Migrant Domestic Workers In Europe

With specific attention to irregular migrant workers - that is to say, those without legal permits to stay in the countries in which they work - this volume focuses on domestic work, presenting studies from ten European countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. Offering a comparative analysis of irregular migrants engaged in all kinds of domestic work, the authors explore questions relating to employment conditions, health issues and the family lives of migrants. The book examines the living and working conditions of irregular migrant domestic workers, their relations with employers, their access to basic rights such as sick leave, sick pay, and holiday pay, as well as access to health services. Close consideration is also given to the challenges for family life presented by workers' status as irregular migrants, with regard to their lives both in their countries of origin and with their employers. Through analyses of the often blurred distinction between legality and illegality, the notion of a ’career’ in domestic work and the policy responses of European nations to the growth of irregular migrant domestic work, this volume offers various conceptual developments in the study of migration and domestic work. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, political scientists, geographers and anthropologists with interests in migration, gender, the family and domestic work.

This book explores the often neglected, but overwhelmingly common, everyday vulnerability of those who support the smooth functioning of contemporary societies: paid domestic workers. With a focus on the multiple disadvantages these – often migrant – workers face when working and living in Europe, the book investigates the role of law in producing, reinforcing – or, alternatively, attenuating – vulnerability to exploitation. It departs from approaches that focus on extreme abuse such as 'modern' slavery or trafficking, to consider the much more widespread day-to-day vulnerabilities created at the intersection of different legal regimes. The book, therefore, examines issues such as low wages, unregulated working time, dismissals and the impact of migration status on enforcing rights at work. The complex legal regimes regulating migrant domestic labour in Europe include migration and labour law sources at different levels: international, national and, as this book demonstrates, also EU. With an innovative lens that combines national, comparative, and multilevel analysis, this book opens up space for transformative legal change for migrant domestic workers in Europe and beyond.

Domestic work has become highly relevant on a local and global scale. Until a decade ago, domestic workers were rare in European households; today they can be found working for middle-class families and single people, for double or single parents as well as for the elderly. Performing the three C's - cleaning, caring and cooking - domestic workers offer their woman power on a global market which Europe has become part of. This global market is now considered the largest labour market for women world wide and it has triggered the feminization of migration. This volume brings together contributions by European and US based researchers to look at the connection between migration and domestic work on an empirical and theoretical level. The contributors elaborate on the phenomenon of 'domestic work' in late modern societies by discussing different methodological and theoretical approaches in an interdisciplinary setting. The volume also looks at the gendered aspects of domestic work; it asks why the re-introduction of domestic workers in European households has become so popular and will argue that this phenomenon is challenging gender theories. This is a timely book and will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of migration, gender and European studies.

This timely and innovative book delivers a comprehensive analysis of the non-recognition of the right to a family life of migrant live-in domestic and care workers in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and Ukraine.

This book analyses the changing face of work, gender equality and citizenship in Europe. Drawing on in-depth research conducted in nine different countries, it focuses on the discourses, social relations and political processes that surround paid domestic labour. In doing so, it rethinks the vital relationship between this kind of employment, the formal and informal citizenship of migrant workers and their employers, and the cultural and political value of gender equality. Approaching these as fluid, complex and interrelated phenomena that change according to local context, it will appeal to sociologists, political scientists, geographers, anthropologists and gender studies scholars.

Domestic and care work in private households is now the largest employment sector for migrant women. This book sheds light on these households through its focus on the interpersonal relationships between Latin American “undocumented migrant” domestic workers and employers in Austria, Germany, Spain and the UK. The personal experiences of these women form the basis for Gutiérrez-Rodríguez’s decolonial analysis of the feminization of labor in private households and cultural analysis of domestic work as affective labor. This book will be a necessary voice in the debates on citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and migrant workers’ rights.

Gender and International Migration in Europe is a unique work which introduces a gender dimension into theories of contemporary migrations. As the European Union seeks to extend equal opportunities, increasingly restrictionist immigration policies and the persistence of racism, deny autonomy and choice to migrant women. This work demonstrates how processes of globalisation and change in state policies on employment and welfare have maintained a demand for diverse forms of gendered immigration. The authors examine state and European Union policies of immigration control, family reunion, refugees and the management of immigrant and ethnic minority communities. Most importantly this work considers the opportunities created for political activity by migrant women and the extent to which they are able to influence and participate in mainstream policy-making. This volume will be essential reading for anyone involved in or interested in modern European immigration policy.

This timely and innovative book analyses the lives of new female migrants in the EU with a focus on the labour market, domestic work, care work and prostitution in particular. It provides a comparative analysis embracing eleven European countries from Northern (UK, Germany, Sweden, France), Southern (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus) and Eastern Europe (Poland, Slovenia), i.e. old and new immigration countries as well as old and new market economies. It maps labour market trends, welfare policies, migration laws, patterns of employment, and the working and social conditions of female migrants in different sectors of the labour market, formal and informal. It is particularly concerned with the strategies women use to counter the disadvantages they face. It analyses the ways in which gender hierarchies are intertwined with other social relations of power, providing a gendered and intersectional perspective, drawing on the biographies of migrant women. The book highlights policy relevant issues and tries to uncover some of the contradictory assumptions relating to integration which it treats as a highly normative and problematic concept. It reframes integration in terms of greater equalisation and democratisation (entailed in the parameters of access, participation and belonging), pointing to its transnational and intersectional dimensions.