Markets, Regimes, and the Role of Stakeholders: Explaining Precariousness of Migrant Domestic/Care Workers in Different Institutional Frameworks

Markets, Regimes, and the Role ofStakeholders: Explaining Precariousnessof Migrant Domestic/Care Workers inDifferent Institutional Frameworks

Zenia Hellgren1,2,*

Spain and Sweden represent societies with very different welfare, migration, and

employment regimes in a European context, but in both countries, female migrant

workers in the private domestic/care sectors experience precarious job conditions.

The purpose of this article is to explain the situation of migrant workers in these

societies through an analysis of both structural components and the position of sta-

keholders involved in the private care/domestic services sector. Comparing the

cases of Spain and Sweden, I argue that different characteristics of regimes

and markets—rather paradoxically—produce similar results for the workers. In both

countries, there is pressure to keep the wages low. Work hours are often unpredict-

able and adapted to the clients’ demands. In Spain, these workers fill the “care

gap”, representing a comparably affordable solution to the lack of public eldercare.

In Sweden, the private domestic services market expanded after the so-called RUT

tax subsidy was implemented in 2007. Here, cleaning companies play a key role

as middlemen who receive a large share of the cost for these services. Few actors

represent the workers, and those who do find themselves restrained by structural

factors (as NGOs in Spain) or ambiguous in their support (as the Swedish trade

unions). All in all, the female migrant domestic/care workers in Spain and Sweden

apparently form part of the development towards a “migrant precariat” in European

societies.

Introduction

Several scholars have debated if there is a Europe-wide convergencein terms of the expansion of private care/domestic services performed by

1Sociology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden2GRITIM, Political and Social Science, Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain*[email protected]

socpol: Social Politics, Summer 2015 pp. 220–241doi: 10.1093/sp/jxv010# The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press.All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Access publication June 1, 2015

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low-paid migrant workers or not (e.g., Williams 2011; Morel 2015). Thosewho do not think there is a convergence emphasize the persisting national dif-ferences in welfare, migration, and employment regimes within Europe. Spainand Sweden—the two countries under study in this article—represent bothpersisting divergence and the new converging trends. They possess very differ-ent institutions in welfare, migration, and employment regimes, yet migrantworkers in the private domestic/care sectors experience similarly precariousjob conditions (Hobson and Hellgren, 2015). This article, instead of takingsides in the convergence debate, asks why Spain and Sweden demonstratesimilarities in migrant workers’ precarious existence despite their widely dif-ferent institutional structures and private care/domestic services markets. Wecan only answer this question by understanding: (i) the role and functionsmigrant service workers fulfil in each society; and (ii) the structure of obstaclesor opportunities available to migrant workers to overcome their precariousstatus.

In Spain, the private market for care/domestic services largely emergedin the 1980s and 1990s when Spanish women’s participation in the labourmarket started to increase. Families had to rely on private care/domesticservices to fill the gap between care needs and the lack of public eldercareand childcare. Sweden has only recently seen this sector grow significantly asa result of the Conservative government’s implementation of a tax subsidyfor hiring domestic/care service workers in 2007. Since the welfare regimecovers most care needs in Sweden, demand for private domestic servicestends to be mostly for cleaning, and for occasional child minding. Thereasons behind the expansion of private markets for care/domestic servicesthus differ in the two countries and are intertwined with the structure ofwelfare states and other policies in each country. Such differences notwith-standing, the situation of the female migrant workers is very similar in thetwo counties: they are caught up by low wages, demanding job conditions,and difficulties to make ends meet (ibid). This article addresses the follow-ing questions:

1. What are the specific features of the Spanish/Swedish welfare/migra-tion regimes and labour markets that shape the precarious job condi-tions of migrant domestic/care workers?

2. What role do different stakeholders play in influencing the situationof migrant workers?

Institutional contexts have important effects on the overall life conditions andopportunities of migrant workers. Are there, for instance, laws that permit un-documented migrants to regularize their situation in exchange for a job con-tract? Are migrant domestic workers covered or exempted from general labourrights applicable to other workers? Do undocumented migrants have accessto health care and schooling? Beyond such structural factors, the situation of

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migrant domestic workers is also affected by the agency, or lack of agency, of avariety of actors who advocate or oppose migrant workers’ rights. Such actorsinclude migrant workers themselves, who self-organize or participate in tradeunions, national trade unions, NGOs, church actors, employers’ organizations,private companies, and policy-makers involved in decision-making in therelated issue areas. I argue that these actors, whom I call “stakeholders”, can ex-ercise some agency to change the status quo while facing constraints placed bystructural (institutional) contexts.

It is fair to say that the existing literature on migrant care and domesticworkers can be roughly divided into two groups. One group of researchersfocus on the micro-politics of migrant care/domestic work (e.g., Lutz,Parrenas, Hochschild, Chiatti, and Shutes), and within that group, there is theethnographic research on the conditions of migrant care workers (e.g.,Anderson, Williams, and Gavanas). The other group pays close attention tostructural features of welfare/care regimes, and their intersection with immi-gration and employment regimes. Fiona Williams (2011) has been a primemover in this research terrain. My work contributes to bridge these fields bycomparing both different institutional structures and the conditions ofmigrant workers, and simultaneously highlighting the role of agency. Thisarticle demonstrates how stakeholders may play an important role both influ-encing and interpreting the changes in policy and markets for care/domesticwork, and offering support for vulnerable workers in the sector, but also thatstructural factors significantly limit their agency.

