We are delighted to virtually welcome Professor Gabriella Alberti and Dr Marketa Dolezalowa from Leeds Business School to present ‘From low-skilled to good work – labour and migration issues in Social Care‘ as part of our Seminar Series.
Date: 12th May 2026
Time: 12:30-13:30 UK time
Online event, please click here to register using a Google form.
Having trouble accessing this form? Please contact us via our website, or email centreforcare@sheffield.ac.uk.
About the seminar
The adult social care sector in England has long been in crisis created by long-term undervaluation of care work, the reliance of the sector on the public-private model accompanied by underfunding, which resulted in worker shortages and understaffing of care services. This paper draws on qualitative interviews with care workers, managers of care companies, and experts, collected as part of a larger research project that examined the impact of immigration policy on low-paid sectors in the UK, and discusses the intersections between immigration policy and social policy and their role in the current workforce crisis in the sector England. We found that due to the complex public-private structure of the sector and the de facto outsourcing of care provision, the state intervenes indirectly in the regulation of work and employment in the sector by creating specific market conditions (see Howell 2021) in which the sector operates. It does this by setting care standards and eligibility, de facto price setting through budget allocation, and using immigration policy and visa conditions to reduce labour shortages whilst keeping wages low. The changes driven by welfare and social policy reforms and the shift to public-private model of care provision, alongside austerity and cuts to budgets for local authorities, resulted in tensions within the sector led to increased reliance on migrant workforce, who provide flexible and insecure labour, with limited possibilities for collective action. However, the forms of employment in the sector and fluctuating demand for care present challenges for both migrant workers and employers to comply with complex requirements of visa conditions, leading to ongoing workforce pressures in the sector. The Government recent promise to stop the reliance on international workers and close the Care Worker Visa Route by uplifting conditions and attracting the local workforce to work in the sector, opens up opportunities for improving conditions but without a clear reform of its funding model it is hard to see shortages and demand for migrant labour reduce
About the presenters
Gabriella Alberti is Professor of International Labour Migration at Leeds University Business School. Her research interests revolve around the questions of transnational labour mobility, precarious work and their implications for changing employment relations, migrant intersectionalities, trade union renewal and movements for social and environmental justice.
Dr Marketa Dolezalova is a Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Her research interests revolve around migration, ethnicity, work, welfare and social policy. She has conducted research in the UK and in the Czech Republic
Please click here to register using a Google form.
Having trouble accessing this form? Please contact us via our website, or email centreforcare@sheffield.ac.uk.
The Centre for International Research on Care, Labour and Equalities (CIRCLE) and Centre for Care Seminar Series
In this seminar series we invite colleagues, partners and experts, whose work aligns with the mission of our Centre, to share their work with us and our audiences, to deepen our understanding of the critical issues in social care in the UK and around the world.
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