Christine E. Bose,
"The Interconnections of Paid and Unpaid Domestic Work"
(page 2 of 3)
Nonetheless, there was a change in the structure of paid domestic
work and in the people who entered this field. Early in the twentieth
century, U.S. domestic workers were often young and single, usually
Irish or Scandinavian immigrant women, who performed "live in" domestic
work in another woman's home. But by the middle of the century,
domestic workers were more likely to be married women of color, such as
African American women and Latinas, who lived with their own families
and who pioneered the concept of paid housework as "day
work."[3] This
shift in the demographics of domestic workers was primarily due to the
growth of other employment opportunities for white immigrant or working
class women in factory or white-collar employment, while women of color
were trapped by occupational segregation and discrimination into
domestic or agricultural work. Technology had allowed more women to
make use of part-time, non-resident domestic workers for the remaining
"heavy" tasks such as laundry.
For at least two reasons the demographics of domestic workers changed
once again, starting in the 1960s. First, affirmative action regulations
opened up white collar and professional work to women of color, and they
left the field of domestic work when they could. And, second, at the
same time, shifts in the U.S. economy and social norms led to the
decline of the single breadwinner model and made two income families the
norm. Women were more likely to participate in the traditional labor
force, creating more need for domestic or carework, while at the same
time the supply of household workers decreased. On the other hand,
today's globalization makes economic survival difficult in poor
countries, while affluent countries have a strong demand for low wage
domestic labor, resulting in the "feminization of migration." Rhacel
Parreñas has described the result as an international division of
reproductive labor, transferring white women's domestic and carework
labor in developed countries to women of color who migrate from
developing nations as contract workers or undocumented
workers.[4]
In The Global Dimensions of Gender and Carework, Mary
Zimmerman, Jacqueline Litt, and I describe how migration and
citizenship have shaped who performs paid and unpaid carework and under
what conditions it is done.[5]
We see three outcomes of migration.
First, there is fluidity between paid and unpaid carework over a woman's
life course and across geographic space. For example, since paid and
unpaid carework are not mutually exclusive, women who migrate for paid
work continue to nurture their families at home even while working
overseas. Furthermore, stringent regulations on paid carework allow
women to migrate for a limited time period, so at some point they must
return to their home countries and perform unpaid carework.
Second, migrant careworkers often have only limited citizenship
rights and experience considerable surveillance by governments and
employers. For some migrants, paid work is prohibited and few
citizenship rights are available. Other paid careworkers are recruited
by employment agencies in developed or newly industrializing countries
from a limited set of developing countries usually defined by
immigration laws. For example, Taiwan's 1992 Employment Service Law
limits foreign workers to three unskilled labor occupations—domestic
workers, caregivers, and construction or manufacturing workers—as well
as six white-collar job categories. Since only workers from the
Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam are eligible for
these unskilled jobs, there is an implicit association between
perception of skill and race or nationality.[6]
In other words, racial
and ethnic occupational segregation and stereotyping are fostered by the
Taiwanese government's immigration restrictions on domestic workers and
jobs become racialized. Once women arrive to work under these temporary
labor contracts, they are constantly surveilled—their passports are
often confiscated, they are required to undergo regular health and
pregnancy tests, prohibited from marrying while employed, are given
limited opportunities to get out of the house and socialize with other
careworkers, and their pay is postponed—all of which limit their
substantive rights as citizens.
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