Week 2
Historical Centro:
On the barrio of Embajadores
Introduction
As a 2018 GGFUP Fellow, I will be collaborating with the cooperative organization Servicio Doméstico Activo (SEDOAC), where most of the members are Latin American migrant women currently employed as domestic workers in Madrid. SEDOAC’s activities revolve around four main objectives:
- empowering domestic workers employed in Madrid;
- raising awareness on the dignifying nature of the work and the challenges they face as migrant women;
- fostering the political engagement and participation of their members;
- and building strategic networks with other local partners concern with labor and human rights.
Demanding their right to the city by pushing the ratification of the ILO’s 189 Convention on Domestic Workers, SEDOAC and their affiliates continue to push for a fairer employment conditions and more equitable salaries in Madrid. Given the nomadic nature of the profession, SEDOAC tends to have several locations that serve as their meeting place. Although they do not have a particular home-base, some of their latest meetings have been taking place at the Casino de la Reina and the Museo de Artes Tradicionales y Populares, both located in the Embajadores neighborhood of the Centro district, in central Madrid. Thus, I will be using these two jurisdictional subdivisions as objects of my essay, mainly focusing on the latter. I will briefly review their geography, history, and demographics, in order to illustrate a comprehensive narrative of the location and its people.
History
The Centro district is the oldest part of modern-day Madrid, with evidence of Muslim settlements dating back to the 9th Century AD.[1] In fact, the etymology of the capital city’s name derives from the Arabic “Magerit” (مجريط), meaning “place of abundant water” given the large number of streams and river providing for fertile lands in the region.[2] The first historical records of Centro date back to a strategic move by Muhammad I, emir of Córdoba, built a fortress near the Manzanares River between 860 and 880 AD.[3] Today, the Spanish Royal Palace sits in its place.[4]
As a suburb grew around the fortress, and the military facilities passed into the hands of Christian rulers in 1085, the conglomeration of houses grew into a proper city by 1123, year when it received the titled of villa under the control of the House of the Trastámara, a dynasty from Castille.[5] Four centuries later, King Philip II housed its court in this city, increasing the area of the city from 74 to 134 hectares between 1535 and 1565.[6] The period gave way to the Madrid de los Austrias, the name with which the Habsburg dynasty was known in the peninsula at the time. Some of these pre-industrial characteristics still remain intact around the capital city, particularly scattered around the district of Centro. As the slideshow below illustrates, some of the colorful tiles that stand on each street corner allude to Madrid’s historic upbringing across the centuries.
As Madrid grew into a modern European urban center, Centro remained vitally positioned in the heart of the city. The contemporary district of Centro includes the aforementioned Royal Palace, the Congress of Deputies, and the government building of the Community of Madrid, one of the seventeen autonomous communities in Spain. In the barrio of Embajadores, a series of important cultural institutions can be found within its geographical boundaries, including the Reina Sofía Museum, the Tabacalera Cultural Center, the La Casa Encendida Cultural Center, and the Rastro, the largest open-air flea-market in Spain that dates back to the Middle Ages.[7]
Demographics
According to the CEPAL (the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), the Latin American population in Spain reached over 2.4 million in 2015.[8] Even though there are no updated figures as to what share of the Latin American population participates in the Spanish informal economy—which accounts for 20% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product[9]—there seems to be a widely held assumption that “the majority of domestic house workers are from Latin America.”[10] [11] Data for the year 2005 “indicate[d] that 32% of migrant domestic workers in Spain are from Ecuador and 13% from Colombia,”[12] reinforcing this belief. This sector is highly feminized, with women accounting for more than 90% of the total of domestic workers. Moreover, as a share of total female employment in Spain, “domestic workers represented 8.4 per cent in 2010.”[13]
Centro is reflective of these demographic fluctuations product of the globalized job market. The district’s population for 2017 was 131,928, of which 4.8% (6,404) came from an immigrant community in the Western Hemisphere.[14] Now, with a population of 35,810 as of 2017, the Latin American diaspora in the barrio of Embajadores represents 20.87% of the total immigrant population (2,138 out of 44,630 inhabitants), the third largest behind citizens of European Union member states and citizens of Asian countries.[15] The Latin American population stands at an almost 50-50 divide in regards to female-male inhabitants. Below a chart that illustrate these statistics more effectively.
|
Centro |
Embajadores |
|
|
Total Population (2017) |
131,928 | 44,630 |
|
Latin American Diaspora (%) |
6,404 (4.8%) | 2,138 (20.87%) |
|
Male (%) |
3,229 (50.4%) | 1,087 (51%) |
|
Female (%) |
3,175 (49.6%) | 1,051 (49%) |
|
Source: Ayuntamiento de Madrid |
||
[1] Gea Ortigas, María Isabel. Historia de los distritos de Madrid: Centro. Madrid: La Librería, 2000.
