Re-writing the domestic role: transnational migrants’ households between informal and formal social protection in Ecuador and in Spain

Abstract

Ecuadorian migration to Spain can be described as an emblematic case of feminization of international migration. As the scholarship showed, this migration flow has been shaped by transnational female social networks in which different types of capital circulate and which are reproduced across generations, providing social protection for people involved in them, both migrants and non-migrants. Starting from three ethnographic studies conducted with Ecuadorian adults and teenage migrants in Seville and in different Ecuadorian localities between 2004 and 2011, this paper has two aims. First, it investigates the crucial role played by migrant women of the first and second generation to create a safety net for the members of their transnational households, in terms of child and elderly care, combining tactically both informal and formal social protection along the different stages of their migratory projects. Second, adopting an intersectional lens, which looks particularly at the dialectic between gender and generation, it analyses the tensions and conflicts generated by the repositioning of these women within their transnational households. The paper contributes to the literature through questioning the changing gender role and relations in transnational social protection.

Gendered dynamics of transnational social protection

“…Care dominates much of the literature on migration and social protection, though research often faces hardships in placing "care work within a wider landscape of activities and sites and to connect supposedly disparate circuits of migration, in particular labour, family, and education, which are usually analysed separately but which are in fact interconnected" (Kofman, 2012, p. 144). The papers in this special issue therefore take into account not only care relations but also other forms of migrants' social protection, such as financial protection (Bilecen, 2019) and labour market inclusion (Castellani & Martín-Díaz, 2019) in due consideration of their transnational networks, stages in their life course and the impacts on life chances arising from the exchange of protective resources (Faist, 2014).…”

“…Based on extensive ethnographic research, Castellani and Martín-Díaz (2019) illuminate that social protection across borders is a source of tensions and conflicts within transnational families. The example of Ecuadorian women living in Spain demonstrates the complex processes through which gender roles transform at the intersection of social protection and employment, which oscillate between preservation of traditional gender relations and empowerment.…”

Left Behind? Russia’s Entry Bars and Gender Relations in Tajikistan

“…Women celebrate their skills, knowledge, and increased income, all of which provide them with more control over their lives (Menjivar 2000;Oishi 2005;Wolfe 1992;Yu 2007). An empowerment framework is useful for an understanding of female migrants' experiences and their increased agency (Bastia 2013;Castellani and Martín-Díaz 2019;Encinas-Franco, Ang, Opiniano, and Sescon 2015;Segura and Facio 2008;Zentgraf 2002). Tajik women migrants value more egalitarian gender norms in Russia's urban areas compared to Tajikistan and appreciate less social control Zotova 2014, 2019).…”

“…Tajik women migrants value more egalitarian gender norms in Russia's urban areas compared to Tajikistan and appreciate less social control Zotova 2014, 2019). Migration allows migrating and non-migrating women to renegotiate traditional gender roles as women who stay behind also enjoy increased decisionmaking power as heads of households, greater mobility, and less social restrictions in local communities (Castellani and Martín-Díaz 2019;Cleuziou 2017, Cleuziou andDirenberger 2016;Erdal and Pawlak 2017;Kikuta 2016;Sinha, Jha, and Negi 2011;Ullah 2017).…”

Far from a Burden: EU Migrants as Pioneers of a European Social Protection System from Below

“…Moreover, the life cycle is only one aspect of social differentiation; others include social class, gender and race. In fact, a transnational intersectional analysis is often missing from the general debate on the nexus between migration and welfare (Castellani and Martin‐Diaz, ).…”