Migrant workers in the care sector: what support is available for workers ‘in limbo’?

Following a long-term workforce crisis in the adult social care sector in England, which was made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and the end of freedom of movement of EU workers in 2021, the sector experienced a historically high number of 160,00 vacancies in the second half of 2021.

The main factors behind the workforce crisis in adult social care include work intensification and low pay, both a result of reduced budgets and increased demand for social care. Because the majority of social care provision is funded by local authorities, without an increase in budgets, care providers are unable to offer higher wages, and consequently, wages in the sector tend to be benchmarked to the national living wage, making care providers unable to compete with employers in other sectors.

Despite both the government and sectoral organisations emphasising the need to fill vacancies with the local workforce, the sector remains unattractive to British workers. Hence, the sector has increasingly relied on migrant workers, with data from 2023/24 showing that a quarter of the workforce was from a migrant background.

Acknowledging the social care workforce crisis, in February 2022, the government responded by introducing the Care Worker Visa scheme to allow employers to recruit care workers from abroad. After the introduction of this scheme, the number of visa applications increased sharply, with 143,823 visas being granted to main applicants in 2023 (a significant increase from 31,800 in 2021), and over 200,000 visas being granted to dependants of care workers.

In addition to this, in March 2023, the government made £15 million available through the International Recruitment Fund for adult social care to local and regional partnerships to support employers with international recruitment.

The unresolved staffing crisis

Despite the significant increase in international recruitment after the introduction of the Care Worker visa, there is still a high level of vacancies in the sector (131,000 according to the latest data). There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, the visa was brought in quickly without an adequate impact assessment of the route on the sector or understanding the sector’s workforce strategy and needs. The Care Worker route is an extension of the existing Skilled Worker visa route, and its requirements and visa conditions do not match the needs of care employers.

To comply with the conditions of the scheme, migrants have to work 40 hours per week for their main employer-sponsor. However, a large part of the sector focuses on providing domiciliary care services, where carers visit clients in their homes and provide care there. Care workers in domiciliary care are often paid only for time spent with clients, with travel time between clients being unpaid. Consequently, many domiciliary providers do not offer full-time contracts and alongside part-time work, there is high use of zero-hours in the sector, with around 30% of care workers being on zero-hour contracts.

During our research - Labour Mobility in Transition (2021-24, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)) - we interviewed care providers, care workers, and sectoral stakeholders. Some of our respondents from the care sector reported an increase in the number of new care companies being set up after the introduction of the Care Worker visa which were recruiting workers from abroad, seemingly without sufficient oversight and checks whether these new care providers were able to offer workers full-time hours.

Soon after the visa scheme opened, reports of exploitation and bogus employment linked to the scheme emerged, as well as instances of debt bondage and potential cases of modern slavery. The lack of oversight and risk assessment of the scheme led to a situation where a large number of care providers had their sponsorship licence revoked, leading to around 39,000 care workers losing their sponsorship and being at risk of losing their visa if they did not find a new employer within 60 days. Despite the establishment of fifteen regional hubs to support displaced care workers back into employment, less than 4% of displaced workers found employment through the hubs.

Insights from migrant care workers

To better understand the issues that displaced migrant workers are facing and what can be done to support them, we partnered with migrant-led organisations Meshebah CIC, Oasis Training and Consultancy, and NobleArise CIC, who are all part of the UK BME Anti-slavery Network (BASNET). Jointly, we co-organised three workshops with migrants who came to the UK on the Care Worker visa and have found themselves ‘in limbo’, without any work or with very limited or inconsistent hours of work, not having sufficient income to support themselves, and at the same time not having any access to public funds.

The workshops revealed that migrant care workers were not given sufficient information before coming to the UK, leading to a mismatch between expectations and reality. Many workshop participants were promised work by their recruiter (and some paid their recruiters thousands of pounds for help with visa applications), but after arriving in the UK, they were unable to contact their employer or the agency that recruited them.

Many workshop participants were in difficult financial situations and some reported working long hours in situations that were likely debt bondage.

The workshops also revealed barriers that migrants experienced when trying to find a new employer. These included the need for drivers, especially in the domiciliary care sector, which requires care workers to travel between clients. Whilst migrants are able to drive in the UK with an international driving licence for a period of time, they are required to obtain a UK driving licence after twelve months. However, the high costs of obtaining a UK driving licence and the long waiting times for driving tests prevented them from getting a UK licence before the expiration of their international one.

Workshop participants also reported that there were limited roles for male care workers, who cannot be recruited into roles that require carers to provide personal care to women specifically.

Following the workshops, we have developed a guide for migrant care workers aimed at providing information about rights and support provision, and that also includes clear explanations to challenge common myths. New, local versions of the guide are planned in collaboration with Migrant Action, a Leeds-based NGO supporting migrant workers. These resources will collate local knowledge about support organisations and services in a specific area.

Policy recommendations

In the recently published White Paper on immigration, the government set out their plans for reducing immigration, which included scrapping the Care Worker visa scheme. Whilst the scheme has been linked to exploitation and abuse, scrapping the scheme will not right the abuse and exploitation that migrant care workers in the UK continue to experience. Neither will it solve the ongoing issues with shortages in sectors problematically labelled as low-skilled.

The government urgently needs to work with migrant organisations and the care sector to develop a strategy that supports those who came via this scheme into work. This should include helping workers secure a new employer-sponsor and scrapping the requirement to work full-time. With the ongoing high rate of vacancies in the sector, support for ‘displaced’ migrant care workers would also contribute towards addressing the long-term care workforce crisis.

Download the guide.

Visit the project webpage.

The “guide for migrant care workers” project has been sponsored by the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account.