[2] Corominas, Juan. “Sobre la etimología de Madrid.” Revista de Filología Española. Vol. 43, No. ¾. (1960).
[3] Patrimonio Nacional. El Palacio Real de Madrid. Paris, Connaissance des Arts; Madrid, Palacios y Museos y Ediciones El Viso, 2015.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Reilly, Bernard F. The Medieval Spains. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
[6] Fernández Álvarez, Manuel. Felipe II y su tiempo. Madrid: S.L.U. Esparsa Libros, 1998.
[7]Nieto Sánchez, José A. Historia del Rastro. Madrid: Vision Net, 2004.
[8] CEPAL. “La Cepal cifra en 28,5 millones el número de emigrantes latinoamericanos.” La Celosía. Web. 8 Nov. 2017. http://www.lacelosia.com/la-cepan/
[9] Ferdman, Robert. “Spain’s Black Market Economy Is Worth 20% of Its GDP.” The Atlantic. 16 Jul. 2013. Web. 08 Nov. 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/07/spains-black-market-economy-is-worth-20-of-its-gdp/277840/
[10] Requena Aguilar, Ana. “Una de cada tres empleadas domésticas que trabajan en España lo hace sin protección social.” ElDiario.es. 14 Mar. 2013. Web. 08 Nov. 17. http://www.eldiario.es/economia/empleadas-domesticas-trabajan-Espana-proteccion_0_494500616.html
[11] Larrañeta, Amaya.” El 31% de las empleadas de hogar en España siguen sin estar de alta en la Seguridad Social.” 20 Minutos. 14. Mar. 2013. Web. 08. Nov. 2017. http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/2696989/0/empleadas-hogar/espana/oit/#xtor=AD-15&xts=467263
[12] Consejo Económico y Social de España (CES). “Panorama sociolaboral de la mujer en España, primer trimestre 2006.” CES. No. 43 Spain: Madrid, 2006.
[13] International Labour Organization. “Domestic workers around the world: Global and Regional Statistics and the extent of legal protection.” ILO. Switzerland: Geneva, 2013:35-36.
[14] Ayuntamiento de Madrid. “Distrito 1 – Centro.” Madrid.es. 20 Sep. 2013. Web. 13 Jun. 2018. http://www.madrid.es/portales/munimadrid/es/Inicio/El-Ayuntamiento/Estadistica/Distritos-en-cifras/Distritos-en-cifras-Informacion-de-Barrios-/?vgnextfmt=detNavegacion&vgnextoid=0e9bcc2419cdd410VgnVCM2000000c205a0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=27002d05cb71b310VgnVCM1000000b205a0aRCRD
[15] Ibid.
This data is so helpful in contextualizing the members of SEDOAC in a larger presence of immigrant labor and of informal economies in Madrid. I was blown away by the detail that 20% of Spain’s GDP comes from the informal economy, yet the immigration of Latin Americans to Spain and the need/desire for domestic labor are *in practice* and socially formalized. This gets at the precarity of the situation SEDOAC faces — the economy and social expectations are that Latin American immigrants will arrive and do necessary, but unenviable, labor, but the rights of immigrants AS LABORERS is barely recognized. Such is the plight of the global “underclass,” but it is also the basis for a global politics around labor. Has your own global perspective through your other research efforts helped with your understanding of where SEDOAC is situated among other labor efforts of this kind?
To answer your question, I think it is important to realize that industrialized countries like Spain have a segmented labor market. To further explain, a segmented labor market is influenced by contractual arrangements between employer and employee (i.e. permanent versus temporary employment), their enforcement (which can result in informality) and the types of workers concerned (migrant, domestic, or dispatch workers). Thus, a ‘secondary’ segment of the market can appear. This entails more precarious working conditions for members that belong to this segment, like delayed wage growth and the risk of unemployment given their fixed-term contract and the informality of the profession. Latin Americans tend to occupy vulnerable positions in this polarized job market, risking marginalization and exclusion that could jeopardize their economic and social integration in Spain. What is more problematic is the exclusive migratory policy results from an economic panorama based on recruiting low-skilled workers.