paid domestic work in the global north and south
Domestic work has been extensively studied within sociology, histo-ry, anthropology, gender studies and economics, among other fields.
It was one of the central questions in early feminist studies,
bring-31 National Sample Survey (NSS) data of 1999–2000 quoted in Mukhopadhay and Tendulkar (2006, 6).
32 For example, as a percentage of all teachers at the primary level, female techers had increased to about 40 % in 2004–05 (Palriwala & Neetha 2006, 21–22).
ing into focus the extensive time women, compared to men, spend in care and domestic work. The early feminist research of the 1960s and 1970s concentrated on women’s unpaid work in their own home (Bakan & Stasilius 1995, 303), and looked at domestic work as a bur-den imposed on women by patriarchy. Gradually paid domestic work entered the discussion, albeit often focussed on as a separate issue to women’s unpaid work in their own homes. Discussions on the former mainly looked at the lives of working class women, while those on the latter explored (white) middle class women and their housework.
While it is important to make a theoretical distinction between unpaid and paid domestic work, empirical studies have shown that the two realms are not necessarily unconnected in the lives of do-mestic workers (Romero 2002, 48). Paid and unpaid care work may overlap during different stages of women’s lives and settings (Zim-mermann et. al. 2006, 105) and women may shift between the posi-tions of maid and madam, or occupy both (Lan 2003, 204). This, however, is not common in India where hierarchies between workers and employers may be more rigid than in other countries. Moreo-ver, even if female domestic workers shift between paid and unpaid domestic work daily, they make a clear separation between the wage work and domestic chores in their own homes.
Modernisation theories in the 1970s had predicted the demise of paid domestic work, perceiving it as a vanishing occupation (Moors, 2003, 386; Romero 2002, 55; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001, 4). For ex-ample, Coser (1973, 39) saw domestic employee-employer relation-ships as pre-modern, as inheriting several traits from the traditional master-servant dynamic, and argued – in the case of the United States – that modern household appliances would replace domestic workers by reducing the household work hours. In total contrast to such a prognosis, paid domestic work has grown rapidly in recent
decades all over the world (Moors 2003, 386),33 making it one of the most common employment sectors for women in many countries.34 (Anderson 2001; Peberdy and Dinat 2005, 5).
The relevance and the size of the sector have contributed to an increasing interest in the analysis of paid domestic work since the 1980s, and particularly from the 1990s onwards. Today, ample schol-arly literature on paid domestic work exists. Most recent studies are located in a transnational context, studying paid domestic work performed by migrant workers in Europe (Anderson 2000; Chang 2006; Näre 2007; Gregson and Lowe 1994) and North America (Bakan & Stasiulis 1995; Chang 2006; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001;
Parreñas 2002; Repak 2006; Rollins 1985; Romero 2002; Spitzer et al. 2006). The literature, mostly focusing on Western countries, has emphasised that most work today is performed by female labour migrants from poorer countries. The same is true for paid domestic work in the wealthier East Asian countries of Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan as recent studies show (Cheng 2006; Consta-ble 1997; Dannecker 2005; Keezhangatte 2004; Lan 2003).35 This literature has established the overrepresentation of domestic workers from racial and ethnic minorities. (Anderson 2002; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2002; Romero 2002; Parreñas 2000). 36
33 My own region, the Nordic countries, can be seen as an exception for despite the recent increase in hire of domestic workers, including through the au pair system, hiring full-time workers is rare.
34 Hondagneu-Sotelo (2001, 246) claims that it was no coincidence that both Coser (1973) and another modernist Chaplan (1978 quoted in Hondagneu-Sotelo) were men who, in her view, underestimated not only the compatibility of modernisation and socioeconomic inequality, but also the seemingly endless activities required to maintain households and child care.
35 Keezhangatte (2004) explores changes in the social relations between Indian domestic workers in Hong Kong and their family members back in India; and Dannecker (2005) on how Bangladeshi women’s migration to Malaysia acted as an important agent for transformations of gender relations.
36 Studies have shown that the migrant domestic workers’ position depends considerably on their status as citizens/non-citizens (Bakan and Stasiulis 1995;
Zimmermann et al. 2006, 105) and that employers’ power over workers increases in the case of undocumented migrants (Anderson 2001, 30).
In spite of the vast differences between the ‘reception’ countries, the studies show considerable similarities in how workers are treated.
