Agency and labor integration of immigrant women: the lure of structural exclusion

GALAZ VALDERRAMA, CATERINE; MONTENEGRO QUINTANA, KARLA; MONTENEGRO MARTÍNEZ, MARISELA; YUFRA, LAURA CRISTINA

Manchester

Workshop; Gender, Sexuality and Political Economy; 2011

Manchester Metropolitan University

Social policies and social work practices aimed at immigrant women in Spain, are based on the host societies labor inclusion discourses. The path for inclusion, proposed by host societies, generally imply that immigrant women must adapt to the roles and dominant situations of exploitation that this context can offer, due to the socio-economic conditions imposed by current labor markets.Although work insertion trajectories which encourage self-management are proposed, behind these discourses lie practices that supposedly enhance «agency» for immigrant women, while the structural conditions of exclusion in host societies are made invisible. In this manner, the work of social «self-inclusion» is left on their field, leaving unquestioned the socio-economic and geopolitical conditions implicated in the social inclusion/exclusion processes that are experienced.Frequently the interpretation of these processes is done departing from the «immigrant women» category, which makes invisible the different trajectories, and ways of living of these women. In this sense, an interseccional perspective is needed for taking in account the ways in which asymmetrical relations are constituted, by the interrelation of diverse differentiation axis such as age, gender, sexuality, national origin and/or legal conditions. This perspective allows us to reflect upon the ways in which policies and social work practices contribute to create and maintain, within host societies, the category of «immigrant women», and therefore, limit the possibilities of social and labor insertion of people categorized in this manner. This paper is based on research, carried out in Catalonia (Spain), aimed to recognize the social and labor trajectories of seventeen women, of diverse national origin, living in different cities of this territory. The analysis carried out, reflects on the ways that some policies and practices contribute to conceal the heterogeneity and mine the agency of people that are intervened, while altogether, expecting them to work in favor of their own social inclusion.