Abstract
Domestic workers, who live in private households, often lack access to decent work and labour rights. Formalization is widely understood as a normative strategy aimed at improving working conditions. As the German debate around domestic live-in work has centered around “legal certainty”, the article discusses if and how legal certainty could contribute to formalization. Legal developments e.g. in Austria, show that legal certainty can even work to the contrary, by disguising bogus self-employment more effectively. The article argues that, in the same vein, not all claims for more ‘legal certainty’ are likely to improve the situation of live-in care workers in Germany.
