Week 6

Cadena COPE’s Interview with Carolina Elías

Carolina Elías, SEDOAC’s President, was recently interviewed on Cadena COPE, a Spanish radio station based in Madrid with an average +2 million listeners per month.
The event was live-streamed on Facebook and broadcasted live on FM to all of the Spanish territory.

I added English subtitles to the video recording of the event. Although it is a short interview (a bit over 13 mins.), the themes addressed include include the experience of migrant women in Spain; life as a domestic worker; and SEDOAC’s strategies to address structural injustices.

On the other hand, this constitutes an important achievement for SEDOAC, which has gained the attention of mainstream Spanish media. As seen by the coverage given by Cadena SER and COPE, it seems like not only the general public but also political commentators. 

Interview begins at 01:10 mark

 

2 thoughts on “Week 6

  1. I know it was a lot of work to translate this into English, so thank you for that effort. It’s really helpful to be able to hear/read the situation in Carolina’s own words. It seems that even if the law requires domestic workers to be registered into the social security system by their employers, there’s no enforcement that is punitive (or just encouraging, I guess!) But this also seems to highlight for me the vested interest the state and the elite have in keeping the informal economy robust so that the formal economy can still operate within a general austerity framework. Or am I taking that too far? In what way, for example, is austerity still the the order of the day for the Spanish government (and/or the EU) and is some of the lack of energy behind social security rights for domestic labor an extension of the state’s neglect of labor rights overall?

    1. Most of the people I’ve talked to in Spain have told me the effects of the recession are gone and that economic recovery is starting to be more visible. Unemployment rate is at 16.1% as of February 2018, down from an obscene 26.2% between February and July 2013. However, you are right, the legacy of austerity is still visible in the way the Spanish State allocates its resources. As made evident by the General Budget of the State, some areas are not considered to be pressing issues to the government–at least not yet. Labor rights remain in the background, whereas job creation and other macroeconomic maneuvers still guide the incumbent’s agenda.

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