El cuidado de personas mayores dependientes a cargo de emigrantes.

Aproximación a la situación de las trabajadoras migrantes y las familias empleadoras, en la Comunidad de Madrid.

Abstract

The caring sector for dependent elderly people is an emergent labour segment, which in Spain and, specifically, in the Community of Madrid experiences a clear rate of growth. Spain, last decades, bears deep social and labour transformations, as the incorporation of the women into the extra domestic work, the growth of over 65 years people and the flow of immigrated women. These changes, along with both, the social withdraw of the Welfare State and the retreat of the men’s partaking in the domestic management, compel to rethink about how to give care to the dependent old people. For the working families, one of the implemented solutions is to employ immigrant female workforce. The aim of this article is to show the results of a research on the situation of the immigrant female workers who take care of elderly people in the Community of Madrid. On this research we claim that to employ immigrant female workforce should not be considered as a permanent answer to the problem of the taking care of the dependent old people, because this remedy is dependent on random migratory flows and, also, a harmful solution for the ends of the women (autochthonous or immigrant). Furthermore, this article argues that the national perspective is not adequate to the study of the family and work reconciliation, because, intrinsically, the fact of female immigrant workforce compels to analyze this subject from a transnational perspective.