Resisting Crisis at What Cost? Migrant Care Workers in Private

Households

Ibáñez, Z. & León, M.

A final version of this paper will be published in Anderson, B. and Shutes, I. (2014)

(eds) Care and Migrant Labour: Theory, Policy and Politics Palgrave forthcoming

ABSTRACT

Since the late 1990s and until the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008, the

household sector in Spain was growing well above average mainly due to the

employment of female migrant as domestic workers. This chapter shows how the

household sector has so far been resisting the economic crisis by not becoming a site

of mass job destruction as has happened in many other occupational sectors. It is

argued in this chapter that the key role that migrant workers play as carers in private

homes is largely the reason for this resistance. The most recent 2011 reform

regulating the working conditions and entitlements of household employees is a

significant improvement with regards previous discriminatory practices. High levels

of undeclared work and low salaries hinder however the actual reach of this new

legal framework.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years there has been an increase of care work in private households. As has

been widely shown in recent research in Europe the expansion of the household

sector has been particularly strong in Southern European countries and this

expansion has largely depended on migrant labour (León, 2010; Lutz, 2008). The

strength of this new trend at the beginning of the century prompted Francesca Bettio

and others to proclaim a shift in Southern Europe from a ‘familialistic’ to a

‘migrant-in-the-family’ model of care (Bettio et al., 2006). The reasons for this have

been widely reported (Rubio, 2003, Bettio et al., 2006, Simonazzi, 2009, León &

Migliavacca, 2013). On the demand side, three of the most important factors behind

this growth of care-related work in the household sector are population ageing, rapid

incorporation of women to the labour market and insufficient state support to cover

increasing demand for care provision.

In the Spanish case, from the mid-1990s the household sector rapidly became an

entry route to the informal labour market for migrants. In just four years, migrants

grew from being under 20 per cent of domestic employees in 2000 to over 53 per

cent in 2004 (see Table 3). Although it is not possible to statistically differentiate

care-related household work from other household tasks, the weight of the

household sector within the overall employment structure together with a

comparatively less extensive formal care sector, clearly indicates the presence of

migrant domestic care work (León, 2010, Bernardi et al., 2010; see Table 2).

Employment in the household sector in 2013 remains above half a million

employees, more than 3 per cent of total employment. Ninety five per cent of

workers are women and more than half of these women are migrants, making

domestic work the largest occupational group by far among migrant women, close to

20 per cent of all economically active migrant women (INE, 2013).

This chapter shows how the household sector – the main site of paid as well as

unpaid care work in Spain - has been resisting the economic crisis by not becoming

a site of mass destruction of employment as has happened in many other

occupational sectors (especially construction and services). In turn, migrant women

working in private households have not been as affected by unemployment as their

male counterparts in other sectors. With construction and manufacturing having

suffered more than 60 per cent of total job losses, the different sectoral distribution

of male and female migrants explains why women have been less affected by

unemployment (INE, 2012, Bernardi et al., 2010). We argue in this chapter that care

work in private households is resisting the economic downturn for two main

reasons. Firstly, demand for long-term care is still largely channelled through the

informal household sector. The recently developed system of long-term care has

been severely affected by public expenditure cuts implemented since 2011. Public

provision of care services and benefits only meet a limited proportion of the demand

for care (Rodríguez Cabrero & Marbán Gallego, 2013). Secondly, despite initial

intentions of the new long-term care system to prioritize services instead of cash,

and in the context of meagre resources, most regions in Spain have opted for cash

allowances for family or non-professional care. These cash benefits are not linked to

the provision of a service and can be used to directly employ a care worker in the

home.

The extent of these privatized arrangements means that the most recent 2011 reform

on the Social Security Regime of Household Employees (SRHE)i, which entered

into force in January 2012, is a positive step towards improving the conditions of

care work in private households. The 2011 reform complies with ILO Convention

189 on the regulation of the working conditions and access to social rights of

household employees. Workers in private households are now on an equal footing

with other employees in terms of pension rights and employment protections. The

important exception is unemployment protection for which household employees

continue to be excluded. As argued elsewhere (León, 2013), the reform implies a sea

change in relation to the discriminatory treatment of household workers embedded

in previous legal frameworks. However, it is argued that the potential impact of the

legislation might be hindered by two related issues. Firstly, despite the significant

steps towards the formalization of employment relationships in private households,

home-based care work continues to be difficult to regulate, especially since the

monitoring of compliance is still very limited by the rights of households to privacy

and the reluctance of care workers in vulnerable situations, often without legal

status, to denounce abusive practices. As it will be explained, the 2011 reform

continues to exclude formally employed domestic workers from unemployment

protection allegedly because of the difficulty of enforcing labour inspections in

people’s private homes to control fraud effectivelyii. Secondly, there is still a

substantial percentage of domestic and care work in private households that is

undeclared by both employers and employees and thus not affected by

improvements in the regulation of the sector.