I have conducted, coded, and analyzed thirty-two interviews (of which twoare e-mail interviews) with NGO and church actors, policy-makers, andspokespersons of employers, companies, and trade unions representingworkers in the domestic sectors in Sweden and Spain. Most of these interviewswere performed as part of the ongoing research project Migration and Care(within the EU project FamiliesAndSocieties), which compares the situationof migrant domestic workers in Sweden and Spain. Within the scope ofthis project, together with a related research project funded by Riksbanken(The Swedish Central Bank) and directed by Barbara Hobson, we have alsoconducted, coded, and analyzed in-depth interviews with ninety femalemigrant domestic/care workers in Barcelona, Stockholm, and Madrid.1 Themigrant interviews have provided us with important insights regarding the jobsituation of these workers (Hobson and Hellgren 2015).

In the following sections, I will first compare the institutional frameworkscomposed by welfare/migration regimes and labour market structures inSweden and Spain, respectively, viewed through the lens of what the implica-tions are for migrant domestic/care workers. Then, I will shift focus to the roleplayed by stakeholders representing different positions within these institution-al frameworks, and how their agendas and discourses influence on the out-comes for the workers.

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The Emergence of Private Markets for Care/DomesticServices in Spain and Sweden

The reason behind the increasing demands for private care/domestic ser-vices vary between Spain and Sweden, as do the type of services demanded.The private care/domestic services sector in Spain expanded in order to com-pensate for the lack of public provision for child and eldercare services. InSweden, in contrast, private domestic services are not a matter of necessity asin Spain, but they are more about making everyday life more comfortable forhard-working, upper middle class families (Hobson and Fahlen 2015). Manyelderly persons also buy private domestic services for housework that is notcovered by the welfare system. The forms in which migrant care/serviceworkers provide their services are very different in the two countries. Moststrikingly, the employment form of live-in workers is common in Spainthough virtually inexistent in Sweden, and irregular migration status is farmore common among the Spanish domestic/care workers. Despite their verydifferent policy trajectories (often undocumented), female migrant workerssimilarly occupy precarious positions in the respective labour markets. Thatdomestic workers almost exclusively are women is something naturalized;housework is what women have always done and continue to do that is under-valued and often unpaid (Hobson and Bede 2015). In both Spain and Sweden,the workers in this sector face long and irregular work days, too few workhours, low salaries, sometimes exploitative conditions, high levels of insecurityin employment, and difficulties to make ends meet (Hobson and Hellgren2015).

The Interplay Between Care Regime, Migration Regime, and LabourMarket Structure

Spain. Like other Southern European welfare states, Spain is characterized bya male breadwinner model with a comparatively limited supply of publicwelfare services. Particularly eldercare is an area where the care deficit is con-siderable (Fernandez and Tobio 2005).2 Foreign female migration came at atime when the supply of internal domestic workers was declining alongside anincreasing demand for more services for the elderly, and by mothers of youngchildren entering the labour market (Peterson 2007). In this context, migrantcare/domestic workers appeared as a “solution”: affordable care for (mainly)middle and upper class families, and thereby less pressure on politicians toexpand public services (Bettio et al. 2006; Lutz 2008; Recio 2010). Spanishpolicy-makers confirm the importance of a low-cost workforce in avoiding thepressure for expanding costly public welfare provisions for care. In the wordsof the Spanish government’s former representative in Barcelona:

The matter of eldercare. . .the possibility of people hiring immigrants todo a really good job for, let’s say moderate salaries, is a big advantagecompared to for example a home for old people. If those immigrants


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weren’t here this would obviously have to work in another way. EduardoPlanells i Indurain, the Spanish Government’s representative in Catalonia,interview in 2007.

Moreover, the Spanish migration regime and labour market structure haveclearly been significant for the supply of a migrant workforce who came tooccupy the low-paid positions that the national workforce rejected (Cachon2001). Simonazzi (2009) argues that the informal economy preceded undocu-mented migration, acting as a strong pull factor, and that the two processesre-enforced each other. The private care/domestic services market has appar-ently both profited from and stimulated (largely irregular) labour migration(Moreno and Bruquetes 2011).

Immigration policies applied in Spain can roughly be summed up in twoterms, quotas for regular labour immigration establishing the demand accordingto sector (now largely shut due to the crisis (Bosch, interview 2014)), and regu-larizations (Izquierdo 2005; ILO report 2009), through which undocumentedimmigrants are granted residence permits. Currently, the general requirementfor regularization is irregular stay of at least three years in the country—docu-mented through registration in the municipal register, which requires having anaddress but not an immigration permit—and a job contract. This rule reflectsboth the persisting laissez faire or “non-policy” approach towards migration anda certain tolerance for informality (Rodrıguez, interview 2014). Parallel to the laximmigration policies, undocumented migrants have been granted basic socialrights as health care and schooling, which allows for a certain degree of integra-tion despite their irregular status (Romero-Ortuno 2004).3

Turning the lens to the labour market, we can see that the precarious situ-ation of private care/domestic workers is influenced by several factors. Someof these factors are laws exempting domestic workers from general workforceprotection, high proportions of informal work, and clients’ unwillingness orinability to pay more. The existence of a large informal sector is symptomaticfor the Spanish economy in general, and the share of informal jobs is particu-larly high within the domestic/care sector (Moreno and Bruquetes 2011).Domestic/care work was not recognized in Spanish labour law until 1985, andeven then it was made a special legal category (known as the Special Regimefor Household Workers) (Leon 2010). In 2011, a new law was passed by theSocialist government. It obliged anyone who hired a private domestic/careworker to offer a job contract and pay the worker’s social security costs. The lawwas however subsequently modified by the Conservative government in 2013,mitigating the employer’s responsibility. Workers who work less than sixty hoursper month for one employer must pay the social security costs of 150 euro permonth themselves, and workers in this sector still have no unemployment insur-ance (http://www.empleo.gob.es/es/portada/serviciohogar/). At present, thereare 427,415 registered domestic workers in Spain according to the SocialSecurity database (seg-social.es, March 2015). The total number of workers in

