Immigrant women in paid domestic service. The case of Spain and Italy

Abstract

In the familistic welfare state regimes of Italy and Spain, the resurgence in live-in domestic work and the demand for migrant domestic workers is stronger than in other European countries. Organising and regulating services in order to help with the burden of caring for one's family is not an important objective of social policy in southern European countries. It is taken for granted that the family (‘women') is the main provider of social protection. In the absence of policy decisions in this field, the increase in local women's labour market participation in recent decades has led to households recruiting non-EU immigrant women in order to help them balance the needs of their family with the demands of paid employment. These immigrants constitute an enormous supply of low-cost labour and there is a shortage of local female workers in paid domestic work.