Paper short abstract:

The paper will pay attention to the role of the children of migrant domestic workers in Barcelona. It focuses on how children fit into the global displacement of care produced by the flows of migrant domestic servants and on how they shape and give meaning to the migrant project of their mothers.

Paper long abstract:

Based in a fieldwork among Latin-American live-in domestic workers in Barcelona (Spain) the paper will reflect about the role of the children in some of the crucial issues faced by these workers. There are several interesting focuses from economy to kinship. Most of these migrant women leave their own family behind to move outside their country to take care of another family as a job, producing a global displacement of women taking care of other women's children. Through some ethnographic pictures we will observe how the children left behind keep going their relation with their absent mothers, how the mothers take decisions conditioned by their children responses, and how the children who can join their mothers in Barcelona deal with the implications of their mother's job. In all this cases children appear as actors who shape the realities of their mother's lives. In sum, this paper will deal with the role of children in conditioning and giving meaning to the migrant project of these women.