Exhaustion: Migrant mental health, gendered migration and workplace regime

Abstract

This article focuses on the mental health of female migrant workers in Italy. The multi-method study involved a survey of 157 Moldovan migrant women employed in different jobs and 30 semi-structured interviews with Moldovan female migrant domestic workers. Quantitative analysis demonstrated that Moldovan domestic workers are affected by poor mental health to a greater extent than Moldovan women employed in other jobs, and that the factors most associated with it were non-standard working times and having migrated primarily for work reasons. Qualitative data showed how the strain resulting from demanding schedules was intertwined with being a single female labour migrant, whose experience was strongly marked by the gendered dimension of transnational motherhood and a loss of social status. The article concludes that the gendered migration regime and the gendered workplace regime constitute two intertwined and mutually reinforcing determinants of health.