No abstract

This article focuses on the private for-profit agencies providing eldercare that have recently emerged in the post-socialist Czech Republic, a country with strong familist tendencies in eldercare organisation. We draw upon 10 in-depth interviews with owners of these agencies, focusing on how they create their services, define the care they provide and target potential clients. We also analyse the websites of the selected agencies to investigate how they promote their services online. The main aim of this article is to illuminate the strategies of marketising eldercare in the agencies. We identify the process of the ‘burdenisation’ of eldercare as an outcome of its marketisation.

Each culture has a deeply rooted understanding of what constitutes the ideal for eldercare organization. This article investigates the role of family members in the delegation and provision of eldercare by private for-profit agencies in the Czech Republic. In this post-socialist country with a high level of intergenerational solidarity, a new market for eldercare has emerged in recent decades. We are interested in how the dominance of the family in eldercare provision is inscribed in the functioning of forprofit agencies and their caring practices. We examine how the role of family members whose elderly relatives receive paid care provided by private for-profit agencies is conceptualized by those who sell the care services, those who provide these services, and the care recipients themselves. We draw upon interviews conducted with the owners of private agencies, ethnographic observations, and informal interviews with paid care workers.