Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers

585 Pages·2015·5.564 MB·English

by  Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Silke Neunsinger

Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers
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Studies in Global
Social History
VOLUME 18
Studies in Global
Migration History
Editor
Dirk Hoerder (Arizona State University, Phoenix, az)
Editorial Board
Bridget Anderson (University of Oxford)
Adam Hanieh (soas, University of London)
Immanuel Ness (City University of New York)
Jose Moya (Barnard College, Columbia University)
Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore)
Vazira Fazila-Yacoobaliis Zamindar (Brown University)
Min Zhou (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
VOLUME 6
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sgmh
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Towards a Global History of
Domestic and Caregiving Workers
Edited by
Dirk Hoerder
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
Silke Neunsinger
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Cover illustration: George Clive and his Family with an Indian Maid (1765), Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792).
Oil on canvas. Staatliche Museen (Berlin, Germany). Image courtesy of the Art Renewal Center®
www.artrenewal.org.
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering
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issn 1874-6705
isbn 978-90-04-28013-7 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-28014-4 (e-book)
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Acknowledgements iX
List of Illustrations and Figures X
List of Contributors Xi
1 Domestic Workers of the World: Histories of Domestic Work as Global
Labor History 1
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Silke Neunsinger and Dirk Hoerder
2 Historians, Social Scientists, Servants and Domestic Workers: Fifty Years
of Research on Domestic and Care Work 25
Raffaella Sarti
3 Historical Perspectives on Domestic and Care-Giving Workers’
Migrations: A Global Approach 61
Dirk Hoerder
part 1
Combining Work and Emotions: Strategies, Agency,
Self-Assertion
4 Introduction: Combining Work and Emotions: Strategies, Agency,
Self-assertion 113
Dirk Hoerder
5 Slovenian Domestic Workers in Italy: A Borderlands Care Chain over
Time 120
Majda Hrženjak
6 Ties that Bind: Localizing the Occupational Motivations that Drive
Non-Union Affiliated Domestic Workers in Salvador, Brazil 137
Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman and Jaira J. Harrington
7 Maid-of-all-Work or Professional Nanny? The Changing Character of
Domestic Work in Polish Households, Eighteenth Century to the
Present 158
Marta Kindler and Anna Kordasiewicz
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vi Contents
8 Mutual Emotional Relations in Caregiving Work at the Turn of the
Twenty-First Century: Vietnamese Families and Czech
Nannies-Grandmothers 182
Adéla Souralová
9 Making the Personal Political: The First Domestic Workers’
Strike in Pune, Maharashtra 202
Lokesh
10 Ambivalence of Return Home: Revaluating Transnational Trajectories
of Filipina Live-In Domestic Workers and Caregivers in Toronto from
1970 to 2010  222
Yukari Takai with Mary Gene De Guzman
part 2
Domestic Work in the Colonial Context: Race, Color, and Power in
the Household
11 Introduction: Domestic Work in the Colonial Context: Race, Color,
and Power in the Household 245
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk
12 Slavery, Servility, Service: The Cape of Good Hope, the Natal Colony,
and the Witwatersrand, 1652–1914 254
Shireen Ally
13 The Servant Problem: African Servants the Making of European
Domesticity in Colonial Tanganyika  271
Robyn Allyce Pariser
14 Imperial Divisions of Labor: Chinese Servants and Racial
Reproduction in the White Settler Societies of California and the
Anglophone Pacific, 1870–1907  296
Andrew Urban
15 “The Matter of Wages Does not Seem to be Material”: Native American
Domestic Workers’ Wages under the Outing System in the United
States, 1880s–1930s 323
Victoria K. Haskins
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Contents vii
16 Who’s in Charge, The Government, the Mistress, or the Maid? Tracing
the History of Domestic Workers in Southeast Asia 346
Bela Kashyap
17 Migrant Domestic Work through the Lens of “Coloniality”: Narratives
from Eritrean Afro-Surinamese Women 366
Sabrina Marchetti
part 3
From Servitude to Domestic Service: The Role of International
Bodies, States and Elites for the Changing Conditions in Domestic
Work between the 19th and 20th Century
18 From Servitude to Domestic Service: The Role of
International Bodies, States and Elites for Changing
Conditions in Domestic Work Between the 19th and
20th Centuries. An Introduction 389
Silke Neunsinger
19 Reconfiguring Household Slavery in Twentieth Century Fes,
Morocco 400
R. David Goodman
20 Child Slavery, Sex Trafficking or Domestic Work? The League of
Nations and Its Analysis of the Mui Tsai System 428
Magaly Rodríguez García
21 Domestic work in Cyprus, 1925–1955: Motivations, Working
Conditions and the Colonial Legal Framework 451
Dimitris Kalantzopoulos
22 Employing Migrant Domestic Workers in Urban Yemen: A New Form
of Social Distinction 465
Marina de Regt
23 What is “Domestic Service” Anyway? Producing Household Labourers
in Austria (1918–1938) 484
Jessica Richter
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viii Contents
24 “The Problem of Domestic Service in Chile, 1924–1952” 511
Elizabeth Quay Hutchison
25 Decent Work for Domestics: Feminist Organizing, Worker
Empowerment, and the ILO 530
Eileen Boris and Jennifer N. Fish
Index 553
Acknowledgements
This book grew out of a workshop and a conference in Linz, Austria, in
September 2013. As organizers of the conference and editors of this book we
are indebted to a large number of people and organizations for their support.
The international advisory board of the conference commented on our first
draft for the call for papers. Barbro Budin from the International Food and
Allied Workers has helped us to establish the contact with the International
Network of Domestic Workers (indw). Without the General secretary of the
International Conference of Social and Labour History (ith), Eva Himmelstoss,
the support from the Arbeiterkammer Oberösterreich and especially the
Jägermayrhof in Linz and Gerhard Gstöttner-Hofer, the Professor van Winter
Foundation and Lex Heerma van Voss, The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, The
Labour Movement Archives and Library in Stockholm, we would not have
been able to arrange a conference of this size and quality.
Although this volume can only present a selection of contributions from the
conference, all presentations and comments during the workshop and the
conference were important for how this book project has developed. Thanks to
the participants, this conference has been intellectually stimulating and a lot of
fun. Vicky Kanyoka, national organizer of domestic workers in Tanzania then
from the indw which in the meantime has become the International Domestic
Workers Federation, joined us during the conference and reminded us about
what academic research can mean for the international network. We want to
thank her and Yvonne Svanström for the final comments, which brought
together both activists and researchers.
This manuscript has profited from the discussions with the contributors
and the comments from the anonymous referees. Karl Heinz Roth has dis-
cussed the question of the “surplus value” with us, Stan Nadel has edited the
language in our introductions, Jonas Söderqvist has made the index and, last
but not least, Marcel van der Linden has supported this project from the very
beginning.
Oxford, Wageningen and Stockholm in April 2015
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