Paper short abstract:

This contribution explores the quotidian lives of Honduran migrant women working as “inmates” in Spain as elderly caregivers. It discusses how, due the irregular migratory status of the caregivers, elderly’s homes can be analyzed as a prison (real and imagined) that reproduces daily violence.

Paper long abstract:

During the last ten years, (irregularized) migration of Honduran women has increased dramatically, as has U.S. Border Externalization toward Mexico and Central America. The increase of interdiction in Mexican territory and militarization at the Mexican-Guatemalan Border has turned Mexico into a country of waiting and entrapment. Waiting is a necropolitical mechanism of disenchantment and dehumanization, causing migrants to abandon their goals. Still, waiting is also a platform for creating resilience strategies to face migration management.

After multiple attempts to reach the United States, many women are forced to return to Honduras. After several months or years, they manage to embark on the migration experience again, but this time to Spain. Hondurans are allowed to stay 90 days in the Schengen area, after this period they become “irregular” migrants. Honduran women find jobs as elderly caregivers working 24/7 from Monday to Saturday as “inmates.”

This contribution firstly explores the quotidian lives of Honduran migrant women working as “inmates,” as well as the strategies of resilience they create to cope their feelings of being “incarcerated.” Secondly, it discusses how their workplace, can be analyzed as a sort of prison (real and imagined). Finally, although elderly’s homes do not seem to be a given space for carceral practices, the "irregularized” migratory status of the caregivers echoes a place where invisibility, oppression, exploitation, and abuse are reproduced. For this research, narrative interviews with Honduran migrant women working as “inmates” elderly caregivers were conducted in the community of Valencia during 2023 and 2024.