Semester documents identify another challenge particular to social reproduction in CEE countries: a shortage of labour in the healthcare and LTC sectors. In the case of Slovakia, general practitioner and nurse shortages are pointed out as early as 2014 (European Commission, 2014), In Poland, this issue arises since 2019 as it is recognised that its ‘number of practising doctors and nurses relative to population size is among the lowest in the Union’ (Council of the EU, 2019a). In its analytical reports the EC recognises that shortages are at least partly due to labour emigration to Western EU member states. In the case of Slovakia, it mentions ‘a substantially lower density of nurses than the EU average. Relatively low salaries compared to neighbouring countries . . . combined with poor working conditions and limited career prospects, explain their . . . low numbers’ (European Commission, 2023c: 64). For Western Europe, similar shortages are only identified in Austria as of 2022 (e.g. European Commission, 2022a), in the wake of the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and in view of a planned reform of Austria’s LTC system which is likely to deepen reliance on migrant labour (Council of the EU, 2023a).

Prognosis: How to address the crisis of social reproduction?

To address the problems identified in the European Semester documents, EU policy makers predominantly propose two approaches, depending on the type of reproductive labour discussed. The first is applied in the case of paid childcare services, whereby all countries are advised to invest into the creation of more, more affordable and better-quality facilities, in particular for the youngest children. This is expected to result in a better utilisation of human capital and activation of women’s ‘untapped’ labour market potential by freeing them of their caring responsibilities; it is also meant to be an investment into the development of a (future) highly skilled workforce (Jenson, 2010).

In regard to approaches proposed in the Semester documents towards healthcare and LTC services, a differentiation between Western and CEE countries appears. The predominant recommendation for Western European countries, which remains stable over time, is to reduce spending and improve the efficiency of these two (interrelated) sectors, for example, for Belgium to ‘[curb] age-related expenditure, including health expenditure’ (Council of the EU, 2012: 13). This can be done by reducing demand, as recommended to Austria through, for example, ‘a stronger focus on prevention, rehabilitation and independent living’ (Council of the EU, 2013a: 4), by changing the means of delivery and shifting provision from state institutions to home care in Belgium (European Commission, 2019b: 25) and the further commodification of care through cash-for-care schemes in Austria (European Commission, 2019a).

In the case of the CEE countries, earlier Semester documents (2011-2014) identify their healthcare and LTC systems as being underfunded and lacking availability but stop short of recommending investments. Such recommendations appear only as of 2019, and even then are made indirectly – rather than suggesting investment, they call for improvement or enhancement of access to LTC (e.g. in Slovakia, Council of the EU, 2019b), at times explicitly tying the provision of LTC (and childcare) services to labour market participation (e.g. in Poland, Council of the EU 2019a). While the need for investments into healthcare is recognised in the EC’s 2019 annual report on Poland (European Commission, 2019c), this is not translated into formal recommendations.

Finally, the way in which European Semester documents advise member states to address reproductive labour shortages suggests that EU policy makers are aware of the different roles which Western EU and CEE countries have in labour migration chains, as well as of the negative impacts of emigration on CEE countries. While no country receives formal recommendations to increase its reliance on labour migration, there is a clear awareness of the existing dependencies and suggestions to maintain this status quo in the EC’s annual reports.

Since Slovakia does not rely on migration to address its labour market gaps, the EC welcomes government plans to reduce ‘the salary gap with neighbouring countries’ (European Commission, 2023c: 65), addressing one of the key causes of emigration in an attempt to improve staffing in healthcare services.

This is different in the case of Poland, where labour market gaps caused by emigration can be addressed through labour migration from neighbouring non-EU countries, notably Ukraine. This is explicitly recognised in each EC annual report between 2015 and 2023 (European Commission, 2015b, 2016b, 2017, 2018, 2019c, 2020, 2022b, 2023b). At times, the country is warned of the risk of the secondary migration of Ukrainian arrivals to more ‘attractive’ Western countries, unless adequate policies to improve working conditions on the Polish labour market are taken (European Commission, 2019c). Despite this recognition of the negative impacts of emigration on CEE economies and societies, Austria, which has a heavy reliance on CEE migrant labour, is told to maintain this dependence: ‘the long-term care sector relies strongly on care provided by workers from other Member States, pointing to the need to secure a free flow of cross-border workers’ (Council of the EU, 2020: 4). This is in line with the EC’s annual reports which welcome Austria’s long-term fund as a medium-term solution, although expressing concerns about its cost as compared to home care or cash benefits (European Commission, 2019a). The Semester’s two approaches to social reproduction (cost saving for fiscal balance vs investment to promote women’s employment) clash over this issue, as the EC criticises plans to tighten access to the fund due to the impact this may have on women’s employment: ‘[this] will reduce the number of eligible beneficiaries and might [put] more pressure on [women] to leave their jobs in order to provide informal, family-based care’ (European Commission, 2016a: 60). Thus, EU policies implicitly support the impacts of the cash-for-care system on deepening reliance on migrant labour as long as this is outbalanced by the increased labour market participation of women.