For example Filipina workers in the United States and Italy shared the experiences of dislocation related to partial citizenship, the pain of family separation, the experience of contradictory class mobility, and the feeling of social exclusion or non-beloning in the migrant community (Parreñas 2001a, 11–12).
The global restructuring of migration flows, with female workers entering domestic work, has resulted in the globalisation of the occu-pation and in the restructuring of the international division of repro-ductive labour (Parrenãs 2000, 561; 2001, 9).37 Hochshild’s (2001, 131) concept ‘global care chain’refers to ‘a series of personal links be-tween people across the globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring with global chains typically beginning in a poor(er) country and ending in a rich country’.38 This leads to an ‘international transfer of caretaking’, through which middle- and upper-class women trans-fer their previously unpaid carework to poor immigrant women in exchange for a relatively low wage (Parreñas 2000).39 The transfer, in turn, has led to a significant transnational ‘care deficit’ when domestic workers leave their own children in their country of origin (Zimmer-man et al. 2006, 14).40
37 Transnational migration of domestic workers has also been perceived as a response to the ‘crisis of care’ in richer countries (Zimmerman et al. 2006, 10), referring, among others, to the care of children, the elderly and the chronically ill.
38 Näre (2008) refers to ‘global care orders’ to capture the multiple, simultaneous, and multi-directional nature of the care flows.
39 This phenomenon has been illustrated in the recent hit movies Lukas Moodys son’s Mammoth (2009) and Alejandro González Inárritu’s Babel (2006) where domestic workers from the Philippines and Mexico, respectively, take care of the employers’ children while trying to cater for the needs of for their own children through transnational motherhood.
40 An interesting discussion on the emotions within the care chain has risen.
Hochshild (2003) argues that an ‘emotional deficit’ emerges as workers express love and affection to the employers’ children instead of their own at home, whereas Zimmermann et al. (2006, 18) point out that developing affection for an employing family does not necessarily signal that feeling for one’s own children back home have been removed or diverted.
Care chains also exist within countries, especially in the developing world, where workers move from rural to urban areas (Hochshild’s 2001), and this is particularly relevant in India. There paid domestic work is closely related to rural-urban labour migration (Neetha 2003, 132), and a large percentage of domestic workers in Indian cities are migrants from within the country and, to a lesser extent, from Nepal and Bangladesh. Contemporary migration is not merely an outcome of modernity, since people have “always” moved within the subcon-tinent of South Asia, including in pre-colonial times (Gardner and Osella 2003, vii; Van der Veer 1995, 4 quoted in Unnithan-Kumar 2003, 165).41 However, rural-urban migration has intensified since the 1970s, as a result of the post-independence focus of economic investments on the urban centres and the consequent stagnation of rural areas (Srinivasan 1997, 1). Despite more recent efforts to boost rural areas, major differences remain between rural areas in different states as well as within states. For example, in West Bengal there are some villages which by many standards fare better than they did a few decades ago and there are others with stagnating human devel-opment indicators (Tenhunen 2010). Migration does not only stem from poverty in the place of origin but also the growing demand for a cheap labour force in large cities, contributing to the flow of domestic workers from particular pockets of out-migration (Neetha 2003, 9).42 Thus, in the cities today, “the urban population is organised around the huge migrant and naturally increasing population, organised into the informal economy dominated by insecure work”, and internally segmented on the basis of caste, language, ethnic, and religious iden-tities (Patel 2006, 27–28). However, while the absolute urban popu-
41 The main focus of migration research has been on transnational migration but Gardner and Osella (2003, vii) emphasise the need to study migration within India, and note that there are important social and historical continuities between different types of migration.
42 In Delhi, hundreds of employment agencies specialise in the flow of female migrants from such pocket areas (Neetha 2003, 9).
lation has increased significantly, urbanisation in India has been rela-tively slow in the past forty to fifty years compared with many other developing countries (Mohan 2006, 59).
Recently, Ray and Qayum (2009, 19) who studied domestic work in Kolkata, India, criticised the transnational discussions for the tele-ological error that domestic service would follow the same trajectory from a feudal to a capitalist mode everywhere, as well as for the uni-versalism which assumes a uniformity in the effects of capitalism.
Moreover, they make the important note that the literature on paid domestic work in the North:
...reflects the unease with the “return” of an occupation and so-cial relation seemingly at odds with life in a “modern”, demo-cratic, postfeminist world, especially for the generations that came of age in the period between the 1960s and 1990s when servant-keeping had declined (Ray and Qayum 2009, 12).
