MUJERES MIGRANTES EN UN PAÍS EN CRISIS

What are the problemsmigrants –and especially migrant women- face in Italy since the beginning of the economic crisis, which has been reinforced by the austerity policies im-posed by the Germany-lead European Union? Recent data show thatunemploymentis growing among foreigners, reaching the number of318.000 persons in the second half of 2012 and 385.000 in the first half of 2013 on 2 millions and 334.000 active foreigners .Moreover, these data indicate that the percentage of unemployment is now higher among the foreigners than among the Italians: this is a recent trend -until 2010 the opposite was true (Minister the Lavoro, 2013).At the same time, the demand for domestic work, after a brief and limited decline in 2010 and 2011, is growing. There are structural reasons to this paradox. The demand in domestic services is a consequence of theabsence of available public ser-vices to children and, especially, to elderly. In the last twenty years, the role of domestic work to persons has become crucial for elderly care, responding to a specific demographic problem –as the aging population. Services to the person -often in a situation of co-residence with the employer, without residential autonomy-have mostly employed foreigners- for the majority women. In 2012, foreigners represented almost the half of the em-ployed in services to the person: 467.565 on a total of 982.975 (47,6%) (Minister the Lavoro, 2013). These numbers concern migrants having a regular contract, but it is well known that this sector is characterized by the informal and undeclared work. Consequent-ly the number of foreigners employed in domestic service is certainly higher.