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this sector is unknown—in 2012 they were estimated to about 700,000, of whichonly 294.916 were registered. The share of formal workers has certainly increasedsince the new law was passed. However, the total number of work hours is de-creasing due to the crisis, which in turn reduces the total revenues for the socialsecurity system from this sector (http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/1604919/0/ley/empleadas-hogar/fracaso/; Spanish Government’s Report 2014). All inall, it appears clear that the interplay between the Spanish care/migration regimeand the labour market structure has influenced the configuration of the private,to a great extent informal, market for care/domestic services, and the supply of aprecarious workforce. The pressure to keep costs low and the widespread infor-mality among migrant workers are factors that explain their marginalization,though precarious work is common in several other sectors on the Spanishlabour market as well.

Before proceeding, it is necessary to address the impact of the global finan-cial crisis that has affected the Spanish economy drastically (Robert et al. 2014)and how this influences the sector. The job conditions in the private care/do-mestic services sector in Spain have indeed always been precarious. The crisis ishowever rapidly leading to both unemployment and yet worsening conditionsfor these workers. It strongly affects the mechanisms of supply and demand,the character and duration of the services needed, the priorities of organiza-tions representing domestic workers, and the level of precariousness amongmigrant workers in general (Rendon, Rodrıguez, Martı, interviews 2013–2014;conversations with representatives of migrant/domestic workers’ rights NGOsSURT and Anem Per Feina, 2013). Unemployment is high across sectors, atpresent reaching 23.6% for the whole population, and 36.5% among immi-grants (ine.es, February 2015). The situation is further aggravated by the factthat many immigrants lose their residence permits, which cannot be renewedwithout a valid job contract (Rendon, interview 2014).

In this context, immigration policies in Spain are increasingly focused onencouraging voluntary return. The head of the Catalan immigration secretariatstates that “the situation is very serious, desperate” and that “there is no needfor further immigration but we cannot oblige people to leave” (Bosch, inter-view 2014). Spain rarely performs forced repatriations as these are consideredtoo expensive; irregular immigrants who are caught are in general releasedshortly (Hellgren 2014). Authorities promote programmes to assist thisprocess, but return is not an option for many migrant workers despite thehardships they now encounter in Spain. A supervisor at the Barcelona munici-pal immigration office states that “no matter how bad things are here, thingsare often even worse in their country of origin”, and that immigrants, “just asmany others”, at present are focused on surviving day by day (Rodrıguez, inter-view 2014). Stakeholders who assist migrants state that the supply of un-employed migrants looking for virtually any job they can get increases daily(interviews with, e.g., Martı 2013; Hermana Encarna 2013; Rendon 2014,Rodrıguez 2014; Serra 2014).


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The financial crisis in Spain affects all spheres of society and is incorporatedin public discourse to legitimate welfare cutbacks, restrictions in the migrationregime, and deteriorating job conditions (Rendon, Rodrıguez, Serra, Garcıa,Bosch, Pulido, interviews 2014). It constitutes a fundamental part of theSpanish institutional context at present, and a structural impediment for po-tential advocacy to improve the situation for migrant care/domestic workers.

Sweden. In Sweden, the welfare regime covers the basic care needs of citizens.Here, the private market for domestic/care services did not expand to fill acare deficit as in Spain, but as the result of a political reform with clearly ideo-logical undertones. The increase in demand for private domestic servicesresulted from an incentive, a tax subsidy known as RUT. It was implementedin 2007, by the Conservative government elected in 2006 (Hellgren andHobson 2011; Morel 2015).4 The RUT reform reflects the political strategies ofthe Conservative bloc in Swedish politics. It represents a shift away from theSocial Democratic model of comprehensive public provisioning to a neoliberalmodel of choice, privatization, individualized solutions, and greater inequal-ities. The Social Democratic project to erase class differences and create anegalitarian society fostered a culture where acting in a “non-egalitarian”fashion, as hiring a domestic worker, was frowned upon. This ideologicallegacy was highly present during the heated debates after the RUT reform(Hellgren and Hobson 2011). There is still a strong ideological divide betweendefenders and antagonists of the subsidy. Swedish trade unions, with closelinks to the Social Democratic party, are among the main critics of RUT, whichhas consequences for their role in representing domestic workers.5

The link between the welfare/migration regime and the private market forcare/domestic services is not as clear in the Swedish case as in the Spanish.There is still no research or empirical evidence to demonstrate that job offersin the domestic sector attracted female labour immigration to Sweden. Findingdata to confirm this relationship is further complicated as very few of theseworkers actually get residence/job permits to work in the domestic sector. Thevast majority instead comes as asylum seekers or for family reunification(Hobson and Hellgren 2015, forthcoming). Since the expansion of theEuropean Union in 2004, the number of labour migrants to Sweden hasincreased. Poland is one of the main sending countries (www.scb.se, Feb2010). Moreover, the rules for labour immigration from outside the EU wereliberalized in 2008, when the Conservative government implemented a newlaw together with the Environmental party. It gives employers the right to hireemployees from outside the EU, as long as salaries and conditions meet thesame standards as those applicable for the Swedish workforce (www.regeringen.se, Feb 2010). This law was strongly criticized by the main tradeunion LO. According to them, it has led to a growing supply of low-paidmigrant workers in Sweden, and a dramatic increase in the illegal trade withwork permits as a “window of entry” into Sweden when the asylum channel is

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not applicable. Job contracts often pay less than promised, expire, or may noteven exist, and these migrants stay irregularly to work in the informal economy(Arvidsson, interview 2009; Pettersson and Ingesson, interviews 2014).