In India, and presumably in most countries of the South, domestic serv-ice has never ceased to exist, and as Qayum and Ray (2003, 13) continue:
In contemporary India, keeping servants is not seen as contra-dictory to capitalist modernity, and no justification is needed for hiring domestic workers. Rather, in an odd reversal, the middle class households without servants are those that feel compelled to justify their position.
These different trajectories, on the one hand, and the significance of paid domestic work in the South, on the other, make it necessary to have contextualised empirical research on these areas. This study is one attempt to do this.43
43 Apart from studies on India, individual studies on countries of the South include, for example, Shah’s (2000) analysis on domestic relations in Nepal;
Peberdy and Dinat’s (2005) study on South Africa, and Dumont’s (2000) study on the Philippines.
previous research on paid domestic work in india
Considering the importance of paid domestic work in India, there are relatively few studies on it, albeit probably more than on any other country of the South. In the study of Indian history, domestic labour has until recently been an unexplored area (Banerjee 1996, 5). How-ever, Banerjee’s (1996, 2004) insightful analyses of domestic manuals for middle class women in Bengal in the late 19th century44 are an ex-ception and important for my work because of significant similarities between employer attitudes then and today.45 The manuals, however, only portray the employers’ views. Although ‘a new labour history’ has emerged in India since the 1990s, broadening to include previously almost invisible groups such as ‘unorganised’ home-based workers, casual labourers, self-employed artisans and others ( Joshi 2003, 6), the historical voices of domestic workers are still missing, reflecting that historical studies on working class women’s aspirations and ac-tivities are virtually non-existent (Tenhunen 2006, 110). Working class history is tied to its location ( Joshi, 2003, 15), and the location of servants’ work, at the homes of others, makes writing their history particularly challenging.46
By contrast, there is no paucity of colonial period autobiographies and personal narratives of middle class and elite women (Banerjee 2004, 682). Domestic workers alongside with other female workers’
groups such as washer women and prostitutes, were among those lower-class female figures which frequently appeared in the Indian 19th century literature in the new social milieu of the new middle
44 Many of the accounts on colonial history concentrate on West Bengal, which was an economically and culturally central area for the British and hosted the colonial capital Calcutta.
45 Domestic manuals were written for British women in India, too. For example, The Englishwoman in India gave advice on the treatment of servants (Chaudhuri 1988, 530).
46 Several studies on Indian labour history concentrate on one, often industrial or artisanal location within a particular city; see for example Joshi (2003) on fac-tory workers in Kanpur; Chatterjee (2001) on tea plantation workers in Darjeel-ing; and Kumar (1988) on artisanal workers in Banaras.
class (Chatterjee 1993, 127). Servants, as “the other”, came to serve two purposes, establishing middle class hegemony and paternalism within the families and being crucial determinants of the character and status of middle class women (Banerjee 1996, 8; 2004, 683). The relationship between employers and workers was based mainly on a difference implicit in the simultaneously nurturing and oppressive aspects of familial ties (Banerjee 2004, 683).
Apart from Mehta’s (1960) early exploration into the domestic servant class in (then) Bombay and Tellis-Nayak’s (1983) explora-tion into domestic patron-client arrangements in South India, most contemporary research has emerged in the last ten to fifteen years, mainly within sociology, anthropology and labour studies.
One research stream, studies with a migration perspective point to the importance of kin and other social networks among migrant domestic workers in India (Neetha 2002, 2003; Raghuram 1999).
In Delhi, Parvati Raghuram (1999, 11) showed that migrant female domestic workers used social networks both to support and to ex-ploit other migrant workers. Migrant women from rural areas ap-pear as the most important “pool” for the urban domestic labour force (Neetha 2003, 132). This can be explained by the gendered nature of the occupation and the ease with which migrants can enter it (ibid).
Some of the workers I interviewed are labour migrants and differ-ences in the workers’ work-life trajectories in my data stem partly from the migratory background. Thus, while my main focus is not on migrant labourers, I discuss migration as it emerges from the data.
Moreover, my focus is on current labour relations, and therefore an analysis of the migration processes and dynamics is mostly beyond the scope of this study. In any case, the existence a large percentage of migrant workers has implications for the hierarchies in the sector, for the efforts to unionise domestic workers, and potentially for regula-tory efforts in the sector.
