In our paper we aim to present the main characteristics of live-in care migration from Hungary to Austria. Due to aging, the demand on care workers is increasing. Our analysis shows the supply side of the phenomenon. Our paper focuses on three main issues, the mechanism of decision-making of migration, gender roles and gender arrangements within the family, and the institutions connected to care workers’ migration.

Our research method is based on ethnographic fieldwork, and a combined interview technique. We combined the narrative interview technique with half-structured interview method, and analyzed the narratives by Rosenthal’s method of objective hermeneutics (Rosenthal 1993). We conducted field work in the southern part of Baranya County, Hungary, and in the surroundings of Graz, Austria.

As opposed to assumptions of individual rational decision making, interviews showed that the decision about migration is made on familial basis, and migrants make a decision by themselves only if they are widows, single, or their children are already grown-ups. The results of our research confirm the validity of the theory of new economic labor migration, that migration is based on a household decision, opposed to the neo-classical economics model.

As women undertake the responsibility of being the single earners in the family, they develop a more masculine type identity, while men end up in some kind of a gender panic. Besides becoming breadwinners in the family, women’s household duties do not cease to exist. Care workers’ daily life can be described by conflicting moral commitments of earning money abroad and caring for their own family.

Our analysis raises that gendered family economy aspects have not been taken into account properly in European migration. It also shows that there are elements of coercion, long-term structural constraints, and most of the “rational” advantages do not explain this type of labor migration.