The chapter is structured as follows. The first section looks at how the intersections

between the labour market, the migration system and the welfare state shape

employment conditions for care workers in Spain and how they have been affected

by the economic crisis, public spending cuts, decreasing wages and the surge in

unemployment. The second section focuses on responses to the care crisis in Spain

with regard to the implementation of the 2006 long-term care system (Ley de

Dependencia) to explain demand for care work in private households. The third

section examines the expansion of the household sector over the last decade,

distinguishing between regular and irregular work, and the changes as a result of the

most recent 2011 reform. The chapter draws on the findings of in-depth interviews

with policy makers, government officials, representatives of the social partners and

of migrant and non-migrant domestic and care workers in private households, as

well as analysis of policy documents and secondary data. Interviews were conducted

in two waves between 2009 and 2012 in Madridiii

.

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS, MIGRANT LABOUR AND THE HOUSEHOLD

SECTOR

Following spectacular growth of more than 15 points between 1995 and 2005, total

employment has dropped considerably since the outbreak of the crisis from 44.1 per

cent in 1985 to 63.3 per cent in 2005 and 55.7 per cent in 2012 (Eurostat, 2012).

Three and a half million jobs have been lost since 2008. In 2012, more than half of

those unemployed had been in that situation for more than one year, which in most

cases means they were no longer entitled to unemployment benefit. Over 10 per cent

of all Spanish households now have all members unemployed-- close to two million

households at the end of 2012 (FOESSA, 2013). However, considering female

employment only, while the increase during the period of economic growth was

spectacular (an increase of 19.5 per cent between 1995 and 2005), the decrease since

2007 has been less pronounced (-4.1per cent between 2007 and 2012). In this

respect, to the extent that more ‘male’ than ‘female’ jobs have been lost since the

beginning of the crisis, male and female unemployment is now at similar (very

high) levels (see table 1). Unemployment among non-EU nationals has since 2008

been higher than for Spanish nationals and, as table 1 shows, unemployment among

male non-EU nationals higher than among female non-EU nationals.

INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

To understand the extent to which female employment, and female migrant

employment specifically, has been less affected by the economic crisis, we must

examine the context in which employment growth took place in the years of the

economic boom in Spain.

Spanish economic growth in the decade of 1996-2007 fuelled high demand for so-

called ‘unskilled’ workers in the sectors of construction, agriculture, hotels and

catering, and personal and social services. However, by the late 1990s the Spanish

labour market already showed distinctive structural characteristics that would

determine how that demand for labour would be channelled: a heavily segmented

labour market according to public/private sector, gender and age divides, wide-

spread use of temporary contracts (over 30 per cent of the employed population);

fragmented and sparse trade union representation; an extensive informal economy;

and low wages (almost 50 per cent of employees earning less than 1,000 € per

month). Limited labour market regulations during the years of economic growth

meant that increasing employment was not matched with a significant improvement

of working conditions, or less so than during previous periods of economic growth.

This context shaped, firstly, the demand for and position of migrant workers within

the Spanish labour market; secondly, the difficulties experienced by many migrant

workers in improving their situation through promotion, re-qualification or change

of employment; and thirdly, how the impact of the crisis materialized in high levels

of unemployment for migrant workers.

