Irregular Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe ─ Who Cares?

With specific attention to irregular migrant workers - that is to say, those without legal permits to stay in the countries in which they work - this volume focuses on domestic work, presenting studies from ten European countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain. Offering a comparative analysis of irregular migrants engaged in all kinds of domestic work, the authors explore questions relating to employment conditions, health issues and the family lives of migrants. The book examines the living and working conditions of irregular migrant domestic workers, their relations with employers, their access to basic rights such as sick leave, sick pay, and holiday pay, as well as access to health services. Close consideration is also given to the challenges for family life presented by workers' status as irregular migrants, with regard to their lives both in their countries of origin and with their employers. Through analyses of the often blurred distinction between legality and illegality, the notion of a a€?careera€? in domestic work and the policy responses of European nations to the growth of irregular migrant domestic work, this volume offers various conceptual developments in the study of migration and domestic work. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, political scientists, geographers and anthropologists with interests in migration, gender, the family and domestic work.

Anna Triandafyllidou is Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) in Athens, Greece. She is also Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. Author of The Social Psychology of Party Behaviour; Immigrants and National Identity in Europe; and Negotiating Nationhood in a Changing Europe, she co-wrote What is Europe? and Migrant Smuggling. She has edited Irregular Migration in Europe and Muslims in 21st Century Europe; and co-edited European Immigration: A Sourcebook; European Multiculturalism(s); The European Public Sphere and the Media; Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration; Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship; and Transcultural Europe.