Anna Triandafyllidou (ed.): Irregular Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe: Who Car ****************************************************************************************** * Petra Ezzeddine ****************************************************************************************** Aldershot: Ashgate 2013, 256 pp. Hired domestic and care migrant workers, the form of employment which seemed to be on the disappearance in modern societies, provide today to an increasing degree a private solutio problem. Thus social organization of care in late capitalist societies is systematically c structures of global economy and social inequalities. Changing family relations, increasin participation in the labour market, and changing patterns of family lifestyle meet with de of ageing of the European population and simultaneously with institutional trends of weake Western model of the welfare state and rising neo-liberal globalisation. The new book Irregular Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe focuses on the wide area of rese domestic workers in an irregular situation: immigrant domestic workers who have no legal r in the countries in which they work and who thus have no proper work contracts or welfare chapters cover eight European countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Neth and Spain and cover both genders and all types of domestic work (live-in, live-out, with o employers). It is a pity that the book does not cover new EU countries with transforming d the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, etc., where an interesting increase in employing mig workers is being noticed. The authors looked on the three main aspects of irregular immigrant domestic work: employm health issues and family life. I believe that the last two topics are the ones that separa from others about domestic work. As Triandafyllidou argues: "Domestic work is a heavy job and emotionally and entails particular health hazards. Access to health services is at bes immigrant workers are undocumented and the fact that they work in the home makes it even m to access information and/or to refer to NGOs or a trade union that could assist them" (20 shows the specific tension between the absence of rights to a family life for domestic wor while at the same time incorporating into the surrogate family environment of their employ The book editor Anna Triandaffyllidou chooses three conceptual advancements: "1.) the noti for irregular immigrant domestic workers - a concept that has to date only been discussed immigrant domestic workers, 2.) the notion of legality and irregularity highlighting the f between them in immigrant domestic work, 3.) the gender and (transnational) family issues irregular immigrant domestic workers to have a family life and the difficulty of combining with live-in employment" (2013: 3). I have to maintain that the book works sensitively wit dimensions of legality/illegality in the specific situation of irregular domestic workers. The editor's introduction chapter Irregular Migration and Domestic Work in Europe: Who Car place a book in the wider literature on global migration and the ‘global care chain' (Hoch looking at how domestic work fits the needs and dynamics of developer countries' labour ma era of post-industrial capitalism and neoliberal globalization" (2013: 4). Triandaffyllido specifics of the European context and its migration policies. For me, as a social anthropo interesting part of this chapter is its focus on special attributes of domestic work. She care work transcends the distinction between private and public life: "While traditional p other it is inherent in the family life and not in the employment system. For instance, qu highly valued in paid work such as speed, effectiveness and efficiency may not be appropri work where caring for elderly, sick or children requires patience, flexibility, slowness" The second chapter, Domestic work in Belgium: Crossing Boundaries between Informality and Marie Godin, introduces how domestic work is organized in Belgium and it shows the heterog migrant trajectories. She explains about the concrete example of migration policy - the ‘c system' which "helps many migrant women who used to work irregularly in the domestic work having been regularized, a first formal job opportunity" (2013: 37). She speaks about posi of the system which has reduced some parts of the informal economy in the domestic sector regular migrants to enter the formal labour market in Belgium. The system has its weakness Godin writes: "The choice of shifting the work relationship from a classic type (‘worker-e a more complex one including a third party (‘worker-client-employer') is not always an eas for any parties (‘new clients' workers) .....As a result, the affective and symbolic compo exploitative relationship between ‘master' and ‘servant' is ‘naturally' being reproduced f to the formal sector" (2013: 38). Chapter 3, Migration Careers and Professional Trajectories of Irregular Domestic Workers i Sohler and Florence Lévy, is based on field research and focuses on the female migration t domestic work. They reflect constant legal and economic insecurity of female migrants: "As have only one employer or have a weak social network that impedes them from finding quickl they remain very dependent and vulnerable to abusive and exploitative employment relations successful career strategies used by the women interviewed was to extend and diversify the networks, thus reducing their dependence" (2013: 64). In Chapter 4, Three different Things: Having, Knowing and Claiming Rights: Undocumented Im Workers in Germany, Lisa-Marie Heimeshoff and Helen Schwenken argue that "...our research domestic workers are conscious that by entering into an employment relationship, they are for employment, because undocumented domestic workers in the situation are not able to cla that they have according to German law" (2013: 90). They specifically explain examples of exploitation and in founding new family and family reunification and they are not able to in this case "and claim their right to physical integrity, because an independent right to manifests itself after three years" (2013: 90). Chapter 5, With All the Cares in the World: Irregular Migrant Domestic Workers in Greece b Maroufof, examines the Greek policy framework on domestic work and the experience of irreg workers and civil