By Maria Izzo, Doctoral Researcher in Health and Social Policy, University of Glasgow.

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Nina, a Ukrainian woman in her mid-seventies, lives and works in Milan as an eldercare worker. Formally retired, she receives a pension of just €250 per month while paying €300 for a shared accommodation. Recent medical treatment kept her in Italy, and she still works occasionally to cover the rent. Her situation reflects a wider reality, which is the focus of my PhD studies: decades of labour in Italy’s care sector often leave Ukrainian migrant workers with minimal pensions and a precarious old age.

Many of these workers arrived in Italy in the late 1990s, driven by post-Soviet instability that left them marginalized in Ukraine’s labour market. Like many Ukrainian women, they entered the largely invisible domestic care sector. In 2023, 54.7% of Ukrainians in Italy worked in family care, 69.2% of them women, and almost 45% were over sixty years old. Today, many have spent more than twenty years in a sector defined by low pay, informal contracts, and limited social protection.

Care work in Italy has become central to the welfare system, yet it remains undervalued. The sector’s familistic and unregulated nature means workers face low wages, ambiguous employment relations, and limited social protection. Migrant status amplifies this precariousness: temporary work permits tie workers to inherently unstable jobs, creating cycles of informal work and partial regularisation.

Pensions: A Mirror of Inequality

This insecurity is particularly visible in pensions. Ukrainian workers in Italy are nominally entitled to pensions under the same rules as Italians, but adults arriving into the country later in life face barriers. Italy and Ukraine lack a bilateral agreement to combine pension contributions earned in both countries, forcing many to re-start their work history and pension entitlements from zero after migration. Natalya, approaching sixty years of age, explained: “There’s no agreement because Ukraine hasn’t made one. I would have nearly thirty-four years of contributions… a nice amount”.

Informal work further undermines pension accumulation. Larysa, who worked in Naples for ten years without a contract, only began paying contributions after entering formal employment   two years prior. “I worked twelve years here. Two years I paid contributions, ten years under the table. I did good for Italy… thousands like me did the same,” she said.

Long-term care work often leads to minimal pensions. Low wages mirror the meagre public support available: the main state allowance for fully dependent people is €542 per month, while formal home care can be claimed for only a few hours per week. Families cover most long-term care costs, which in 2023 reached €13 billion — nearly half of public expenditure on long-term care. For low- and middle-income families, this is often unsustainable, especially as over half of Italy’s elderly persons earn less than €20,000 per year.

As Alisa recounted, most of the families she worked for were people in difficult economic situations — “a warehouse worker, a former hotel employee, a teacher.” At the time of the interview, her hourly wage was €6.70: “I work for poor families who can’t give me more […] they pay the contribution of €400 every two or three months. It’s a pittance. It really is a pittance. After fifteen years of work, I still have thirty years ahead of me, but […] everything at the minimum.”

A War that Deepens Precarity

For many Ukrainian care workers, decades in the sector reproduce the same economic vulnerabilities that drove migration in the first place. The war in Ukraine, beginning in February 2022, has worsened these pressures. In the first months of the conflict, Ukraine lost an estimated 4.8 million jobs, while inflation further eroded household income. Migrant women abroad faced increased responsibility for supporting relatives, adding to decades of caregiving obligations.

Inna, nearing seventy, told me in Milan: “I can’t think about my future. I think about my daughter.” Yuliya, approaching eighty years of age, continues to care for a 93-year-old client in Naples “as long as my legs hold me,” seeing no viable return to Ukraine, either during the war or post-war.

Continuing to work in physically and psychologically demanding jobs into old age has a high cost. Yeva, nearly sixty years old, explained: “I’ve lost so much health because the work is very heavy.” Liliya, also in her sixties, had four years left until retirement but felt exhausted. Her home in southeastern Ukraine, just renovated with her life savings, was destroyed by a missile. But, despite the war situation, she would have returned home: “I’d return home tomorrow, even with a small pension” she said. Her ruined home mirrors the precarious lives of many Ukrainian care workers who have endured the collapse of the Soviet Union, unstable welfare systems, and now the war. For decades, they have sustained both Italy’s ageing population and their families in Ukraine, yet their old age remains insecure.

These stories expose a broader European dilemma: welfare systems rely on the insecurity of those who sustain them. Without fair working conditions, regularisation, pension agreements, and public investment in long-term care, Europe’s care economy will continue to build its future on the precarity of others.

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Keywords: migrant care workers, long-term care, ageing, pension inequality, Ukraine, Italy

Bio: I am a PhD candidate in Health and Social Policy at the University of Glasgow, interested in the intersections of ageing, migration, gendered care, and welfare. My current research investigates ageing and social protection among older Ukrainian care workers in Italy.

Image credit: Maria Izzo