Multiplex Migration and Aspects of Precarization : Sedish Retirement Migrants to Spain and their Service Providers

Exploring the relations between different migrants who meet in Spain, this article discusses issuesof mobility, the globalization of care and service work, and precarization of labor and livelihoods,of crucial importance to welfare states and the future of work and retirement conditions inEurope. A mélange of migratory processes are scrutinized along a Swedish-Spanish North-Southaxis. It analyzes longstanding conditions on the Spanish labor market combined with neoliberalde- and reregulation of work and welfare with a bearing on spatial and social inequalities acrossthe European Union. From a relational approach, the authors examine conditions of Swedishretirement migrants in Spain and of the workers and entrepreneurs who provide care and servicesfor them. Social networks, intermediaries and subcontractors are crucial to organization ofmigration as well as work and services. Some of these workers, especially third country migrants,occupy precarious, and sometimes informalized, low skilled jobs in an ethnically segmented andgendered labor market.Funding agencies: Swedish Research Council [VR] [421-2012-675]; Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE) [FAS] [2012-0223]