society actors. When you conduct your work in the same place as your job is not your own personal space, it is difficult to maintain a boundary between work time a time. The lack of personal space and private and personal life can lead to feelings of soc frustration and feelings of loneliness. Maroufof writes about health related issues - espe challenges of domestic care work: "These problems are mainly connected to the long hours o of sleep and rest and the fact that they feel ‘detached' from the ‘outside world'" (2013: The Irish situation is explored by Sally Daly in Chapter 6, The Home as a Site of Work. He on surveys involving 40 domestic workers provided some important indicative data from fema domestic workers in Ireland. Her respondents maintained the importance of new technologies dating' their transnational parenting. She reflects on the use of mobile phones to help th the notion of everyday parenting, including micro-management of their children's meals. Da "This communication allows them to reconstitute their role as effective parents, but there ambivalence in the child's experience of such distance parenting" (2013: 130). Paola Bonizzoni explains the Italian situation in Chapter 7, Undocumented Domestic Workers Surviving and Regularizing Strategies. The chapter builds on 11 interviews of female undoc workers and on five interviews with civil actors that were conducted in Milan. The intervi general conditions of undocumented domestic workers in Italy as well as on the limits and the current Italian immigration law and the specific forms of support organization offered actively spoke about seeking regularization to improve not just their working conditions, their family conditions. But, on the other hand, regularization channels provided by Itali policies can lead to deeper dependency of the worker on the employer. As Bonizzoni writes, always realized) prospects of regularization have led several women to accept a worsening condition, as well as bearing the costs associated with the regularizing process... Regula seen not as a right, but as an indulgent concession of often reluctant employers, who clea regularization because they want to avoid the penalties of using undocumented workers" (20 Sarah van Walsum in Chapter 8, Regulating Migrant Domestic Workin the Netherlands: Opportu Pitfalls, maps diverging interests and possibilities for collaboration and political const the current situation of domestic workers in the Netherlands. She introduces a so-called s which refers "to those forms of childcare and home-based care for elderly and the infirm t provided via state-financed health car or by independent service providers, and are often agencies, with the possibility of state funded compensation of costs or tax exemption. In workers must declare their income in the Dutch tax department and hence must have residenc 162). Sarah van Walsum asks important questions with which immigrant domestic workers will "What conditions will have to be met to ensure that they can successfully compete with wor operating in the shadow economy? To what degree will they, as employees, be able to mainta autonomy that some at least have attained, as quasi self-employed, in determining whom the what tasks they will perform, during which hours, under which conditions, for what price, And, once admitted as domestic workers with formal employment rights, will they be able to careers or will they be racially marked as suited to this form employment and none other?" The Spanish situation is presented by Tania González Fernández in Chapter 9, Globally Inte Households: Irregular Migrant Employed in Domestic and Care Work in Spain. She critically "The irregular migration of women is not only a response to the gender segregation of the in the countries of origin, nor just the demand for the labour in the destination countrie complex process, multifactorial, and if indeed the feminization of wage labour in the cent is an important part, we cannot ignore the power relations articulated within the migrator given that capitalism does not just respond to a logic of class, but rather to a system of cultural, gender, ethnic hierarchies (among others)" (2013: 205). Books that include a collection of research by different authors from different academic f considered by readers as chaotic and losing their comparative perspective. But Anna Triand has done a good editing job keeping articles theoretically and methodologically homogeneou concluding chapter extends a helping hand in this regard by giving a comprehensive compara of the final results of particular research results. In concluding (Chapter 10 Irregular M Workers in Europe) Anna Triandaffyllidou and Thanos Maroukis argue: "Policies need to rend services industry viable as regards the sustenance of its labour force and growing social that surround it. The current economic crisis and the overall restructuring of welfare sys southern and northern Europe make the need for an affordable and sustainable domestic care all the more necessary and sought after, especially as life expectancy is prolonged and th population is increasingly ageing. Restructuring this occupation's architecture might even the reconstruction of its profile. However, this requires careful interventions that would social process of reproducing unequal labour relations. And time. Policy changes need time transform to social changes" (2013: 230). The problems and risks of domestic work are already reflected on the international policy 2011 the International Work Organisation (ILO) adopted the Convention on Decent Work for D where for the first time it even applies its rules in the sector of informal economy. Part here is paid to female migrants, because their increased vulnerability and inequality lead abuses of rights. Even though states have obligations under international agreements, for Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to adopt proce to ensure the same protection rights for these groups also. In reality the question of the female workers in domestic work remains the interest of many developed countries, includin mentioned in the book. I suggest that books like the reviewedIrregular Migrant Domestic Wo may help to deeply analyse the social situation of those who care about our elderly, ill a comes the time to start to care about domestic workers themselves. 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