4.2 Non-communitarian immigrant women in the work market in spain  (Page 15/18)

This displacement towards other sectors depends on a great number of factors, among which the education level of the immigrant woman stands out, the migratory project, and the time of establishment in the receiving society, the family networks, the knowledge of the language, and the position in the family structure. In the case of the Spanish society, there are few job alternative routes and are concentrated in poorly qualified services: catering and commerce. For the catering sector, the tasks carried out by immigrant women are related to cleaning and the kitchen, “in the back room,” and there are less that work as waitresses, unlike native workers. Although there are no connotations of abuse and servitude in the catering services like those attributed to the domestic service, according to Colectivo IOÉ (1999, 2001a, 2001b), the precarious conditions of work and supervisory abuses predominate, just like the reproduction of the traditional feminine rolls. Even so, for the fact that it takes place in a public space, the rights of women workers are more easily defensible. Working as a clerk in some business is another more reasonable option for the immigrant woman (because of the shortage of native work force in that sector), mainly for Latin American woman, who has a good dominion of the linguistic code.

The shortage of “other” labor opportunities for immigrant women is a determinant of which many of them, among those who consider a definitive establishment in the receiving society, manifest auto-occupation as a project of half-term labor mobility, once they reunite the sufficient income to establish their own business (Sole, Parella 2005). It is more and more habitual for immigrant women to consider settling a business (hairdressing salons, cafeterias, etc.), mainly among those that count with a greater educative level, as a strategy to leave the domestic service once they have reunited a sufficient amount of savings. At the moment, only 8.8% of the total female foreigners affiliated with 14-01-2004 are in the Special Regime of Independent Workers (as opposed to 11.4% men); although it is foreseeable that this percentage will increases in the upcoming years, according to the existing barriers in labor mobility of immigrant women towards more qualified sectors. The scarce studies that have been made on the enterprising immigrant women state that the enterprise route can be elevated as an alternative of social mobility, and an exit of the classic labor sectors reserved for immigrant women, like cleaning, caring for elders and children, catering, or prostitution. Not to mention, another condition included with education is the fact that they can settle a business on their own account, and serves many women to better manage their working time, so that a greater flexibility in the labor activity allows them to take care of their families (Colectivo Ioé 2001a; Oso and Ribas 2004). Immigrant workers take advantage of informal networks as friends or relatives, at the time of settling their businesses (Colectivo Ioé 2001b).