I remember in 2008, maybe we had a total of one or two applications.Last year we had 740 or 780, I need to check the exact number. Now Ican have about 30 or 40 per week [new applications for job permits frompeople who are abroad]. Annelie Pettersson, representative of the tradeunion Fastighetsanstalldas forbund, interview 2014.

We count on 50,000–75,000 undocumented migrants in Sweden today,though it is of course impossible to say. [. . .] The trade with workpermits has increased dramatically, this is a big and growing problem.We have a case right now with a guy who came from Algeria and paid19,000 euro to come here and get a cleaning job. [. . .] But often there isnot even a job at all and then they stay here as undocumented migrants.Bengt Sandberg, Head of the Union Centre For UndocumentedMigrants in Stockholm, interview 2014.

LO has performed internal studies and interviews with undocumented workersto investigate their job conditions in this sector. One example that they note isthat of eight undocumented workers who were exploited by Latin Americancompatriots’ cleaning firms. They got no pay at all or just symbolic amounts,sometimes pizza, as “you have nothing to do anyway so you might as well cleanfor us”. LO states that there are similar testimonies concerning companies withcollective agreements and who use the RUT deduction. It is hard to say howwidespread this is. LO’s investigator states that “I only see the problems, ofcourse, those who come here. But you don’t exactly have to look hard to findthem” (Ingesson, interview 2014).

In contrast to the Spanish case, the shadow economy in Sweden is generallyconsidered a marginal phenomenon, explained by factors such as the high levelof governmental control and the strong influence and presence of unions (e.g.,Hjarnø 2003). The RUT deduction was explicitly intended to regularize asector with a comparably large share of undeclared work, but also to increasegender equality as women on an average still perform more unpaid domesticwork than men (Kvist and Peterson 2010).

The tax subsidy has tapped into the latent demand for services as well asstimulating markets for providing them. Before the reform, there were twolarge companies present in the sector offering these services formally (Hemfridand Homemaid), and a black market of an unknown but not insignificant ex-tension (Calleman 2006). Nobody is able to tell exactly how many small com-panies and entrepreneurs operate on this market. The statistics are complicatedby the fact that several of these companies offer multiple services. In 2011, theTax Authorities reported 2400 registered companies offering exclusively do-mestic services in Sweden. The current number of companies is “probably


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between 2500 and 3500” according to the Swedish employer’s organizationAlmega. They also estimate that there are “about 17,000 employees” in thissector in the whole country (Huldt, interview 2014); while Kommunal countson “about 14,000” (Johansson, interview 2014).

Moreover, the system with many small entrepreneurs and subcontractingchains point to middlemen taking a large share of the benefits. At the end ofthe chain, there is likely to be a migrant, perhaps an irregular one, performingthe job at a very low cost (Gavanas 2010) under conditions comparable to theSpanish ones. In the words of Thord Ingesson, migration expert at the mainSwedish trade union LO:

The Tax authorities are wrong thinking that an invoice means that thejob is white. [. . .] A company may charge 360 SEK per hour, then sellthe contract to someone else for 300, who then sells it on to someoneelse. . . there is no relationship between the receipt and who actually per-forms the job and this is something they do not understand. ThordIngesson, LO, interview 2014

The Swedish Tax Authority however recognizes that the use of subcontractedcompanies is difficult to control, and that those who receive the subsidy mightnot actually have done the job. They seek to find ways to combat this(Skatteverket Report 2011). At this point, it is impossible to say how commonit is with subcontracting. It is also unclear whether RUT has had the desiredeffect of transforming informal work into formal. Johan Huldt at the Swedishemployers’ organization Almega claims that about 10% of the black jobs in thesector have been transformed into white. The size of the sector has however, inhis words, multiplied by ten since the implementation of the RUT subsidy.This indicates that both black and white jobs have expanded, which is coherentwith how trade union actors describe the development of this market (Huldt,Ingesson, Johansson, Pettersson, interviews 2014).

There is a special regime for domestic workers hired directly by householdsin Sweden, “Lagen om husligt arbete”, which mainly applies to nannies andau-pairs. Union actors state that this profession may be increasing in Sweden,but that the sector is still very small—though its actual extent is unknown—and dominated by informal employment (Johansson and Ingesson, interviews2014). Domestic workers hired by companies are included in the generalregime under the same conditions as the rest of the Swedish workforce. Theprofessional arrangement is entirely between the client/household and thecompany, who sends the worker to the home (Johansson, interview 2014). Allactors in the sector confirm that these workers almost exclusively performcleaning services, complemented by occasional child-minding.6 In contrast toSpain, private care services are rarely demanded in Sweden as these are coveredby the public welfare system. It is however increasingly common that peoplebuy cleaning services to their elderly relatives, to alleviate their burden and notfeel obliged to perform this unpaid work themselves. The elderly furthermore

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purchase additional domestic services not provided by the municipality(Huldt, Engstrom, and Johansson, interviews 2014).

Kommunal, the trade union representing domestic workers in Sweden, onlyorganizes those who work for cleaning companies who have collective agree-ments. Kommunal states that these workers are the only ones in the sector whohave their labour rights assured. Beyond access to formal rights, however, bothstakeholders and migrant workers assert that their main problem is the diffi-culties to find enough work and/or combine schedules in order to get fulltimeemployment. This is related to the clients’ demands. For instance “peoplewant someone to clean on Thursdays or Fridays or before the holidays, not ona Monday or Tuesday” (Johansson, interview 2014). Underemployment iswidespread, and workers who are single or sole providers in their families haveserious difficulties to make ends meet (Johansson, Ingesson, Huldt, Engstrom,interviews 2014; Hobson and Hellgren 2015).

