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Marta SzebehelyProfessor emeritus

About me

Marta Szebehely is a Professor Emeritus of Social Work at Stockholm University, Sweden. She has been partnering and leading several Nordic and international comparative research projects on eldercare, and for almost four decades, she has analysed how policy and organisational changes in eldercare have affected the everyday life of care workers, older people with care needs and their family members. Her research interests include gender, social policy and care; shifting boundaries of care (family, state, market); comparative and historical perspectives on care policies; everyday life perspectives on formal and informal care; living conditions and use of care among older and disabled people; working conditions in care work.

Research projects

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Care work in different arenas: Working conditions in Swedish eldercare and disability services

    2024. Sara Erlandsson, Marta Szebehely. International Journal of Social Welfare 33 (2), 495-510

    Article

    Care work is shaped by the context in which it is carried out. This study explored the context, content, conditions and consequences of work in two fields of social care in Sweden: eldercare and disability services. Policy documents and statistical sources were used to analyse the context. Job content, working conditions and consequences of work were analysed using survey data collected in 2015 and 2017 in eldercare and disability services (N = 1307). The analysis of the political and economic context showed that the disability sector is characterised by a higher ambition level in legislation and funding. The survey of care workers reflected this difference: the work content differs; and the working conditions and their consequences are significantly worse for the eldercare staff than for the disability service staff. Possible explanations for these differences are discussed in terms of policy-framing, ageist notions and unintended consequences of policy changes. 

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  • Recruiting labour: the challenge of finding workers

    2024. Martha MacDonald, Gudmund Ågotnes, Marta Szebehely. The Labour Crisis inLong-term Care, 119-137

    Chapter
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  • Conclusion: a labour of love is still labour

    2023. Pat Armstrong, Hugh Armstrong, Marta Szebehely. Unpaid Work in Nursing Homes, 127-130

    Chapter

    Beginning with an overview of the various forms of unpaid labour done by and for those who live in, visit and work in nursing homes, this chapter identifies the conditions in Norway, Sweden and Canada that shape this work in particular, and different ways to bring both rewards and tensions to the various players. It demonstrates that the boundaries between paid and unpaid work are flexible, based more on conditions than on choice. It argues that naming unpaid labour as work does not eliminate care – or love for that matter. Rather, it calls attention to the conditions that are required to keep the care and the love in this labour.

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  • Working conditions in the long-term care sector: A comparative study of migrant and native workers in Austria and Sweden

    2022. Cassandra Simmons, Ricardo Rodrigues, Marta Szebehely. Health & Social Care in the Community 30 (5), e2191-e2202

    Article

    Increased demand for long-term care (LTC) services alongside precarious working conditions has resulted in labour shortages in the LTC sector, which has led to an increasing share of workers of migrant origin filling these jobs. Previous research on migrant care workers has also highlighted the seeming gap in working conditions relative to native workers. However, lack of disaggregated data on migrant and native care workers, alongside single-case studies, may have concealed potential disadvantages faced by certain groups and insufficiently accounted for differences in migration regimes and organisation of LTC sectors. To address these gaps, we carried out a comparative study on various working conditions of migrant and native LTC workers in Austria and Sweden. Using the international Nordcare survey on care sector working conditions, carried out in Austria in 2017 (n = 792) and in Sweden in 2015 (n = 708), we employed t-tests and multivariate logistic regressions to compare the working conditions of migrant and native carers in home and residential care in each country. We found that worse working conditions in Sweden compared to Austria may be explained by differences in training requirements of the LTC workforce and the relatively large for-profit private sector. Country of origin also plays a paramount role in the differences in working conditions experienced by migrants compared to native care workers, with non-European migrants being more likely to face a number of precarious working conditions. Our findings highlight the need to continue addressing precarious working conditions across the sector, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic where poor working conditions have been linked to increased COVID-related deaths in nursing homes. Our findings also emphasise the importance of policies that consider the various challenges experienced by different migrant groups in the LTC sector, who may particularly be at risk of presenteeism during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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  • The politics of profit in Swedish welfare services

    2019. Gabrielle Meagher, Marta Szebehely. Critical Social Policy 39 (3), 455-476

    Article

    The Social Democratic architects of the Swedish welfare state considered public provision as well as public funding of welfare services essential to realising their egalitarian ambitions. However, since the early 1990s, a highly concentrated, for-profit sector has emerged in welfare service provision. We analyse how the Swedish Social Democrats have discussed privatisation and the profit motive in welfare services from the 1980s to the present. We find that Social Democratic governments have defended public provision weakly across the period. The driving factors include the eclipse of the egalitarian ideal in favour of ideals of choice and diversity, internal disunity within the party on the profit question, and change in the political power order in Sweden, such that private welfare companies and their interest organisations have gained and now wield significant influence over welfare service policy.

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  • How institutions matter for job characteristics, quality and experiences

    2016. Gabrielle Meagher, Marta Szebehely, Jane Mears. Work, Employment and Society 30 (5), 731-749

    Article

    This article seeks to understand a puzzling finding: that workers in publicly-funded home care for older people in Australia, compared to those in Sweden, feel that they are better able to meet their clients’ needs, that their workplaces are less pressed, and that their work is less burdensome and more compatible with their family and social commitments. This finding seems to challenge expectations fostered by comparative sociological research that job quality and care services are inferior in Australia compared to Sweden. Informed by comparative institutionalist theory and care research, the structures and dynamics of the care systems in the two countries are analyzed, along with findings from the NORDCARE survey of home care workers conducted in Sweden in 2005 (n=166) and Australia in 2010 (n=318). Differences in the work and working conditions in the two countries are explained by the dynamic interaction of national institutional and highly gendered sector-level effects.

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  • Marketisation policies in different contexts: Consequences for home-care workers in Germany, Japan and Sweden

    2018. Hildegard Theobald (et al.). International Journal of Social Welfare 27 (3), 215-225

    Article

    Market-oriented restructurings of long-term care policies contribute significantly to the aggravation of care workers’ situations. This article focuses on the effects of broader long-term care policy developments on market-oriented reforms. Germany, Japan and Sweden are three countries that have introduced market-oriented reforms into home-based care provision embedded in distinct long-term care policy developments. Conceptually, this article draws on comparative research on care to define the institutional dimensions of long-term care policies. Empirically, the research is based on policy analyses, as well as on national statistics and a comparative research project on home-care workers in the aforementioned countries. The findings reveal the mediating impact of the extension and decline of long-term public care support and the corresponding development of the care infrastructure on both the restructuring of care work and the assessments of the care workers themselves.

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  • Marketization in Long-Term Care

    2017. Charlene Harrington (et al.).

    Article

    This article presents cross-country comparisons of trends in for-profit nursing home chains in Canada, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. Using public and private industry reports, the study describes ownership, corporate strategies, costs, and quality of the 5 largest for-profit chains in each country. The findings show that large for-profit nursing home chains are increasingly owned by private equity investors, have had many ownership changes over time, and have complex organizational structures. Large for-profit nursing home chains increasingly dominate the market and their strategies include the separation of property from operations, diversification, the expansion to many locations, and the use of tax havens. Generally, the chains have large revenues with high profit margins with some documented quality problems. The lack of adequate public information about the ownership, costs, and quality of services provided by nursing home chains is problematic in all the countries. The marketization of nursing home care poses new challenges to governments in collecting and reporting information to control costs as well as to ensure quality and public accountability.

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