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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 14

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Feminization of labor: Domestic work between regulation and


intimacy

Time seems to stand still as we flick idly through glossy


magazines decorated by pictures of celebrity hands on mums
and dads. They smile at the camera with perfect hair and
make-up, holding their children as they pose in impeccably
decorated living rooms or well looked after designer gardens.
Despite full agendas and demanding careers, they give the
impression that they still find time for their children and their
households. How do they manage it? This is the question asked
by the average reader of these magazines, who are mostly
female and less affluent. In their search for answers they will
question their own personal abilities and that of other household
members. Certainly the female reader will wonder about the
distribution of domestic work in their households and notice
that unfortunately this work remains their burden.
Broadly culturally perceived as women's terrain, the
historically established correlation between domestic work and
femininity remains unbroken (Federici, 2004). Domestic work
has been naturalized as labor that women do because of their
innate caring faculties. It is, thus, considered inferior to other
forms of work (Bock & Duden, 1977; Chaney & Garcia Castro,
1993; Delphy, 1984; Duden, 2009, Federici, 2004; Hausen, 2000).
Domestic workers continue to be subjected to poorly paid,
precarious, abusive and exploitative working conditions (ETUC,
2005, 2012; ILO, 2012; WIEGO1). Further, the contribution of
domestic work to national and international economic growth is
silenced in GNP calculations (Himmelweit, 1995; Melo,
Pessanha, & Parreiras, 2005; Prez Orozco, 2010; Waring,
1999). This persistent social devaluation of physical, emotional
and intellectual capacities and practices which engage with
well-being and care of ourselves, others and our environment,
is reinforced by the constraints produced by migration policies
(see in this volume Anderson; Assis; Courtis & Pacecca; Gil
Arajo & Gonzalez; Gorban & Tizziani; Gutirrez Rodrguez).
Due to the increased participation of women in the labor
market, which has led to a demand for domestic and care
workers (ILO, 2012), the affective and emotional dimension as
well as the persistent social devaluation of domestic work has
come to the fore of current public and academic debates. As the
articles here demonstrate, domestic work in private households
remains a highly un-regulated work sector. Even in countries
such as Spain, where domestic workers' organizations have
succeeded in including domestic work into the general social
security system (see in this volume Gil Arajo & Gonzalez;
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.07.009

Gutirrez Rodrguez), these achievements are challenged


through the economic crisis impacting on private households,
resulting in lower pay and lack of social benefit coverage.
As some of the articles in this volume show with regard to
Spain, Germany and the UK (Anderson; Gil Arajo & Gonzalez;
Gutirrez Rodrguez) the policy provisions addressing the sphere
of domestic work are mainly centered on care work. These
programs rarely address domestic work as a whole and the State
leaves domestic work to private households. Thus, domestic
work continues to be socially perceived as a private matter.
Further, in times of austerity measures and public spending cuts
in Western Europe, the policy provisions addressing care and
domestic work are being severely cut.
Unfortunately, very little has changed since the 1970s
when the women's movements highlighted domestic work
as devalued labor (cf., Benera, 1979; Dalla Costa & James,
1972; Molyneux, 1979; Saffioti, 1979). This debate led to an
international scholarship interested in questions of multiple and simultaneous oppression (Azerdo, 2002; Brito da
Motta, 1977; Castro, 1993; Chaney & Garcia Castro, 1993;
Phizacklea & Wolkowitz, 1995; Kofes, 1994; Rollins,
1985; Romero, 2002) as well as global inequalities and
social reproduction (Bakker & Gill, 2003; Benera, 1979;
Constable, 1997; Gogna, 1981; Jelin, 1977; Melo, 2002;
Molyneux, 1979; Saffioti, 1979; Zurita, 1983). Continued
engagement with these issues was conducive for more recent
research on care-chains and the reshuffling of global inequalities
(cf., Assis, 2011; Caixeta, Gutirrez Rodrguez, Tate, & Vega
Sols, 2004; Constable, 1997; Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2002;
Fleischer, 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Lan, 2006; Lutz, 2008;
Oso & Parella, 2012; Parreas Salazar, 2001; Pedone, Agrela,
& Gil Araujo, 2012), as well as the feminization of the
international economy (cf., Barker & Feiner, 2010; Bedford &
Rai, 2010).
This special issue draws on these debates by engaging with
an intersectional approach (see in this volume Bernadino-Costa)
and taking a comparative perspective in looking at the
organization of paid domestic work in Europe (Spain, Germany
and the UK) and South America (Argentina and Brazil). It does
so by, on the one hand, re-addressing the question of State
regulation in the organization of care and domestic work in
private households, and on the other, by exploring the dynamics
of intimacy in private households through the focus on the

interpersonal relationship between domestic workers and their


employers.
Highlighting local particularities and global commonalities,
this issue, thus, engages with the analysis of domestic work as
sites of the negotiation of social boundaries (cf., Anderson, 2000;
Brites, 2001; Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010; Hondagneu-Sotelo,
2001; Kofes, 1994; Lan, 2006; Saffioti, 1979) and the examination of domestic work as emotional and affective labor (Brites,
2001; Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010; Hochschild, 2008; Illouz, 2007;
Vega Sols, 2009; Zelizer, 2009). This requires an analysis of the
negotiation of intimacy in private households as reflecting the
nation's structural dynamics of inclusion and exclusion based on
race, ethnicity and migration (see in this volume Anderson;
Assis; Bernadino-Costa; Courtis and Pacecca; Gil Arajo &
Gonzalez; Gutirrez Rodrguez), as well as an understanding
of the affective and emotional interactions between employers
and domestic workers (see in this volume Brites, Gutirrez
Rodrguez; Gorban & Tizziani).
While not identical with the European situation, the social
organization of domestic work in South America is similarly
organized as the articles on Brazil and Argentina in this volume
discuss (Assis; Bernadino-Costa; Courtis & Pacecca; Gorban &
Tizziani). As is the case in Western Europe the organization of
domestic work in private households relies on household
members' private arrangements, with women in charge of
organizing this work. In poor households, domestic work is
mainly delivered by the women in the households or by
their female relatives, friends and neighbors. More affluent
households, (cf., Anderson, 2000; Chaney & Garcia Castro, 1993;
Momsen, 1999), opt to employ another person, mainly a woman,
to deliver this work. Frequently, these women belong to an
economically, racially, ethnically and religious subordinated
social group.
As all the chapters in this volume show, the reshuffling
of gender, racial and class divides on a global level are
re-negotiated on a local level (Anderson, 2000; Azerdo,
2002; Cox, 2006; Davis, 1983; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001;
Kofes, 1994; Lan, 2006; Parreas Salazar, 2001; Rollins,
1985; Romero, 2002; Sharpless, 2010).
The organization of domestic work is shaped by the local
processes of marginalization and subordination articulated in
the gender, race and class stratification of the labor market,
which migration policies reactivate these divisions in new
ways (cf., Assis & Siquiera, 2009; Barbosa, 2000; Gutirrez
Rodrguez, 2010; Herrera & Ramrez, 2008; Herrera & Yepez
de Castillo, 2007; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Jelin, 1977;
Kofman, 2012). Thus, migration policies create different legal
residency categories or the position of illegal residency,
introducing differing degrees of treatment and (lack of)
protection for workers. As the articles on this topic in this
issue demonstrate (see in this volume Anderson; Assis; Courtis
& Pacecca; Gil Arajo & Gonzalez; Gorban & Tizziani; Gutirrez
Rodrguez), migrant women, employed as domestic workers in
private households very often earn less than the national
domestic workers, work under precarious conditions and are
open to physical, psychological, emotional and sexual abuses
(ETUC, 2005; ETUC, 2012; FRA, 2011; Lalani, 2011).
In her article Nations, migration and domestic labor: the
case of the UK, Bridget Anderson discusses private households as sites of negotiations of national belonging. Engaging
with the mechanisms of immigration control, Anderson explores

Editorial

the symbolic function of delineating the border between Us


and Them in the family by focusing on the implications of two
types of visa for domestic work recruitment in the UK, domestic
worker accompanying an employer and au pair, for the
construction of ideas about the family, work, and Britishness. In a
similar vein, Sandra Gil Arajo and Tania Gonzalez argue in their
article, International migration, public policies and domestic
work: Latin American migrant women in the Spanish domestic
work sector, that the boundaries of exclusion inserted by
migration policies impact on the private households employing
domestic workers in Spain. Focusing on the case of Latin
American women employed in the care and domestic work
sectors, Gil Arajo and Gonzalez explore the connection between
migration policies, family policies, gender regimes and the
foreignization of the domestic work sector. They thus relate
processes of feminization to migratory policies and patterns of
migration, the features of the welfare state and the organization
of work. A similar approach to the question of feminization,
migration and domestic work is outlined in Corina Courtis and
Mara Ins Pacecca's article on Domestic work and international
migration in Latin America: Exploring trajectories of regional
migrant women in domestic service in Argentina. Focusing on
the case of Argentina they examine the working conditions and
backgrounds of migrant women mostly from Peru, Bolivia
and Paraguay working in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan
area.
Continuing the analysis of the relationship between migration policy and domestic work, Glauci de Olivera Assis in her
article Gender and migration from invisibility to agency: the
routes of Brazilian women in contemporary migrations on
Brazilian migrant women working as cleaners in New England,
United States, stresses these women's professionalization strategies. Despite suffering marginalization and exclusion through
being made illegal, these women find ways to build on
their professional experiences prior to migration in order
to improve their opportunities in the country of arrival.
They experience migration as an opportunity for entrepreneurial ventures, resulting from their experiences with various social
networks. Set in this context housecleaning becomes a strategy
that enables these women to travel and insert themselves into
the project of transnational migration.
All these articles delve into an understanding of the
interlocking of domestic work with migration regimes and
processes of racialization, a perspective which is also addressed
by Encarnacin Gutirrez Rodrguez's article on Domestic work
affective labor: on feminization and the coloniality of labor.
drawing on research conducted in private households on the
relationship between domestic workers and their employers in
Western Europe (Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010), this paper argues
for an understanding of domestic work as affective labor.
Expanding on feminist debates on domestic work's constitutive
value for societal reproduction, Gutirrez Rodrguez considers
the affective dimension in which social boundaries relying
on the logic of feminization and the coloniality of power are
negotiated, enacted and performed. Drawing on interviews
conducted with domestic workers and their employers
the dis-animating, but also animating energies circulating in the households are discussed and situated within the
societal context of migration policies and the organization of
domestic work. Dborah Gorbn and Ania Tizziani's article on
Inferiorisation and deference: the construction of social

Editorial

hierarchies in the context of paid domestic labor focuses on the


enactment of social distinctions in the encounter between
domestic workers and their employers. Based on qualitative research on affluent private households in Buenos
Aires, Tizziani and Gorbn explore how employers set
social boundaries and construct the domestic worker as
socially inferior in order to legitimize their attempt to
control them, but also how the domestic workers undermine
the employers' imposition of superiority.
Countering subordination and subverting the stereotypes
of social inferiority imposed on domestic workers by the
employers, is also a topic that Jurema Brites raises in her
article Domestic service, affection and inequality: elements
for a Study of Subordination. Based on an ethnographic study
conducted in Brazilian middle and upper class households,
Brites discusses the concept of the stratified complementary,
related to Shelle Colen's (1995) notion of stratified reproduction, by focusing on the affective relationship between
employers and domestic workers. On this basis, she states
that the social hierarchies established in the relationship
between domestic workers and their employers are enhanced by an emotional ambiguity. Processes of subordination
are thus unintentionally sustained by moments of affection
expressed by the domestic workers and employers alike, but
embedded in a matrix of power relations in which the
domestic worker is still treated as a subordinate even when
she has become the surrogate mother of the household's
children.
As the articles by Brites, Gutirrez Rodrguez; Gorban and
Tizziani demonstrate, the intimate relationships established
between domestic workers and their employers are driven by
both positive and negative affects. The social hierarchies in the
private households, circumscribed by national policies of
belonging (Anderson); migration policies (Courtis & Pacecca;
Gil Arajo & Gonzalez; Gutirrez Rodrguez) and the persistent
gendered division of work, are enacted, negotiated and produced in the encounter between domestic workers and their
employers.
We conclude the special issue with some considerations
regarding the different strategies of claiming agency and
ownership of domestic workers and domestic workers'
organizations. As Joaze Bernadino-Costa suggests in his
article Intersectionality and female domestic workers'
unions in Brazil, scholarship on domestic work needs to
shift the focus from an analysis of multiple oppression to
one that departs from intersectionality as a vantage point for
political organizing. Taking the experience of domestic work
trade union organizers in Brazil, Bernadino-Costa argues for a
consideration of these women's strategies of professionalizing
domestic work. By so doing, Bernadino-Costa concentrates on
these women's political strategy to form a public agenda for
female domestic workers' unions and their negotiations with
other trade unions, as well as the feminist and Afro-descendent
movements in Brazil.
Attending to the various proposals for understanding the
interconnections of migration, domestic work and affect, this
special issue attempts to broaden the analytical framework of
production and reproduction by considering the affective,
emotional and caring dimension of domestic work. It also
aims to establish a dialog between Western European and
Latin American scholarship enabling us to understand the

persistence of feminization and coloniality of labor expressed


in the societal organization of domestic work and through
new systems of social classification/categorization fuelled by
migration control policies.
Endnote
1
See http://wiego.org/informal-economy/occupational-groups/domesticworkers.

