Characteristics, working and living conditions of migrant female domestic and care workers in Europe: a cross-country comparative approach

Giuseppe Gabrielli, University of Naples Federico II
Anna Paterno, University of Bari
Salvatore Strozza, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Rocco Mazza, University of Bari Aldo Moro

Many ageing European societies are experiencing a growing demand for personal and household services (PHS). Given native-born workers do not satisfy this growing demand, foreigners play a decisive role: formal care migrant workers are overrepresented in most European countries. Among them, single aged breadwinner women became the perfect candidates for occupying this occupational position which, however, observes significant shortages as it is characterized often by low salaries, poor working conditions, limited professional development opportunities, and high staff turnover rates. In many European countries, employment in the PHS is poorly regulated, depriving workers of labour and social protections. This lack of regulatory framework further contributes to the vulnerability and isolation of domestic and care workers. Using the ad-hoc module of the EU Labour Force Survey (2021) which oversampling of the foreign population, we aim to analyse migrants’ working and living conditions in different European contexts by using a cross-country comparative approach. Descriptive results highlight that, according to the literature, migrant women workers employed in the PHS have different socio-demographic profile respect to the other average working foreign-born and native-born groups. Moreover, multivariate analyses show that they often find themselves in more unfavourable working and living conditions which make them more vulnerable.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Human Capital, Education, and Work, International Migration, Migrant Populations and Refugees

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