D3.2 Data and policy report for Italy. Deliverable D3.2 within the MAJORdom project

Despite being the Europe’s oldest society, with 22,9% of people aged 65 years old and more and 7,2% aged 80+ (OECD 2019), Italy spends only 0,9% of the GDP on long term care (OECD 2018). Italy is a Mediterranean welfare state with a “migrant-in-the-family” care model and a fundamental role of the family in care provision, with direct cash support from the central and local governments (Da Roit 2010, Da Roit 2021). The role of domestic workers, especially in the care for the elderly is important against the background of a lack of widespread institutional and in-home publicly funded forms of care (Da Roit 2010). According to the most recent statistical data, 848,987 domestic workers are employed regularly in Italy, 70.3% of which are migrants, while an estimated additional 1.2 million are employed irregularly (Zini 2020, Dossier statistico 2020). The care and domestic sector workers come principally from Romania, Ukraine, Philippines, and Moldova2. The countries grouped under the label of Eastern Europe clearly dominate the elderly care sector (73,6% of in-home care workers) while among the housecleaners (COLF) their share is still prominent but lower (47,1%) (DOMINA 2020)3. Among the non-Italian workers, the migratory projects are rather longer, and circular care migration is not dominant (Redini et al. 2020, Cojocaru 2020, Kordasiewicz 2014). According to the official data of the Instituto Nazionale della Previdenza Sociale (INPS), in 2020 there were 920 722 domestic workers in Italy. Among them the most prominent category of workers according to the origin were workers from the so-called Eastern Europe, mainly from Romania, Ukraine and Moldova, that surpassed 351 thousand workers. The second largest category of workers were actually Italian workers, who were 287 610 and constituted 31% of all registered domestic workers in Italy.