Comparing the cases of Spain and Sweden, I argue, as well as other authors(Hobson and Bede 2015), that different characteristics of regimes andmarkets—rather paradoxically—produce similar results in terms of precariousjob conditions for migrant domestic/care workers. In Spain, the relationshipbetween the most relevant institutional features appears clear: the care gapcreated a demand for cheap care/domestic workers; the migration regime andthe labour market structure (with high levels of informal work) facilitated thesupply of migrant workers to fill this gap. In Sweden, a combination of clients’demands and the role played by middlemen seems crucial for the situation ofthe workers. Cleaning companies are the predominant economic actors onthe Swedish private market for care/domestic service. They may be expected tooffer higher quality employment than private households, who are the mainemployers in this sector in Spain (Saliba interview 2013). There are howeverindications that several of these middlemen take a large share of the benefitsthemselves (Ingesson, interviews 2011 and 2014; Johansson, interview 2014).

In the following section I will focus on the agendas and discourses that aremost salient among actors addressing migrant domestic/care workers, andwhat implications their different positions have for the situation of theseworkers.

Stakeholders and Migrant Domestic Workers

Actors involved with the domestic/care sector in Spain represent differentinterests and perspectives. Yet they all agree that the financial crisis, togetherwith the continuing demand for cheap care services, are structural factors thatsignificantly limit the possibility to improve conditions for workers in thesector (several interviews 2013–2014; Torrecilla, lecture 2014). In Sweden, sta-keholders inevitably take a stance on the RUT deduction. The debate becomesa question of pros and contras with RUT rather than the situation of the


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workers (whose job opportunities, it is assumed, would decrease radicallywithout the deduction). In this section, I will situate the positions of stake-holders within the overall framework of workers’ precariousness in differentinstitutional contexts.

Migrants’ Rights Activists and (Lacking) Self-organization amongDomestic/Care Workers

The importance of supporting agendas and actors—social movements,non-governmental and grassroots organizations—to improve the situation ofmigrant workers has recently been noted by Williams (2011). She used theexample of how such groups pressured the International Labour Organisationin June 2010, who agreed to consider adopting an international convention forthe rights of domestic workers. Migrant activism in Spain has largely focusedon demands for regularization of undocumented migrants and has had somesuccess in achieving this. The Spanish unions were among the earliest advo-cates for irregular migrant workers’ rights. The main Spanish trade union,Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) supported regularizations to increase tax contri-butions and counteract unfair competition. But the union also took an ideo-logical stance, claiming that regularization was a human rights issue and amatter of workers’ solidarity. In Sweden, the trade unions have only recentlystarted to address undocumented migrants and accept them as members.Undocumented migrants in Sweden often live in situations of extreme margin-alization and precariousness, literally hiding away from authorities and institu-tions. Until very recently, they lacked the basic social rights that citizens andlegal residents have. Groups mobilizing for an extension of rights for the un-documented have focused on access to the public health care system. It appearsthat in the more generous, Swedish welfare state, offering welfare benefits toundocumented migrants is perceived as more threatening than in Spain wherethere is “less to lose”. Representatives of the Swedish government haveexpressed the concern that granting access to health care for undocumentedmigrants would serve as an incentive for increased irregular migration toSweden (Hellgren 2014).7 Moreover, the more “generous” position of theSpanish trade union compared to trade unions in Sweden may partly beexplained by the widely accepted segmentation of the labour market in Spain.Migrant labour overall has not been perceived as threatening here, as immi-grants almost exclusively occupied positions that national workers rejected(Amuedo-Dorantes and de la Rica 2008). This may however change as aneffect of the crisis.

Migrant domestic workers as collective have been absent from these generalmigrants’ rights movements both in Spain and Sweden. Self-organization isvirtually inexistent, but there is a Spanish advocacy group called PATH(Platform for Associations of Domestic Workers) whose main objective is topromote the interests of domestic workers. PATH has informed political andsocial actors about the conditions in the sector, written law proposals for

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improvements, and offered free legal advice to workers. However, they havefaced resistance among both users of migrant care/domestic services and insti-tutional actors. The reason for this is according to Peterson (2007) that highersalaries would hinder families from buying these services, and thereby increasepressure on authorities to cover the care needs of families.

There are some NGOs and associations in Spain that specifically representmigrant domestic workers, as SURT, Anem per Feina, and Latinas sinFronteras in Barcelona. The two former organizations focus particularly ontraining and job search, while the latter has shifted from a broader advocacyfor the rights of Latin American migrant domestic/care workers to a more ex-plicit focus on finding jobs for the members (conversations with employees atSURT and Anem per Feina, 2013; Martı, interview 2013). Mamen Martı, thehead of Latinas sin Fronteras since more than 20 years, claims that the demandof domestic services is decreasing as unemployed family members are takingover work hitherto performed by migrant workers. Simultaneously, increasingimmigration from Central American countries plagued by drug cartels’ vio-lence and persecution, particularly Honduras, has resulted in salaries beingpushed downwards in the sector. All of these newly arrived workers are un-documented and have an extremely weak bargaining position. Martı states thatshe still tries to negotiate a salary of around 800–850 euro per month for full-time with the clients, but that the price is flexible if clients are unable to pay asmuch as the general minimum standard (Martı, interview 2013).

According to Guadalupe Pulido, the head of the Anti-Discrimination bureauin Barcelona, workers do not dare to denounce violations of labour rights withthe current recession not abating, though abuses increase. Domestic workersconstitute one of the weakest groups on the labour market, and very few appearat the bureau to present demands. When they do, it generally concerns unpaidsalaries or exploitation, as being hired to care for an elderly person but obligedto clean the family’s summerhouse over a weekend without additional payment(Pulido, interview 2014).

