Irregular Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe: Who Cares?

2013

2011

European Journal of Women's Studies, 2015

In Belgium, a service voucher scheme – known as Titres Services – was launched in 2004 in order to create employment and regularize the labor conditions of domestic workers. The extent to which this scheme has represented an improvement in domestic workers’ labor conditions, however, is still a matter of debate. This article explores the workers’ experience of the changes introduced by this scheme. It focuses on Latin American migrants that are currently working under this scheme in Brussels, situating them in relation to their previous experiences and the experience of other migrants who currently work in the informal market. The authors distinguish two tropes in their informants’ discourse, which describe their ambivalence regarding these changes. Using the Titres Services scheme’s rhetoric, the first one seeks to increase the social status of this occupation by presenting it as a ‘profession’. Contrarily, the second trope highlights the limits to professionalization.

2020

adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

2015

1. Introduction: Domestic and Care Work of Migrant Women and the Right to Family life Maria Kontos Glenda Tibe Bonifacio I. FRAMING LEGALITIES, EMPLOYMENT, AND FAMILY RIGHTS 2. Transnational Domestic Work and Right to Family Life in International and European Law Dorothee Frings 3. Au pair Arrangement in Norway and Transnational Organization of Care Mariya Bikova 4. License to Care? Migrant Domestic Workers in Spanish Employment and Family Policy Elin Peterson 5. Invisibility, Exploitation and Paternalism: Migrant Latina Domestic Workers and Rights to Family Life in Barcelona, Spain Gabriela Poblet Denti II. PUBLIC DISCOURSE, FAMILY SEPARATION AND REUNIFICATION 6. Growing Up with Migration: Shifting Roles and Responsibilities of Transnational Families of Ukrainian Careworkers in Italy Olena Fedyuk 7. Family Rights in a Migratory Context: Whose Family Comes First? Magdalena Diaz Gorfinkiel 8. Live-in Caregivers in Canada: Servitude for Promisory Citizenship and Family Rights Glenda T...

The purpose of this article is to remedy the lack of explanatory endeavours concerning the positive performance of female migrant workers during the recent economic crisis in Western Europe. This phenomenon both interrogates the established association between economic downturns and their negative impact on migrant labour in low-skilled jobs and enriches the theory of the reserve army of labour, which has been applied to understanding the fragile status of migrant workers in Western economies. Secondary analysis of Labor Force Survey (LFS) and OECD data concerning the impact of the crisis on migrant labour shows that women employed in the care-domestic sector have been affected significantly less than men employed in manufacture and constructions. To explain this evidence, the article proposes a theoretical framework that draws on key concepts and debates in different strands of sociology: the increasing demand for paid care-domestic work due to the ageing population and the growth of native-born women's rates of activity; the commodification of care and the state management of migration; the affectivity and spatial fixity of care-domestic labour. All these factors contribute to configure female migrant labour, mostly employed in the reproductive sector, as a 'regular' rather than a reserve army of labour.