Domestic work and international migration in Latin America: Exploring trajectories of regional migrant women in domestic service in Argentina

• Current immigration in Argentina builds on Latin American female domestic workers.
• We analyse interviews made to 18 domestic workers from Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay.
• We assess the relevance of gender-based practices in their migration processes.
• Restrictive migration regulations impinged on migrants' insertion in precarious jobs.
• The “family” logic of households as a workplace may hamper access to diverse rights.

SynopsisBesides emigration towards developed countries, Latin America has a regional migration dynamics of its own — one in which the presence of women, as well as their employment in domestic service, has proved decisive. Combining a macro perspective with a case-based socio-anthropological approach, this paper examines international migration and domestic service at an intra-regional level. Drawing on statistical information, we first present an outline of the regional migration context and the insertion of migrant women as domestic workers in destination countries of the region. The core section of the article centers on the particular case of Argentina, and illuminates the experience of migrant domestic workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. The paper closes with a series of reflections on the operation of gender as an organizing principle of relations and opportunities involved in international migration.