What we see here is the top of the iceberg, most never complain. Butthere are things we can do, calling the clients is often enough to makethem pay as they get scared. We also talk to intermediaries as churchesand say that clients cannot, for instance, ask for someone light-skinned.Guadalupe Pulido, Head of the Anti-discrimination office in Barcelona,interview 2014.

In current times of excess supply, clients’ possibilities to choose workers in ac-cordance to their taste increase. Also organizations representing these workers’interests may adapt to predominant ethnic stereotypes and preferences, influ-encing on their role as intermediary.

Latin women are lovely with the elderly, they are patient and respectful,but they are not good at cleaning. They are very slow. A Romanian or a


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Moroccan clean much better but cannot handle the elderly. We onlywork with Latins, but clients call us to demand Moroccans for cleaning.And I tell the Latin women, everybody has their virtues and rapidness isnot yours. Mamen Martı, head of the NGO for domestic workers Latinassin Fronteras, interview 2013.

In Sweden, there are no NGOs or other actors who represent migrant domesticworkers, or domestic workers as collective for that matter. The only actor or-ganizing this group of workers is the trade union Kommunal (Johansson,interview 2014).

The Role of Trade Unions

The main Spanish trade union CCOO has been a strong advocate for theimplementation of the new labour law for domestic workers. They believedthat it would increase taxation and control over the sector and improve theworkers’ conditions. CCOO has also done some attempts to increase affiliationrates among migrant domestic workers and inform them about the function oftrade unions. Ghassan Saliba, head of the immigration unit at CCOO, howeversays that most of the workers have primarily cared about finding more work.Other concerns become secondary in the current context of financial crisis.The middle classes are losing acquisitive power, which implies an emerging“chain of precariousness” that affects both clients and performers of domestic/care services. According to Saliba, the demand for cleaning services is decreas-ing, but the need of cheap elderly care remains. The result is often worse con-ditions for workers as families are able to pay less and demand more work fortheir money (Saliba, interview 2013).

Some migrant domestic workers are affiliated with the union, according toCCOO about 400 in Barcelona, but this is generally a passive membership. It ishard for union actors to establish contacts with the workers, as they areworking in private homes and have few possibilities to participate in public orpolitical arenas. Many of them also work long hours and barely get out, par-ticularly the live-in workers, which makes it even more difficult for them toparticipate in networks and organizations (ibid).

In Sweden, the trade union Kommunal affiliates domestic workers with thecondition that they are formally employed by companies who have signed col-lective agreements (which, according to Kommunal, almost only the twolargest companies in the sector, Hemfrid and Homemaid, have done). In prac-tice, only 15% of these workers even in the largest firms are affiliated with theunion (Johansson, interview 2014). Kommunal states that they need moremembers and that they have been slow but are “waking up now”. They alsoclaim that they try to organize the workers, who are at “a very basic level” and“need to be informed about what a union is” (ibid). It is difficult to get apicture of the job situation for the vast majority of this workforce who is not incontact with the union. Union actors and employers agree that the main

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problem for domestic workers is the general lack of enough work hours (ibid,Huldt and Engstrom, interviews 2014).

There are also some trade union actors organizing undocumented migrantworkers in Sweden (mainly present in Stockholm) regardless of sector, as SACwho applies direct actions against exploitative employers (Alvarez, interview2009; Hellgren 2014). Since 2007, there exists a centre in Stockholm where un-documented immigrants can search for advice and help for solving conflictswith employers. It was created after the undocumented migrants’ networkPapperslosa Stockholm initiated a collaboration with the trade unions LO, TCO,and SACO. A spokesperson of the centre estimates the presence of undocu-mented migrants being exploited in the cleaning sector with the followingwords:

We see that about 1 out of 10 cleaners in Stockholm are undocumented.They make between 10 and 50 SEK per hour. There are some exceptions,a few decent companies who pay them salaries according to the collectiveagreement level, but these are the common salaries for undocumentedmigrants. Then many don’t get paid at all and that is when they come tosee us, we are their last way out. Bengt Sandberg, Head of the Unioncentre for undocumented migrants in Stockholm, interview 2014.

Swedish union actors and employers agree that domestic services companiesrun by immigrants who hire compatriots generally are the most exploitative.They take advantage of the lack of language skills and knowledge of howsociety functions—and the irregular migrant status when this is the case—among the newly arrived (Huldt, Ingesson, Johansson, Pettersson, interviews2014). When there are scarce possibilities for these undocumented workers toregularize their situation, extreme precariousness becomes perpetual. InSweden, an undocumented immigrant cannot apply for residence permit sub-sequently as in Spain. Instead, regularization is only possible if they leave thecountry and reenter with a valid job offer (Hellgren 2014).

Besides the difficulties for unions to reach and organize the migrant domestic/care workers in both Spain and Sweden, there is a noticeable ideological conflictin the Swedish context. Advocacy for the rights of migrants has never been direc-ted towards them as workers, recognizing their right to stay and work in Sweden,but instead focused on refugee amnesty and the right to health care (ibid).Migrant workers are still a contentious issue, and actors who defend migrants’rights out of humanitarian concerns may nevertheless oppose, for instance, liber-alizing the granting of work permits. The issue represents a moral conflictbetween the trade unions’ overall aim to defend Swedish workers’ conditions onthe national labour market—for whom cheap, irregular labour represents athreat—and the solidarity with the most exploited (Arvidsson, interview 2009;Ingesson, interviews 2011 and 2014). Swedish trade unions have also positionedthemselves against the RUT deduction. The employer’s organization Almegaaccuses Kommunal of not representing workers’ interests, as they have been


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“more interested in abolishing the sector than defending the interests of theiraffiliates” (Huldt, interview 2014).