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Encarnacin Gutirrez Rodrguez


Corresponding author.
Jurema Brites

Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 512

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Nations, migration and domestic labor: The case of the UK


Bridget Anderson
Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 58 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6QS, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 4 February 2014

s y n o p s i s
Immigration controls serve a crucial symbolic function of delineating the nation and the
people, the boundaries of Us and Them and state legitimacy is, through immigration policy,
linked to ideas of nation building and preservation (Honig, 2003). Labor migration policy is not
simply an instrumental response to the needs of employers but highly symbolic and politically
contested terrain that assumes intense public significance. This is particularly evident in the
case of domestic workers, who are embedded in the family, the heart of the nation. This paper
explores the ways in which migration policies on domestic work not only produce a
subordinated workforce, but reflect and construct ideas about family, work, and Britishness,
with a particular focus on two visa types: domestic worker accompanying an employer and au
pair visas.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In 2002 Wimmer and Glick Schiller famously alerted us to
methodological nationalism, the assumption that the
nation/state/society is the natural social and political form
of the modern world. They argued that mainstream social
science was infused with methodological nationalism, and
that the study of migration in particular had been limited by
this. The significance of the study of transnational communities lay in this epistemic move away from methodological
nationalism rather than in the identifying of new objects of
observation (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002). They were
absolutely right to identify the importance of de-naturalizing
the nation state, and to point out the ways in which
intellectual work and research participates in the construction of the categories of state, nation, migrant and citizen. In
this paper, I want to consider the implications of this for
research on migrant domestic workers, but I also want to
argue that resisting methodological nationalism doesn't
mean we should not take the nation seriously. On the
contrary, we must acknowledge its importance in order to
see beyond it.
Nationalism is integrally related to the projects of race
and gender, which all are permanently under construction.
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.005

How ideas of the nation are linked to states' naturalization


policies has received some attention, but much less has been
paid to how these are linked to states' discourses about their
immigration policies.1 In the UK, social relations are increasingly dismissed by social policy: those in receipt of housing
benefits are required to move from neighborhoods where
they have lived for years if their rent is deemed too
expensive, single parents are being required to look for
work and so on. What matters in an age of austerity, it seems,
are questions of economic costs and benefits. Yet national
social relations have increased prominence. So government
rhetoric dictates that employers' principal consideration
should not be the most efficient, profitable worker, but
whether or not they are British though of course
immigration policy is more complicated because of EU
citizenship. In this paper I want to consider how policies on
immigration contribute to nation building in the UK. More
particularly, I'm interested in how policies on immigration
and domestic work reflect and reproduce ideas about
Britishness, Britain, the family and work. This is a complementary approach to the research that argues for the
importance of both acknowledging the UK's need for
domestic workers and understanding why it is that this
demand is met so overwhelmingly by migrant women. I'll

B. Anderson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 512

begin by considering the relation between immigration,


states and nations, and the production of us and them,
looking at how this is manifest in UK policy documents. I'll
then examine the two UK visas that have been available for
domestic work, looking at how they encapsulate certain
assumptions about domestic work in the UK, about the
relation between family and work, and ideas of equality,
slavery and freedom.
States, immigration and nation
Nations are imagined as groups of people who share a
common culture, language and history. They are, as described
by Benedict Anderson, imagined communities because the
members of even the smallest nation will never know most
of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them,
yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.
Because of their association with history and with kin, there
is a strong element of ethnic myth around nation-ness,
whether the promotion of nation as nationalism is in
opposition to colonialism, or in opposition to the perceived
intrusion of ethnic outsiders.
Despite its sometimes archaic feel, the nation continues to
have resonance in contemporary liberal democracies. States
are represented as having to act in the national interest,
which is imagined as different from the interests of the state
per se. It is important to recognize that when it comes to
immigration policies, states must be seen as prioritizing the
interests of the nation and the people in ways that go
beyond simply a response to the demands of capital.
Notoriously, in 2009, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown
coined the phrase British jobs for British workers. This was
taken up by a wide range of political actors, including
elements of the trade union movement and Far Right parties.
Its logic underpins immigration policy and rhetoric, which
constructs migrants as a residual labor force, to be tapped
only when states lack the skills or otherwise cannot fill
particular vacancies. Of course in practice it is not easy to say
what is a British job given the complex and multinational
relations of global capital. British worker is equally tricky,
particularly as those with settlement status and EU nationals
must not be discriminated against because of their country of
birth. Nevertheless the call reveals that national interest is
bound up with national identity as much as with GDP and
balance of payments. Immigration policy is not only functional but a highly symbolic and politically contested terrain
that assumes intense public significance.
Liberal theorists who are concerned with justifying immigration controls often point to the importance of borders for
delineating the community. They argue, for instance, that
political and legal institutions embody values that atomized
individuals cannot generate themselves (Miller, 1995). Importantly, modern liberal democratic states portray themselves
not as arbitrary collections of people hung together by a
common legal status and/or simply by common descent but as
communities of shared value. Nation states are therefore not
just legally constructed but are communities of value. One
political challenge for liberal immigration states is that the way
in which people are legally constructed, (i.e. formal citizenry, as
those who cannot be refused entry or deported because their
claim to belong is recognized) cannot be translated to fit the

powerfully imagined category of the community of value.


There is tension between the idea of belonging to the people
by birth and belonging as a result of upholding certain values.
The Good Citizen is in part constructed by immigration and
citizenship law (Honig, 2003), but by a whole lot more as well.
The details are clearly context dependent, but the Good Citizen
is law-abiding, hardworking, white, and heterosexual. They are
liberal sovereign selves that are independent but rooted in a
community, a community that is, importantly, unchallenged by
gender, race and class relations. Not all natural born citizens are
Good Citizens.
Citizenship acquisition by migrants is symbolically important because it is a moment when the state, acting in the
national interest, is seen to actively influence the composition of the population on the territory of the state and in the
heart of the nation, when the borders between us and them
are revealed as unstable and therefore all the more important
to fix. Thus one moment where the (purported) key values of
state membership can be discerned lies in the requirements
laid down for admission to citizenship. What states require of
naturalizing citizens (such as lack of a criminal record,
knowledge of the state's history, commitment to certain
values, use of the language, ethnicity) offers a picture of the
normative content of citizenship. The non-citizen who is
allowed access to citizenship must be the right kind of
person.
Good citizenship is not only asserted through naturalization
processes, but also through controls over entry and exit.
Attention to the borders of immigration and citizenship reveals
how we make sense of ourselves (Gutirrez-Rodrguez, 2012).
The state must be seen as ensuring the entry of the right type of
person and excluding others, most obviously the terrorist,
but also low-skilled workers, those who cannot integrate, or
who do not make the right kind of contribution. As authors
like Sara Van Walsum (2008), Mae Ngai (2004) and Eithne
Luibhid (2002) have brilliantly demonstrated, gender and
sexuality are important components of this fixing. Only the
right kind of women, mothers, daughters, and workers
can be allowed entry onto the territory and into citizenship.
The myth of common origin, the imagining of the nation as
family writ large, the role of women as reproducers of the
nation and as bearers of cultural authenticity, and their role
in the backward look to tradition and the past, have been
the subject of a sophisticated literature on the complex and
mutually constitutive relations between gender, ethnicity
and nationalism.
Care work and labor migration
In this way, states are constrained in their responses to
the demands of capital and capitalism. States cannot be seen
to straightforwardly deliver low-wage, disposable migrant
labor to employers, because of the demands of nationalism.
Immigration controls aren't simply instrumental responses to
the needs of capital, but are important to state legitimacy,
which is, through immigration policy, linked to ideas of
nation building and preservation. The call British jobs for
British workers is a normative demand, calling upon the
state to recognize immigration and nationality as the crucial
and defining factors in determining who ought to have access
to employment. Importantly, it also acknowledges, even if

B. Anderson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 512

only by implication, that labor markets are or can be socially


constructed and are not only the domain of liberal sovereign
selves making rational choices.
The unraveling of the ways in which immigration
controls interrelate with other national level factors to
produce certain types of labor demand, social and employment relations has been an important contribution made
by the growing interest in migration, care and domestic
work since the late 1990s. From the migration studies'
viewpoint, what has been particularly productive about this
strand of work is the manner in which it has been integrated
into examinations of social and economic change in so-called
receiving countries. There has been considerable interest from
academics about how demand for particular types of paid care
has been shaped by the feminization of labor markets, aging
populations and changes in the welfare state (Cangiano,
Shutes, Spencer, & Leeson, 2009; Cox, 2006; Orloff, 2006;
Williams & Gavanas, 2008; Bettio, Simonazzi, & Villa, 2006; see
Williams, 2010 for a review article).
The work of Williams and Gavanas (2008) has been
particularly important in this regard, as they set out a
framework that facilitates an analysis of how the intersections between regimes of migration, welfare and employment shape demand and discourses around care work. The
particularities of this vary from state to state of course, but it
does seem to generally be the case that, firstly, demand for
low-wage care workers is structurally embedded in many
European states' organization of care provision; secondly,
that very different policy regimes result in ostensibly the
same outcome: significant numbers of migrants working in
the eldercare sector in particular (though also childcare)2;
and thirdly, that there is a disconnection between this
practice and states' increasingly restrictive migration
policies. The majority of these migrants, though not all,
are women, and this is discussed in terms of the gendered
ideology of care and gender relations more generally
(Parreas, 2001; Yeates, 2009). The ideology of gender
that underpins the way that care is organized at the
household and national level has received some attention.
There has also been some work on racialized ideologies
and care (Glenn, 1992; Anderson, 2000), however, less
attention has been paid to the ideology of nation, and
how this structures the migration regime that shapes the
entry and the living and working conditions of migrant
workers, and especially of those who work in care. While
viewed as exceptional because it often does not fit the
conventional models of employment and contract that
underpin the way waged labor is organized, care work, in the
most general sense, has always been done, and in this respect
isn't exceptional at all. Arguably, in fact, what is surprising is
that we tolerate an analysis that has such difficulty in
accommodating care relations. Domestic and care work are
not some leftover, but precede normal employment (Fraser,
2011). As wage labor has become normalized and regulated,
and the wage earner constituted as the normalized subject, we
have forgotten just how human the relations of care are, and
how limiting our ideas of the job. This should remind us that it
is not only the domestic worker who is marginalized, but
unpaid female labor, the unemployed, the informal, such
figures are spectres outside its political economy domain
(Denning, 2010).

Immigration, Britishness and domestic work


UK immigration practice is infused with references to
Britishness. Consider the foreword to the Home Office 2007
Enforcement Strategy document, Enforcing the Rules:
Britain is a country where people work hard, play by the
rules, speak English, and get on through merit. It has a proud,
centuries-old record of integrating immigrants from around
the world and, many times down the years, it has become
home to communities eeing persecution the fact that
many immigrants, at the end of their journey, end up in
shadowy jobs in the grey economy undermines the terms
and working conditions of British workers. That's not fair. It
chips away at the social contract and fabric of our country.
Resentment of it breeds discontent and racism. This is
especially keenly felt among those who believe they are not
getting the economic or social opportunities they should
because others, who have outed the rules and often the law,
seem to be getting on ahead of them.That's not fair either.
The concept of the kind of place that Britain is, where
certain values and an ill-defined British way of life prevail,
can be found throughout policy documents. We can see how
Britain is presented as a place of justice and it's interesting
to see the prefiguration of current debates on fairness,3
with a strong social fabric, sensitive to the needs of its
national workers, intent on combating racism, though
accepting that there may be misperceptions (believe they
are not getting, seem to be getting on). The reproduction of
Britishness is also manifest in practice: the UK now has a
citizenship test (which many UK born nationals might find
difficulty in passing) and citizenship changes will make
integration into the British way of life a requirement for
new citizens.
Immigration controls are not then simply about allowing
in or out individual units of labor, family members, people
fleeing persecution and so on, they are about admitting good
workers (who are skilled, who are financially stable), good
spouses (who speak English and are able to participate in
British life from the outset (HO Press release 26th July
2010)), and genuine asylum seekers. Who counts as suitable
entrants in this way reflects and (re)produces ideas of Britain
and Britishness, ideas of what counts as skill, who is a net
contributor, what are British values, etc.
Given the centrality of ideas of home, family and gender
to nationhood, it is interesting to consider the tensions
and contradictions of specific immigration policies in this
regard. The position of migrants who do domestic work in
private households sheds light on how state legislation
and rhetoric manage and reproduce contradictions around
family, work, public and private, citizenship and membership, and how these are then experienced by individuals and
households. Like soldiering, the work of making homes is a
key site for the production of nationhood. Families are
supposed to be where nations are constructed, through
blood, affection and sacrifice, they underpin national life,
yet interestingly (again, as with soldiering), work in private
homes is not a sector that is considered to be unsuitable for
non-citizens.

B. Anderson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 512

In the UK, domestic work is not a standard category of


employment. It is not incorporated into employment legislation as it is in some other states (though even then it is often
subject to discriminatory provision). Domestic labor is
informalized as a result of economic and social processes,
and there is a delicate equilibrium of transgression that means
that the widespread informality and illegality in the sector is
generally not considered a problem. As with, for example,
marijuana use by middle-class teenagers, middle-class parents
may be paying a visa overstayer cash in hand to clean their
home and this kind of illegality is not really regarded as a cause
for concern. It is endemic, and for this very reason, public
figures have run into problems when they have been
discovered: in the same way that Bill Clinton famously didn't
inhale, Baroness Scotland never knowingly employed an
illegal immigrant (http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/sep/
17/attorney-general-sacks-maid). Domestic worker is not a
standard category of immigration entry unlike in Canada,
several states in Asia including Hong Kong and Singapore, and
some European states. This means that many migrants who are
working as domestic workers are working (often perfectly
legally, at least in terms of immigration status) on student and
dependant visas the latter if they can't find work designated
as skilled. There are also migrants working in breach of
conditions (students working more than 20 h a week, asylum
seekers, etc.) and overstayers. Thus most of the migrants doing
domestic work in the UK are hidden in both employment and
immigration status terms and the relation between domestic
work and migration is largely invisibilized.
Migrants, by which I mean people who do not have the
right of abode in the UK (this group includes EU nationals as
well as foreign nationals who are subject to immigration
controls), often work as live-in domestic workers, but for
many years the only visas available for domestic work were
for au pairs and domestic workers accompanying their
employers, i.e. jobs where the work was imagined as
live-in. The visas signaled an acknowledgement that live-in
domestic work does happen in the UK, but is imagined as
exceptional. Thus the two visas have been devised to deal
with quite specific situations. Nevertheless, they have been
routinely reformulated and these shifting categories are
highly dynamic, suggesting both the difficulty of incorporating
domestic labor into the standard model of immigration
controls and the difficulty of accommodating the idea of work
within the ideal of the family.
Au pair visas
The au pair visa was used for many years, starting in the
post-war period until its abolition under the Points-Based
System in 2008. While there are no longer au pair visas
available, there are still lots of young people, mainly women,
who are au pairs, and the relation is still shaped by past
immigration rules and a long history of European exchange of
young people. As a practice, the idea of young people moving
to work in households as a transition to setting up their own
family has a long European history. In the early modern
period of north western Europe, late marriage meant a long
gap between puberty and marriage, and in the 16th to 18th
centuries, an estimated three-fifths of English young people
were sent to work in other households under a system of

