The underdevelopment of the fourth pillar of well-being, one example of which would be the inadequate dependency law, in tandem with the limited coverage of alternatives aimed at nationalizing the responsibility of providing care to children, the elderly and the sick, as well as the lack of men sharing the burden of unpaid vital care work, has turned the “substitution of one woman for another woman” into an individual strategy for reorganizing daily care and meeting the need for it within families.

Outsourcing care work to less well-off women is an individual strategy that has been on the rise since the 1990s in Spain.

This formula for outsourcing care work, which has been on the rise since the 1990s, has been pursued particularly in the southern states of Europe, according to the 2018 CIDOB Immigration Yearbook, and has been underpinned by the transfer of responsibility onto women with less opportunities. That is, of course, when there is enough money in the home to do so. Sometimes, a pension is the only income, explain several workers consulted.

According to figures from the International Labour Organization (ILO), about 70% of the time dedicated to unpaid care work in Spain is provided by women, and one in four of working age state that they are unavailable for employment or are not seeking work due to having to take on care work. “In developed countries, the hiring of migrant women from Latin America allows many women to develop their careers, as they have another woman who undertakes cleaning and care work, without them having to question the unequal distribution of tasks within their home”, observes Morena Herrera, activist with the Feminist Collective for Local Development in El Salvador. At the same time, the work of tens of thousands of migrant women employed as domestic workers in poorer conditions compared to other sectors "acts as a buffer in the face of the lack of action from governments in meeting the need for care policy", she says.

“There is an international, sexual and racial division of labour, according to which a white woman from Spain is worth much more than a non-white woman from abroad, which means that migrants end up stuck in these low-quality jobs", considers CIDER researcher Camila Esguerra.

According to the Workers' Commissions’ report on the employment of the foreign population in Catalonia in 2017, about four out of ten women from Latin America work in the domestic sector, and make up three quarters (73.7%) of the women from abroad working in it. "There is an international, sexual and racial division of labour according to which a white woman from Spain is worth much more than a non-white woman from abroad, which means that migrants end up stuck in these low-quality jobs" says Camila Esguerra, researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies at the University of Los Andes (CIDER).

Statistics from the Association of Domestic Workers of Biscay (taken from a consultation of more than 500 women during 2018) indicate that seven out of ten non-EU migrants are employed on a live-in basis, the vast majority (95.88%) responsible for care work, in almost all cases, of dependent persons. Eight out of ten live exclusively with the person or people they care for. "Talking about the importation of women sounds coarse but would be correct, because the work of migrant women as live-in caregivers has been transformed into a form of slavery that satisfies the need for care here, and into a great loneliness which ties in with the other great loneliness emerging from the care crisis: that of the elderly” explains Wendy Espinosa, project coordinator for Mujeres Pa'lante.

The migration of women, unlike that of men with dependent relatives, is tied to a care drain and has a domino effect. Just as many migrants and exiles employed in the domestic sector in countries such as Spain fill a gap traditionally occupied by unpaid women from within the family, in their country or place of origin the care deficit left behind following migration is often picked up by other women from within their own family circle. Grandmothers, aunts and sisters, among others, take on in situ care work “without security, because they don't have time, because they are very old, because they are very tired”, says Herrera.

Immigration law renders live-in work a pseudo-refuge laden with abuse, lack of protection and isolation, in the face of the need for accommodation and the risk of deportation.

There are cases in which the care deficit, exported to the place of origin of the woman who has migrated or exiled to Europe or the United States, is filled by another migrant from the same country or a neighbouring one, who is also employed in domestic work "in even more insecure conditions than those faced by those who migrate from the South to northern countries", says Esguerra. "98% are from a rural background, many Black or indigenous, who come to the cities to do care work because it is the only sector that will take them on", she says. This same sector, in our part of the world, is usually reserved for those who have "neither the capital of whiteness, nor of being Western, nor of masculinity, nor of having regularized documentation", comments the CIDER researcher. With immigration law that pushes migrants towards at least three years working in the underground economy, live-in work becomes a pseudo-refuge laden with abuse, lack of protection and isolation in the face of the need for accommodation and the risk of deportation.

For eight years, during which time she was unable to formalize her residency, Maria was afraid to go out and could not visit her family. In fifteen years, there have been only two reunions. "Leaving is a difficult decision, but sometimes the circumstances force you to. That, or the opportunities”, María posits. She says that, for the most part, she has been treated well by the people she has worked for and that, for her, the elderly people she cares for have come to mean a great deal to her. Moreover, in terms of her work, she says that she has experienced humiliation and a loss of freedom, and her wish would be to return to Colombia and be close to her father, now that he –like the people several Catalan families have left in María's care in recent years– is in his 80s.

According to the report of the XIX Ruling made by the Observatory of the National Association of Social Services Directors and Managers, about two out of ten people (19.2%) with a recognized dependency in Spain do not receive support payments or services from the care system. 250,000 people are affected, with 98,000 in need of extensive and sometimes continuous support. Although the support payment for care of a family member was conceived as an exception, it became the norm, something the document describes as "failure of the system", revealing "a lack of flexible services, or an absence of services altogether”.

The report also considers across-the-board professional recognition for personal care practitioners "long overdue". It states that domestic service contracts "which do not reflect the work required, nor take into account professional qualifications, and clearly leave workers vulnerable and without the right to unemployment and baseline social security contributions" are unsuited to meeting this challenge, and as such the relevant authorities “should not endorse [them], and should enable others as a matter of urgency”. “Welfare states have exploited women in their own country through [domestic and care] work that does not figure in national expenditure, and moreover have overexploited migrant women; they are welfare states thanks to the geopolitical relationship of exploitation between countries”, Esguerra points out.

"It’s cheaper to pay for a person at home than in a care home. If we all refused to provide care, what would they do?" asks María Osorio, a domestic worker who migrated from Colombia.

Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia… many of María's acquaintances in Tarragona have migrated from abroad. Except for her, they all have children, many in their country of origin, and almost all, says María, are employed providing care for the elderly. “If we weren’t here to care for the elderly, what would their children do? Sometimes we talk about it in our group of friends. It's cheaper to pay for a person at home than in a care home. If we all refused to provide care, what would they do?", asks María.