Shared language as a scarce resource: Organizing communication in care homes with foreign clientele

In the border regions of the Czech Republic, a new phenomenon of care homes catering to German seniors has arisen. Located in underprivileged regions and competing with significantly higher salaries on the German side of the border, care homes here lack German-speaking care workers. Communication between (Czech) care workers and (German-speaking) seniors is thus a burning issue for the homes and a matter to be organized. In this article, I link socio-material theories of care with organizational theory and present the different strategies employed by care homes to deal with the precarious position this scarcity of German-speaking care workers causes. Based on an analysis of these strategies, I show how organizational knowledge structures care interactions and communication in these institutions. I argue that the organizational setting, constituted by shared organizational language and knowledge, translates systemic conditions into institutional care.