Mass migration from overseas, especially from Latin America, significantly

contributed to Spanish economic growth. At the end of the 1990s, Spain, together

with Finland, had the lowest proportion of foreign-born residents within the EU-15

(Eurostat, 2012). By 2004, Spain was among those EU countries with the highest

proportion of foreign-born residents. Net migration in Spain increased from 1.5 in

1993 to 17.6 per thousand in 2003iv

, that is close to five million newcomers, the

highest level of net migration within the EU-25 that year (Eurostat, 2005: 74). As

Laparra (2011: 211) highlights ‘Spain is undoubtedly a remarkable case in the

international context, as it has undergone one of the most intense immigration

processes of the industrialized countries.’ Migrants were over-represented in low-

skilled occupations and sectors (Koehler et al., 2010: 126). In 2010, migrant women

were highly concentrated in the sectors of household/domestic work, industrial and

textile labour. Almost 20 per cent of non-EU-15 migrants were working in the

household sector, compared to just 2 per cent of the Spanish working population

(Bernardi et al., 2010: 211). The proportion of non-EU-15 migrant men working in

the construction and agricultural sectors was three times higher than for male

Spanish nationals (10.8 per cent against 3 per cent) (Bernardi et al., 2010, Miguelez

et al., 2011, Miguelez et al., 2013)v.

The extent and rapid development of these new international migration flows during

the economic boom years created a new migration model characterized by the

limited regulation of entries and stays, favouring irregular migration which in turn

was readily supported by the large informal economy (Arango, 2000, Reyneri, 2004,

Koehler et al., 2010). During the decade of economic growth, the absence of a work

permit for a non-EU national was certainly not an obstacle to finding a job. From the

outset, the household sector has been a straightforward labour market entry route for

migrant women who arrived in the country without a work permit. The importance

of the informal economy is made clear by the gap between the number of employees

in the household sector according to Labour Force Household Survey data (Encuesta

de Población Activa -EPA) and the number of employees registered with Social

Security. The gap is much greater for non-EU-15 nationals than for Spanish

nationals; in mid-2011 the gap between EPA and Social Security data pointed

towards more than 600,000 non-registered migrants, 25 per cent of all employed

non-EU workers in Spain (Miguelez et al., 2013, OECD, 2012). Nevertheless, there

have been attempts to regularize the situation of irregular migrant workers with

unclear results. A key attempt was the 2005 regularization process when 83 per cent

of applicants were granted work permits (548,700 people). Of these, one third of

those applying were working in the household sector (183,000) (OECD, 2006: 82).

By and large, migrants have had access to the same social rights as Spanish

nationals (access to universal health care and to pre-school and school-based

education from the age of three irrespective of the parents’ immigration status), but

they generally entered work in low-skilled sectors marked by low wages and poor

terms and conditions within a heavily segmented labour market (Bernardi et al.,

2010, Miguelez et al., 2013). The crisis is severely affecting the ‘low-skilled’ jobs

where migrants are heavily over-represented (Arango et al., 2009, Bernardi et al.,

2010). The location of female and male migrants in different sectors and

occupations explains the differences in unemployment rates. Whereas the collapse

of the housing bubble resulted in unemployment for many male migrants in the

construction sector and related activities, regardless of their duration in the labour

market, migrant women were much more likely to remain in their jobs in the

household sector during the crisis (Bernardi et al 2010, Miguelez, 2013). In this

sense, male low-skilled migrants are one of the groups most affected by the crisis.

Unemployment for non-EU nationals was 39.62 in 2012 (37.27 per cent for women

and 41.75 per cent for men), that is 15 points above that of Spanish nationals (25.53

per cent for women and 23.53 per cent for men) (see Table 1).

How Spain will resolve the situation is unclear. High unemployment is definitely not

new, since every cyclical crisis over the last three decades has translated into

unemployment rates above 20 per cent. However, there are some crucial differences

with regard to the current crisis. Firstly, the euro zone low interest rates favoured a

housing bubble that added to the traditional imbalances of the Spanish economy and

the structural deficits of its productive model (low investment in Research and

Development, a weak industrial sector and a high proportion of small-size

businesses). Secondly, the fiscal constraints, resulting from the sovereign debt, are

severely limiting the potential cushioning effect of key welfare institutions (health

care, education and social security).

Since the beginning of the crisis in 2008, the economic situation of migrants in

Spain has clearly worsened. As indicated previously, unemployment among non-

Spanish nationals has rocketed mainly because the construction sector, one of the

sectors with higher percentages of non-EU workers, has virtually collapsed.

Migrants have also been severely affected by what looks like the most dramatic

consequence of joblessness: bank repossessions due to insolvent debtvi

. Since the

end of 2008, there have been a total of 377,000 foreclosures in the country (El País

12/4/2013). Migrant workers who have lost their jobs have been the first victims of

this process, made worse by the much weaker informal support that migrants can

resort to compared with Spanish nationals, who have access to wider and stronger

informal social and family networks. This is an important difference between

foreign and Spanish nationals given that the Spanish welfare regime offers very

weak formal social protection, and the family has been the traditional buffer for this

gap.

