Care (Mis)Match

In Denmark, a growing number of care workers are multilingual. To address labor shortage, municipalities recruit resident migrants for training in elderly care. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, we explore how migrant care work trainees’ struggles with Danish language affect their relationships with older citizens and influence supervisors’ work practices. We show how supervisors arrange “good” care relations by matching multilingual trainees with particular older citizens to support migrants’ training and language learning. This practice fosters some relationships while hindering others, as part of broader efforts to meet care expectations and secure the future workforce in the Danish elderly care.