International Migration Papers No. 115

Promoting integration for migrant domestic workers in Italy

Since the 1970s, the labour market of domestic services has experienced a considerable growth in Italy, becoming over the past decade the main sector of employment for migrant women: in 2011, more than one foreign woman in two (51.3 per cent) was employed as a domestic worker or family assistant (CNEL, 2012). This phenomenon has been driven by the concomitance of a number of processes: an advanced process of population ageing (with one of the highest rates in the world of persons over 65), the increase of female participation in the labour market, the persistence of rigid patterns of gendered labour division in households, a public welfare budget heavily skewed in favour of monetary transfers (especially old-age and survivor pensions) to the detriment of welfare services in support of families.