Furthermore, the pre-crisis migration model has been undermined by significant

cutbacks in resources attached to policies and programmes targeted to the needs of

newcomers. This is the case, for instance, with regard to the public Fund to Support

the Reception and Social Integration of Migrants, which was cut by 50 per cent in

2010 (Koehler et al., 2010: 173). At the same time, central government has tried to

reduce the flow of newcomers by restricting formal migration flows, imposing

stricter requirements for family reunification (the Foreign Residents Law was also

modified in December 2009) and imposing tougher sanctions on illegal entry.

Voluntary return measures have also been introduced, such as the Programme for

the Early Payment of Unemployment Benefits to Foreigners (APRE) in November

2008 (Domínguez-Mújica et al., 2012). Despite the difficulties in measuring

migration flows with precision, most evidence suggests that the number of entries

has been decreasing year by year since the beginning of the economic crisis, with an

increase in the entry of higher skilled EU nationals. By 2011, emigration flows were

larger than immigration flows (Miguelez et al., 2013).

RESPONSES TO THE CARE CRISIS IN SPAIN: THE NEW LONG-TERM

CARE SYSTEM

Until the outbreak of the economic crisis, welfare state expenditure had increased

substantially in Spain. Between 1995 and 2009 the increase in real per capita terms

was almost 54 per cent compared with around 32 per cent in the EU-15 (Eurostat

2012). Higher levels of public social expenditure were due to an expansion of

coverage of traditional welfare domains such as pensions, education and health care,

and also policies addressing ‘new social risks’. Some of these new policies were

addressing the care-related needs of older people and children. Prompted by rapid

population ageing and the rise in women’s labour market participation, the Law on

Dependency (Ley de Dependencia)vii

introduced in 2006 became the first normative

framework for long-term care, granting a universal right to care. This law came to

mitigate the historical absence of institutional support to individuals in need of long-

term care. The so-called ‘Fourth Pillar’ of the welfare state after pensions, health

care, and education was promoted as the flagship policy of the socialist party PSOE

for the 2004 general elections, as a policy innovation within a wider package of pro-

gender equality legislative measures. This new policy agenda in the field of long-

term care was developed within a political environment clearly directed towards the

institutional de-legitimation of the traditional male-breadwinner model,

reconfiguring in many respects previous conceptions of gender roles within the

family. By March 2011, over 800,000 older people were either receiving long-term

care services or cash benefits (CES, 2011).

Public intervention in the field of long term care in the years preceding the

economic crisis can be seen as an important departure from a tradition of weak state

involvement in the provision of care, thus challenging the underpinnings of

familialism. However, the outbreak of the crisis in 2008 has to a large extent eroded

the reach of this new programme. In the 2012 budget, financing of the long-term

care system was virtually discontinued. As a result, the current provision of services

and cash transfers only meets demand for a provision to a very limited extent.

Furthermore, in this context of meagre resources, means-tested cash allowances for

care within the family have been the most widely used option in contrast to the more

limited provision of services. Recent research has shown that over half of the

recipients of these cash allowances use all or part of the amount to employ either on

a full-time or part-time basis a care worker in the home, often of migrant origin

(CASER, 2009).

This predominance of cash over services is quite the opposite of what the 2006 law

intended. The Ley de Dependencia aimed at providing long-term care services on a

quasi-universal basis, leaving cash allowances for ‘exceptional circumstances’. And

yet, across the country, the value of cash given directly to dependent individuals or

their families has outstripped resources for the direct provision of services.

According to the latest figures (February 2011), 65 per cent of public expenditure on

long-term care across all the regions has been on cash allowances (SAAD/

IMSERSO, 2011). Furthermore, only 7.9 per cent of cash allowances are linked to

the provision of a service; the rest are classified as allowances for care within the

family. Thus, care work in private households appears to be very much a part of the

new long-term care system. While the legislation implicitly acknowledges the role

that the family plays in providing care support for older people and other

dependants, at the same time, it also allows care to remain unprofessional and

largely outside the scope of public regulation. This is perceived negatively by trade

unions and some employers involved in the sector, who demand greater public and

private investment in long-term care services not simply to meet the demand for care

but also to foster the growth of employment, particularly female employment. There

are also concerns about the adequacy of efforts by non-professionals to attend to

certain care and medical related needs in the home. Moreover, and as shown by

Sarasa & Billingsley (2008), when non-family care has to be bought on the market

because of insufficient public provision, access is very unequally distributed.

