Peru

Sara-Lafosse's thesis (1995, 1998), supported by other authors' (Burkett 1985; Stein and Stein 1979; Montecino 1993; Mannarelli 1993), is that irresponsible fatherhood in Latin America and the Caribbean has its origins in the colonial conquest. Rape of indigenous women was used to subjugate and oppress. Violence was continuous during this period. After the conquest (1492 to the early 1800s), violence manifested itself in other forms of oppression. During the fifteenth century, to facilitate pacification, the Spanish Crown encouraged Spanish men to marry the Indians' daughters. This policy changed in the 1600s, when Indians and Spaniards were prohibited from marrying one another. In addition, the ratio of immigrant Spanish men to immigrant Spanish women was nine to one, pushing men toward interracial relationships. Furthermore, children of European fathers could not be considered Indians and therefore, they were not subject to the oppression, prohibitions, or taxes imposed on the conquered population. Although the father did not recognize his offspring, the son had progressed in social position and brought his mother on this relative ascent.

Cecilia Blondet (1990) argues that, for women who migrate from rural to urban Peru, children played a determinant role for developing roots and constructing a social identity in Lima. The possibility of having a partner and children was an incentive to settle down in their new situation, given that for a woman, forming a family meant having something belonging to her and gave her courage to go ahead. Thus, even though marriage was an ideal for immigrant women, to have children was the ultimate goal of these unions. In this way, faced with the difficulty of having or retaining partners, women accepted the irregular presence or the absence of the family father.

Fatherhood and femininity in urban areas. The second half of the twentieth century brought changes that particularly affected urban areas in Peru. Since the early 1960s, urban women have increasingly entered the labor market. By the beginning of the 1990s, women made up 40 percent of the active workforce (INEI 2000). They also reached secondary and postsecondary education and decreased their fertility rate. Other factors that have influenced changes in representations of masculinity and femininity and raised questions the traditional model of male-female relations include the equality of the genders established by the political constitution of 1981, as well as the cultural globalization of new images of paternity and discourses about women (feminism, citizenship, sexual liberation, etc.) (Fuller 1993). Machismo is criticized, and the image of the distant and authoritarian father has been replaced with the image of the close and loving father (Fuller 1997).

Machismo and marianismo persist in many practices and attitudes of the Peruvian middle-class culture, but they have lost legitimacy as absolute values. Female representations are now characterized by the coexistence of different models of femininity. Their values and their representations are modern but their practices and some fundamental definitions of femininity, including the relationship between the sexes and motherhood, remain traditional and correspond to the marianismo code (Fuller 1993).

Families and migration. Female-headed families experience more difficult economic conditions. They have inferior legal protection given that women are especially concentrated in the informal sector of the labor market. Social security affiliation rates are higher in male-headed families. Families headed by women tend to live in inferior housing, and they have less access to public services (Velez and Kaufmann 1985). As a result of these conditions, a large number of women are involved in the international migration process (Chant and Radcliffe 1992).

The following findings are based on a qualitative study of the way of life of Latin American women who live illegally in Switzerland (Carbajal 2002). The findings are based on the life histories of these women, who work in domestic service and childcare.

In Europe various social changes have influenced the family structure of Latin American immigrants. Changes in demographics and women's social and economic roles have brought increased demand for migrant female work in the domestic service, babysitting, and the care of seniors. These changes include an increase in employment among middle-class European women, the decline of the extended family in southern Europe and the reduction of the welfare state in northern Europe. Employing migrant women appears to be a strategy to combine work and family. (Henshall 1999; Ackers 1998; Sassen, 1984; Stier and Tienda 1992; Kofman 1999). In this way, the double burden of middle-class working European mothers is reduced at the expense of the work of domestic immigrant employees who, themselves, are frequently mothers.

Women and illegality. "Illegality means to live always with limits. Illegality marginalizes you, for example related to the type of work: I can't think of being a secretary in a firm. . . . Illegality is the psychological insecurity of always thinking that the police watch us" (Carbajal 2002). The closure of national borders to immigrants since the 1970s by European Union countries because of the economic crisis produced illegal immigrants, people who do not have a legal resident status and who lack all rights. The possibilities of having a legal status are thus reduced for non-European people, and they are often in illegal situations.

The study focused on women who work with the goal of saving money to improve living conditions for their families. They want to provide for their children's education, pay debts, build a house, establish a small savings, and have economic independence for the future. These women also want to send money regularly to their parents, children, or husbands.

Myrian Carbajal Mendoza distinguished between two profiles of illegal women: First, there are women with primary or secondary education, who are mothers, forty to fifty years old, come from the lower classes, and entered the labor market during their adolescence doing domestic work, babysitting, or working in the public market.

An example of this group are Peruvian women who are in Switzerland with their families (partners and children), as well as single mothers whose children stayed in their countries of origin.

Being in Switzerland represents the opportunity to escape insufficient living conditions and replace them with improved conditions. Women relate this to their role and identity as mothers: "We can't regret the fact of having come to Switzerland; a mother wants always to give the best to their children . . . it's for my children" (Carbajal 2000). This accomplishment, as they understand it, enables a woman to feel able to face poverty and to believe that the "sacrifice" she made was worthwhile, "Despite the fact of being far from my children I always have money to send them, they are not going to suffer because of a lack of meals or housing." They justify and validate their experience by defining the hardships and sacrifices, including being far from their children, in another country where they do not speak the language, as making it possible for their children to have another type of life, especially better education.

In the second profile are women with a higher educational level, twenty to thirty-five years old, who come from the middle class, and have professional training, higher education (secretary, university student, etc.) or who were occupying positions in public administration.

These women are single mothers whose children stayed in their origin country or single women who are responsible for helping their parents. These women feel a loss of their professional and social status: "In my country, I had a position at work where I was esteemed; here, I am a domestic. Just to think that in my house, we had somebody who worked for us, it's very hard."

Nevertheless, this identity is viewed as temporary. They do not use Switzerland but their country of origin as their reference. In this way, they construct an identity as courageous mothers who sacrifice themselves to give their children the possibility of a better life or an identity of the oldest courageous daughters who sacrifice their studies to help their parents. In addition to benefiting the family economically, these women also look to have some personal benefits such as the opportunity to travel, to save their own money, and to buy things for themselves.