life-cycle service, a period of protected transition from the


family home to adulthood. For the majority of life-cycle
servants, this was a transient phase, and while elites did not
send out as many young people as they hired, much movement
was lateral or nearly lateral across classes. Young people
moved into the homes of others of the same, or perhaps slightly
better, social status and relations were familiar but they were
regarded as junior members, subordinate but integral (Cooper,
2004). They performed a range of tasks including hauling water,
doing laundry, gathering wood and looking after children. These
tasks were gendered, with childcare being predominantly the
job of female life-cycle servants.
This bears a strong similarity to the way that the au pair
regime is imagined: it is the movement of young people, in
modern times, mainly females who are childcarers, it is
transient and imagined as middle-class. The notion of au
pairing as cultural exchange, I would suggest, echoes these
types of historical practices and is related to a life stage in
immigration practice and in the imaginations of the au pair
and the host family. This is an arrangement whereby one
person's stage in the life cycle, as young, without dependants,
inexperienced, flexible, fits another household's life stage
overstretched, in need of help with demanding young
children. It draws on an idea of the home as a particular
safe space for girls before they settle down, offering them the
opportunity for social progress without exposing them to
the dangers of the market. The 1969 Strasbourg Convention
formalized this process by marking an agreement between
certain European countries to facilitate cultural exchange for
young people at the same time as providing help to families
with young children. In the preamble, the Convention
emphasized that au pairs do not belong to the worker
category and described the movement of au pairs as
constituting an important social problem with legal, moral,
cultural and economic implications, which required special
moral protections (Preamble Strasbourg Convention).
In the UK (not in fact a signatory to the Strasbourg
Convention), the immigration status of au pairs was limited
to people coming from named European states aged between
seventeen and twenty-seven. Applicants had also to be
single, with no dependants, and coming for the purpose of
cultural exchange. The relation between au pair and host
family was explicitly one of fictive kin, and they were
expected to live as part of the family. Host families provided
accommodation and board and in return, the young person
could be expected to help out for a maximum of 24 h plus
twice weekly babysitting, in exchange for pocket money. Au
pair visas could not be renewed and were valid for a
maximum of two years (with a possible six month extension).4 The only possible switch was to a spouse visa.
Immigration rules both reflected and constructed notions of
what an au pair is and in the UK this meant young, European
(often then coded as white and Christian cf. Cox, 2007;
Newcombe, 2004), and, until 1993 when the rules changed,
female.
They also made requirements of the family that is suitable
for cultural exchange: they had to be English speaking, have
a spare room and not need too much help. If they had a
pre-school age child there must be another caretaker
available, presumably either a parent/mother or a nanny.
While the immigration rules described the contours of the au

B. Anderson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 512

pair and host families, these were filled in by agencies whose


literature illustrated the wholesome au pairs and happy
families they were to be welcomed into (Cox, 2007). It was
nevertheless generally the au pair who was monitored and
regulated rather than the host family, and this was true for
both immigration controls and agencies. In practice it seems
that there was considerable abuse of the au pair system by
host families. Research conducted in 2004/5 found that many
hard-pressed families were very different from the au pair
ideal, using au pairs as the cheapest available form of
childcare, e.g. for single mothers working shifts. Moreover,
au pair agencies reported considerable difficulties in managing the assumptions of whiteness of both host families and au
pairs. The latter caused particular problems as host families'
photographs, unlike au pairs', were generally not required for
agency registration (Anderson, 2007).
Immigration rules not only regulated the type of people
who could be subject to the au pair arrangement, but also
described the kind of relationship that would pertain. The au
pair visa institutionalized three ideas around the role of young
non-citizens in British family homes: firstly, that that they were
equal, secondly, that au pairing was not work and thirdly, that
they were temporary. While au pair quite literally designates
equal in French, the question of who, in practice, the au pair
was equal to, can be unclear. In the context of a history of
life-cycle service, a certain equality of familial status might be
referred to, that is, an arrangement between equal family types,
one middle-class family might host an au pair and send their
daughter as an au pair to the other's parents' family. However,
internally, families are not equal institutions but intensely
hierarchical. Were au pairs equal to big brothers, sisters,
aunties, mothers or fathers? Moreover, the equality only
extended to within the home. Unlike other young people living
in the household, the au pair was not allowed to take on any
form of paid employment, as doing so would breach immigration conditions. The family is imagined then not only as a space
of equals, but as the private sphere, completely separated from
the market, and what happens in public does not impinge on
the relations within the private sphere.
Au pairs were not migrant workers. There was an
important relation between equality and not working. The
tasks performed by au pairs were not work because they
were performed as part of the family. This was not work
because au pairs were equal. Equality signified not getting
paid: wives and daughters don't get paid, only servants, who
are not equal. Thus the invisibility of the economic basis of
the household was maintained, even as non-family members
were accommodated. Au pair agencies were extremely active
in lobbying the Labour government in the processes up to the
introduction of the 1998 National Minimum Wage Act. They
successfully secured an exemption for people who were
being paid but living as part of the family (the family
worker exemption.) The Immigration Directorate's Instructions on au pairs at the height of the au pair policy suggest
that the amount of money allocated to an au pair was an
important indicator of the nature of this relationship.
Reasonable allowance was defined as up to 55 a week, as
[a]ny sum significantly in excess of this might suggest that
the person is filling the position of domestic servant (IDI
March 2004 Chapter 4 Section 1, Annex A paragraph 4). Work
in households was equated with servitude rather than the

home making of the au pair and family members. In addition


to equality and not working, immigration controls imposed
temporariness as a condition of the au pair visa. Temporariness
is in keeping with the practices of life-cycle service and it also
facilitated the delicate imaginative and emotional balancing of
maintaining the relations of fictive kin (Anderson, 2007).
The idea of the au pair depended for many years on the
architecture of immigration controls. This began to change
with the free movement of European citizens, but the scheme
expanded in the early 2000s to include citizens of Central and
Eastern European states who still required a visa to come to the
UK. On the eve of EU Enlargement in 2004 most au pair visa
holders came from the new accession states, particularly the
Czech Republic. However, following the EU enlargement,
nationals from the new accession states (A8 nationals) were
free to work in the UK wherever they wanted, which caused
considerable anxiety for many host families (Anderson, 2007).
Until May 2011 all A8 national workers, however, had to
register with the Workers Registration Scheme. Interestingly,
Workers Registration Scheme data puts domestic staff in the
top five occupations for A8 nationals, but au pairs who are
living with a family do not have to register. While this means
that this dataset is likely to underestimate the importance of
domestic work to new arrivals, it is also significant that some
domestic workers/au pairs did register with the WRS. The
importance of au pairing not being constructed as work seems
to have diminished with the opening of EU borders, when
people attained (alleged) equality of citizenship status.
This is confirmed by the position of Romanian and Bulgarians
(A2 nationals). There has been a significant growth in these
nationals working as au pairs in the UK5 beginning in early
2004, just before the EU Enlargement gave A8 nationals
unrestricted access to the labor market. At that time, au pair
agencies reported host families specifying that they wanted
Romanian, Bulgarian or Turkish au pairs because they can't
legally run off, and the agencies in turn were recommending
visa nationals: My Romanian is going up because Romanians
can't get other jobs (Anderson, 2007). Romanians and
Bulgarians, however, found that, until 2014 should they wish
to be au pairs, it was now considered a category of
employment and, although they did not need a visa they did
require an accession worker card. These au pairs were thus
constructed as workers but were highly constrained. In
particular, unlike previous au pair visa holders, they could
work only for the named employer on their accession worker
card, because they were workers. However, unlike holders of
accession worker cards working in other sectors, au pairs did
not qualify for minimum wage. Thus they were workers and, at
the same time, not workers.
The au pair visa, (with the exception of the accession
workers card) was abolished in November 2008. The scheme
was incorporated into the Youth Temporary Mobility
scheme, which is applicable to only eight states and is
aimed at those who wish to experience life in the UK. Those
who enter under this scheme may both work and undertake
au pair placements, but what precisely is meant by au pair
placement is, unlike before, not defined. There is no need to
distinguish au pairing from working in private households,
because this group is allowed to work. Thus, the discursive
idea of the au pair has a strong hold and the disappearance of
the visa has not meant a disappearance of the practice and

10

B. Anderson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 512

type of arrangement. There are still large numbers of au pair


agencies and it continues to signify a type of arrangement
that is not straightforwardly an employment relation, often
relying on fictive kin, to distinguish itself from a service
relation. Questions like How much do you pay your au pair?
and Can an au pair live out? continue to attract multiple
Internet postings. The current dominance of non-EU 15 states
suggests a shift in the equality of familial status aspects of au
pairing: British nationals registered with au pair agencies
tend to be looking for families in Austria, Spain and Holland,
or further afield in Canada, the USA or Australia. There are
very few looking for places in Czech or Poland.
The history of the au pair visa demonstrates the shifting but
mutually dependent nature of citizenship, family, work and
gender, and the attempts to accommodate this within liberal
discourses of equality. While the au pair visa has, for the
moment, largely disappeared from the UK (it is still an important
yet under-researched component of immigration controls in
other European states such as Sweden and Denmark), the
contradictions and tensions that gave rise to the immigration
status continue to underpin domestic arrangements in unknown
numbers of British households.

safe spaces for women, but as cruel and exploitative places


where the threat of physical and sexual abuse was ever
present. Moreover, the contrast represented the UK as a site
of free labor and space of equality that is (nearly) free from
slavery, where any sign of the slave trade would be
ruthlessly stamped out. Following any high profile public
event, the domestic worker support group, Kalayaan, would
receive calls from well intentioned members of the British
public, offering opportunities for workers who had been
abused to come and work for them. These opportunities
would often be unpaid, but offering rooms with a lovely
view or the chance to be with a really nice family. This ideal
of the UK as a place of free labor, of British families as havens
was a feature of responses to the campaign in the 1980s and
90s that has continued to the present day. As seen in the
previous citation from Enforcing the Rules, Britain is not the
kind of place where slavery takes place, British people (who
are, after all, fair) are not the kind of people who put up with
slavery, let alone benefit from the labor of slaves.
By tying domestic workers to their employers, the British
government was caught between a very public falling short
of liberal democratic ideals and ideas of Britishness, and the
demands of a very specific group of wealthy employers:

Domestic worker visa holders


While the au pair visa was issued for non-citizens living
with British families, the domestic worker visa was designed
for non-citizens entering the UK and living with non-citizen
families. It began as an immigration concession outside the
rules in 1977. This followed a general tightening in immigration controls, which meant that low-skilled workers were
not given visas to work in the UK. The domestic work
concession encompassed a wide range of visas. Some would
be given a visitor's visa with an employment prohibited
stamp, others had permission to enter to work for their
employer, with the name of the employer written on their
visa, while others were given permission to enter as family
members. The practice seemed to depend partly on the
individual visa-issuing officer but also it later transpired on
the point of origin of the family and worker. More
particularly, African domestic workers accompanying families from Africa were usually given family member visas,
while Filipinos accompanying families from the Middle East
were given visas with the name of the employer on them.
The employers of these domestic workers were generally
wealthy foreign nationals, though they did also include
returning British expats. The abuse and exploitation that
was a consequence of this kind of employment relation
gradually became public, and a lively campaign against the
immigration arrangements was expressed as the imposition
of slavery in modern times. I must confess that my first
publication, Britain's Secret Slaves: migrant domestic workers
in the United Kingdom (Anderson, 1993), contributed to this
campaign. The campaign generated considerable publicity
and engaged the popular imagination. While it was recognized, even at the time, that there was a problem with the
presentation of foreign employers (often Arab) importing
slavery and barbaric practices, public sympathy seized on
images of abusive (male) employers, and this also generated
considerable parliamentary support. These families, in stark
contrast to the host families of au pairs, were not imagined as

Looking at our national interest, if wealthy investors,


skilled workers and others with the potential to benet
our economy were unable to be accompanied by their
domestic staff they might not come here at all but take
their money and skills to other countries only too keen to
welcome them.
[Lord Reay, 1990]
The response to this campaigning was to print leaflets,
require pre-clearance interviews and require that domestic
workers had been employed for twelve months previous to
coming to the UK. However, reports of abuse continued, and
in 1998 the recently elected Labour government finally
agreed to give domestic workers accompanying their employer the right to change employer in the case of abuse, the
right to settlement and to be subject to employment
protections. Since then, they must be paid minimum wage,
have holiday pay, etc. They can also, in theory, access
employment tribunals and join trade unions. But a crucial
requirement of this is that, unlike au pairs, they are not
family workers, i.e. are not employed6 to live as members
of the family (House of commons library research paper 99/
18, 1999: 4). In contrast to au pairs, domestic workers
entering the UK accompanying their employer are constructed as workers. Work in this case does not signify
servitude and inequality with mothers, sisters and daughters,
but is rather a means to acquire social dignity. Work signifies
not slavery and free labor. While au pairs must be distinguished from servants, this category of migrant must be
distinguished from slaves.
Rather than life-cycle service, this model is closer to the
model of the nineteenth-century English domestic worker,
wherein those who were still resident were physically and
psychically more distanced from the families they lived with,
where class (for some domestic workers now, race), rather
than life stage was what determined one's role in the family.
Middle and upper classes were no longer providing servants,