The reasons for the dominance of cash benefits for care within the family as

opposed to services are threefold. Firstly, the absence of a pre-exisiting network of

services for long-term care means that there is not enough provision to meet

demand. Secondly, the existence of a strong informal care market means that there is

already institutional and social inertia towards the informal sector. The large number

of informal care workers already working in private households in a sense justifies a

fait accompli attitude by the public administrations. In fact, cash benefits for care

within the family are in a sense fuelling the consolidation of informal migrant care

workers in private households. As one key informant put it:

It is a sort of Catch 22 situation. We do not have the services to cover the

existing demand and families have these pressing needs, but most of them do

not have great economic capacity which justifies low wages in the domestic

sector. The (long-term care) law has not solved the problem of informality; it

has not changed in any way the domestic sector, because in a way it is using

this informality. (TS1a)

Thirdly, some respondents in the research argued that public demand for the

provision of services is not strong. In this sense, the spirit of the law (to make

services available to all) is to a certain extent ‘betrayed’ by users who prefer to

receive cash instead of services. However, as the following quote illustrates, other

interviewees claimed that the issue of choice did not have a straightforward

interpretation:

For 700 or 800 Euros a month you can have a personal carer in your home 24

hours a day, six days a week. But if you choose services instead of cash you

might be offered assistance only for a few hours a day. Some of these

services, for instance day care centres, have rigid timetables and are not easy

to combine. So it is not surprising really that people opt for cash. The system

does not make it more beneficial for users to choose services over cash.

(IE1b).

This quote reflects the pervasive effects of the dualized nature of the Spanish labour

market, whereby there is, on the one hand, very low minimum incomes and almost

non-existent regulation of working conditions, that shares spaces with, on the other

hand, rigid and bureaucratized services. At the same time, international and national

surveys repeatedly report the little support Spaniards show towards institutionalized

forms of care when compared with care provided in the home (Albertini et al.,

2007).

THE EXPANSION AND REGULATION OF CARE WORK IN PRIVATE

HOUSEHOLDS

Taking a long-term perspective, paid domestic work in Spain was on a downward

trend since the late 1980s until the late 1990s. The pattern reversed to an upward

trend from 1998 to 2008 when it grew 114 per cent (CES, 2009). At the beginning of

the 2000s, the household sector was growing above average (creating over 55,000

jobs per year) (CES, 2009).

There are two data sources that document the development of the household sector.

The first is the Spanish Labour Force Survey (INE), which constitutes the main

source of labour market data. The figure of household employees provided by the

Labour Force Survey will correspond to the number of respondents who declare

themselves as household employees irrespectively of whether or not they are

formally employed as such. The second is the Social Security Registry, which

provides data on all employees who are formally employed and paying social

insurance. While the number of workers in the household sector is always higher

according to the former than the latter data source, the difference between the two

provides an estimate of those working informally.

As indicated in table 2, the Spanish Labour Force Survey (EPA) viii

shows a steady

increase from 1996 to 2007 in the number of employeees in the household sector.

Since 2008, there has been a small decrease but the total number of household

employees remains above half a million individuals. As the table shows, the growth

of the household sector for over a decade is mainly explained by the contribution of

migrant workers. While foreign nationals represented less than 10 per cent of the

total number of employees in the sector during 1996 and 1997, by 2004 they were

over 50 per cent.

The number of employees in the household sector is almost halved when we

consider workers who are registered for social insurance. In 2010 there were a total

of 292,649 registered household employees, of which over 60 per cent were

migrants (León 2013). It is worth noting that the majority (over 70 per cent) of those

with social insurance contributions were full-time/single household employees. That

is, employees who work for just one household for 80 or more hours per month

(Ministry of Employment and Social Security 2012: 34).

INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

Unlike many EU states, Spain has, since 1969, had a regulatory system in place for

the domestic sector. Under the Special Social Security Regime of Household

Employees (SRHE), established during the Franco regime, domestic workers and

their employers could make social insurance contributions. The conditions were,

however, highly discriminatory. The ‘atypical character of the home’ excluded this

social security system from the Workers’ Bill of Rights (Estatuto de los

Trabajadores). Domestic workers could not claim basic social rights such as

invalidity, maternity and unemployment benefits. A reform introduced in 1985

improved to a very limited extent social protection for domestic workers (Banyuls et

al., 2003). Domestic workers still had no right to be unionized, no rights against

dismissal, no unemployment or invalidity protection. Furthermore, in order to

protect rights of privacy and family life, the rights of domestic workers were

secondary to those of their employers.

The reform of the SRHE has been on the political agenda for quite some time. The

European Commission declared on several occasions that the Special Regime for

Domestic Workers violated the European Directive on equal treatment of men and

women, especially Directive 79/7/EEC on equal treatment in the social security

system (Peterson 2011: 159). But despite several attempts, the reform of SRHE did

not take place until 2011. The new 27/2011 law of 1/08 on ‘the rationalization and

modernization of social security’ (sobre la actualización, adecuación y

modernización del sistema de la seguridad social) closely followed the

recommendations of the ILO’s Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers,

which urged member states to offer domestic workers social security and

employment rights in line with other workers (see León 2013 for further details). As

Table 3 shows, improvements concern working conditions on the one hand (written

contract, type of work, income, hours of work and so on) as well as health and safety

at work and social entitlements.

INSERT TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE

However, with regard to wages, the legislation could not go beyond guarenteeing

limited improvements in the application of the national minimum wage. And, thus,

given that wages are generally low in the domestic sector, the application of a very

low national minimum wage did little to improve wages. The national minimum

wage was 645,30€ per month in 2013, well below the threshold set by the European

Social Charter of 60 per cent of the average national wage (1,640€ per month in

Spain in 2013).

How has the 2011 reform affected registered domestic employment? It may be too

early to assess the impact of this significant regulatory change, since it was only

passed one year ago and there were many exceptional temporary dispositionsix to

ease the transition, particularly during the first six months. In September 2012, the

new center-right government made a critical report of the impact of the reform

(MEYSS, 2012). It questioned the new law’s capacity to regularize undeclared

work, and argued that the reform had resulted in a significant fall in the payment of

social insurance contributions and that it made new social security registrations

problematic, actually forcing thousands of workers out of the sector. However, while

these criticisms were considered controversial among the main actors interviewed in

our research, very few would deny that the new law really improved the social

protection of workers in the household sector. By the end of 2012, there was an

almost 40 per cent increase in domestic workers registered for social security - that

is over 100,000 additional employees with social rights - and this was so within a

context of an overall decrease in the number of social security registrations (UGT

2012).

As a result of the implementation of the new reform, registered household

employees increased from 294,916 of workers that were in the Special Regime at the

end of 2011 to 378,690 workers (Ministry of Employment and Social Security 2012:

34). Although some workers that were previously affiliated to the SRHE did not

make the transfer to the new system (probably because of an increase in social

security costs), there were also newcomers (individuals that were previously not

paying social insurance). Therefore, in balance, the transfer from the formerto the

new system was positive by 83,511 individuals. Although this increase suggests

some policy success, the figure is nevertheless very modest if we take into account

the number of workers (over 640,000) estimated to be working in the household

sector at the end of 2011according to the Labour Force Household Survey (EPA).

Although the 2011 reform is seen as a positive step by all interested parties to the

extent that it enables an improvment in the working conditions and social protection

of domestic workers, some issues are still contentious. As argued by a trade unionist,

the government’s financial incentives for households to declare their employees

privileges middle and higher income households: ‘If we subsidise domestic work

we would be maintaining the status quo of the better off. We all know that the

working class do not pay for domestic service’ (TU2b). The current context of

dramatic cuts in the financing of long-term care services raises further issues

concerning the effects of financial incentives.

Another contentious aspect of the 2011 changes concerns the number of hours that

had to be worked before standard social security registration became compulsory.

The 2011 legislation requires social security contributions to be paid from the first

hour of work with no exceptions. However, the new centre-right government and

representatives of the households as employers consider this no-exception approach

to be problematic to implement and inconvenient for both parties, employee and

employer. Consequently, the new government made changes in December 2012 to

introduce greater flexibility. Some of these modifications, however, are potentially

of concern in the context of the track record in Spain of a shift from flexibility to

precariousness in work (Barbieri, 2009, Meardi et al., 2012, Porthe, 2010).

