Middle-class Women and Domestic Work in India and the United States: Caste, Race and Patriarchy

This study compares middle-class women’s experience of domestic work in India and the United States(US), highlighting similarities in how domestic work is organised in its paid and unpaid forms across both sites. The focus on middle-class women’s experience as unpaid workers and employers of domestic workers provides an insight into how the social and economic values of domestic work are determined. Despite social and political differences, the political economies of India and the US and interlocking systems of oppression including patriarchy, neoliberalism, caste and race have produced similarities in the undervaluation of domestic work at both sites.

Making Migrants’ Input Invisible: Intersections of Privilege and Otherness From a Multilevel Perspective

For some years, the German public has been debating the case of migrant workers receiving German benefits for children living abroad, which has been scandalised as a case of “benefit tourism.” This points to a failure to recognise a striking imbalance between the output of the German welfare state to migrants and the input it receives from migrant domestic workers. In this article I discuss how this input is being rendered invisible or at least underappreciated by sexist, racist, and classist practices of othering. To illustrate the point, I will use examples from two empirical research projects that looked into how families in Germany outsource various forms of reproductive work to both female and male migrants from Eastern Europe. Drawing on the concept of othering developed in feminist and postcolonial literature and their ideas of how privileges and disadvantages are interconnected, I will put this example into the context of literature on racism, gender, and care work migration. I show how migrant workers fail to live up to the normative standards of work, family life, and gender relations and norms set by a sedentary society. A complex interaction of supposedly “natural” and “objective” differences between “us” and “them” are at work to justify everyday discrimination against migrants and their institutional exclusion. These processes are also reflected in current political and public debates on the commodification and transnationalisation of care.

The meaning of social media for women domestic workers during the Covid-19 pandemic

Social media plays an important role during the Covid-19 pandemic, where physical activity and community mobility are limited. Especially for women who work as domestic workers who live with their employers. Social media is the only means for them to connect with the outside world.Previous studies have shown that a person's identity can be shown through the front stage and the back stage. Theoretically, this study analyzing how women domestic workers identify themselves through the online realm using social media. This study uses a constructivist paradigm and a qualitative approach. The research participants were three women domestic worker who were obtained purposively using the snowball sampling technique. Data was collected through in-depth interviews and observation to participants. The results of the study show that social media allows participants to construct a reality in the online realm that is different from their situation in real life. Therefore, social media has a very important meaning for participants, because with social media, participants feel their position is equal to other users. They also have access to create a front stage and a back stage, where they can create their ideal self-identity. The aspect of self that are presented by the participants on the front stage is individuals who are successful and happy with their lives. For participants, this is an aspect of their ideal self, even though it does not represent their actual state.

The Coaching of Family Welfare and Empowerment Group of Krueng Barona Jaya through the Making of Soap

The Krueng Barona Jaya is a sub-district in Aceh Besar District, Aceh Province, Indonesia. This sub-district is located near the Ulee Kareng area, Banda Aceh. The Krueng Barona Jaya sub-district has at least more than 16,000 people spread across a number of locations. Most of the residents in Krueng Barona sub-district earn their living as farmers, domestic workers, civil servants, entrepreneurs, and 31.53% have temporary jobs. This situation can be improved by providing various training to residents to help them establish their own or group businesses. The community service activity is intended to improve public understanding about technology of making liquid soap. To achieve this objective the team sincerely helped provided training on the process of making liquid soap for mothers in the family-welfare-empowerment group. The results of interviews with the community and sub-district officials showed that the women of the group were very enthusiastic in participating in soap making training and other similar activities. The results of interviews with the community and sub-district officials showed that the women of the group were very enthusiastic in participating in soap making training and other similar activities. The results of the discussion indicated that the participants’ mastery of making soap was very good. This training and coaching opens people’s mind to change their habits and thinking patterns.

