Domestic and care work in private households is now the largest employment sector for migrant women. This book sheds light on these households through its focus on the interpersonal relationships between Latin American “undocumented migrant” domestic workers and employers in Austria, Germany, Spain and the UK. The personal experiences of these women form the basis for Gutiérrez-Rodríguez’s decolonial analysis of the feminization of labor in private households and cultural analysis of domestic work as affective labor. This book will be a necessary voice in the debates on citizenship, cosmopolitanism, and migrant workers’ rights.

Drawing upon several years of research in Germany, the UK, Spain, and Austria, and over 100 interviews with Peruvian, Ecuadorian and Chilean women working as domestic and care workers, this book examines hitherto unexplored areas of the interpersonal relationships between domestic and care workers and their employers.

This timely and innovative book delivers a comprehensive analysis of the non-recognition of the right to a family life of migrant live-in domestic and care workers in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and Ukraine.

Domestic work has become highly relevant on a local and global scale. Until a decade ago, domestic workers were rare in European households; today they can be found working for middle-class families and single people, for double or single parents as well as for the elderly. Performing the three C's - cleaning, caring and cooking - domestic workers offer their woman power on a global market which Europe has become part of. This global market is now considered the largest labour market for women world wide and it has triggered the feminization of migration. This volume brings together contributions by European and US based researchers to look at the connection between migration and domestic work on an empirical and theoretical level. The contributors elaborate on the phenomenon of 'domestic work' in late modern societies by discussing different methodological and theoretical approaches in an interdisciplinary setting. The volume also looks at the gendered aspects of domestic work; it asks why the re-introduction of domestic workers in European households has become so popular and will argue that this phenomenon is challenging gender theories. This is a timely book and will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of migration, gender and European studies.

This book tells the stories of the Ethiopian women who migrate to work as domestic workers in the Middle East. Drawing on qualitative research in Ethiopia, Lebanon and Kuwait, the author reveals how women’s aspirations to migrate are constituted within unequal gendered structures of opportunity in Ethiopia and asks us to consider how gender, race, class and nationality intersect in the construction of migrant subjectivities and agency. By analysing the impact of migration on social reproduction both in Ethiopia and the destination countries, the book offers fresh empirical and theoretical insights into the largest stream of women’s autonomous international migration from Africa.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Drawing from the EU-funded DomEQUAL research project across 9 countries in Europe, South America and Asia, this comparative study explores the conditions of domestic workers around the world and the campaigns they are conducting to improve their labour rights. The book showcases how domestic workers’ movements put ‘intersectionality in action’ in representing the interest of various marginalized social groups from migrants and low-income groups to racialized and rural girls and women. Casting light on issues such as subjectification, and collective organizing on the part of a category of workers conventionally regarded as unorganizable, this ambitious volume will be invaluable for scholars, policy makers and activists alike.

Based on insights from Filipina experiences of domestic work in Paris and Hong Kong, this volume breaks through the polarized thinking and migration-centric policy action on the protection of migrant women domestic workers from abuse to link migrants' rights and victimization with livelihood, migration and development. The book contextualizes agency and rights in the workers' capability to secure a livelihood in the global political economy and is instrumental in making the problem of migrant women workers' empowerment both a migration and development agenda. The volume is essential reading for social scientists, bureaucrats and non-governmental political activists interested in the protection of the rights and livelihoods of migrants. It will also appeal to migration and feminist scholars who have yet to adopt the contribution of critical development studies in the analysis of low-skilled female labour migration.

The provision of care has been widely referred to as facing a 'crisis'. International migrants are increasingly relied upon to provide care – as domestic workers, nannies, care assistants and nurses. This international volume examines the global construction of migrant care labour and how it manifests itself in different contexts.

This volume closely analyses women’s role and experiences in migration (internal and international) and its interlinkages with the care economy in their functions as nurses and paid domestic workers as well as unpaid carers. Bringing together case studies from across India and other parts of the world, the essays in the volume capture the characteristics and specificities of female migration in different settings — be it for economic or associational reasons, or as left behind members. The book also looks at gender-specific discriminations and vulnerabilities along with the empowering aspects of migration. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of migration, gender studies, sociology, and social anthropology, as well as development studies, demography, and economics.

The continuum of exploitation that has historically defined the everyday of domestic work - exclusion from employment and social security standards and precarious migration status – has frequently been neglected. It is primarily the moments of crisis, incidents of human trafficking, slavery or forced labour, that have captured the attention of human rights law. Only recently has human rights law has begun to address the structured inequalities and exclusions that define the domain of domestic work. This book addresses the specific position of domestic workers in the context of evolving human rights norms. Drawing upon a broad range of case studies, this book presents a thorough examination of key issues such as the commodification of care, the impact of the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights on ‘primary care providers’, as well as the effect that trends in migration law have on migrant domestic workers. This volume will be of interest to lawyers, academics and policy makers in the fields of human rights, migration, and gender studies.