Employers’ Organizations, Companies, and the Church

In Spain, where the private market for domestic/care services is dominatedby direct arrangements between the household and the worker, the employers’organizations are not actively involved with the sector (Recio Ortega, e-mailinterview 2014). There is an increasing presence of intermediary actors as do-mestic work agencies who charge workers for job search (Saliba interview2013; Hobson and Hellgren 2015), and as described above, NGOs representingmigrant domestic workers increasingly focus on finding work for theirmembers. Traditionally, the leading “employer organization” and “job agency”in this sector has been the Catholic Church. This was the case in past eraswhen domestic workers were mainly young Spanish women from rural back-grounds, and different churches in the big Spanish cities now function as inter-mediaries between households and migrant workers.

The nun Hermana Encarna is an emblematic figure on the domestic/careservices market in Barcelona, widely known and referred to by both workersand other stakeholders. She runs a job agency and social assistance center ather monastery. There, she attends both families looking for workers and un-employed or underemployed migrant workers. Several of these migrants findthemselves in situations of extreme vulnerability, without stable housing orenough food to eat (Hermana Encarna, interview 2013). Hermana Encarnaspeaks of the strong contrast between the demand that existed a few years agoand the current situation:

I used to have lots of jobs but it has gone down very much. Today I had2 or 3 jobs, I used to have 20 or 30 per day. This year it has really gottenworse. Every day, 80 or 90 women looking for cleaning jobs per hourshow up here, and then another 80 or 90 who want to work as live-ins.Hermana Encarna, Nun who runs a job and social assistance office fordomestic workers in Barcelona, interview 2013.

According to her, there are currently two main types of job situations. Clientswith comparably high incomes often want to hire a domestic worker for one totwo months during their summer vacations, to cook, clean, and mind the chil-dren while the family relaxes. Simultaneously, a larger share of clients demandcare workers for elderly, often live-ins, and at a lower wage than some yearsago. Eldercare is the most indispensable work that families need to outsource.Furthermore, she claims, women who formerly worked in other sectors butlost their jobs now compete with domestic workers. Spanish women lookingfor work in this sector are still a minority, but they come to her office in in-creasing numbers and are generally preferred by clients (ibid).

The pressure from potential clients to lower costs puts Hermana Encarna ina position where she advices the women looking for work to accept what they

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can get and not demand too much. She also represents a moral discourse, co-herent with Catholic paternalism, in arguing that these workers ought to begrateful.

Sometimes these girls get less for trying to be smart, because they arevery demanding. A lady came to me, the girl had worked for her amonth and asked the lady if she was happy with her work. She replied“yes, very happy, you work very well”. “So pay me more”, the girl said![laughs]. I mean, pay me more. . . of course not, the salary was set. Soshe fired her. Hermana Encarna, interview 2013.

Hermana Encarna represents an ambiguous position. She offers basic assist-ance and argues that she helps the workers as she does not charge them for jobsearch, which the private job agencies do. On the other hand, she also contri-butes to their marginalization by justifying precarious job conditions.

In Sweden, the church is not present as actor in relation to domesticworkers (though the Swedish Protestant Church has been among the leadingadvocates for refugee amnesty and undocumented migrants’ right to healthcare). As described above, the private domestic services market in Sweden isdominated by cleaning companies—a large number of mainly small businessesand two large companies with a dominant position. Just as Swedish tradeunion actors are explicitly critical of the RUT tax subsidy, the cleaning com-panies and the Swedish employers’ organization Almega are strong advocatesfor RUT (Engstrom and Huldt, interviews 2014).

Hemfrid employs 1,600 domestic workers of forty different nationalities inSweden (of whom about 1,000 in Stockholm). Fia Engstrom, a head of thecompany, emphasizes the importance of RUT for the growth of the sector. Shebelieves that if the current discussions in government about cutting the deduc-tion by 2016 results in policy change, many smaller companies will have toclose down. Hemfrid would survive as a company, she believes, but with feweremployees. Engstrom argues that if formal domestic services become perceivedas too expensive, they will disappear, except for a minority of clients with highincomes who are insensitive to prices. Instead, people would perform the workthemselves or turn to the black market: “People have gotten used to these ser-vices and want to continue buying them, but not at the prices that . . . [theywould have to pay if buying them formally without RUT]” (Engstrom, inter-view 2014). Just as in the Spanish case, the argument that people are notwilling or able to pay more for these services serves both to justify and regretthat “nothing can be done” to improve their conditions (Johansson, Huldt,Engstrom, interviews 2014). The question of how much of the benefits fromdomestic work in Sweden that goes to middlemen is dismissed by Engstrom.She argues that Hemfrid offers wages at the level of collective agreements. Thelack of enough work hours is in her view a larger problem than low salaries.She also states that many of their workers study, or plan to do so, with the am-bition of moving to other sectors (ibid) of which there is no evidence (Hobson


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and Bede, 2015). Johan Huldt at the employers’ organization Almega considersthis sector a good starting point for newly arrived migrants to enter theSwedish labour market (Huldt, interview 2014). Implicit in these statements isthat the best option for individual workers is to leave the sector.