Mapping domestic workers’ organizing globally

Domestic workers face challenges for organizing, e.g. decentralization of the workforce, nature of the employment relationship. This article analyses, based on a multiple country-comparison, how domestic workers organize despite constrictions. We identify three forms of organizing: the trade union model and the association model (Shireen Ally). We propose, though, an additional third model, the ‘hybrid type’: domestic workers organize ‘amongst themselves’ in associations and at the same time these associations are linked to or integrated into trade unions, which provides representation, services and contact with other workers. Related to this finding, we see a trend of an ‘emerging trade unionism’. Which means that we tend to find more trade union-related forms of organizing than a decade ago. One explanatory factor is the “governance struggle” of winning the International Labour Organization’s Convention “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” in 2011, which led to an increased collaboration and trust-building between organized domestic workers and trade unions.

Re-examining the middle-class thesis: Class profiles of families employing migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong

To what extent is employing migrant domestic workers (MDWs) a middle-class practice in Hong Kong? I drew quantitative data from the Population Census and a representative household survey to test the middle-class thesis. The results show that a significant proportion of the families that currently employ or had ever employed MDWs were not from middle-class backgrounds. As the practice of hiring MDWs spread to families from lower socio-economic background, it may be expected that the working and living conditions of MDWs may deteriorate due to the fewer resources of these families.

Impact of foreign domestic workers on the fertility decision of households: evidence from Hong Kong

A potential solution to low fertility is the employment of foreign domestic workers (FDWs), who substitute child-rearing and housework duties, thus reducing child-rearing costs. Recent studies argue that the flow of low-skilled foreign workers into the childcare sector influences fertility choice. However, these studies mainly use the availability of FDWs in the local area as the causal inference and focus on Western countries, making it difficult to identify individual direct effects or generalize the findings to other countries. To bridge this research gap and examine the impacts, this study uses household data from the Hong Kong census. Employing ordinary least squares, the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment, and the instrumental variable approach, we find that households that employ live-in FDWs give birth to more children. Moreover, the heterogeneous analysis reveals that women's greater proportional contribution to household income has a positive impact on households' fertility response after employing the FDWs.

Mapping Evidence of the Power Relations Between Domestic Workers and Their Employers in Sub-Saharan Africa: a Scoping Review Protocol

Background Across various intersectional lines, including race, class and gender, domestic work is profoundly exploitative than other comparable occupations. The private household, within which domestic workers (DWs) work and function, provides for a space of complex and nuanced dynamics of power. According to the International Labour Organization there are more than 65 million DWs in the world, and Africa is the third largest employer of DWs, with more than 5.2 million DWs reported. The inception of the Domestic Workers Convention (No. 189) (C189) in 2011 sought to protect DWs from all forms of exploitation and discrimination in the workplace, the convention brought global attention to the violation of their human rights and inequalities within the domestic work sector. Although there are more than 5.2 million DWs in Africa, 39/46 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have not ratified this convention. Due to the extremely low ratification of the C189 and scanty evidence on the power relations between DWs and their employers in SSA, this scoping review is relevant to detect the extent and characteristics of domestic work in SSA since the introduction of C189 in September 2011. Methods The literature that will be included in this scoping review are published peer-reviewed articles, grey literature from relevant departmental websites, humanitarian organisations and theses. Electronic searches of databases and search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, EBSCOhost, EBSCO Discovery Service, Scopus, World Bank and International Labour Organization (ILO) for literature published between September 2011-2021. Other search engines will include screening citations and references of appearing literature within the stipulated time period. All retrieved literature will be exported to an Endnote X9 library. Duplicate documents will be deleted prior to commencement of title screening. An adapted Mixed Method Appraisal Tool (MMAT), developed in a Google form, will be used by two reviewers to quality assess and describe all included studies (qualitative, mixed methods and quantitative). Discussion We anticipate mapping relevant literature on the power relations between domestic workers and their employers in sub-Saharan Africa. Once analysis and summary is finalised, the data will be useful to guide future research.