B. Anderson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 512

even before the post World War 1 decline, and poorer houses
increasingly had no paid workers at all. These families would
no more consider exchanging their children with the
households of those providing servants than British families
would consider their sons and daughters going to work as
domestic workers for, say, Indian families in India. Importantly however, this kind of commodified relation is
classified as work. Employers must demonstrate evidence
of written terms and conditions of employment, must agree
to provide a separate bedroom for their worker, or, if they
are not to live in, that the worker will have access to
adequate accommodation. Those who had entered under the
previous regime were to be regularized as they had become
illegal through no fault of their own. The latter is an interesting
description as it does intimate the state construction of
irregularity at the same time as circumscribing it strongly
implying that there are others who become illegal through
their own fault. Thus, at the very moment of winning their
campaign, the power of the state to set borders is reinscribed
(Nyers, 2010).
There is a tension revealed in the affirmation that domestic
work is work: is the call for domestic work to be formalized and
regulated as other types of work, or does it call for special
measures? While the call of the workers and the campaigners
was for an end to their invisibility through the recognition of
domestic work as work, in practice the demand was for a
specific regime. At the time of the campaign and visa change,
there were very limited routes of entry for the purpose of
low-skilled work and work permits were available only for
high-skilled jobs. The gendered nature of skill and its reliance
on specific specialisms and measurable achievements makes it
peculiarly unsuitable for capturing the requirements of
domestic labor. Indeed, the roots of the concept of skill are
precisely that it is not the general requirements of reproductive labor and the management thereof (Cockburn &
Ormrod, 1993). However, being cast as low-skilled had its
advantages at that time, since work permits tied workers to
employers. The tying of workers to employers did not and
does not, have the connotations with slavery and forced
labor that it does in the private household, even though
there is evidence that it can have a significant effect on
employment relations, and as Robert Miles has argued, call
into question whether this is really free labor (Miles, 1987;
Anderson, 2010).
The fact that domestic work is not considered high-skilled
meant that, despite it being recognized that they were workers,
they were anomalous workers in that they were permitted to
enter even though they were considered low-skilled, and
consequently were not tied to their employers. However,
because it is considered unskilled, the hard-won right to be
treated as workers came under pressure only ten years later in
2008. The domestic worker visa could not be accommodated
within the new Points-Based Immigration system. Given that
the UK was no longer supposed to be granting visas to
low-skilled non-EU migrants, the domestic worker visa
represented an anomaly. Rather than a working visa, it was
proposed to issue a six-month business visitor visa, which
would not give domestic workers any employment rights and
would tie them to the employer with whom they entered. This
visa would not be renewable and would be issued for the
purpose of enabling employers to train an Eastern European

11

(who would not require a visa) to do the work and replace the
original domestic worker when she returned.
The government had not reckoned with the symbolic
importance of this particular group of migrants. While
accounting for a very small proportion of entrants and even
smaller proportion of long stayers, domestic worker visa
holders continue to have a lot of support from those who
feared a return to modern day slavery. Domestic worker
visa holders and other campaigners protested that the
continuing high rates of abuse and exploitation by first
employers meant that tying them to abusive employers in
this way would mean, in effect, that the UK government was
facilitating trafficking. The Labour government's initial
response was interesting: they claimed that trafficking
prevention measures would be put in place that would
ensure all employers and workers would be interviewed
before entry and at the border, and if the employer was
suspected of maltreating the worker they would be refused
entry. Trafficking and slavery would not be allowed on
British soil. It is not hard to imagine the consequences for a
domestic worker if she and her employing family are
returned to the state from which they came (often not the
state of citizenship of the domestic worker, but the state of
citizenship of the employing family). While this proposal
stops abuse from happening in the UK territory, it is at the
cost for the worker of far greater risk and powerlessness on
the territory of another state. State intervention would not
be neutral and prevent harm, it would actively increase the
risk of harm to a vulnerable person, but it would prevent the
harm from occurring on British territory. The suggested
response to the problem reveals the importance of keeping
Britain a national space of liberal freedoms, while simultaneously disavowing interest in human rights outside of
British territory, even when the British state has had an
active role in creating vulnerability. It very explicitly ties
rights to the presence of the territory, even if this presence is
not legally endorsed.
The new Coalition government reopened the debate, in
their pursuit of reduced net migration. They reinvigorated
some of Labour's original proposals, and announced that from
April 2012 domestic workers accompanying their employers
would only be eligible for a six-month non-renewable visa.
They would not be able to change employer and would have to
leave the UK with their employer. They would be given visas as
workers, but, like Romanian and Bulgarian accession card
holders, this did not mean that they would be paid minimum
wage, as the UK Border Agency claimed it is not for us to say
who is entitled to the National Minimum Wage.7 It was
acknowledged by Government Ministers that employment in
private households could be abusive, but the association of this
with the foreignness of households was made explicit. Home
Secretary Teresa May, for example, stated: We recognise that
the ODW routes can at times result in the import of abusive
employer/employee relationships to the UK.8 Whereas previously vulnerability to abuse had been used to demand labor
rights, these two have now been separated, and protection
rather than rights were invoked as the appropriate response:
We do not necessarily believe that a right to change employer
whatever the reason is the only way to provide protection
(Home Office Response to OSCE Country report on the UK,
Justine Currell, 2012). The principle protection for migrant

12

B. Anderson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 512

domestic workers was now to be refusal of entry. The biggest


protection for these workers will be delivered by limiting
access to the UK through these routes (Home Office, 2012).
Refugees may, theoretically at least, be protected by flight, but
migrant women, it seems, are protected by not being able to
move in the first place.
Conclusion
A focus on nation building and the ideological and
productive function of borders and immigration controls
points to the disjuncture between the formal community of
the state, comprised of legal citizenry, and the community of
value. It indicates that we need to look beyond formal
citizenship in order to understand the discrimination faced
by migrant domestic workers. Attention to social construction
and embodiment which is where domestic work leads us
moves us beyond wage differentials and the lump of labor
fallacy to the nexus of gender, race and nationalism, the
materialities of bodies and the relations of affect, all of which
shape the intricacies of regimes of care, welfare, employment
and the labor markets for paid care.
Endnotes
1
I am using state to refer to what Abrams (1988) called the state idea
rather than the state system i.e. the mask which prevents us seeing
political practice as it really is, rather than the heterogeneous state
institutions and actors.
2
There is of course nevertheless considerable heterogeneity masked by
this, depending on labor market segment, source state, employment
relations and migration status, etc.
3
Particularly in the light of the application of a points based system to
incapacity benet/jobseeker's allowance assessment previously it has
principally been associated only with immigration
4
Across Europe, these regulations vary widely: in Norway, Netherlands,
Sweden and Denmark for instance, the movement of young people for
cultural exchange more obviously includes people that might be better
designated as domestic workers from Thailand and the Philippines.
5
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/le/LivingTransnationally2008.pdf.
6
The terminology is interesting here as it captures acute contradictions.
Can one really be employed to be in a ctive kin relation, i.e. not considered
as working?
7
P.c. Jenny Moss, Kalayaan.
8
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-vote-ofce/February_
2012/29-02-12/6.Home-Immigration.pdf.

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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

International migration, public policies and domestic work


Latin American migrant women in the Spanish domestic work sector
Sandra Gil Araujo a,, Tania Gonzlez-Fernndez b
a
b

CONICET (National Council of Scientic and Technical Research), Gino Germani Research Institute, Faculty of Social Science, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Marie Curie ITN CoHaB (Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging), Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 11 February 2014

s y n o p s i s
Based on the Spanish case, in this article we explore the connection between migration
policies, family policies, gender regimes and the insertion of Latin American migrant women
into the domestic work sector. Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, Latin America
became the main region of origin of migrants who had settled in Spain, being women the first
link in these migration chains. The main factors that have affected the configuration of this
feminization are linked to migration policies and patterns of migration, the features of the
welfare state, the characteristics of the labor market and the way in which gender organizes
and stratifies migration and domestic work. The achievement of national middle class
women's rights to conciliate their professional and family life through outsourcing domestic
work to non-national women also brings with it a deep inequality in terms of citizenship.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Over the first decade of the 21st century, Spain became
the primary destination for Latin American immigration, particularly from Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and
the Dominican Republic. This growing migration can be mainly
explained through the financial crisis, impoverishment and
degradation of working conditions in their countries of origin,1
but also (and we should emphasize this) through the farreaching social transformation of Spanish society since the
mid-1990s. The analysis of Latin American migration to Spain,
thus, needs to be attentive to the conditions in which this
phenomenon is embedded: accelerated economic growth, the
specificities of the regional labor market, state policies, gender
relations, the welfare regime, the historical bonds between
Spain and Latin American countries, the consolidation of migration networks and increasing importance of family migration
(Gil Araujo, 2008).

Corresponding author at: Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Pte.


Uriburu 959, 6 (1144), Ciudad Autnoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.007

Unlike traditional Latin American migration to the USA,


headed foremost by men, there is a substantial female presence
in Latin American migration to Spain, especially in the earliest
stages of the project and by the role of women as the first link
within the migration chains (Pedone, 2006). As we will show in
the following sections, the factors affecting the configuration
of this feminization are linked to the history, policies and patterns of migration, the features of the welfare state, the social
and sexual division of reproductive labor, the characteristics
of the labor market and the way in which gender permeates,
organizes and stratifies migration and work. As many scholars
have shown, migration policies, family policies, labor markets,
racial and gender relations shape the transfer of productive
and reproductive labor from the South to the North in the
context of international migration (Anderson, 2000; Gutirrez
Rodrguez, 2010; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Parreas, 2001).
In this article we focus on the connection between
Spanish migration policies, family policies, gender relations,
the de-nationalization or foreignization of domestic work,
and the feminization process of Latin American migration
towards Spain, as well as the implications in terms of inequalities based on gender, class, legal status and nationality.

14

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

In addition to the limitations on family life that the grueling


pace of domestic work implies (especially in the case of
live-in workers), migration legislation imposes requirements
for housing, earnings and employment, which make official
family reunification very difficult. These limitations on the
right to family life have deepened family transnationalism,
encouraging various forms of long-distance motherhood,
rarely freely chosen by the women themselves. The transfer
of inequality between women involved in domestic work
being outsourced from national to non-national women
also brings with it a deep exclusion in terms of the right to
family life, care and affection.
We will draw on the data collected within different
research projects we have participated in over the last six
years.2 Between 2006 and 2007, as part of the Spanish research
team for the project Civic Stratification, Gender and Family
Migration Policies in Europe, we took a gender perspective for
analyzing the diverse formal and informal regulations that
affect the non-national population established in Spain in
relation to access to the labor market, social rights and family
life. We also carried out sixteen interviews in Barcelona and
Madrid, conducted with a lawyer, a social mediator, two
representatives of migrant associations along with nine female
and three male migrants with different nationalities and
migration status. All the women interviewed worked or had
worked in the Spanish domestic labor sector. Between 2009
and 2011, as part of the project Fundamental rights situation of
irregular immigrants in the EU carried out in different European
countries, we elaborated a Spanish case study about irregular
migrants employed in domestic work. Interviews were conducted in Madrid with both migrants in irregular situation
employed in domestic work and other stakeholders such as
members of NGOs, migrant associations, women's organizations, trade unions and experts in the field. Between 2010
and 2012, we were part of the research team for the project
Migration Policies, Family Transnationalism and Civic Stratification:
Latin American Migration to Spain. From a transnational and
gender-based perspective, the aim of this project was to explore
the connections between Spanish migratory policies, the stratification of migrants' rights and the transnationalization of
family life among Latin American migrants who had settled in
Spain. Within this framework we looked at migration, social,
labor and family legislation and (formal and informal) regulations that particularly affect the Latin American migrant
population. Transnational fieldwork was carried out between
Spain (Barcelona and Madrid), Colombia and Ecuador, including
thirty in-depth interviews with members of migrant families
in both the country of origin and destination. All the migrant women interviewed had worked in Spain as domestic
employees.
We have organized the text into four sections. Firstly,
we will present a brief review of the research on female
migration in Spain, with the aim of highlighting that from the
very beginning, the feminization process of migration was
related to the insertion of migrant women into the domestic
work sector. Secondly, we will summarize the particular
features of the Spanish migratory regime and present data on
the profiles of Latin American migrants who have settled in
Spain, including information about the impact of the current
economic crisis on their unemployment rates and settlement
patterns. Thirdly, we will explore some of the features that

have historically characterized the Spanish welfare regime


(such as the family as the main provider in times of need,
the decentralization of social policies or the notion that care
was closely linked to and relied on families, households and
women), which add to the implementation of recent family
policies that urge private households to have their care needs
met by the market, thus generating a sustained and increasing demand for domestic workers. The data we present
in this section shows that to a large extent, Latin American
migrant women were the ones to meet this demand and that
the increase in migration was accompanied by growing
numbers of migrant women in domestic work. As described
in the testimonies of our informants, the demand of women
for domestic work is crucial in explaining the feminization
of the migration flows from some Latin American countries
(the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, and Paraguay, among others)
and the role of many of these women as the first link in these
migratory chains. In order to understand this process, we give
an account of the immigration regulations (visa exemptions
and regularization processes) that facilitated both the entry
into Spain and the later regularization of Latin American migrant women through their insertion into the domestic work
sector. Lastly, in section four, we will focus on the effects
of public policies (migration, labor) and the domestic work
regime on the family life of Latin American domestic workers.
This paper sheds light on how the difficulties in fulfilling the
requirements for family reunification deepen and broaden the
exercising of transnational motherhood, which the women
rarely freely choose. Within this framework, national middle
class women's rights to conciliate their professional and family
life have been achieved through denying non-national female
domestic workers a family life of their own.

