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In Spain, domestic workers in the informal sector are often recruited and placed in Spanish households by local institutions such as NGOs. One of the central and biggest institutions which recruit female immigrants for formal as well as informal domestic work is the Catholic Church. It acts as a mediator for domestic workers especially in its own parishes within the scope of social work called "Caritas parroquial". Beforehand, the immigrants are often trained to be domestic workers. The topic of this paper is one of these training courses for domestic workers including the later procurement of a job, which was studied during one year field research in Madrid. It is based on participant observation as well as interviews with migrants, instructors and Church officials. The article starts with an analysis of current domestic work in the context of the global financial crisis. Afterwards a short account of the training course in a Catholic parish is given; domestic work and the role of the Spanish Catholic Church in it are outlined and subsequently, the assumptions of the interactions in the domestic service course, the construction of otherness and of migrant domestic workers are analysed, and finally these interactions are explained within different power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]