4.2 Non-communitarian immigrant women in the work market in spain  (Page 9/18)

The labor incorporation of the female immigrant in spain: the domestic service as a “norm”

The interaction of the social class, gender, and ethnic group, along with the concept “triple discrimination,” allows understanding the different modalities from labor insertion of women of immigrant origin. The labor incorporation of the female immigrant is opposed, on one hand, in accordance to their feminine condition, to that of men – whether they are native or immigrants –; on the other hand, in accordance to their condition of immigrants, their labor opportunities are not the same as that of native women. That way, if the perspective of gender is added to the phenomenon of stratification of the work market from the ethnic group, it is stated that, although the set of immigrant population is led to occupations of minor social status, smaller remuneration, and worse labor conditions, are the female immigrants of non-communitarian origin that occupy the last roster: the domestic service – with exception of Chinese women, who mainly are used in catering, and commerce. The female immigrants constitute a species of “sub-segment” of the market of feminine work, more restricted than that of men, relegated to the most emblematic tasks of discrimination for gender reasons.

For a start, we must clearly know that the labor statistics do not suitably reflect the presence of foreign workers in the work market (Colectivo Ioé 2001b). The labor increase of foreigners to the Social Security do not include those who work in irregular situation, or the immigrant workers who have stopped being legally foreign when obtaining the Spanish nationality. On the other hand, the operation of the data of the 2001 Census of population and houses not only provides information on the type of labor activity that evolves, but in addition, it allows to approach an important proportion of the people in irregular situation, although the data is old – was made during the first semester of 2001 – for a so dynamic and changing phenomenon as migrations are. The Survey of Active Population (EPA), with quarterly appearance, is another statistical instrument to analyze the composition and the dynamics of the work market in Spain. To what concerns to foreign population, its main handicap is that it quantitatively underestimates the foreign people, whether they are in a regular or irregular situation. Throughout this section, we will be centered in the first two sources,  Statistic of foreign workers affiliated with the Social Security and 2001 Census of population and houses, although only percentage will be used and not non-absolute numbers, with the purpose of giving a greater reliability to the presented data.

The distribution of labor increase of the set of foreign workers – communitarian workers included –, gathered in Table 1, shows the labor segregation of the foreign woman; it is to say, the labor concentration in certain activities that have to do with reproductive work is noticeable. Note that, by activity sector, the services sector agglutinates 85.1% of the affiliates, as opposed to only 47.1% in the case of men. Also, by main branches of activity, three activities – domestic service, catering, and retail trade concentrate almost 50% of the total affiliated foreigners and only 19.5% of the homologous males. One of the reasons for which the data is not presented in absolute terms, is because these underestimate the important volume of women immigrants who are developing activities tied to the social reproduction from the submerged economy and in an irregular situation.