Other recent studies on paid domestic work in India have explored the role of caste, gender, and class in the sector. In a study among
fourteen dalit female sweepers, workers who specify in waste removal and toilet cleaning, Raghuram (2001) showed how the intersections of caste and gender in suburban Delhi stratify domestic work. She demonstrated that asymmetries within society are reproduced and reinforced through paid domestic work. In spite of being at the bot-tom of the caste hierarchy (see Chapter 2), the sweepers had man-aged to maintain their caste-based occupational niche, and to use the caste to their advantage. However, the renegotiated gendered division of labour between the women and their husbands mostly benefit-ted the latter. Raka Ray (2000b), using data from interviews with thirty employers and thirty workers from Kolkata in 1998 and 1999, explored gender ideologies and changes in the gendered division of labour, showing how male domestic workers navigate the contrast between their low-status work and the West Bengali ideal of hege-monic masculinity. Both of these studies have been helpful in under-standing the complexity in how gender interacts with other social dimensions and organises domestic work.
Domestic labour relations have recently been analysed as class relations by Anne Waldrop (2004), who showed how thebuilding of fences around upper middle class areas, one aspect of a broader differentiation in the urban class structure, was directly related to domestic workers, one of the main commuter groups to enter these areas. Sara Dickey’s (2000a; 2000b) insightful analyses focus on the meaning of class within paid domestic work in Madurai in South India. Drawing from interviews with twenty-seven workers and twenty-eight employers (2000a, 35), she emphasised the opposition-al nature of their labour relations, which for her are first and fore-most a matter of class. Raka Ray and Seemin Qayum (2003; 2009) studied the culture of post-colonial domestic servitude between the employing and servant classes in Kolkata, and Rachel Tolen (2000) explored the knowledge transfers across class boundaries between domestic workers and their employers in Chennai (former Madras)
in Tamil Nadu. Kathinka Froystad (2003; 2005)47, through empiri-cal data acquired mainly among employer families in Kanpur Uttar Pradesh, acknowledged the importance of class in domestic labour relations, but emphasised the persistence of caste in the reproduc-tion of master-servant relareproduc-tions. She noted that the upper-caste habit of employing servants contributes to the reproduction of no-tions of caste, untouchability, and upper-caste superiority (2005, 93).
By and large, the literature shows that practices in domestic la-bour relations are strikingly similar in different countries around the world (see, for example, Anderson 2000; Cheng 2006; Dickey 2000a;
Ray and Qayum 2009; Romero 2002; Shah 2000; Tolen 2000). The structures within which domestic labour relations are established differ considerably in relation to legislation, welfare systems, and gen-dered divisions of labour, but the similarities, for example, in how the employers and workers talk about each other, show that analysis of domestic labour relations reveals something essential about human nature and behaviour.
To summarise, there is an important body of recent literature on paid domestic work in India. Fruitfully for my work, Dickey (2000a, 2000b), Froystad (2003; 2005), Raghuram (1999, 2001), Ray (2000b) and Tolen (2000) all bring into focus the hierarchies of class, caste, and gender, and my analysis in Jaipur resembles theirs in this respect. However, apart from short referrals to the age of the workers and to the existence of child workers (Tellis-Nayak 1983;
Neetha 2001), previous studies have paid little attention to ‘age’and
‘life course’ and how they relate to paid domestic work.
Within the literature on child labour, the existence of child domes-tic workers has been explored either on a general level (Blagbrough &
Glynn 1999) or with a focus on a particular country, for example Haiti
47 Her investigation into domestic labour relations are part of a broader research which deals with upper-caste Hindus’ tendencies of ‘othering’ of Muslims and dalits in Kanpur.
( Janak 2000); Ivory Coast ( Jacquemin 2004; 2006); the Philippines (Camacho 1999); and Vietnam (Rubenson & Thi Van Anh & Hojer
& Johansson 2004). In India, migration trajectories of young girls from Tamil Nadu to other states for paid domestic work have been discussed (Varrell 2002), but given their explicit focus on children, these studies have not looked at how age stratifies the overall sector of this work. Nor, with a notable exception of Shah’s (2000) study on domestic child workers and employers in Nepal, have they analysed the work-life trajectories of child domestic workers and the role of work during their life-course, which to me seem important. My aim is to consider paid domestic work and children’s work in combina-tion, and to explore the place of child domestic workers in the overall workforce in Indian homes.
With the exception of Chigateri’s (2007) study of organising among domestic workers in Bangalore, Neetha’s (2003) study in
With the exception of Chigateri’s (2007) study of organising among domestic workers in Bangalore, Neetha’s (2003) study in