| Summary/Abstract |
Japan and Italy are the most aging societies in the developed countries and they both face the rapid increase of the social cost and the demand in manpower for long-term care. Both countries have the common welfare state trajectories and characteristics. In contrast, both the care and migration policies and the role of migrant care workers between Italy and Japan are consistently different. The paper compares the welfare state characteristics, care configurations, and the care-migration policies in 2000s, and reveals how the role of migrant care workers in Italy and Japan would be influenced by the migrant and care policies reciprocally. The paper concludes that the combination of the restricted migrant policies for unskilled migrant care workers and the in-kind-based national care policies is significant in efforts to maintain a qualified and regulated care work. Conversely, it verifies that the in-cash-based national care policy with the weak migration control for unskilled migrant workers brings the spread of marketized care with weak control and low professional skills, mostly in the gray market.
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