This article looks at the role of private companies involved in organizing so-called live-in care arrangements between two EU member states, Germany and Poland. Due to gaps in the public long-term care system, employing livein migrant care workers in private households has become a widespread individualized solution to rising long-term care needs in Germany. Since eastern EU enlargement, private brokerage agencies placing Polish live-in migrant care workers in German households have grown considerably. Building on approaches conceptualizing the role of intermediaries in formalizing domestic work, we aim to provide a more fine-grained typology of private brokerage agencies, taking into account not only the legal environment and structural features of these private enterprises, but also their strategic positioning under conditions of high legal uncertainty in the EU multi-level governance system. By analyzing corporate as well as political strategies of these intermediaries, we distinguish three different agency types we call pioneers, minimum effort players and followers.

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This article analyses the new market for live-in migrant care work in Germany and Austria, focusing on brokering agencies as intermediary actors. The analysis presents unique data on the field by combining an online survey of brokerage agencies with semi-structured qualitative expert interviews. We show that the sector is growing swiftly and dominated by small businesses in both countries but is quite diverse in terms of regional presence, corporate strategies and the relationship with established welfare organisations. Despite different legal settings, malpractices at the household level seem to be constitutive of the brokerage market in Germany as well as in Austria.

nissen haben meine Forschungsanalyse geprägt und geschärft. Beiden, ebenso wie Aranka Vanessa Benazha danke ich zudem herzlich fürs inhaltliche Korrekturlesen.Ich bin froh, dass ich während der Promotionsphase auch in meinen Freundschaften stets einen Quell der Ermutigung und Solidarität finden konnte; in Kaffeepausen, bei Telefonaten, gemeinsamer Zeit. Ich danke daher besonders