The Danish elderly care provides work for more and more foreign nationals. Yet, little is known about how these employees are best included in the sector to ensure their contribution to an elderly care that is sustainable for citizens, employees and managers alike. A new scientific research project will provide insights and recommendations on these questions.
More and more employees in Danish elderly care have a foreign national background. In 2023, around 45 percent of the social and healthcare helper trainees at the social and healthcare colleges were born abroad.
At the same time, labour is recruited directly from abroad, and politicians at Christiansborg have proposed expanding these efforts. This will involve granting more residence and work permits to foreign national social and healthcare professionals and by establishing recruitment partnerships with other countries.
Nevertheless, no research has so far included all three key actors in elderly care – older citizens, migrant care workers and managers.
A new research project, supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark, will change that.
»We would like to focus on the trend that Denmark is recruiting more and more employees more or less directly from abroad,« explains Sara Lei Sparre, Senior Researcher at VIVE, The Danish Center for Social Science Research, who will be in charge of the research. She continues:
»Senior citizens may encounter language and cultural barriers in their communication and interaction with these employees. What does this mean for the quality of care provision? What does this mean for their collaboration and for citizens’ experiences of the care services?«
Migrant care workers, on the other hand, may also be at risk of being subjected to discrimination, racism or encounter difficulties advancing at the workplace.
»And then there is the whole management issue. When employee groups become even more diverse, the need for inclusive and attentive management grows,« Sara Lei Sparre elaborates.
The project group will consist of four researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds and skills. One of key areas they will investigate is what actually happens in workplaces and in the citizens' homes.
Against this background, the research is divided into three levels: encounters between older citizens and migrant care workers, the workplace, and the broader sociopolitical context. The methods applied will be a combination of ethnographic fieldwork, a national survey, and register data.
The encounter between an older citizen and an employee with a foreign national background rests on a relationship of mutual dependence. The citizen needs care, and the migrant care worker depend on his or her job.
The researchers will investigate how this interdependence, as well as different forms of belonging, interact with potential language and cultural barriers. What shapes the care work and the relationship between the care worker and the older citizen?
In the workplace, focus is primarily on the relationship between the manager and the migrant care worker. In other words, how the manager support employee inclusion both through leadership and by building sustainable relationships between the employee and the citizens.
The socio-political context concerns the conditions and experiences that contribute to shaping what happens in practice. For example, geographical or family ties or lack thereof.
»Migrant care workers may have different ties to Denmark. This can have an impact on whether they want to stay. Their employment and residence in Denmark may also be based on various schemes, which means that they are more or less dependent on this job.«
The researchers will use register data to understand the migrant care workers’ employment journey.
»What educational background do they bring with them to Denmark, and what residence scheme are they relying on? In the future, we will also be able to see information in the data about any job changes, changed residence permits, participation in upskilling courses, and the development in their working hours and salary. We will also look at the composition of citizens in the different municipalities and areas in which these employees work. You might have a hypothesis that there is a difference in how good you are at receiving migrant care workers across different municipalities,« Sara Lei Sparre elaborates.
Research results will be translated into relevant knowledge of value to elderly care in Denmark by engaging social and healthcare colleges, selected municipalities, Local Government Denmark, the Danish Agency for International Recruitment and Integration, the Danish Health Authority, FOA and the DaneAge Association.
The goal is to include these participants' experiences in order to make the right recommendations at the end of the project.
»Society can use this research to improve how migrant care workers are recruited and included in Danish elderly care, both in the workplace and in strategic decision-making. It can help ensure that they receive the right introduction and training for their work and for interacting with citizens, so that elderly care services and citizen interactions are of higher quality. This way, older citizens can trust that the employees they meet are competent and able to communicate with them,« says Sara Lei Sparre.
The research project is scheduled to run for three years, starting on 1 October 2026. One of the reasons is that the Danish government has announced that Denmark will not receive the first employees through recruitment partnerships until the end of 2026 at the earliest.
Sara Lei Sparre
VIVE
Sustaining Danish elderly care through migration: Experiences and perspectives of older adults, migrant care workers and managers
5.489.280 kr.