Sustaining or increasing labour migration is not mentioned in the case of Belgium, although it relies on migrant labour for domestic work. This is likely the result of the strategic silence which exists in the Semester documents around the economic and social input of this type of labour.

Discussion

This article has analysed economic policy documents and recommendations issued to four EU member states in the framework of the EU’s main economic governance tool, the European Semester. It found that the focus of and recommendations of the European Semester differ depending on the type of reproductive labour in question, for Western European and CEE states and over time, with a primary preoccupation for fiscal balance dominating 2011-2014 and attention shifting towards more complex problematisations post-2014.

With regards to childcare, across the period studied, Belgum is seen as a top performer, while Austria, Poland and Slovakia’s low availability of ECEC is problematised, and the countries told to expand availability of childcare services (often through binding recommendations). This is the only instance where Semester documents consistently call for public investment, likely as paid childcare services, in particular ECEC, are seen as allowing to increase both women’s labour market participation as well as an investment into building the skills of a future workforce (Jenson, 2010).

Initially (2011-2014), all countries are seen to have challenges related to the cost of their LTC and healthcare systems. Austria and Belgium are told to reduce these (at times in binding recommendations) through measures such as de-socialising care provision, in particular its outsourcing to market-based providers. What remains invisible in these recommendations is the role of paid domestic work in these cost reduction strategies, whereby home-based services (including those of cleaning and cooking) would replace the more ‘costly’ institutional ones for those with LTC needs. Despite statements about the costliness of their LTC and healthcare systems, binding recommendations to reduce expenditure are not made to CEE countries, likely as policymakers also recognise the existing weakness of their systems. The underfunding of CEE LTC systems is further problematised post-2014 as challenging women’s labour market participation, and formal recommendations are issued for these systems to be improved to increase women’s waged employment, exposing an objective to relieve informal carers of their responsibilities to free them up for ‘higher productivity’ work (Morel, 2015).

Another challenge begins to be identified as of 2014 in Slovakia, as of 2019 in Poland and as of 2022 in Austria’s – that of labour shortages in the healthcare and LTC systems. Here, depending on the country’s position in the labour migration chain, EU policy makers advise them (although not through binding recommendations) to maintain or increase their dependence (for Austria and Poland), or take measures to improve labour market conditions and stem emigration (Slovakia). While countries are not bound to follow these suggestions, such formulations demonstrate the awareness of EU economic policymakers of the existence of labour migration dependencies in the EU, the capacity of some states (but not others) to rely on labour migration to address labour market shortages, as well as the negative impacts of excessive emigration on origin countries. However, it appears EU policy makers choose to disregard the impact of their policy suggestions on the deepening socio-economic divisions between member states, the excessive emigration from the CEE (and outside of the EU, e.g. Ukraine) and reliance on labour migration for the sustenance of entire sectors in Western EU countries.

More broadly, the article demonstrates the way in which contemporary capitalist economies approach reproductive labour. It appears that a hierarchy of reproductive labour is in place in EU economic policy, whereby paid public or market-based services (including the paid but informal work done by migrant workers) are seen as more beneficial to the economy than unpaid reproductive labour. While reproductive labour services are perceived as having the capacity to boost the economy by increasing women’s employment rates, reliance on informal care labour is seen to achieve the opposite, slowing the economy down by restricting the supply of labour force. The provision of services supporting social reproduction thus becomes another means for growing the economy, rather than the essential means of meeting reproductive needs.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Elena Zacharenko

Ethical Considerations

The research meets ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements of Finland.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Kone Foundation.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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