Labour trajectories of immigrant women in Spain: towards a social upward mobility?

Elena Vidal-Coso, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Pau Miret-Gamundi, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Using retrospective data from the National Immigrant Survey (2007), this paper aims to investigate the labour mobility of immigrant women in Spain. The first objective is to analyse whether immigration leads to an upwards, lateral or downward movement in their labour career. The second objective is to study labour mobility of immigrant women in Spain. The main hypothesis is that although labour insertion of immigrant women is, at the first place, mostly in the domestic services, labour mobility is possible, although movements are often limited to those positions in the secondary segment. Moreover, their chances for advancement in the receiving labour market depend on different factors (national origin, family context, educational level, previous labour experience in the country of origin, language knowledge, or length of stay in the host country).