PAP0222 - Domestic services, gender and migration in Portugal: a quantitative contribution

The study of domestic services has been recently nourished by an array of empirical studies. Precious international overviews can be found in Anderson (2000), Ehrenreich and Hochschild (2002), Lutz (2008), or Isaksen (2010). In particular, the notion of in-house paid labour as a trait of traditional societies about to be washed away by the flush of modernity has been replaced with the observation of these services as instantiations of the global (Sassen, 2007), persistently intertwined with issues of gender, class and ethnic relations. Yet, two limitations can be identified in research to date: the exclusive focus on urban settings and the lack of quantitative analysis. How many individuals are currently employed in domestic and care occupations? What can be said about their demographic profile? And how did numbers evolve over the last decade? In this paper, Portugal is proposed as a singular case of study within Europe. Two data sources are combined to examine the period between 2000 and 2010: the European Union Labour Force Survey and the national Social Security Records. The first section of the paper offers an overview of previous studies on domestic labour and a short characterization of the case of Portugal regarding employment, gender and migration. A description of methodology is then provided. To be sure, large-scale datasets on employment provided by statistic offices entail specific limitations regarding domestic services. These require close attention. According to examined data, cleaning and care services employ a growing number of individuals since 2000. This is the case both in Portugal and the European Union at large. By 2010, the occupational group of ‘Domestic and related helpers, cleaners and launderers’ comprised 5.6 percent of the total employed population in Portugal (280.2 thousand individuals), while the group of ‘Personal care and related workers’ stood at 3 percent (146.9 thousand individuals). Considering women only, the dimension of these two groups is significantly larger, comprising 11.5 and 5.8 percent of all women in paid employment. The particular number of individuals employed in domestic services increased between 2000 and 2008, and decreased under the economic recession of 2008-10. The combination of the two data sources suggests that there are indeed two concomitant trends in operation. On the one hand, a mild decrease in the number of individuals employed in domestic services; on the other, a significant fall in the share of workers who are registered in the social security system. Change in the profile of domestic workers since 2000 is also apparent: average age and the number of migrants both increased. The very large share of women in the workforce remains unaltered. Some recommendations for future research are included in the concluding remarks.

Manuel Abrantes é membro do SOCIUS: Centro de Investigação em Sociologia Económica e das Organizações, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, e Professor Convidado de Sociologia do Trabalho e do Lazer na Universidade Aberta. Os seus principais interesses académicos incluem o trabalho, o género, a migração e a participação política. É autor do livro Borders: Opportunities and Risks for Immigrant Workers in Cities of the Netherlands e tem contribuído para diversos volumes conjuntos e revistas científicas. Desde 2010, está a conduzir estudos de doutoramento na Universidade Técnica de Lisboa sobre as condições e as relações de trabalho no setor dos serviços domésticos.