Migrant Women and Defamilialization in the Spanish Welfare State

Abstract

Familialism or familism characterizes Southern European welfare states such as Spain. Familialism places the right and obligation of care and the performance of domestic tasks within the family and familialism’s gender order assigns these responsibilities to women. Recently there has been an increase in households’ outsourcing of care and domestic tasks to economic migrant women, reflecting an incipient defamilialization process in the Spanish welfare state. The legal frame of this defamilialization process via the market is the legislation on paid care/domestic work and the legislation that aims at ordering migrant women’s access to the Spanish labour market. The defamilialization process of the Spanish welfare state relies on a gendered and origin-based outsourcing of care and domestic tasks.