Female migration and domestic work in Spain: a brief


state of the art
In the Spanish context the first debates on the feminization
of migration were related to studies on domestic work from the
early 1990s. For instance, Mara E. Snchez Martin's (1992)
study Nuestras hermanas del Sur: La inmigracin marroqu y el
servicio domstico en Madrid that dealt with the situation of
Moroccan women in Spain, and Gina Gallardo Rivas's (1995)
exploration on Dominican women's migration to Spain and
their settlement patterns published in her book Buscando
la vida: dominicanas en el servicio domstico en Madrid.3
Both publications are crucial in studying the feminization of
migration in Spain, because at that time there was already
a noticeable presence of women among the nationals from
both countries. These works addressed the situation of migrant
women in Spain and drew attention to the fact that domestic
work was one of the main entry points into the labor market, a
situation that has hardly changed since.
In the late 1990s and the early twenty-first century, several
dissertations that focused on female migration and domestic
work were published,4 in addition to Colectivo IOE's (1991)
groundbreaking study for the International Work Organization.
Although the data is outmoded, it remains a crucial frame of
reference. Later works, such as the Colectivo IO (2001) on the
situation of migrant women and their entry into the labor
market, and Parella Rubio (2000, 2003) analyses of the

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

domestic sector in Catalonia in relation to proximity services,


have shed further light on this phenomenon.
This second wave of studies on gender and migration
highlights the direct link between the increasing demand for
domestic work in Spain and outsourcing care and domestic
tasks. In order to cover those precarious, invisible and socially
unvalued job positions, a high demand for a female labor force
is generated. The analysis of migration in terms of gender has
led scholars to the conclusion that female migration can no
longer be attributed to a traditional gender model in which
women are merely passive followers of their mobile husbands.
These works demonstrate the very opposite, namely that
women migrate alone and that their patterns differ from those
of men and, in some cases, that they headed family migration
projects (Oso, 1998). Consequently, in some migrant groups in
Spain, such as those from the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Peru,
Colombia, Bolivia and Paraguay, there is a high proportion
of women and, as previous research has shown, in the case of
Ecuadorean women, they are the first link in the migratory
chain (Gil Araujo & Pedone, 2013).
In this vein, changes in migration patterns in both Spain
and other southern European countries can be attributed to
the following structural factors: 1) an aging population as a
result of a combination of increased life expectancy and a
falling birth-rate; 2) growing participation of women in the
labor market and an increase in their skills; 3) a new management of time and organization within families, which are
increasingly smaller and more geographically dispersed (the
possibility of creating support networks among the members
is diminished); 4) a tendency towards reducing state support
for family matters and an inadequate supply of services
(welfare regime based on a familistic model5), 5) a migration
policy designed in order to cover those needs; and 6) a lack of
reproductive work shared between men and women.
The contribution of international literature on these issues,
and the intersection of the welfare, gender and migration
regimes are just as crucial for understanding the responsibility
of the Spanish state, since states have become key players
in these new global developments (Lutz, 2008; Williams, 2005;
Williams & Gavanas, 2008). Therefore, this complex issue must
be approached by considering women's contribution to social
reproductive work within households; the relation between
the state, the market, the family and the community in the
supply of services; and pigeonholing migrants in certain
extremely feminized and racialized/ethnicized labor niches
(Anderson, 2000; Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010; HondagneuSotelo, 2001; Parreas, 2001).
The internationalization of reproductive labor: a transfer of
inequalities among women
This situation takes place against a backdrop where capitalism and patriarchy are strongly interlinked. This dyad
leads to a sexual and ethnic division of labor on an international scale and to a transfer of reproductive labor among
women. Regarding these specific issues, a key contribution is
Vega, Garca, and Monteros's (2004) report on Madrid, which
was conducted within the framework of an European project
on domestic work, migrant women's rights and inequalities
(Caixeta, Gutirrez Rodrguez, Tate, & Vega Solis, 2004).
It sheds light on how, in the context of a migration society,

15

women experience the provision, sharing and transfer of


those tasks, which range from highly valued to the so-called
dirty tasks. The national dimension is added to the sexual
and ethnic division of work and becomes central in this transfer between women (from nationals to non-nationals). It
involves major changes, such as an alteration of domestic
privacy, and a perception of complementariness or substitution of one woman by another (Caixeta et al., 2004).
Therefore the relationships or ties that may be established
between women conceal the asymmetry of new expressions
of patriarchal relations experienced on a global scale (Vega
et al., 2004).
The employment of migrant women in this sector enables
us to identify a transfer of class and ethnic inequalities among
women, as Parella Rubio (2000, 2003) points out. Parella
considers that the myth of new and more equal gender relations between heterosexual couples is masked, while patriarchy remains embedded within domestic structures and paid
employment. Female migrant workers thus act as a peripheral
reserve army that reduces the cost of services linked to social
reproduction for both capital and the state, by increasing social
inequalities between women.
The result of this transfer is the ethnicization of domestic
and care work (Catarino & Oso, 2000; Parella Rubio, 2003).
Although migrant women and certain profiles of national
women share the same sector of activity, they are not present
in great numbers in the same modalities. Migrant women are
normally hired for the job positions least desired and valued,
for instance they are mainly concentrated in the live-in domestic work sector. Parella Rubio (2003) points out that
this process of ethnicization not only applies to the personal
characteristics of migrant women and their strategies, but also
to the stereotyped configurations of the workforce demands. In
this way, criteria of differentiation, discrimination and exclusion that rely on ethnic and cultural factors are produced. On
the other hand, migrant status creates marginal groups with no
access to the formal labor market, or makes their legal situation
directly dependent on this type of work.
Lastly, more recent works provide a new approach that
links migration flows and care in a global context. Their
theoretical and political aim is to bring the notion of care to
the fore and to acknowledge its complexity as an activity
embedded in our everyday lives. By referring to concepts
such as the global care chain (Hochschild, 2000), these
works draw attention to the interaction between two households whose developments are intertwined, simultaneous
and interdependent. They seek to contribute in developing a
broader reflection on the social organization of care from
which the premise of the present social model sustaining the
reproduction of life may be questioned as a whole (Daz
Gorfinkiel & Orozco, 2009). In light of this, Daz Gorfinkiel
and P. Orozco make use of the right to care in a twofold
meaning: the right to receive and to provide care. However,
according to the authors, this right should also recognize the
option to freely decide whether to provide care or not. More
recent studies focusing on the intersection between the migration regime, care regimes and gender relations include the
Vega Sols's (2009) work, Daz Gorfinkiel's (2008a) doctoral
thesis on childcare, Martnez Bujn's (2008) doctoral thesis
on care for the elderly, and the special issue of the Journal
Alternativas edited by Agrela Romero, Martn Palomo, and

16

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

Langa Rosado (2010), which is a compilation of the papers


presented at the First Annual Congress of the Spanish Social
Policy Network in Oviedo in November 2009.
Nevertheless, while caring for dependents (children,
elderly, sick people) has been the subject of public debates
for the last decade, domestic work has been kept a private
matter, without assuming its structural character as necessary societal labor (Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010: 75). Following Anderson's (2000) argument, Gutirrez Rodrguez (2010)
writes that the demand for care workers is only one of the
factors that configure the labor market for migrant domestic
workers. Domestic work involves cleaning and caring. The
state-led focus on care not only camouflages the fact that care
workers perform domestic work as well, but it also obscures
the increasing transfers of domestic work to migrant women,
many of whom are in an irregular situation and are hired
by private households, meaning they also have very limited
economic, social and political rights.
However, most of the researchers haven't paid adequate
attention to the way in which policies of the receiving
states shape the family life of migrant workers. Taking
Latin American migration to Spain as a case study, the aim
of our analysis is to demonstrate how the combination
of migration policies (controls, residence, family reunification) and the precarious labor conditions of domestic work
(informality, temporary, low salaries, long working days)
creates obstacles for domestic workers living in migration
to reunite their families in Spain. In this way, Spain's
public policies foster the extension and prolongation of
transnational family bonds in general, and more specifically, transnational maternity. It seems that the geographical dispersal of migrant family members is becoming a
distinctive feature of NorthSouth migration in the twentyfirst century.
The migratory regime and Latin American migration
in Spain
In the 1980s, various processes coincided, which have had
an impact on Spain's current political and economic profile,
including its democratic consolidation, integration into the
transnational economic sphere via a political and economic
opening, and its alliance with advanced capitalist nations
after joining the EU in 1986. These dynamics produced an
explosion of high-paid professional and technical jobs, but
also an increase in low-paid jobs and employment in the
informal sector. Within this framework, Spain came to be
referred to as a country of immigration, in a context that was
clearly different from postwar migration in Europe (Gil Araujo,
2005, 2010a).
The development of social protection coincided with a
limited deployment of the welfare state, the existence of high
levels of unemployment and the increasing incorporation
of migrant labor, principally in the area of informal work. The
informal economy continued to play an important role in
different sectors, such as textiles, services, construction,
and agriculture. The weight of the informal economy should
not be interpreted as a sign that Spain was less developed
compared to other EU countries, but as a specific form of
insertion into the international market. The informal economy results in a minority of qualified workers with high

salaries and a majority of workers in precarious conditions. It


is this hierarchical structure that immigrant laborers enter
into in different ways.
The migrant population is heterogeneous, with notable
differences between nationalities and in terms of sex, age,
education levels, migration projects, and degrees of labor
insertion. A great number of migrants came from former
Spanish colonies, especially Morocco and Latin American
countries. The 2001 Census estimates the foreign population
in Spain at 1.5 million, which was 3.7% of the total population
of 40,847,371. At that time, the largest migrant communities
were from Morocco, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, Germany
and France (Gil Araujo, 2005). In January 2013, municipality
registrations showed that migrants (documented and undocumented) represent 11.7% of the total population. The
main countries of origin are Rumania, Morocco, the United
Kingdom, Ecuador, Colombia, Italy, Germany, China, Bolivia
and Bulgaria (INE, 2013).

Registered migrant population and percentage of women by nationality


(regions), (January 2013).
Region of nationality

Numbers

% of total migrant % of
population
women

UE-27
Europe
Africa
Asia
North America
Central America and Caribbean
South America
Others
Total

2,352,978
247,441
1,096,392
376,285
57,340
222,767
1,163,705
3225
5,520,133

42.6
4.5
19.9
6.8
1
4.0
21.1
0.1
100

48.2
57
38.8
41.2
55.8
61.5
55.9

48.5

Source: Padrn de Habitantes. INE, 2013.

The insertion of migrants into the labor market is limited


to only a few sectorscommerce and the hotel industry;
domestic work; agriculture; constructionand displays a
rapidly developing tendency towards segmentation and
ethnicization (Pedreo, 2005). In particular, non-EU migrants
hold low-qualified jobs in the secondary labor markets, and
they work in positions that are often temporary or precarious,
with very poor working conditions and frequently poorly paid
(Arango, 2004; Cachn, 2002; Pedreo, 2005; Calavita, 2005).
The connection between access to rights and work permits
permeates all the norms that regulate migrant residence in
Spain, which makes evident that non-EU migrants are basically
perceived as part of the labor market. Legislation establishes
that foreigners over sixteen years of age must obtain a work
permit as well as a residence permit in order to work in Spain. A
job offer must be submitted along with the application for a
first work permit. This initial permit is valid for one year and
may be limited to a particular sector of activity and geographical area. In order to renew the work permit, the applicants
must have contributed to the social security system and have
paid their taxes. Since 14 January 2002 it is no longer possible
for persons already on Spanish territory to apply for a work
permit. These are only granted to those who submit
an application in their country of origin, and quotas exist for
agriculture, domestic work, construction and service sectors.
This has meant that the hundreds of thousands of non-EU

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

migrants already settled in Spain are constricted to a status of


irregularity; although they may have a job offer, they cannot
obtain the necessary permit.
As Arango (2004) points out, the high proportion of
undocumented migrants is the most distinctive structural
and constant characteristic of immigration patterns in Spain.
Until recently, Spanish immigration policy focused on the
entry of undocumented migrants, who would potentially
receive reparation through being offered the opportunity
of regularization (Cachn, 2002). Domestic work has always
been one of the main channels for obtaining regularization
during different periods of Spanish government legislation,
in 1986, 1991, 1996, 2000, and 2001. The last regularization
wave took place in 2005, during which 31.6% of the applications were for the domestic sector, 20.7% for construction, 14.2% for agriculture and 10.4% for the hotel industry.
In the domestic sector, 83.4% applicants were women. In
the construction and agriculture sectors, the situation is
the other way around, as respectively 94.9% and 83.1% of the
applicants were male (SEIE, 2006). Nonetheless, domestic
work was defined as an exceptional channel of regularization
(va excepcional de regularizacin).
In the context of the current international crisis, which
is also affecting Spain, legislation imposing new limitations
on migrants' rights has been passed. In 2009, the government leaders of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)
passed a new reform to the Immigration Law. The main
modification limits the reunification of the parents and inlaws to non-EU migrants who hold long-term residence
permit (Pedone, Agrela, & Gil Araujo, 2012). In 2013, the
government leaders of the Popular Party (PP) repealed
undocumented migrants' rights to public health care. Given
the precarious legal and labor status of migrant domestic
workers, both reforms pose restrictions on their rights to
health and to family life.
Figures and new trends
The year 2000 was a turning point for several reasons.
With consolidation of migration networks, there has been
an increase in and diversification of the migration flows, as
well as a change in migrant demographics through family
reunification and the children born while living in migration.
At the same time, immigration has become a matter of public
debate. The beginning of the twenty-first century ushered in
a phase of migration that was characterized by the dominance of migrants from Latin American countries (Actis,
2009; Gil Araujo, 2008; Martnez Bujn, 2003). Municipality
registrations in Spain show a 663% increase in Latin American
migration between 2000 and 2005. During this period, the
percentage of Peruvians registered rose by 140%, that of
Colombians tripled, Ecuadorians almost quadrupled, Argentines quintupled and Bolivians increased fifteen fold. If we
add to this the number of people from Latin America with
Spanish nationality, we can conclude that the Latin American
population residing in Spain has multiplied six times in
the period between 1998 and 2005 (Vicente Torrado, 2006).
It is important to stress that there is a greater number of
migrants from Latin America than shown in the statistics,
because (a) it is relatively easy for Latin American migrants
to obtain Spanish nationality (two years of regular residence

17

vs. ten years for other nationalities); (b) there are bilateral
agreements between Spain and these countries on dual
citizenship; and (c) there are also Latin American migrants
who are descendants of Spanish emigrants (mainly Argentina, Cuba, Venezuela and Uruguay).
The growing visibility of this population has been, in part, a
result of state policies, such as the two regularization processes
in 2000 and 2001, and a greater percentage of approvals of
applications submitted by Latin American migrants (Martnez
Bujn, 2003: 17). Moreover, bilateral agreements with Ecuador,
Colombia and the Dominican Republic prioritize hiring workers
from these countries, based on a quota system. Other important
factors have been less strict (in comparison to the USA, for
example) controls of incoming migrants from most Latin
American countries until the early 2000s. In the political
debate, favoring Latin Americans in migration policy has been
justified by claiming that an ethnic affinity (Cook-Martn &
Viladrich, 2009) exists between Latin American and Spanish
people, based on an (imagined) common historical and cultural
(colonial) background (Gil Araujo, 2010b).
Since the mid-1980s, Latin American migrants in Spain
were predominately women, mainly from the Dominican
Republic, and continued to grow until the period between
1992 and 1996. At that time, 62% of Latin American migrants
with resident permits were women. From 2002 to 2006,
the preponderance of women fell to a more moderate 53%,
according to the municipality registry (Actis, 2009). Later, the
processes of family reunification and the demand for Latin
American workers in construction and agriculture generated
a greater balance between the sexes, with major differences
being the countries of origin. The highest degree of feminization among groups are, on the one hand, those initiating their
migration process to Spain from Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil
and Bolivia, along with some already stabilized groups such as
the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba. On the
other hand, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Uruguay show more
of a balance between the sexes.

