Les domesticités

Description

Long ignored by public authorities, paid domestic work is now increasingly regulated. Once on the margins of academic inquiry, it has become a subject of research in its own right. The International Labour Organization estimates that there are more than 100 million domestic workers worldwide.

At the intersection of wage labor and family relations, domestic work encompasses a wide range of realities. The tasks performed, types of employment, characteristics of domestic workers, their living and working conditions, their life trajectories, and their collective struggles are far from homogeneous. Who performs domestic work for others, and who delegates it? Do forms of domestic service share enduring characteristics across time and different geographical contexts? What economic and political roles do they occupy today?

This book approaches domestic work as a social relationship that crystallizes gendered, racial, and socioeconomic inequalities. These inequalities are continuously reinforced by globalization and contemporary capitalism.