Explanatory factors of discourses and strategies in order to conciliate work and family of non-communitary migrant women in Spain

Abstract

Conciliation of work and family is a difficult enterprise for almost all women with small children willing to participate in the labour market. Nevertheless, the sort and amount of resources women have to combine paid-work and family care are very unequal and so are as well the possible strategies to conciliate work and family they can develop. The social vulnerability of migrant families in social and economic structure explains to a big extend the fewer options for some women to design conciliation strategies. This lack of equal opportunities relates not only to immigrant women’s practices but to different perceptions of the conciliation «problem». We propose a model of analysis of the structural and subjective factors linked to the conciliation strategies of migrant women. The model is based on the theoretical baggage about this matter and on the empirical material collected for an ongoing research about conciliation strategies of non communitarian migrant women in the Barcelona metropolitan context.