Latin American migrants with residence permit by country of nationality and


sex.
Country

No. of migrants with


residence permits

% women

Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Colombia
Cuba
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Paraguay
Peru
Uruguay
Venezuela

94,461
146,723
62,429
276,342
53,393
90,947
406,330
39,984
140,157
33,351
41,614

49.9
60.7
68
56.5
55.1
58.5
51.3
71
52.6
49.5
59.2

Source: Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracin. Date: 30 September 2011.

Currently, of all the migrants (with and without papers)


in the municipal register in January 2013, 1,386,472 are
Latin American migrants, which make for 25.1% of the
migrant population, 56.8% of whom are women (INE, 2013).
The increase in the proportion of women in Latin American
migration flows in recent years could be related to (a)

18

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

the consistency and/or increase in female migration


coming from Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Honduras;
and (b) the return migration of groups with a greater
balance between the sexes, such as Argentineans and
Ecuadorians. The data indicates a greater impact of unemployment on male migrants compared with migrant women in
the first cycle of the crisis (Colectivo IO, 2012) which could
generate a significant increase in the return migration among
men.
In spite of the diversity that characterizes Latin American
immigration in Spain in terms of country of origin, sex and
time of arrival, Walter Actis (2009) identifies some dominant
characteristics: 1) increase in the flow during the first years
of the 21st century, 2) initial importance of female flows,
3) considerable importance of family chains at the beginning of emigration and for remittances in the present, and
4) process of downward labor mobility in emigration, partially compensated by higher wages and access to public
services (health, education, etc.).
This situation developed throughout an expansive economic cycle that ended in the middle of the year 2008. The
unemployment rate increased from 8.3% in 2007 to 26%
at the end of 2012, with a rate of 36.5% in the overall
migrant population. In terms of origin, Africans have been
the most affected by unemployment, followed by Europeans from non-EU countries and Latin Americans. Among
the Latin American population men have a higher unemployment rate (31.1% in 2011) than women (26.3% in 2011)
(Colectivo IO, 2012: 193, based on Encuesta de Poblacion
Activa).
As Actis (2009) stresses, the crisis raises various questions
regarding the future of migrants residing in Spain, as well
as the continuation of the migration flows. As a reflection of
this difficult situation, 2011 data shows a negative balance
of South American migration to Spain and, to a lesser extent,
African migration, while other contingents continue to increase (Colectivo IO, 2012: 5). Although we cannot speak of
a widespread exodus, an increase in departures has been
notedfrom 109,000 to 305,000 between 2007 and 2011
as well as a decrease in the number of registered migrants,
mainly from countries in South America. Latin Americans
who have continued coming to Spain are chiefly migrants
from the Caribbean and Central America (Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras and Cuba) and, to a lesser degree,
from Venezuela, Peru and Paraguay. In Spain, there has been
a decrease in the presence of migrants from the South
American countries of Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina
and Brazil (Colectivo IO, 2012). Many migrants from these
countries have returned to their home country, but others,
mostly (but not exclusively) those who have EU citizenship, have re-migrated to other countries within the EU,
like the United Kingdom and Belgium (Pedone, Echeverri,
& Gil Araujo, in press). Our field work with Colombian
and Ecuadorian migrants indicates that both new emigrations and returns have been selective. If a decade ago
the member of the household who was in the best
position for migration was chosen, today families think
about the best strategy for combining the return of some
members and the continuation of others who can keep
generating economic resources at their destination (Gil Araujo
& Pedone, 2013).

Welfare state, domestic work and migration: Latin


American migrant women in Spain
Taking into account the relationship between the state,
family, market and non-governmental resources (Kofman &
Raghuram, 2009) the Spanish welfare state fits the pattern
of Mediterranean welfare regimes. One of its distinctive
features is that the (nuclear hetero-patriarchal) family is the
main provider in times of need. This trend towards the family
has been reinforced by the decentralization of policies and
the state's withdrawal from the provision of social services
returning tasks of social reproduction to the family, and
within it to women. Another important factor contributing to
the configuration of the welfare regime is the genealogy and
culture of care (Vega Sols, 2009). In the case of Spain, the
notion of care has been historically closely linked to family,
home and women. According to surveys conducted by the
Sociological Center Research in 2002 and 2004, 72% of those
interviewed would prefer to receive care in their home, while
16.8% would prefer a nursing home. Regarding who they
would like to have to provide them care, 78% prefer a relative
(45% spouse, 33% other relatives). These figures show home
and family as the fundamental places for care (Daz Gorfinkiel
& Orozco, 2009). In this regard, Daz Gorfinkiel's (2008a)
doctoral thesis on childcare shows that mothers prefer to leave
their sons and daughters up to two years old in a familiar
environment, such as their own house, with someone providing them personalized care. This person should preferably not
be a relative to avoid interference in the rearing of children.
Care collectives are valued at a later stage, when they
encounter educational and socialization needs.
The link between the increase in Spanish women's participation in the labor market, the aging population,6 and
the lack of public institutions taking on responsibility for
the care of dependents has posed a major challenge to the
welfare regime in Spain (Martnez Bujn, 2008; Williams,
2005; Williams & Gavanas, 2008). In this context, many
families have decided to hire domestic workers, often
migrants and mostly women, although some of them are in
irregular situation (Gonzlez Fernndez, 2013). While the
commodification of domestic work has meant a reorganization of reproductive labor in the family sphere, so far it has
not brought a better balance of responsibilities between
sexes and generations. Domestic work and family care
remains a woman's concern (Martn Palomo, 2008).7
EU states have responded to the increasing needs of
care work with privatization (Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010). In
Spain, the transfer of care work for children and the elderly
to non-EU migrant women has been promoted by the state
through social and immigration policies. As Fiona Williams
(2005: 7) has observed: care policies themselves may
directly or indirectly facilitate the employment of migrant
women as care workers. Social policies of the Spanish
government that aim to address the care of dependents are
supported by a weak network of social services, economic
handovers and the delegation of care to the family. Monetary
transfers to families that require care encourage the hiring of
domestic workers to perform these tasks (Daz Gorfinkiel,
2008a,b; Martnez Bujn, 2011). An example of this is the
Dependency Act (2006), conceived to cover the historical
absence of institutional support for the care of dependents,

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

including the consolidation of paid care work within private


homes. The majority of autonomous communities (the regional
governments are responsible for implementing the law) have
taken on this commitment by transferring money to families
seeking care. According to recent research, most of these funds
have been used to subsidize the work of a relative or to pay a
privately hired care worker (Martnez Bujn, 2011; Agrela
Romero et al., 2010) who takes care of the dependents and also
carries out domestic work (Martnez Bujn, 2010). In terms of
the Law of Work and Family Life Conciliation, conciliation is
usually a women's issue that is resolved individually, with the
help of other family members or by hiring women to do
domestic work with very low incomes and limited rights.8
The passage of Latin American migrant women into the
domestic work sector
Coinciding with the increase in migration flows, the
number of female workers who claim to work full time in
the domestic work sector has grown dramatically in recent
decades, from about 320,000 in 1994 to close to 800,000 in
2007 (Daz Gorfinkiel & Orozco, 2009). Although a feature of
domestic work is its high degree of informality, the data for
affiliation to the Home Employment Regime give an idea
of the growth of the sector and its degree of feminization,
foreignization and Latin Americanization. According to
Social Security data, the number of workers coming under
the Home Employment Regime rose from 156,019 in 2001 to
296,293 in 2011 (Ministerio de Empleo y Seguridad Social,
2012). In December 2011, of the 182,695 foreign affiliates in
that sector, 77% were women from non-EU countries. The
main countries of origin were Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and
Paraguay. The data shows that Bolivian migrants specialize
in the sector (24% of the affiliations) given the recent arrival
of this flow in Spain, compared with other countries like
Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and the Dominican Republic. Figures
also show a strong concentration of Bolivian and Paraguayan
migrants in the domestic work sector, with 45% of Bolivians
and 49% of Paraguayans affiliated with the Home Employment Regime (Ministerio de Trabajo e Inmigracin, 2011).
Based on data from the Ministry of Employment and Social
Security, in April 2013 there were 183,659 non-EU migrants
affiliated with the Home Employment Special Regime
(Rgimen Especial de Empleo de Hogar) at least 60% of them
were from Latin American countries (Ministerio de Empleo y
Seguridad Social, 2013).
But the reality far exceeds these figures. Many domestic
workers' associations put the number of migrant women
working in the sector at 700,000 (Gonzlez Fernndez, 2013).
Domestic employment remains the niche of the irregular and
informal economy that allows many migrant women to enter
the labor market regardless of their skills or administrative
status. Data presented by the Colectivo IO and Fernndez
(2010), based on the National Survey of Migrants in 2007,
indicates that for 74% of Bolivian women the first job in Spain
was in domestic service; and 50% of those from Ecuador, Peru,
the Dominican Republic and Colombia had their first job in this
sector. On the other hand, based on the survey Encuesta de
Poblacin Activa, of the National Institute of Statistics (INE),
Actis has stated that in 2012, 34.4% of the (documented and
undocumented) Latin American women employed in Spain

19

were working in the domestic sector; 69.9% of them were from


Bolivia (personal communication).
The passage of Latin American migrant women into
domestic work positions has nothing to do with their skills
or any trend. It is the result of the lack of regulation of the
sector, its chronic informality and the implementation of
certain policies, which regulate migration flows and the entry
of migrant population into the Spanish labor market, and
especially into domestic work. Since the mid-1980s, when
the first Immigration Law was passed in Spain and migration
became a field of state regulation, domestic work has been
the main way to get access to a work and residence permit
for migrant women in general and Latin Americans in particular, due to the lack of a national workforce to cover the
demand in the sector.9 For that reason it is one of the sectors
included in the quota system, which in the first decade
functioned as a tool for regularizing migrants who were
already in Spain. That was the case of Mara who came from
the Dominican Republic to Madrid in 1998. She received
support from relatives who were already in the country.
They found her a job looking after an elderly lady as a live-in
domestic worker. Through that first job contract she managed
to obtain both a work and a residence permit, therefore she
could regularize her situation in Spain.
I came on 20 August 98. () The idea came up because I was
going to a house, she was a cousin of my mother's, then she
had daughters who were here. () and one day my mother
said, why don't you tell her to tell the daughters to help
you. And in that respect I was very shy, I still am a bit. Then
afterwards I made up my mind, she told me she was going to
talk to the daughters. At that time they had a contract, and
they said yes. I asked them what the conditions were like,
they told me to come over here, and we were talking, they
gave me a price for everything ().
Then you paid them for the contract and for helping with
the papers () but the contract was for a job here or just
to x the papers?
No, once I was here I was in their house. They worked at a
hairdresser's and that lady needed somebody to look after
the grandparents. So they took me into the house. And
once I was in the house they arranged the papers for me.
() Then, while I was in that house, I took out the second
residence permit. The rst one for a year, followed by the
others. (Madrid, 2006)
Over the last decade, in interviews and informal conversations with Latin American migrant women within the framework of different research projects (see note 2) we have
confirmed that domestic work is the key sector for migrant
women's entry into the Spanish labor market, whether they
are documented, undocumented or even if they hold Spanish
citizenship. In many cases, these women initiated family migration projects because it would be easier for them to get a job
and regularize their situation. It is in this sense that we speak of
feminization of Latin American migration flow (Pedone et al.,
2012). This is illustrated by the story of Laura, who came from
Ecuador and firstly migrated to Belgium (1994), then to Spain
(1995) and after a brief and failed return to her place of origin,

20

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

in 1999 she migrated back to Spain again and brought her family
(husband and three children) to Barcelona. In the beginning
she worked looking after a child. Later on she was able to start
her own cleaning business with her sister.
And when we were in Ecuador things didn't work out as
we'd planned, and we came back again, I took the decision
to travel again myself, not to Madrid this time but straight
to Barcelona. Well, I was looking, Murcia, Madrid
looking for contacts to have a job and be able to bring
my family because on the second journey I came with the
idea of bringing my family. And well, then, through contacts
I came to Barcelona and when I was in Barcelona I already
had a job, I made the contacts for the apartment and my
husband and three children came.
And you, what were you working at?
I was looking after a child. In domestic service as well. In
Belgium I worked looking after a child, of that lady, that
couple, and I came to Madrid with her here, and I was
there all the time with her. Looking after the child. And
the second time I came too, because there was a bit of
contact between my old bosses, and they got me a job
looking after a child here, in Barcelona. Then after that it
was a lot of hours, from 9 in the morning till 9 in the
evening, and I didn't see my children, so I quit the job and
started to look for a job per hour. And I started working
per hour. And then I started to meet people, to meet more
people, and I started to have a lot of work, and I started to
take people to help me because I couldn't cope and we
had to open a cleaning business between my sister and
me. (Barcelona, 2006)
The historical relations between Spain and Latin America
are also important when it comes to exploring the role of
migratory regulations in the concentration of female workers
from some Latin American countries in domestic work. An
example is the Visa Waiver Agreement for stays of less than
three months, signed at the time of the emigration of Spanish
people to South America. The visa waiver enabled many
migrants from Latin America to come as tourists and stay
longer to work in the informal economy until they could
regularize their status. Since the early 1990s, due to the
growing flows from Latin America, Spain imposed a visa for
several Latin American countries: Peru 1992, the Dominican
Republic 1993, Cuba 1999, Colombia 2001, Ecuador 2003 and
Bolivia 2007. In any case, the majority of Latin American
countries do not need a visa to stay less than three months,
among them Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Paraguay, Uruguay
and Venezuela. But the last regularization legislation was in
2005. Women who came to Spain after 2005, mainly from
Bolivia and Paraguay, have also mostly found jobs as domestic
workers, but they had to return to their countries of origin in
order to obtain a work and residence permit, therefore many
remain undocumented. That is what Mabel, from Cochabamba,
Bolivia, who arrived in Barcelona in 2006, recounts:
That until a job comes up that can get me a work contract
that would be wonderful. () The requirements mean
[for the papers] going to the country of origin, doing the

formalities there, waiting the time for the visa. If one of


them offers me a job right now, they give me the okay, I
have to travel to Bolivia and then what do I do? Do I leave
my daughters here? Who with? To travel there, at best
they've taken two months, the fastest. I have to consider
leaving enough to pay for two months' expenses here, my
return ticket, and suffer for two months there for them to
give me the visa to come back here, in fact if they could do
the papers without my travelling. Because there's been that
amnesty, my sister got them with that amnesty, she's got
the papers and didn't need to travel [referring to the last
regularization in 2005]. (Barcelona, 2007)
As well as affecting the direction, composition and
feminization of the migratory flows from Latin America and
promoting the entry of many of the Latin American migrant
women into domestic work, migratory regulations configure
a labor force stripped of all kinds of rights. The interconnection of social policies, labor regulation, migration rules and
gender relations at the core of the Spanish domestic work
order encourages the return of the patronage (patronazgo)
relations in many of the Spanish households in postcolonial
times, which were characteristic features of the colonial era
(Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010). We focus on some of those
implications in the next section.

