On 2 April, the short documentary CUIDANT-NOS premiered at Cineciutat, a small cinema in the city of Palma (Mallorca) that screens independent films in their original version. It is a work carried out by Andiara, a non-profit association in Mallorca that works on the basis of intersectional feminism, interculturality, equality, social inclusion, artistic expression and cooperation.
The short documentary film makes visible the reality of many migrant women who work in the care sector in the city of Palma and denounces their precarious situation, both in terms of work and socially. It is an audiovisual project that forms part of the initiative And who cares for us? promoted by the same organisation and financed by Palma City Council, with the intention of denouncing the violation of the rights of women carers (especially when they are in an irregular situation) and the undervaluing of this work, so necessary to sustain life and so seldom recognised.
Thus, the short documentary presents the stories of Doris, Flora and María, three women living in Palma who work in the care sector and who tell of the multiple social, labour and institutional barriers they have faced every day since they arrived in Spain, based on resistance, overcoming and collective support.
Carers (paid and unpaid), and in particular women, were particularly affected by the pandemic in terms of health because they were more exposed (health, social services, education, supermarkets, cleaning and other low-skilled service jobs) and also in socio-economic terms. But the pandemic did not affect all women equally, and was particularly severe for vulnerable women. It is important to take into account the context of the privatisation of care, in which international migration has burst in, conferring a model of transnational familialism (Näre, 2013, in Barañano Cid & Marchetti, 2016). The relationship between households-market-state is therefore global. As Ruhs and Anderson (2010) point out, states design and implement policies that push migrants, generally women, into domestic and care work, commodifying them (in Rojas Wiesner & Basok, 2020). Undoubtedly, we are witnessing a reorganisation of social reproduction on a global scale.