The European care border regime: Theorising extraction, exploitation and East–West inequalities in cross-border care work in central Europe

In the European Union (EU), a significant portion of migrant care workers comprise European citizens from Central and Eastern EU member states. Partly due to the closing of EU inner borders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, East–West inequalities and the exploitation of cross-border EU workers have become a visible public topic. The article suggests that the intra-EU workers’ border crossings provide an important sociological insight into the marketised geographies of care and how the – open-yet-bordered – EU arena contributes to social categorisations of people and the continued systemic devaluation of care. The author draws contours of the European care border regime and analyses how it is enacted in the geographical space of central Europe, adding nuances to a critique of ethno-racialised hierarchies of the EU care market. In particular, the article focuses on cross-border care mobility between Czechia, Germany and Austria to explore the connections between extractive and exploitative dimensions of the European care border regime. Contrasting the position and experiences of live-in and residential care workers, the author outlines an understanding of the extractivist regime of exploitation and how it consolidates, produces and legitimises the systemic devaluation of care and structural inequalities between EU citizens. The article also contributes to current debates on the racialised in-between position of Central and Eastern Europe as white-but-not-Western.