Migrant domestic workers and the right to family life: an


absent subject in political and academic debates
The everyday life of domestic workers consists of looking
after children, the elderly or the sick, doing household tasks,
mediating in family conflicts, and learning to cope with labor
relations in between affection and power. In short, it consists
of everything that the invisible and undervalued domestic
and care work conceals, as Marisa, a 51 year old Colombian
woman who came to Madrid in 2006, reflects:
We provide a wonderful service They should be
conscious that we are offering them good work. What
more than taking care of their parents, older people, their
children, so that they can work and get their own things
done The responsibility of caring for an older person,
that is a really big responsibility All that we want is for
them to value our work a bit more, because we, many of
the domestic workers, we put a lot of life, soul and heart
into our work, and we do things with a lot of love. So it
should be appreciated. (Madrid, 2010)
The main problem regarding their employment situation and working conditions comes up repeatedly in all the
interviews: that this is an under-regulated, informal and
submerged sector. Despite the integration of domestic workers
into the General Employment Regime due to a new regulation
that came into effect in January 2012, the legislation itself
continues to place them at a disadvantage within a regime
that still fails to recognize basic rights such as unemployment benefits and prioritizes personal and family aspects
over labor ones.10 Policies claiming to safeguard the privacy of
homes also make work inspections less likely. Inferior working
conditions are compounded by domestic work regulations and

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

a lack of control, which puts domestic workers in a position of


heightened vulnerability.
As Gutirrez Rodrguez has pointed out: Domestic work is
not only badly paid because it is signified as non-productive,
but because those doing this work are feminized and racialized
subjects considered inferior to the hegemonic normative
subject (Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010: 15). Despite the vital
importance of the work migrant women provide for the reproduction of Spanish society, the Spanish government keeps
all routes to regularized migration closed, with the exception
of specific quotas, which entail figures that are a far cry from
meeting the demands of the sector. All the women who have
migrated outside the channels organized by the state are forced
to work in a situation of irregularity and to trust in the
discretion of their employers. They have no contract and no
work permit. They have no labor rights. Most of them live in the
houses where they work. The ones who work per hour often
have difficulty in renting a home, even though they have
enough income, which they cannot prove. Nor do they have
access to family reunification through formal paths. That is
why in the case of the women from countries where the visa
exemption agreements are in effect the reunifications are
usually done independently (Pedone et al., 2012). As we have
analyzed on other occasions (Gil Araujo & Pedone, 2013;
Pedone & Gil Araujo, 2008), even for Latin American migrant
women with work and residence permits it is difficult to meet
the economic and housing requirements that family reunification regulations demand. In other cases, even though they
can meet the legal requirements, the long working days in
the domestic work sector make care for their own children
unviable in the context of migration. These obstacles to family
become more complex and far-reaching when enacting transnational motherhood, which the women rarely freely choose.
In this regard it is essential to focus more attention on how
immigration policies impact and perpetuate transnational forms
of family organization. As Bernhard, Landolt and Goldring point
out: family dispersal is becoming part of the new normal
rather than an exception (2008: 25).
The so often mentioned conciliation of work and family
life is not on the agendas of policy-makers, political parties
or in academic research concerning migrant families (Caixeta
et al., 2004; Pedone et al., 2012). This omission confirms the
persistent short-sightedness in relation to migrant women
who are imagined and constructed as reunited and dependent housewives. Perhaps this is why the latest Immigration Law reform (2009) excludes relatives in the ascending
lines of the non-EU workers from reunification, accusing
them of being unproductive and looking to cash in on welfare
benefits. These imaginaries (which generate quite specific
effects) revive old and still unresolved questions concerning
the value of reproductive labor (which is allotted to women)
and the weakness of a system that links rights to having
a salaried status. But they also show the power of what
Abdelmalek Sayad (1999) called Pense d'tat, which structures our thinking about the world, distinguishing nationals
and non-nationals, as if such a distinction were part of human
nature and not a social construction. This discrimination between nationals and non-nationals also organizes access to
rights, and it works as the latest (and natural) justification to
exclude migrant women from citizenship. Within this framework, the achievement of civil rights for middle class women to

21

conciliate their professional and family life is contingent on


denying non-national female domestic workers' right to a
family life of their own. That is what Hondagneu-Sotelo (2006)
refers as New Word Domestic Order. A representative of SEDOAC
(an organization of migrant domestic workers) reflects as well
on this issue:
They talk about the workfamily balance, if families have
a bit of purchasing power, a little more, they try to get
this, the workfamily balance, but at the cost of bringing
in another woman. It isn't achieved by dividing the tasks
between sexes but another woman takes her place, and
it's even worse because it isn't just that she will do the
household chores like she did in her [own] home but
that she will be cancelled out as a person. That family or
that other woman is going to appropriate, take over, 100
percent of her time and her life. So that is even more
regrettable. In other words, we've achieved the lifework
balance at the expense of completely cancelling out another
woman. (SEDOAC, Madrid, 2010)

Conclusions
In this article we have explored the connection between
Spanish migration policies, family policies, gender relations,
the de-nationalization or foreignization of the domestic
work sector and feminization process of Latin American
migration to Spain, as well as the implications in terms of
inequalities based on gender, class, legal status and nationality.
As we have shown, in addition to the limitations on family life
that the grueling pace of domestic work implies (especially in
the case of live-in workers), migration legislation imposes
requirements for housing, earnings and employment that
make official family reunification very difficult for them. These
limitations on the right to family life have deepened family
transnationalism, encouraging various forms of long-distance
motherhood, rarely freely chosen by the women themselves.
Any approach to the particular forms adopted by contemporary SouthNorth migrations must take into account the
broader context of (i) unequal relations between population
groups, countries and regions and (ii) the international, sexual
and racial division of productive and reproductive labor. In the
Spanish case, the political, social and economic changes that
began in the early 1980s generated a higher participation of
women in the labor market. However, this access of women
to the field of production was not accompanied by a sharing
of tasks in the field of reproduction. This was not assumed as a
responsibility of the social state either. On the contrary, all
domestic and care work continued (and still continues) to be
considered a private matter to be managed by families and,
more specifically, by women. Many of these families have
solved the conflict of sharing domestic work by transferring
them to other women, generally migrants, many of whom are
in an irregular situation and come from peripheral countries
that were once colonies within the Spanish Empire. In Spain,
as in other countries in Southern Europe, reproductive labor
has traditionally gone to families, and within them to women.
The connection between the provision of domestic work and
women's international migration is the basis of the current
solution of many European states, which use migration policy

22

S. Gil Araujo, T. Gonzlez-Fernndez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 1323

to satisfy the demand for domestic workers. The private


demand for migrant workers for domestic work has been
regulated and guaranteed by the Spanish state through its
migration policies. In all the regularization processes, domestic
work has operated as the main route for migrant women in
general, and for Latin American women in particular, to gain
access to regularization. Domestic work is also one of the
sectors included in the quota system currently in force. In the
current economic crisis and with unemployment rising, this
sector again provides Latin American women migrants a way to
provide subsistence for their families, in both their countries of
origin and destination.
The disengagement of the state from the welfare of the
population fueled by neoliberal social reforms since the mid1980s, a limited welfare state, a culture of care centered on the
family, less men taking on domestic duties, the aging population,
and an increase in the presence of women in the job market;
all these processes have led to the emergence of strategies of
outsourcing and to the foreignization of reproductive social
tasks. The reorganization of reproductive labor offered on the
market has neither resulted in a division of labor between men
and women, nor in improved social protection. Instead, it has
resulted in the transfer of inequalities from national women to
non-national women from the global South. Nevertheless, the
majority of these women have not been recognized as subjects
with families of their own and who might need care themselves.
They are the absent key actors in this debate.
The New World Domestic Order has strong implications
in terms of perpetuating inequality based on gender, class,
ethnicity and nationality. The transfer of inequality between
women involved in the outsourcing of domestic work also
brings with it a deep stratification of the right to family life,
care and affection. One of its conditions of possibility is the
expropriation of civil rights from a sector of the population.
This expropriation is legitimized by the logic of the Pense
d'tat (Sayad, 1999) that divides nationals and non-nationals
and thus naturalizes differentiated access to rightsincluding
family lifestratified to national origin. In this scenario, migrant families have transformed their structures, redefined
their roles, and constructed strategies for managing everyday
life in transnational contexts. From our point of view transnational motherhood should be seen as a substantial component
of the strategies of resistance and survival of many Latin
American families.

2002 and 2003, was a result of the economic and political collapse of Argentina in
December 2001. Between the years 2004 and 2006, the number of Ecuadorians
arriving decreased. They were replaced by migration from Bolivia, which lessened
when the entry visa requirement for the Schengen area came into effect in April
2007 (Gil Araujo, 2008).
2
Migration Policies, Family Transnationalism and Civic Stratication: Latin
American Migration to Spain, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and
Innovation (20102012). Fundamental rights situation of irregular migrants in
the EU (20092011), funded by the European Union Agency for Fundamental
Rights (FRA); Civic Stratication, Gender and Family Migration Policies in Europe,
supported by the NodeNew Orientations for Democracy in Europe
Research Program, Ministry of Education and Culture, Austria (20062008).
3
The author was one of the founders of Asociacin de Mujeres Dominicanas
en Espaa (AMDE), and so this pioneering textthe rst in Spain with
transnational aspirationsdoes not come from the academic sphere but from
the eld of migrant women associations.
4
Cf. for the case of Peruvian women Escriv Chord, 1999 for the case of
Dominican women Gregorio Gil, 1996 and Cern Ripoll, 1999; for the case of
Ecuadorian women Cortina Nido, 2000.
5
This concept alludes to the existence of family and kinship support
networks to cover care tasks and guarantee the support, cohesion and welfare
of the memberstasks that have been traditionally considered women's duties.
6
Spanish population forecasts indicate a clear increase in the number of
people over 60: 16.6% in 2007, 21% in 2021 (Daz Gornkiel & Orozco, 2009).
7
Data on time spent working in the household show that 93% of women
do household chores and childcare, in contrast to 70% of men. Women spend
5 h a day on these tasks (two more than men) and have less spare time.
However, in recent years, men have been spending more time caring for
children. Age is also an important point of differentiation in terms of time
spent on housework: those under 25 spend just 1 h a day on these tasks
(Daz Gornkiel & Orozco, 2009, based on Encuesta del Empleo del tiempo
20022003, Instituto Nacional de Estadstica).
8
Women have taken 98.4% of maternity leaves and have applied for 66%
of time off to care for dependent family members. Women also account for
95.8% of those who left the work market for family reasons, 96.5% of those
who are not seeking employment for family reasons and 97.2% of those who
claim to work part time on family responsibilities (Daz Gornkiel & Orozco,
2009, based on Statics of Instituto de la Mujer).
9
One regulation that differentiates non-EU migrants' access to the job
market is the reference to the national employment situation (National
Priority). This establishes that insufciency or scarcity of Spanish labor in the
activity or profession and geographical zones in which work is sought will be
taken into account for granting or renewing a work permit. This means that the
refusal of a work permit can be justied if there are applicants who are Spanish
citizens, EU members or legal residents.
10
A new regulation on domestic work was approved in November 2011.
It has been in effect since January 2012. Royal Decree 1620/2011, of 14
November, regulating the special labor relation of service in the family home:
http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2011/11/17/pdfs/BOE-A-2011-17975.pdf. However,
owing to the high degree of irregularity of Latin American female workers and the
fact that the jobs are mostly in private homes, the effect this change in the law
may have on the working and living conditions of the female migrant workers is
limited.

