In collaboration with the Taiwanese Society for Care Research, the CRC Project A07 on the Global Dynamics of Long-Term Care Policies conducted a conference and a research workshop in Taipei, Taiwan on March 26-28, 2025. The event focused on comparing long-term care policies across three East Asian and three European countries.
In the past decades, many European and East Asian societies are intensively discussing about long-term care provision and related policies. In both regions, the proportion of older persons relative to the total population is above global average and public long-term care systems have been introduced in a comparatively large number of countries. The conference and workshop therefore focused on a cross-regional comparison and networking of researchers from three European and three East Asian welfare states with social insurance traditions: Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands and, as well as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
The one-day conference held on March 26 brought together scholars from the six countries plus activists, politicians and persons with care needs from Taiwan. Presentations covered the long-term care systems, their challenges and future reform directions of the six countries as well as the topic of migrant care work. Common issues identified across countries were for instance marketization in the care sector, missing support for family care giving and working conditions and staff shortages in long-term care. International participants were particularly impressed to learn about the strong involvement of civil society organisations and activists in long-term care policies in Taiwan.
Under the heading of Bridging Care Research Across East Asia and Europe, on March 27-28, researchers resumed in a smaller round to discuss future directions in care research and comparative research ideas on long-term care. During the workshop, several working groups were formed to discuss collaborative research projects, focusing on care migration, care politics, technology and care, family care and care ethics. A final highlight of the event were the on-side NGO visits to the Taiwan International Workers Association, Taiwan Association of Family Caregivers, and Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association. The workshop concluded with many plans for future collaborative research and all project A07 members hope to continue joint research activities in the future.
Contact:
Dr. Johanna Fischer
CRC 1342: Global Dynamics of Social Policy
Mary-Somerville-Straße 3
28359 Bremen
Phone: +49 421 218-57074
E-Mail: johanna.fischer@uni-bremen.de
