Introduction : irregular migrant domestic workers in Europe : who cares?

Abstract

International migration in the last two decades has been increasingly gendered. Women have become important components of international migration flows both within Europe (from East to West) and from developing countries in Asia and Africa to Europe. Female migration has been encouraged by both push and pull factors. On the push side, the implosion of Communist regimes in central eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics has left women unemployed, without a welfare state to rely on and/or with salaries that were too low even for the mere survival of families. In developing countries, women were and still are faced with poverty and unemployment as well as violence.