Raquel Martínez Buján
Associate Professor
Raquel Martínez Buján is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Communication Sciences at the University of A Coruña. She has three six-year research periods and one six-year transfer period. She has been Dean of this academic centre (2017-2021) and Manager in the Social Sciences Panel of the State Research Agency (2021-2023), where she has carried out both evaluation and monitoring tasks of competitive research projects, as well as the calls for Human Resources funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. She is currently coordinator of the ESOMI research team (Societies in Movement Research Team).
PhD in Sociology (2008, UDC), her research work has focused on the field of International Migrations, Sociology of Care and the Family, and the analysis of Public and Social Policies. From the beginning of her academic career, her research focus has been centred on the analysis of female migration flows and care needs within families. The approach to this object of study has been developed within the context of social policy by analysing the impact of public programmes aimed at long-term care on the creation of an irregular labour market based on the labour of migrant women hired as domestic workers. Recently, her work has focused on characterising the communing care, and her interest has shifted to the study of the sustainability of life. Currently, her research attention is focused on exploring the recent dynamics of commercialisation and corporatisation of care provision through intermediary agencies, digital platforms, and workers’ cooperatives. She also maintains an active line of work on the privatisation of senior home care provision. She has carried out several research stays that have enriched her professional background and expanded her international collaboration networks. The last of these was at the Universitá Ca’Foscari in Venice (June-December 2023) funded by the prestigious Salvador de Madariaga Mobility Programme.
She has been principal investigator of 3 projects of the Spanish National Plan for Scientific Research. The last one is entitled, “The model of long-term care in transition: the articulation of community programmes in the public welfare system after Covid-19”, (PID2020-114887RB-C33), period 2021-2025. She is also actively involved in projects linked to the transfer to public institutions, including her current collaboration with the “Reports on exclusion and social development” of the Foessa Foundation and the “Evaluation of the system for the promotion of personal autonomy and care for people in a situation of dependency” funded by the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030.
Her work has a high scientific impact (Index h=22; Citations=2,169, Google Scholar figures) and her latest publications include: «Home care for profit: Intermediary agencies and digital platforms brokering migrant women’s labour in Spain» (2024. Curreny Sociology; with P. Moré); Welfare Paradoxes and Interpersonal Pacts: Transnational Social Protection of Latin American Migrants in Spain” (Social Inclusion; with L. Oso); “Migrations, care work and social risks: the contradictions of welfare in the context of Covid-19” (Migraciones; with P. Moré). She is a member of the Editorial Board of the journals Papers and Cuadernos de Relaciones Laborales (Labour Relations Papers).