Abstract
Embeddedness is defined as the nature, depth, and extent of an individuals’ ties into an environment and organisation and its relationships with the community and society. Embeddedness has been shown to be an important factor for personal and organisational outcomes, such as life satisfaction and performance. Existing embeddedness research has focussed mainly on local workers and expatriates of higher socio-economic status, but neglected workers of lower socio-economic status. Due to the different and often more difficult life and work situation, little evidence remains about how low-status expatriates (LSEs) experience embeddedness in the host-country. Particularly LSEs working as 24-hour live-in carers in Germany and the UK are often employed in precarious conditions that regularly violate applicable labour laws, resulting in unequal employment opportunities, job insecurity, and social exclusion. There is little knowledge about the factors LSEs consider important to experience embeddedness into the host country society and organisation, social isolation, and social integration. Therefore, drawing on organisational, community, and social embeddedness theories, this research aims to evaluate hidden inequalities and causes for a lack of well-being in the labour market of LSEs. It focuses on the roles of society, the employing organisation, the host family, and the social network in enabling and hindering societal participation, social integration, stress, and embeddedness in the host-country. The research contributes to the international management and HRM literature by extending the current understanding of embeddedness in an understudied and marginalised international workforce. It contributes to practice by providing insights that can be used to develop current policies for employing live-in carers with the aim to improve their work-life situation and increase attractiveness and retention of this crucial workforce.