Female immigration in Madrid and Lisbon: towards an ethnisation of domestic help and cleaning industries

Abstract

The migration of women to Spain and Portugal corresponds to an increasing ethnization in the area of reproductive services (cleaning, personal care...) that are least valued by society. Spain, especially Madrid, has witnessed a surge in the number of female economic immigrants, not necessarily related to family reunion. This immigration process is linked to a growing demand of foreign workers to fill the domestic help sector, primarily live-in. In Portugal, the influx of African women results primarily from a family reunion process. These migrant women have also contributed to a segmentation process of the social reproduction market: in Lisbon, foreign women ocuppy jobs as live-out domestic workers, or else as cleanning staff, in the same way as the indigenous labor force. However, they are left with the least desirable tasks as well as being in a worse position within domination relations. Ethnic segmentation in the social reproduction sectors has been developed in different ways in Madrid and Lisbon, but it is still a consequence of the same general process: externalisation of the least socially valued domestic chores and the rise of a «servant army» encharged of these tasks.