Concluding Remarks

The question raised at the beginning of this article is why there are similaroutcomes in terms of precariousness among migrant care/domestic workers intwo very different institutional frameworks: Spain and Sweden. I looked atboth structural features as well as the position of actors involved in thesemarkets. In Spain, the relationship between the most relevant institutional fea-tures appears clear. The care gap created a demand for cheap care/domesticworkers; the migration regime and the labour market structure with high levelsof informal work facilitated the supply of migrant workers to fill this gap. InSweden, a combination of clients’ demands and the role played by companies/subcontractors seems crucial for the situation of workers. Cleaning companiesmay be expected to offer higher quality employment than private households.There are however indications that several of these middlemen take a largeshare of the benefits themselves. Incompatibility between clients’ demand foroccasional cleaning services and workers’ need for a stable, fulltime employ-ment also explains low earnings and high levels of insecurity in the sector(Ingesson, interviews 2011 and 2014; Engstrom, interview 2014; Johansson,interview 2014).

Spanish actors who formerly advocated for extended rights have becomeresigned to the harsh economic reality, and organizations representing migrantdomestic workers focus mainly on job search. Swedish trade unions focus onthe RUT subsidy rather than the situation of the workers. In short, there arefew stakeholders addressing the problems of this group of workers. Moreover,as Peterson (2007) has argued, it may not be in the interest of political actorsto improve the situation for this group of workers. Their low wages and poorjob conditions seem to be a precondition for this kind of work in its presentform.

In Spain, increasing costs for domestic/care services would make it impos-sible for many families to buy them, and potentially intensify pressure on thestate to expand the public sector. This appears particularly unrealistic in thecurrent context of financial crisis, where large segments of the population ingeneral, and the immigrant population in particular, are rapidly becomingimpoverished (Badia and Sarsanedas 2013; Torrecilla, lecture 2014). A lowwaged (and to a large extent informal) migrant labour force undergirds theSpanish care regime (Hellgren and Hobson 2011). Stakeholders contribute todiscourses and practices that cement these structures, though often unwittingly.

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In Sweden, where domestic services are not indispensable for most families,they would probably do without them or opt for buying black services on theinformal market if prices were raised. Union actors in Sweden, in particular,are ambivalent: on the one hand they want all workers to be part of unions. Onthe other hand, domestic workers’ interests tend to become secondary in theirmainly ideological struggle over whether this sector should be at all accepted orsupported. Trade unions largely agree that the development after RUT, withthe expansion of the sector, marks a return to old class structures of mastersand servants. In their view, it represents an increasing acceptance of inequal-ities on the labour market; a rapid and unwanted change of the egalitarianSwedish society. The female migrant domestic/care workers in both Spain andSweden apparently form part of the development towards a “migrant precar-iat”. If markets expand where ever more workers (many of whom are foreign-born) are outsiders with very low salaries, scarce protection and without fullsocial rights coverage, the emergence of a migrant underclass becomes a per-manent feature of European societies.

NotesI have also maintained interview like conversations with representatives of

the NGOs SURT and Anem per Feina, attending migrant domestic workers inBarcelona.

1. The interviews with migrant domestic workers were performed by ZeniaHellgren in Barcelona, Inma Serrano in Madrid, and by Luwam Bede, SylwiaKopowka, and Oana Galan in Stockholm, from June 2013 to February 2014.

2. In January 2007, the former Socialist government (2004–2011) implemen-ted a law that would improve economic support for families with elderly and/ordependant people, generally referred to as Ley de Dependencia (Dependency law).According to the law, families can apply for subsidies for eldercare that vary withthe degree of dependence of the elderly (www.laleydeladependencia.com, August2012). The Dependency law has, however, apparently not worked well in practice.The subsidies have been insufficient and apparently hard to actually get due to bur-eaucratic obstacles (Casado and Fantova 2007). Currently, the future of the subsidyis uncertain and under debate because of the recession.

3. In 2012, however, the right to public health care for undocumented migrantswas withdrawn by the national government in Madrid, which was resisted bycertain autonomous regions in the country. Currently, Madrid applies this law,while for instance Catalonia decided to issue their own health cards for undocu-mented migrants, out of both humanitarian and public health concerns (Bosch,interview 2014; Hellgren 2014).

4. The RUT allows clients to deduce 50% of the cost for private domestic/careservices, up to a ceiling of 50,000 SEK per person per year (100,000 for a couple)(which is slightly over 10,000 euro).

5. I will return to this in the next section when I shift focus towards the pos-ition of stakeholders.


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6. For instance at Hemfrid, one of the two companies dominating the sector inSweden, 92% of the services they sell consist of cleaning in private homes, and therest is babysitting (Engstrom, interview 2014).

7. Sweden was cited in a UN report for its denial of access to public health carefor undocumented migrants as a violation of human rights (Hunt 2007). Since July1st 2013, undocumented migrants have the same right to basic health care as recog-nized asylum seekers, which include urgent health care, maternity care, and birthcontrol (vardforbundet.se, October 2013). This was the result of years of pressureby a wide range of NGOs, churches, doctors treating patients clandestinely, politi-cians and other actors advocating for undocumented migrants’ right to healthcare, many of whom collaborated within the national Right to health care initiative(http://www.vardforpapperslosa.se/english.asp).

Acknowledgements

A special thanks to GRITIM, the Interdisciplinary Research Group onImmigration at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, who has received me asVisiting Postdoctoral Researcher and provided an excellent research environment.

Note

The following respondents are not directly cited or referred to in the paper,though the interviews with them are included in the analysis that the argu-ments in this paper are based upon: Alonso (2006), Asmani (2009), Carpenter(2014), Fisher (2011), Johansson (2009), Khan (2013), Khosravi (2011),Kranjkevic (2009), Ljunggren (2009), Mijatovic (2014), Morin (2009), Ollinen(2009), Torrens (2004) and Vinas (2004).

Funding

The research has received funding from the European Union’s SeventhFramework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 320116for the research project FamiliesAndSocieties.

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Markets, Regimes, and the Role of Stakeholders: Explaining Precariousness of Migrant Domestic/Care Workers in Different Institutional Frameworks

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