The Resilience and Vulnerability of Hungarian Eldercare Workers Abroad in the Light of Covid

Abstract Resilience, adaptation, survival, endurance, change, transformation, imbalance – these are all responses to crisis situations and social and economic stresses that are increasingly becoming the focus of academic and public interest. The Carpathian Basin is constantly exposed to strong external influences, to which the local communities, households, and individuals must respond in order to regain their balance, or to transition to a new mode of functioning. In the last three to four decades labor migration became one of the most prominent responses to economic and social pressures and a coping strategy. The convertibility of inequalities and resources between different regions is an opportunity for stabilizing the state of insecurity at home. For the last few years, it has been a common preconception in resilience theories that only strong entities are capable of resilience. Recent research shows that resilience and vulnerability are not mutually exclusive; I offer case studies which illustrate this point. I draw on 15 years of fieldwork with Central and Eastern European migrant women working as care workers in Western countries and Israel. These cases show that the experience of vulnerability and the skills and knowledge gained from it contribute to increasing flexibility, adaptability, and learning capacity, and thus practically lay the foundation for resilient behavior. My research also explores the controversial issue in resilience theories of how responsibility is constituted; i.e., whether the idea of resilience is related to the shifting of responsibility from the social classes in power to the vulnerable groups more prone to disequilibrium. In examining foreign women integrated into the low-level segment of the occupational structure, eldercare, I find that if their physical or mental condition deteriorates, and they are on their own, their vulnerability increases, and the disequilibrium resulting from systemic problems can no longer be corrected through individual resourcefulness alone.