CONCLUSION

Migrant labour was a main, if not the main ingredient behind major economic

growth in Spain prior to the recession. Its contribution was decisive for the most

dynamic sectors, including construction and agriculture. While these sectors, like

others, have faced major contractions in employment, the household sector in which

migrant women have become the principle workers, carrying out domestic and care

related work, has not been as affected by this overall rise in unemployment. It has

been shown in this chapter that the reform of householdemployment which entered

into force in January 2012 has substantially improved the conditions of those

officially registered as household employees. Despite the fact that unemployment

protection is still not granted, formally contracted domestic employees now enjoy

much better conditions in terms of employment and social rights than before the

reform. However, it has also been argued that the reach of these legislative changes

is nevertheless limited. The domestic sector is marked by very high levels of

informality, that is undeclared work, regarding which improvements in legal

frameworks have limited effect. Furthermore, we have shown in this chapter that

beyond the household sector, in the current context of the crisis, a strongly

segmented labour market and a clear retrenchment of the welfare state has

particularly negative implications for migrant workers.

Acknowledgements

The research referred to in this chapter was supported through Grant number 28333

of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (Subprograma de Proyectos de

Investigación Fundamental No Orientada Convocatoria 2011). Acronym SOSC

Ref. SO2011-28333.

Endnotes

i 27/2011 law of 1/08 on the rationalization and modernization of social security

(sobre la actualización, adecuación y modernización del sistema de la seguridad

social).

ii This exclusion from unemployment benefit was nevertheless contested by some of

our key informants. Small family-run businesses do not have labour inspections

either unless there is a formal complaint and yet the Regime for Self-employees

does include access to unemployment benefit (TU1; see León, 2013 for further

discussion).

iii Interviews lasted from 60 to 90 minutes. They were all fully transcribed and coded

following a list of sub-themes. Table 1 below summarizes the institutions/

organizations covered, the position held by informants and the date and place of the

interviews.

iv The net migration rate is the difference of immigrants and emigrants of an area in a

period of time, divided per 1,000 inhabitants. In 2003 the net migration rate for the

EU-15 was 5.4 so Spain was well above the average.

v The Spanish statistics office, INE, usually includes as “migrants” foreigners who

have obtained Spanish nationality. The source quoted here (Bernardi et al., 2010),

includes in non-EU-15-migrants all non-EU-15 born persons without Spanish

nationality, and they also exclude from their analysis those workers born in the US,

Canada and other non- EU European countries with special agreements (Norway

and Switzerland). The participation of newcomers in the Spanish labour market has

also been constrained by issues such as the recognition of qualifications, language

barriers, access to informal networks, and public sector entry requirements where

there is the greatest concentration of high-skilled jobs (health care and education).

The latter is aggravated by the structure of the Spanish public sector which favours

early career entry and little turnover.

vi This new phenomena is exclusively linked to the financial crisis with the added

element in Spain of the bursting of the housing bubble--favoured by euro-fed low

interest rates, and an abusive mortgage legal system that puts consumers in a

position of high vulnerability and risk from the moment in which they stop paying

their debt.

vii Law 39/2006 of 14 December for the promotion of personal autonomy and

attention to persons in need of care (B.O.E.-A- 2006-21990). The law lays down the

regulatory framework for a new system for the promotion of personal autonomy and

attention to individuals in a situation of dependency. The target population are those

people who, as a consequence of disability or illness, are unable to perform

independently the activities of daily living. Although in theory it comprises all

citizens aged 3+, in reality over 77 per cent of the applicants are in the 65+ age

groups (26 per cent in the 65–79 age group and 51 per cent in the 80+ age group)

(SAAD / IMSERSO, 2009).

viii EPA is a household survey carried out every three months and dating back to

1964. The sample is about 60,000 households, which, depending on household size,

provides data on between 150,000 and 200,000 people.

ix The 27/2011 law established that the Special Social Security Regime of Household

Employees would be merged within the General Social Security Regime of

dependent employees through a gradual process starting in January 2012 and

culminating the end of 2018. To ease the transition, the law established that during

the first year (2012) there would be a 20 per cent reduction in the quota employers

have to pay to national insurance. This deduction increases to 45 per cent for

families with three children or more and for single parents who work outside the

home.

x

INSERT TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE

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