Caring for those who care. Old age among migrant women care workers (MUMICO)

Code: 39-03-ID25
Funding body: Women’s Institute. Secretariat of State for Equality and the Eradication of Violence against Women. Ministry of Equality.
Participating entities: University of A Coruña, University of Santiago de Compostela, University of Vigo, University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), University of Cape Verde (Cape Verde), Territorio Doméstico Association (Madrid), and Amílcar Cabral Cultural Association of Bembibre (León).
Duration: Start (October 1, 2025) / End (December 31, 2026).
Amount: €23,554.69
Principal investigator: Fernández Suárez, B.
Participating ESOMI members: Belén Fernández Suárez, Antía Pérez Caramés, and Keina Espiñeira González.

Project summary:

The limited development of the welfare state in Spain in terms of care for dependent people and also in reconciliation and co-responsibility, together with population ageing and the social changes that have led to greater gender equality —such as the increased participation of women in paid work, without a corresponding increase in men’s involvement and co-responsibility in care tasks—, have created an ever-growing need for care services for dependent people and for domestic work. Almost twenty years after the implementation of the Law on the Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Care for People in Situations of Dependency (LAPAD), criticism and ongoing difficulties in funding and management have placed the Spanish model in an impasse, awaiting further development in the coming years within the framework of a European care strategy with its own national emphasis.

The response to this unmet demand, characteristic of Spain’s familistic welfare tradition, has largely been the outsourcing of care work, which has generated a strong demand for immigrant women to fill jobs in the care sector (Parella, 2007; Barañano & Marchetti, 2016). This explains why Spain is the second European country, after Italy, in terms of the number of domestic and care workers. According to the Labour Force Survey for 2022 (INE, 2025), Spain has 545,000 domestic employees, 90% of whom are women. Furthermore, among those registered with Social Security, 44% are of foreign nationality (Monguí Monsalve, Cáceres Arévalo & Ezquiaga Bravo, 2022).

Following the pandemic, there was widespread recognition of the essential nature of this work for sustaining life, which helped introduce some improvements in the sector, such as Spain’s ratification of ILO Convention 189 and the extension of unemployment benefits to domestic workers. However, deregulation, precariousness, and the lack of social protection continue to prevail, shaping the working conditions and life trajectories of many women —a large proportion of them migrants— who face serious challenges in achieving an old age with dignity, health, and sufficient economic resources to sustain themselves (Briones-Vozmediano et al., 2020; Abanto Ramos et al., 2024).

Today, the pioneers who helped transform Spain into a country of immigration are reaching retirement age after a lifetime dedicated to care work. Migrant women over the age of 65 already represent more than 10% of the total (INE, 2025). Some of them will decide to stay and age in Spain, which raises important questions: under what socioeconomic conditions will they do so? How will they organize to ensure the care they need? And how will public policies respond to the challenge of caring for the caregivers?

This project aims to analyze the situation of older migrant women who have worked in the care sector in Spain, from a feminist perspective that pays special attention to the intersection of gender and migratory inequalities in studying their socioeconomic conditions and the strategies they adopt to ensure their well-being. The research has a dual orientation: applied, as it will provide a diagnosis and a report with proposals for public intervention and policy action; and participatory, as it involves migrant women themselves, along with their organizations and collectives, in reflection and the joint search for solutions. Moreover, the approach is comparative, focusing on two specific migrant communities: Cape Verdean and Dominican. Both were pioneers in settling in Spain (Dominican migration became significant from the mid-1980s and throughout the 1990s —Pedone & Gil Araújo, 2016—, while Cape Verdean migration began in the mid-1970s and during the 1980s —Espiñeira et al., 2025; Oca González et al., 2025—) and both have had a strong presence in the domestic employment sector. They differ, however, in their migratory and family projects: Dominican immigrant women tend to be heads of household who migrate alone, while Cape Verdean women generally arrive through family reunification with their male partners (Oca González, 2016; Alcalde Campos, 2014). This results in different configurations of transnational family arrangements, which may translate into distinct support networks —hence the interest in comparing their care strategies in old age.

This research, developed under the principle of interdisciplinarity and carried out by a national and international team specialized both in the subject matter and in the communities under study, will promote the development of a roadmap for public policy intervention that addresses the difficulties, challenges, and needs of older migrant women who have worked in the care sector.