Migrant Women, Care Work, and Women's Employment in Greece

Abstract

This contribution is about women's paid and unpaid work in the context of rapid socioeconomic change in Greece between 1983 and 2008. Drawing on feminist analyses of women's employment and the care sector, it highlights the link between women's paid employment and the supply of affordable immigrant (female) labor in Greece in the sphere of care provision. It examines three issues: the acceleration of women's involvement in the paid labor force after 1990; the parallel influx of immigrants, a quarter of whom are women involved in service provision for households, into Greece; and finally, the “big picture” of the demand for care (both paid and unpaid, childcare as well as eldercare) in the context of an aging population and women's rising participation in paid work. The analysis highlights the key contribution of migrant women acting as catalysts for social change.

Keywords:

• Women migrants
• care services
• elderly
• women's employment
• aging

JEL CODES:

• J16
• J61
• B54

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Julie Nelson, Jennifer Cavounidis, Maria Karamesini, Dimitri Sotiropoulos, and Platon Tinios for insightful comments on earlier drafts and to Thomas Georgiadis for helpful assistance with data and figures.

Notes

The migrant in the family model refers to the transformation of the traditional family model of care into a new complex division of labor in which family caregivers (mainly women) provide the coordination, while the task of minding is entrusted to immigrant women (in Bettio, Simonazzi, and Villa [2006]; also in Francesca Bettio and Giovanni Solinas [2009]; finally as “migrant-carer model” in Annamaria Simonazzi [2009]).

The definition of caring labor and the analysis of its economic implications are open to debate (Paula England 2005). Here, I use the term in its narrow sense as referring to specific activities (childcare and eldercare). I do not define it with reference to a caring motive. (In Nancy Folbre [1995], caring labor is undertaken out of affection or a sense of responsibility for other people, with no expectation of immediate pecuniary reward.)

Women's economic autonomy involves changes in their unpaid activities as caregivers (Ann Shola Orloff 1993; Alice Kessler-Harris 2001).

Deirdre McCloskey (1996) takes a view against commodification. Julie A. Nelson (1999) adopts a more balanced position, while Paula England and Nancy Folbre (1999) point out the main difficulties of the actual markets both on the demand and the supply side of care.

The verb “to delegate,” with its connotations of not ceding responsibility, conveys the essence of the process more accurately than “outsourcing,” which expresses similar strategies in the field of small enterprises.

The same phenomenon has been described in negative terms as parenting deficit (Amitai Etzioni 1993) or “abandonment” syndrome (Jeremy Rifkin 1995: 234). Nevertheless, Nancy Folbre and Julie A. Nelson (2000) cite evidence from W. Keith Bryant and Cathleen D. Zick (1996a, 1996b) to argue that delegation may have actually increased the amount of time parents spend per child, as families purchase more services allowing more time with children.

Amartya Sen (2009) reviews the philosophical arguments eloquently.

Should one place a value on caring? Pro-market feminists refrain from demanding direct state payments for homework and childrearing for fear that they will oblige more women to stay at home or that the value society imputes to non-market care will fall (Barbara R. Bergmann 1986). Nelson is concerned that if support for parenting is seen as payment, it would imply that children are seen as commodities; whereas if it is seen as compensation, then children will be conceptualized as a burden (from personal communication with Nancy Folbre, cited in Folbre 1995: 87 and 1995: 89, footnote 49). Other feminists defending non-market institutions are in favor of parental support schemes (Nancy Folbre 1994, 1995).

Bergmann (1986) describes the development of a sexual caste system based on the enforcement of gendered norms of behavior.

For a feminist critique of the notion of “cost,” see Susan Donath (2000) and Susan Himmelweit (2005).

Attempts to improve productivity by reducing the amount of time or personal contact merely reduce the quality (Donath 2000).

In view of the productivity increases in services since 1985, the “cost disease” approach seems dated. Although the required quantity of care work may not decline as a result of new technologies, the quality of care may well improve (for example, aid for handicapped people, housing modifications, and information technology all increase “productivity” of care).

