Minding the Gap: Feminist perspectives on policies affecting immigrant labor in the domestic services industry in Europe
Many scholars have noted that a gap exists between government immigration policies and actual outcomes in the labour market. For a variety of reasons, laws are not enforced and policies are not adjusted to reflect the new realities of employers’ demand for labour. This tacit acceptance of the inflow...
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| Publicado no: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/urmis, |
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| Auteurs principaux: | , |
| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Français |
| Publicado em: |
Cahiers de l’Urmis
2009
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| Assuntos: | |
| Acesso em linha: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Resumo: | Many scholars have noted that a gap exists between government immigration policies and actual outcomes in the labour market. For a variety of reasons, laws are not enforced and policies are not adjusted to reflect the new realities of employers’ demand for labour. This tacit acceptance of the inflow of undocumented workers perpetuates the invisibility of these immigrants with regard to labour policy, and it denies immigrants important safety and security protections granted other workers.This gap between immigration law, government policy and outcomes is perhaps most pronounced with regard to domestic workers, most of whom are women. Female migrants have little access to formal sector jobs, and therefore take on informal sector jobs, typically those derived from traditionally delineated gender roles. These jobs include what Bridget Anderson calls “the three C’s”: cooking, cleaning and caring. Given ongoing globalization and concomitant disparities in income between rich and poor nations, women will continue to migrate from developing countries, travelling to Europe to find work in other people’s homes.Using a comparative framework, we apply feminist theory to the case of undocumented domestic workers in various European countries to analyze this gap between government policy and outcomes. We find that the policy gap persists in both new and old destination countries, partly due to the private nature of the domestic work environment, but that trade unions are more active in older destination countries, indicating that some progress toward protecting domestic workers rights can be made through collective action. |
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