Welfare Paradoxes and Interpersonal Pacts: Transnational Social Protection of Latin American Migrants in Spain

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between migration, care work, and welfare provision, highlighting the role of Latin American migrants in Spain as providers of formal and informal social protection on a transnational scale. It contributes to the debate on transnational social protection and transnational social inequalities from the perspective of welfare paradoxes and interpersonal pacts. Migrant women in Spain have become a resource for the provision of formal social protection through their employment as domestic care workers. Nevertheless, given that access to social rights in Spain depends on job stability and residency status, they have difficulties in accessing formal social protection themselves. This process constitutes a “welfare paradox,” based on the commodification and exclusion paradoxes, explained by structural factors such as the characteristics of the welfare regime (familiaristic model, with a tendency to hire domestic workers as caregivers into households), the migration regime (feminised and with a clear leaning towards Latin American women), and the economic landscape resulting from two systemic crises: the great recession of 2008 and the Covid‐19 pandemic. Interpersonal pacts, rooted in marriage/couple and intergenerational agreements, and their infringements, are analysed to explain the transnational and informal social protection strategies in the context of the “exclusion paradox” and the breach of the “welfare pact.” Our research draws on the exploitation of secondary data and multi‐sited, longitudinal fieldwork based on biographical interviews conducted with various members of transnational families in Spain and Ecuador (41 interviews).

Unaccompanied migrant children and indebted relations: Weaponizing safeguarding

“…These accounts illustrate how unaccompanied young people help each other with debt, in what we characterize as an alternative social protection system. This resonates with research about the role of informal sharing economies for adult migrants, which goes beyond emotional support to include informal money lending schemes (Datta, 2022;Oso & Martínez-Buján, 2022;Pincock et al, 2020).…”

Desafíos y soluciones en la gestión contable del seguro social ecuatoriano

“…Sin duda, la nación ecuatoriana enfrenta desafíos en la prestación de servicios de salud. Las deficiencias en la regulación administrativa pueden tener un impacto directo en la accesibilidad, calidad y sostenibilidad económica del sistema de salud (Oso & Martínez-Buján, 2022). Comprender estas implicaciones económicas es crucial para el diseño de políticas que fortalezcan la infraestructura de salud y mejoren los resultados tanto para los proveedores como para los destinatarios de los servicios (Organización Mundial de la Salud [OMS], 2015).…”

Dual‐career Spanish couples in Europe: Work‐family balance in childcare

“…The economic crises of 2008 had effects not only on job losses and income cuts, but also on family life, including reduced welfare provision for the elderly and childcare (Lafleur & Stanek, 2017). In these conditions of acute economic crisis and social risk, Spanish emigration would have activated intergenerational and marriage/couple pacts as a way of enacting informal social protection strategies in the family (Oso & Martínez‐Buján, 2022).…”