This does not mean that care services will be eclipsed due to rising cost. In Baumol and Blinder's view, as productivity increases elsewhere, priorities must be reevaluated; “If we value services sufficiently, we can have more and better services – at some sacrifice in the rate of growth of manufactured goods” (1985: 547).

Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (2002) adopt a worldwide perspective and cover experiences of migrant domestic workers in the US, Filipina workers in Hong Kong, and female immigrants in Taiwan; Rebeca Raijman, Silvina Schammah-Gesser, and Adriana Kemp (2003) examine Latina migrants in Israel; Christina Ho (2006) presents experiences of Chinese women in Australia; while Sara R. Curran, Steven Shafer, Katharine M. Donato, and Filiz Garip (2006) and Mignon Duffy (2007) focus on the US context.

Claudia Goldin (2006) has charted this process for the US from the late nineteenth century. Antigone Lyberaki, Platon Tinios, and George Papadoudis (2011) examine a panel survey of women over age 50 and chart different national cohort experiences in labor force participation, contrasting the North and South of Europe.

Reconciliation policies form a relatively new area of social policy in Greece, whose impact in raising women's participation in paid employment remains marginal (Karamessini 2005). They still target only women. The responsibility for funding rests with employers and the state and local authorities, none of which put reconciliation outcomes in their priority list. The coverage of preschool childcare is still very limited, and what exists suffers from short operating hours that do not match business hours. Tax deductions and child benefits remain low and fail to make an impact. Leave facilities are limited (except in the public sector), while part-time work is very unpopular with the unions, which have so far been effective in banning it even from the public dialogue. The same goes for working-time flexibility.

More detailed qualitative examination of each of thirteen possible macro, micro, and institutional explanations is available from the author upon request.

The ECHP was a rolling panel survey devised by the European Commission to assess standard of living, and it was subsequently used to compose indicators of social inclusion for the EU. It was designed as a pilot project and was discontinued and replaced in 2004 by the EU-SILC. Despite its many acknowledged shortcomings, the ECHP is the only regular survey covering the period 1995–2001. For the importance of the ECHP and EU-SILC for the formulation of EU social inclusion policy, see Tony Atkinson, Bea Cantillon, Eric Marlier, and Brian Nolan (2002).

Other possible reasons may be underreporting of irregular caregivers, which might be due to the fear of the authorities. Infelicities in the ECHP sampling or questionnaire could also play a role (for instance, domestic help and eldercare are excluded). The supply of paid eldercare may have knock-on effects, enabling older family members to help with small children. If the interpretation of rates of change holds, the apparent mismatch between the levels of paid childcare recorded, on the one hand, and the number of labor entrants, on the other, is explainable.

The strong link between the prevailing care arrangements and labor market behavior of women is substantiated by the high proportion of nonactive women (ages 25–59) because of care responsibilities (39 percent in 1996 according to ECHP), while “family responsibilities” inhibited 40 percent of women (ages 20–59) in 2000 (according to the LFS [Eurostat 1983–2008]).

The remaining source of childcare is interfamily solidarity from grandmothers, which may be assumed constant through the period.

An interesting difference is that the dummy for presence of older, school-age children becomes statistically significant and negative in 2001; this could indicate that once women drop out of the labor market they find it difficult to get back in.

This reversal caught both society and policymakers by surprise (on the issue of attitudes, see Anna Triandafyllidou [2000], and on the gradual formation of “migration policy” see Anna Triandafyllidou [2005]). Policy has been designed to cover the needs of the original majority of migrants – men; so it is not only male oriented but also family oriented, adopting a patriarchal approach towards migrants. This stands in contrast with the trend for the feminisation of migration (Maria Liapi and Anna Vouyioukas 2006).

Due to their irregular status, the total number of immigrants is probably greater than in official statistics. Rossetos Fakiolas (2000) estimated that migrants not enumerated in 2000 were 400,000 persons.

Lianos applied Joseph G. Altonji and David Card (1991) type regressions.

