Resumen de Activitat i complementarietat sociodemogràfica entre les dones immigrades i les no immigrades a Espanya
This thesis analyzes, from a gender perspective, the socio-demographic and labour complementarity process of female population in Spain by origin. Nowadays in Spain, as in others countries of Southern Europe, female international migration is answering to a specific female labour demand caused by the internationalisation of domestic work. The existence of this labour demand explains, in part, the high labour participation rates of immigrant women in destination labour markets. The origins of this labour demand are related to a weak Welfare State in Spain, on the one hand, and in the spectacular transformation of women's role in Spain during the last decades of 20th Century, on the other hand. Therefore, far from the common image of immigrant women as an inactive and dependent subject, in this investigation these women are understood as a very diverse population regarding their socio-demographic characteristics and migratory project. However, the common feature of these women is that their labour insertion in Spain, at least during the first stage after their arrival, would be according to their immigrant origin and to the specificities of the Spanish labour market. Their individual characteristics, as educational level or previous labour experience are less decisive in order to explain their labour insertion in Spain. The dual labour market theoretical approach guides this doctoral thesis. This approach, argues the existence of a labour complementarity between native and immigrant labour force within a segmented labour market (Piore, 1979a), with a clear division between the primary segment or capital intensive and the secondary segment or labour intensive.
After taking into consideration this theoretical approach one may consider that immigrant women with jobs in the Spanish labour market are likely to belong to the secondary segment. Contrarily, native women are mostly in the primary segment. Nonetheless, there is a general process of labour complementarity between them. In this doctoral thesis, we define complementarity as the general process in which native women, according with their level of education and skills, occupy those more qualified labour positions of the primary segment of labour market, whereas immigrant women are in those least qualified jobs, regardless of their educational levels, skills or previous labour experience. Labour complementarity by birthplace or migrant origin entails that the arrival of immigrant female workers facilitates the social promotion of native women, accelerating their labour insertion according with their educational attainment. The general process of complementarity is then the opposite of a general process of competition, and its specific dynamics are three: promotion, substitution and addition.
In this doctoral research the labour demand for immigrant women is interpreted as a consequence of the insufficient supply of native women for unskilled jobs, an argument that would go in conjunction with the complex and general process of labour complementarity. However, it is necessary to point that we understand the labour position of immigrant women as a part of a more general social strategy (Oso, 2003). The acceptance from these women to work in those unskilled and highly female positions, concretely in the domestic services, it should be interpreted as a first stage of a wider migration strategy, in order to improve their labour and social position as a long-term objective.
To sum up, this thesis aims to contribute to a better knowledge of this complex process of complementarity between women in Spain by national origin over the past few years. Most of the analysis is focused on the period 1999-2008, from the beginning of the intensification and feminisation of immigrant flows until the most recent data available. The target population is the female population living in Spain, both, native and immigrant, emphasizing the characteristics of those non EU-25 women. Birthplace will be a central variable in the analysis, differentiating those native women and those foreign born, who will be grouped by area of origin. Results will be mostly refereed to the Spanish territory as a whole, whereas the region of residence will be one of the explanatory variables in the analysis. The data used is obtained from two different sample surveys: the Spanish Labour Force Survey (Enquesta de Població Activa, EPA) for the period 1976-2008 and, the National Immigrants Survey 2007 (Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes 2007, ENI-2007). The methodology of analysis is quantitative, following the demographic and sociologic perspectives. In the study of the complementarity process the women's labour insertion will be explained by socio-demographic variables as sex, age, household structure, educational level, as well as by some other variables relating the migration experience in the case of immigrant women.
This thesis has the objective to analyse the labour and socio-demografic complementarity of female population by origin. Concretely, the thesis has three main objectives. The first objective is to analyze the existing differences regarding the labour participation trends of native and immigrant women. Second, the thesis aims to study the complementarity between the occupational characteristics of native and immigrant female workers within the Spanish labour market and the three dynamics that are inherent to this complementarity: the social promotion of native women towards those more skilled and high-status positions in the occupational scale according to their educational level; the substitution of native by immigrant female workers in those more gendered and less prestigious occupation of labour market, concretely, in the cleaning and domestic services and, finally, the addition of the immigrant labour force demand. The third and last objective in this thesis is the approximation to the labour mobility of immigrant women in order to define the labour trajectories of these women in the segmented Spanish labour market.
