Regularization isn’t enough: The gender gap in Spain’s migration policy

“You can’t leave Spain, and you lose work opportunities while you wait [for documentation],” says Luz Escobar, 48, a Cuban journalist and mother of two. She left her country seeking safety only to face a new struggle: navigating Spain’s complex bureaucracy. After joining an independent digital newspaper in Cuba in 2014, Luz faced escalating repression: interrogations, travel bans, surveillance, and internet cuts aimed at stopping her work.

“Women bear the worst part of the repression… if you are a mother caring for someone older, or if you have children, they pressure you through your husband,” she says, explaining some of the differences in migration experiences between women and men. She describes being isolated during interrogations with several men in a small room and subjected to intimidation, attempts at seduction for psychological manipulation, and abuse.

In January 2022, she arrived in Spain with her husband and daughters on a tourist visa after receiving a journalism award, under the condition from Cuban authorities that the family would not return. Luz entered Spain’s asylum system amid confusing digital procedures and near-impossible appointment delays.

Nearly three years later, she still lives with a temporary permit that limits her mobility and work. Across Spain, migrants with irregular administrative status face long delays and blocked careers, but women like Luz often bear the heaviest burden, juggling caregiving, informal or feminized work, and systemic invisibility that complicates regularization.

A historic policy with unequal outcomes

Spain’s 2026 extraordinary regularization plan, expected to begin in April and run through June, is designed to grant legal residence and work permits to an estimated half a million undocumented migrants who meet specific criteria. The process emerges at the intersection of social advocacy, policy necessity, and global migration pressures. Silvana Cabrera, spokesperson for Regularización Ya, highlights the movement’s tireless campaigning, led predominantly by women. “For us, this measure responds to years of exclusion and invisibility faced by people living without documentation,” she says.

“It’s not just doing a favor to those without formal documentation. Regularization guarantees fundamental rights while integrating people into taxation and social security systems, benefiting society at large,” adds Gonzalo Fanjul, researcher and activist on poverty and development.

But will everyone benefit equally?

Occupational segregation

“From a gender perspective, the impact of migration in Spain is uneven,” explains Patricia Macías, a journalist specializing in migration and gender studies. The government lacks official data on undocumented migrants, and while some figures are available from organizations like Funcas (1) and academics such as Fanjul, who has also made estimates of irregular migration in Spain using the Padrón (2), these figures are not disaggregated by sex.

“Irregular status disproportionately affects women and children. Six out of ten undocumented migrants in our country are women.”

“Irregular status disproportionately affects women and children. Six out of ten undocumented migrants in our country are women,” notes Fundación porCausa in a 2022 report. And the difference is not only numerical but also experiential: men often migrate first, while women later arrive with children and take on caregiving and family responsibilities, Macías states.

Funcas estimates that around 840,000 foreign-born residents were living in Spain without legal authorization as of early 2025, representing roughly 17 % of the non‑EU population. Although gender breakdowns are absent, the report highlights a structural context in which hundreds of thousands of migrants sustain informal sectors such as domestic work, caregiving, cleaning, and agriculture, without legal protections or stable documentation.

Invisible labor, visible barriers

Occupational segregation is a central aspect of this inequality. To qualify for Spain’s 2026 extraordinary regularization, applicants generally must prove at least five months of residence before December 31, 2025, have no criminal convictions, and demonstrate eligibility through work, family ties, vulnerability, or asylum applications.

“Women have often been employed in work that is informal, domestic, or caregiving, and they may face difficulties proving their work because it is not documented like other jobs,” explains Edith Espínola Coronel, national spokesperson for #RegularizaciónYa and member of the Center for the Empowerment of Domestic and Care Workers. “There are sectors where women are overrepresented, particularly care work, and that can create challenges when trying to demonstrate legal requirements for regularization,” she adds.

“Precisely because these jobs take place in private spaces, they are much more susceptible to exploitation and discrimination,” Patricia Macías observes, particularly for live-in care workers whose housing, income, and daily lives depend entirely on employers. Barriers to formal residence registration exacerbate these challenges. Proof of residence may exclude domestic workers whose employers refuse to register them at an address, a common situation in the care sector, according to Macías.

“The Padrón issue can be complex for women if they depend on employers or a partner, or if the registration is in the husband’s name,” explains Victoria Capriles Moreno, feminist lawyer and human rights defender.

Capriles Moreno adds that domestic and care workers often cannot even think about having a contract, while men mostly work in the fields or construction.

“Domestic work, which is feminized, often lacks formal contracts, and unpaid care work is not explicitly recognized as labor activity,” Capriles emphasizes, noting that this makes it difficult for women to meet legal requirements.