Research on migrants in services to Greek households has taken off only recently (Helen Kambouri 2007; Iordanis Psimmenos and Christoforos Skamnakis 2008; Efthymios Papataxiarchis, Penelope Topali, and Angeliki Athanasopoulou 2008; Antigone Lyberaki 2009a).

Social protection is skewed heavily towards pensions, which makes it largely irrelevant to immigrants' needs, especially given that pension benefits are generally not transferable internationally. System fragmentation allows immigrants to “purchase” health insurance coverage at minimal cost in terms of contributions (Tinios 2003).

See Violetta Hionidou (2005) and Pothiti Hantzaroula (2005) on the history of domestic service in Greece.

Between 15 and 23 years of contributions lead to the same pension. The disincentives are presumably stronger for workers who may not plan to stay in Greece after retirement age to collect their pension.

Angeliki Athanasopoulou (2008) found that Albanian cleaners moved from live-in “3Cs status” (cleaning, cooking, caring) to shorter hours of “cleaning only” for many employers, near their homes.

Not all employers are employed. The description of the typical case does not rule out the existence of employers who do not work outside of the home.

These findings are in line with the probit reported in the Appendix and in Lianos's (2003) econometric findings. Even in eldercare the locus of decision may still lie with a younger female relative.

In the context of SHARE (2004), Nordic countries include Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Continental Europe refers to France, Belgium, Austria, and Germany, while Southern Europe includes Italy, Spain, and Greece. For a fuller analysis of these points see Antigone Lyberaki, Tassos Philalithis, and Platon Tinios (2009).

Recent estimates of childcare provision in Greece suggest that coverage remains below 10 percent for children younger than 3 years of age, while 60 percent of children between 3 and 6 years enroll in preschool centers (Maria Karamessini 2007). A further problem is that the operation schedule of childcare institutions does not match business hours.

The structural framework of care services for the elderly in Greece is nominally “tripartite” public services, NGOs and informal care, besides the family (Aris Sissouras, Maria Ketsetzopoulou, Nikos Bouzas, Evi Fagadaki, Olga Papaliou, and Aliki Fakoura 2002). In recent years, a public program called “Help At Home” was introduced, which caters to care needs. However, the spread of the program is still narrow and therefore is unlikely to affect labor market magnitudes (Ministry of Labour and Social Security 2003).

Residential care, calculated as the availability per 100 inhabitants over 65 years of age, accounted for 0.5 percent in Greece against 2 percent in Italy and 13 percent in Denmark (Bettio and Plantenga 2004).

Personal care is defined as help in dressing, bathing or showering, eating, getting in or out of bed, or using the toilet.

The employment of migrants to assist elderly persons has become widespread in rural areas, where evidence from recent research suggests that nearly 20 percent of all households employed migrants for domestic and care services (Kasimis and Papadopoulos 2005). A legacy of the rural–urban migration of the 1960s and 1970s is the large number of “stranded elderly” in the countryside, whose offspring migrated to the towns.

There are at least ten such boarding arrangements in Athens, at prices ranging around half the wage of a live-in.

As their stay in Greece is prolonged, there emerge instances of entrepreneurial initiatives among cleaning ladies in the informal market of services to the households. Headed often by a migrant woman with an established good reputation and a broad network of connections, informal quasi-enterprises get started, with the head of the network acting as the guarantor of high quality service provision and trustworthiness.

Close to the minimum wage, between [euro]650 and [euro]900 per month for full-time equivalent work. Such services are often part time.

The minimum social insurance contribution corresponds to the minimum wage; as many domestic workers either work part time or are paid less than minimum, it was felt that the high non-wage costs were a barrier to the regularization of migrants' work. The new insurance category names domestic and care work specifically.

If 20 percent of immigrants work in domestic services, their number would be >200,000. Assuming that one-third of those work full time, then 130,000 have multiple employers. If 50 percent work for two or more households, we arrive at 15–20 percent. Alternatively, extrapolating from SHARE (2004), the percentage of households (with at least one member 50 years or older) seeking to meet their care needs from the market also arrives at approximately 20 percent.