Migration and Care Work in Spain: The Domestic Sector Revisited

This paper explores the increasing significance of domestic workers in Spain, a country that has the highest figures of registered household employees in the EU, many of them female migrant workers. The paper focuses on how the domestic sector has grown in recent years along with mass migration flows. The growth of the household sector in Spain is situated within the context of the welfare and migration regimes. The household sector in Spain is currently absorbing a large part of the demand for childcare and elderly care provision. Although the domestic sector in Spain is more regulated than in many other countries, greater efforts to formalise and improve the labour and employment rights of household employees are needed to counterbalance occupational segregation and social inequality.