Live-in domestic workers face particular difficulties proving residence if confined to employers’ homes, complicating pathways to legal regularization.

Housing: documentation and survival

“Everyone sees you as a migrant woman… and so in the first moment they see you, they’ve already discarded you,” Luz Escobar elaborates, further highlighting the challenges brought on by the difficulty of finding housing.

Gonzalo Fanjul notes that live-in domestic workers face particular difficulties proving residence if confined to employers’ homes. “This informal status complicates pathways to legal regularization,” Cabrera concludes, underscoring how occupational segregation creates structural obstacles for women migrants.

Gender inequality is particularly visible in domestic and care work. Women in irregular situations are often expected to perform multiple unpaid tasks simply because they are women. “You are hired to care for someone, but they assume you also cook, clean, and do everything else,” Edith Espínola Coronel says, describing a “brutal gender gap in workload” despite low pay. Many accept live-in jobs earning a monthly €600–800, remaining available to employers around the clock to avoid homelessness.

Proof of residence remains a central barrier. Espínola Coronel notes that obtaining municipal registration has become “almost a dream” for undocumented migrants, forcing some to pay illegally for a document that should be free. Activist groups have therefore pushed for alternative ways to demonstrate time spent in Spain.

Structural racism and the regularization paradox

Andrea Londoño Ríos, Colombian migrant, researcher, and member of the collective Las Gaitanas, works on migration, decolonial thought, and anti-racist practices in Spain. She observes that irregular administrative status produces structural racism regardless of education or qualifications.

“I had the same academic training as other women, but without regularization I could not access employment,” she shares, highlighting a paradox in which migrants must secure formal work to regularize their status but are often barred from doing so. She also points to a broader contradiction: while migrants face legal exclusion, migrant labor sustains key sectors of the Spanish economy, including care work, domestic work, agriculture, and hospitality.

While migrants face legal exclusion, migrant labor sustains key sectors of the Spanish economy, including care work, domestic work, agriculture, and hospitality.

Motherhood, marriage, and caretaking as additional burdens

Administrative irregularity affects all migrants, but women often bear the harshest consequences. “Women suffer violence and harassment in the street, at work, and at home,” Espínola Coronel states, noting that many migrant women are single mothers supporting entire families.

Londoño Ríos emphasizes how vulnerability intensifies through intersecting responsibilities such as motherhood and transnational care. Migrant and racialized women supporting children abroad are more likely to accept informal or underpaid work and are less able to report abuse due to fear of deportation. “Irregularity increases exposure to labor exploitation, violence, and trafficking networks,” she warns.

Structural biases and racism embedded in migration law exacerbate these risks. Londoño Ríos notes that pathways like marriage or registered partnerships can force migrants to rely on another person to legally exist in the country, reinforcing gendered vulnerabilities. “Regularization could reduce economic and gender-based violence by allowing women to report abuse without fear,” Patricia Macías adds, yet she cautions that the decree currently lacks a gender perspective.

Bureaucracy, reform, and what comes next

Practical hurdles compound the problem. Short deadlines, application costs, and requirements such as criminal background certificates may disproportionately exclude those facing precarious housing or unstable employment, Londoño Ríos notes, highlighting women’s struggles and Luz Escobar’s near-impossible barriers under Cuba’s restrictive system. “Rights should not become a race against bureaucracy,” she argues.

Cabrera observes that the current process does not formally consider caregiving, motherhood, or labor precarity. And while Londoño Ríos further stresses that Spain’s extraordinary regularization results from migrant-led mobilization rather than institutional generosity, he insists that it does not dismantle structural racism or immigration control.

Capriles Moreno adds that without addressing gendered labor segregation, caregiving burdens, and bureaucratic constraints, women will continue to face barriers. “It’s a welcome measure,” she concludes, “but gender gaps remain largely invisible in its design and implementation.”

Gonzalo Fanjul highlights the need for broader reform, noting that Spain’s restrictive migration system, limited legal pathways, and informal labor market perpetuate cycles of irregularity. He also underscores the importance of improving data on sex, origin, and sectoral distribution of irregular migrants to inform better public policy, as current estimates rely on incomplete records like the Padrón.

“At present, the draft Royal Decree is under Ministry review, following more than 300 amendments from social organizations,” Cabrera states. Once revisions are completed, it must pass ministerial procedures before publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE), potentially by late March, after which implementation would begin immediately.

“Regularization is just the first step,” says Patricia Macías. “If we do not tackle the invisible barriers, gendered labor, caregiving responsibilities, precarious housing, and structural discrimination, millions of women will still remain at the margins, even with papers in hand.”