In her PhD project, Zlatoslava Savych seeks to explore the interrelationship between transnational migration, care labour and language by focusing on care workers from Ukraine. More specifically, the thesis aims to examine the lived experiences of economic migration and care work of migrant caregivers employed in the EU, by paying close attention to the linguistic resources and strategies that the care workers used to construct their experiences and identities. The project will also investigate the care workers’ reported work-related communicative demands, their language learning experiences and the linguistic and cultural challenges they face in intercultural work encounters.

To achieve these research objectives, semi-structured in-depth interviews with migrant care workers will be conducted. The study will focus on migrant workers from Ukraine who are employed as live-in care workers, care assistants or nurses in various care settings in Austria, Germany and Italy. The interviews will be conducted in the research participant’s first language, and the collected interview data will be analysed using both qualitative thematic analysis and narrative analysis.