4.2 Non-communitarian immigrant women in the work market in spain  (Page 6/18)

The main reason of the displacement of these mothers is the necessity to work and make money to cover the family economic necessities. Their objective is to send money to their country of origin to pay debts, to save, to construct, to finish or to enlarge their house, to establish business upon their return, to pay for their children’s studies, etc. It is stated that the arrival of feminine migration, autonomous and independent, results, mainly, of a familiar strategy oriented to obtaining income for the family. Some women arrive to Spain with the intention of remaining for a short period of time, until they gather the sufficient amount of money to obtain their objectives and return; but others settle in a more or less definitive and long term way to reunite with their husbands and all or some of their children (Oso 1998; Escrivá 2000).

But the international migrations of single women do not constitute a new phenomenon; as is indicated by Elia Ramirez (1997), a few decades ago that in Latin America, for example, the internal migrations (field-city) carried out by women are part of a strategy that have been followed by many rural families to face poverty and obtain a wage-earning job. Many of the Latin American immigrants of rural origin that arrive in Spain respond to this profile. Often they are women who, previously, had left the field to work in the domestic service in bigger cities of their respective countries of origin. The drastic economic and social changes that have taken place in many of these countries, and the increasing poverty in bigger cities pushes towards international migrations.

But a considerable part of the female migration comes from the Latin American middle-class, important part of this migratory process on an international scale. During the 80’s and 90’s, the neo-liberal economic measures have impoverished these segments of population. Before the deficiency of economic opportunities and a more uncertain future, grows the migratory flows towards European countries and North America (Escrivá 2000). They are not families of the lowest layers of society, but middle-class families that, as a result of the successive economic and political crises that strike many of these countries, they lose their job (public administration, technical and professional positions in companies) or the buying capacity (faced with the devaluation of currency, for example, many pensioners have seen their savings and pensions disappear) and they state that if they want to maintain their power or standard of life to provide for their children’s formation and opportunities, they have no other alternative but to sacrifice themselves and emigrate. The most impoverished fraction of the middle-class clearly feels threatened and sees emigration as the only exit. The increase of migratory flows coming from Argentina in the last years responds to this profile.

Sometimes, the option of emigrating for female immigrants can respond to a certain dissatisfaction of the social tensions attributed to their gender, added to the economic pressures. They are women who look for a well-being and a change in lifestyle in Europe, which goes beyond the strictly economic motivation (Ramirez 1997). Many of the women who fit within this migratory project are unmarried, young, without family responsibilities, and of urban origin, although it is also frequent to find “unmarried mothers” who feel socially rejected in their countries of origin and decide to emigrate.