From invisibility to gender empowerment and migrant integration? Repercussions of live-in domestic work and caregiving on female migrants in Greece
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/10.12795/CP.2022.i31.v1.05Keywords:
immigrants, women workers, migrant workers, domestic workers, social integration, GreeceAbstract
The article focuses on the case female migrant domestic workers (maids, nannies and caregivers) in Greece and on the impact of domestic work on their integration in Greece. According to the results of in-depth interviews, based on the findings of the “Voices of Immigrant Women” (VIW) project (Erasmus+ 2020-1-ES01-KA203-082364), female migrants are entrapped in a frame of invisible and exploitative working conditions and face discrimination at work. There are multiple cases where an employer treats migrant domestic workers inhumanely, by shouting and gesticulating to them and also exercising physical and verbal abuse as well as hiring them with false contracts or labour contracts that the worker has never read, and are thus vulnerable and susceptible to various forms of exploitation. The situation is further burdened by the control exercised over the employee, hindering their access to other occupations, and thus prolonging their stay in domestic work. In this working context, most female migrants are indifferent to collectivity and solidarity and are isolated from their compatriots and other workers. Servitude leaves them with limited opportunities of empowerment for upward social mobility. In a few cases only women’s economic empowerment and escape from domestic work has led to an increase of women’s capacities to become the primary agents of their own lives and safeguard them from exploitation and from informal and low-paid jobs, to live in freedom and independence.
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