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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 2432

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Domestic work and international migration in Latin America:


Exploring trajectories of regional migrant women in domestic
service in Argentina
Corina Courtis a,, Mara Ins Pacecca b
a

Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientcas y Tcnicas (CONICET), Instituto de Ciencias Antropolgicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Puan
480, (1406) Ciudad Autnoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
b
Instituto de Ciencias Antropolgicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Puan 480, (1406) Ciudad Autnoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 22 February 2014

s y n o p s i s
Besides emigration towards developed countries, Latin America has a regional migration dynamics
of its own one in which the presence of women, as well as their employment in domestic service,
has proved decisive. Combining a macro perspective with a case-based socio-anthropological
approach, this paper examines international migration and domestic service at an intra-regional
level. Drawing on statistical information, we first present an outline of the regional migration
context and the insertion of migrant women as domestic workers in destination countries of the
region. The core section of the article centers on the particular case of Argentina, and illuminates the
experience of migrant domestic workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. The paper closes
with a series of reflections on the operation of gender as an organizing principle of relations and
opportunities involved in international migration.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In recent decades, a significant increase in international
migration (CEPAL, 2007) chiefly to developed countries
has brought migration into the limelight and to the center of
discussion in numerous forums. The growing share of women
in migration trends conceptualized, at least qualitatively, as
the feminization of migration flows has become a matter
of growing academic interest, and has made apparent the
need to introduce a gender perspective in migration studies.
As a region,1 Latin America has a substantial share in the
migration processes that presently raise concerns among
First World States, as most Latin American countries have
strengthened their role as labor exporters and emigrants'
destinations have diversified beyond the United States, to
European countries particularly Spain, Japan, Canada,
Australia and Israel. There are a considerable number of
Latin Americans living outside their countries of birth: it is
estimated that at least 4% of the region's population lives in
Corresponding author.
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.002

extra-regional countries and that this figure accounts for


approximately 13% of international migrants worldwide.
International migration from the region, which stands out
for its increase in women migrants and their widespread
entry into the service market of host countries, particularly
the domestic service sector2 the emigration of South
American women to Spain, the US, and Canada being especially
relevant, has also contributed to the quantitative relevance of
women in contemporary international migrations.
But besides emigration to developed countries, Latin America
also shows a migration dynamics taking place within the region,
one in which women play a decisive role, with domestic work as
a sector of paramount significance. By combining a macroperspective with a case-based, socio-anthropological perspective, this paper approaches the relationship between international migration and domestic work at the Latin American level.
Domestic work in Latin America may be traced back to
colonial times (Kuznesof, 1989), and there is a long-standing
link between female migration and employment in domestic
service in the region. Since the 1960s, urban middle-class
households in several Latin American countries have relied

C. Courtis, M.I. Pacecca / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 2432

on migrant women (both internal and international) for


housework and childcare. This demand has set off and fueled
the movement of hundreds of thousands of young girls and
women, giving rise to an early, albeit thriving feminization
process supported on family logic: the migrant woman's
family of origin, confident that household work is much more
protective than factory or office work; and the employing
family at the destination, willing to hire (and house) girls and
women through work agreements where labor rights are
easily blurred in favor of (fictional) kinship practices. As
shown by a general overview of regional statistical information,3 this process has been particularly active in Argentina,
Venezuela and Costa Rica in the past decade. The analysis of
contemporary Argentine cases, focusing on the experience of
Bolivian, Paraguayan and Peruvian migrant women taking on
jobs as domestic workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan
Area (BAMA),4 allows us to review different stages of the
migration process (deciding on migration, organizing the
trip, arriving at the destination, finding lodgings and work,
saving or sending remittances, family reunification, etc.) in
order to highlight the relevance of gender and gender-based
practices as organizing principles of many of the relationships and opportunities involved in international migrations
(see Grieco and Boyd, 1998; De Jon, 2000; Pessar, 1982;
Piper, 2007, among other authors who have explored the
relationship between gender and migration).
Context: international migration, female migration and
domestic work in Latin America
International migration has been an integral component
of Latin American history. Vis--vis the drop in overseas
migration inflows5 (which were remarkably high at the turn
of the twentieth century and played an influential demographic and cultural role in some countries), recent decades
have seen a rebound in intra-regional migration a longstanding trend characterized by the ever-changing economic
and political conditions of the countries in the region.
Argentina, Costa Rica and Venezuela have historically been
the main receptors of regional migrants. According to
Martnez Pizarro (2008):2, in 2000 the number of regional
immigrants stabilized in the leading immigration countries
(i.e., Argentina and Venezuela), and increased considerably
in Costa Rica and Chile. Also, during the 1990s and 2000s,
intra-regional migration found new impulses, particularly
towards border or neighboring countries, bringing the topic
of human mobility into the integration agendas, as can be seen
throughout the proceedings of the Conferencia Sudamericana de
Migraciones (since 2000), the Foro Especializado de Migraciones
del Mercosur (since 2003), and the Foro Andino de Migraciones
(since 2008).
The growth in the share of women among the migrant
population is a tendency observed in several intra-regional flows
as well. Although the extent of feminization varies depending on the origin and destination of migration flows, it can
generally be asserted that there has been a rise in female
migration, from 44.5% of total intra-regional migrants in 1960
to 50.3% in 2005.6
Several factors are at stake when it comes to determining
the shares of men and women in migration flows, namely
the nature of labor markets both in origin and destination

25

countries, specific labor demands, family reunification decisions


and the existence of networks. In the case of female mobility
in the region, migration flows have become increasingly labor
market-related, and to a large extent cater to demands in the
service sector, particularly for domestic workers and carers
for elderly or disabled persons.7 International female migrants
hired as domestic workers in the region amount to 27% of the
total female migrant workforce, a striking figure, which is
nevertheless lower than the sizeable 40% accounted for by Latin
American and Caribbean women working in the same niche
in Spain. The transnationalization of domestic and personal
services in both the developed world and Latin America the
differences between which would be worth exploring8 is but
an expression of workforce flexiblilization and cost reduction
achieved by labor markets through the articulation of gender,
ethnic and class relations. A close look at the stocks of female
migrants employed as domestic workers by country of origin
and country of residence yields a more detailed picture of the
regional situation. Information from the 2000 census revealed
that the major destination countries in the region also had
higher stocks of migrant women hired as domestic workers:
Argentina (81,000 women) stands out side-by-side with
Venezuela (50,000 women), followed by significantly lower
numbers in Costa Rica (16,000) and Chile (13,000). However,
the highest percentages of domestic workers over the total
economically active regional female migrants could be observed in Chile (42%) and Costa Rica (35.5%) (Table 1).
Regarding source countries, the 2000 census showed that
certain countries stand out as exporters of women finding
jobs in this niche in the region: Colombia was the source
country of 46,000 women employed in the domestic service
sector, chiefly in Venezuela; Paraguay had nearly 35,000 women
residing in this capacity, mainly in Argentina; and Peru had been
the country of origin of 33,000 domestic workers distributed
between Argentina and Chile. Yet, when considering the
proportion of migrant domestic workers from each country
over the total number of economically active migrant women
of the same origin, it is evident that Peruvian women exceed
the regional average (48%), followed by those from Nicaragua
(38%, with Costa Rica as their principal destination), Paraguay
(36%), Guatemala (32%, mostly concentrated in Mexico) and
Colombia (30%).
Regarding the demographic profile of cross-border female
domestic workers in the region, it should be noted that
schooling is either high or intermediate in several migration
flows particularly as far as Peruvian migrants are concerned
Table 1
Latin American-born migrant women employed in domestic service in main
regional destination countries (00 and % on total stock of economically
active regional migrant women) circa 2000.
Centro Latinoamericano y Caribeo de Demografa (CELADE), ECLAC's
Population Division. Data and special tabulations provided by IMILA Project
(Investigacin de la Migracin Internacional en Latinoamrica, www.eclac.
cl/celade).
Country of residence

Total (00)

% of total stock of economically


active regional migrant women

Argentina
Chile
Costa Rica
Venezuela
Total Latin America

81,194
13,149
15,978
49,863
177,004

29.3%
42.6%
35.5%
28.2%
27.1%

26

C. Courtis, M.I. Pacecca / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 2432

and that most of them are mothers and household heads. To


complete this scenario, it should be added that the vulnerabilities created by the precarious nature of domestic work can
be and usually are tied in with the vulnerabilities arising
from migration. In recent years, the concerns voiced by the
international community on the vulnerabilities affecting migrant women have largely emerged from the realities resulting
from the combination of international migration and domestic
work (see, for example, ONU, 1993; Staab, 2003; Corts, 2005).
Let us now examine some of the textures this intersection
can bring about in the experiences of Latin American migrant
women working in the domestic service sector in Argentina,
which concentrates, by large, the highest absolute number of
Latin American migrants employed as paid domestic workers
in the region.
In Argentina, the link between domestic work and female
migration deserves special attention. Internal and cross-border
migration to large cities kept domestic service costs low enough
to make them affordable to the middle class (Jelin, 1976). Studies
such as Berger (1986), Chaney and Garca Castro (1989),
Szretter (1985), Zurita (1983, 1997) and Zurutuza and
Bercovich (1986a,b, 1987) further develop this bind. Some
include a brief diagnosis as well as the occupational profiles of
the population working in this niche (Goren, 2000; Torres &
Mazzino, 1996; Mezzatesta and Raimundo, 2001), and introduce the migration variable. In addition, migration studies
emphasizing female mobility usually consider domestic service
(Cacopardo, 2002, 2004; Corts & Groisman, 2004; Cacopardo
and Maguid, 2001; CECYM et al., 2005; Pacecca, 2000, 2010).
However, specific studies particularly from a qualitative
perspective on contemporary international migrant domestic workers are still scarce (Buccafusca & Serulnicoff,
2004; Canevaro, 2012).
Rethinking migration and domestic work in Argentina
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
through the influx of over 2,000,000 European immigrants,
Argentina clearly became an immigration country. Since the
1850s, the country has also received small albeit steady inflows
from neighboring and nearby countries such as Bolivia, Brazil,
Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and more recently Peru. Until
the mid-twentieth century, these Latin American immigrants
(always less than 3.5% of the total population) remained in the
Argentine provinces closest to their own home country. Over
the past few decades, however, the Buenos Aires Metropolitan
Area9 has become a key destination for regional migrants,
especially for those coming from Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru
currently the largest and most active inflows. These immigrants enter the labor market as an ancillary workforce to the
native population, and take on unstable and poorly paid jobs
that rarely abide by labor law requirements (see Benencia and
Karasik, 1995; Cerrutti, 2005; Maguid, 1990, 1995 and 1997;
Marshal, 1983; Marshall and Orlansky, 1983).
Migration policies have had a bearing on regional migrants'
limited access to secure jobs, as well as on their generally poor
housing, education and health situations. Unlike the welcoming
legislation originally designed to target the historical massive
immigration form Europe, Argentine migration law and regulations became notably more restrictive vis--vis the increased
regional composition of immigrant inflows. Since the 1960s,

a combination of lax terrestrial border control, by which people


from neighboring countries could easily enter as tourists,
and progressively stricter even unfulfillable in-country
requirements for obtaining a residence permit generated a vast
population of irregular migrants, and created a delegitimizing
framework for them. The restrictive nature of Migration Act No.
22.439, sanctioned in 1981, during the last military regime, was
hardened by several regulations passed in democratic times,
and until 2004, when a new Migration Act was approved, the
only alternatives that regional migrants had in order to seek
resident status were periodical amnesties and limited bilateral
agreements.
Now, the current composition and geographic distribution
of immigration described above are linked to the presence of
women immigrants seeking jobs as domestic workers in the
Metropolitan Area.10 34% of the 240,000 women from Bolivia,
Paraguay and Peru that where censed in Argentina in 2001
worked in domestic service, following the occupational path of
earlier internal migrants employed in the same unprotected
niche a niche where, according to a 2004 Ministry of Labor,
Employment and Social Security report, over 96% of the
workers were unregistered.11
The overriding presence of migrant women from neighboring countries has been analyzed in terms of feminization
of contemporary migrations to Argentina. Even though the
notion of feminization holds true from a quantitative standpoint, it requires specification. First, feminization patterns vary
according to country of origin: the Paraguayan migration
underwent an early feminization and urbanization process,
and Paraguayan women in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area
were noticeable as early as the 1960s i.e. the masculinity rate
of Paraguayan migration decreased from 101 in 1960 to 79 in
2010. Bolivian migration to the Metropolitan Area did not
begin to grow until the 1980s; however, due to still attractive
rural and construction jobs,12 the feminization process is
slow-paced: masculinity rates went from 125 in 1980 to 99 in
2010. Furthermore, the economic conditions of the 1990s13
spurred the hitherto sparse Peruvian migration with highly
feminized inflows, so that the masculinity rate plummeted
from 198 to 81 (see Tables 2 and 3).
Secondly, considering feminization in a qualitative sense
alluding to the autonomy of female migrants, or at least to
migration patterns unrelated to those of males , the scenarios
differ between Paraguayan and Peruvian women on the one
hand, and their Bolivian counterparts on the other. Women
from Paraguay and Peru find job opportunities mainly as
domestic workers in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area and
to a lesser degree in trade and communal services. Unlike
them, Bolivian women tend to find domestic service jobs at
other destinations, as well as employment in other sectors such
as agriculture, manufacturing and trade. The smaller number of
Bolivian women in domestic service and the broader spectrum
of options available to them may be accounted for by the
family nature of Bolivian migration and by the role of ethnic
networks in the accumulation of capital, used to start up
ethnic enterprises (such as horticulture since the 1980s and
clothes manufacturing since the 1990s). Such niches have
been consolidated due to the additional workforce provided
by new arrivals (Benencia, 2006; Aranda, 1997, 2005). The
slower drop in the masculinity rate of Bolivian immigrants,
along with the relevance of family-based enterprises must

C. Courtis, M.I. Pacecca / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 2432

27

Table 2
Evolution of Latin American migration to Argentina and evolution of masculinity rates by country of origin. Selected countries, 19912010.
INDEC 1996 and 2010.
Masculinity rate
Country of birth

1980

1991

2001

2010

1980

1991

2001

2010

Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Paraguay
Uruguay
Peru
Total selected countries

118,141
42,757
215,623
262,799
114,108
8561
753,428

143,569
33,476
244,410
250,450
133,453
15,939
857,636

233,464
34,712
212,429
325,046
117,564
87,546
1,010,761

345,272
41,330
191,147
550,713
116,592
157,514
1,402,568

125.4
85.5
114.6
85.6
95.2
197.9
117

107.3
77.3
99.9
78.7
95.2
146
100.7

101.3
71.8
91.7
73.5
92.5
68.5
83

98.7
72.9
87.1
79.7
90.8
81.9
86.0

Includes migrants from neighboring areas whose country of origin is unknown.

be taken into account when discussing feminization in


qualitative terms. What role do adult women play in
family-based enterprises? Are both gender-based roles
(men and women) equally relevant for the success of
family-based enterprises? Current ethnographic research is
being carried out in order to provide at least preliminary
answers to these questions.
In order to highlight certain aspects of the individual and
household processes underlying the trends revealed by
census data, the following pages analyze a set of in-depth
interviews conducted with migrant women working in the
domestic service sector in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan
Area. Eighteen women who had migrated to Argentina from
Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru between 1996 and 2003 were
interviewed during August and September 2005. The
interviews were conducted out of the women's workplaces,
mostly in their homes or at locations that they themselves
suggested. The design of the intended sample followed
several criteria. First, cut-off dates were set to homogenize
the interviewees' opportunities for accessing formal resident status made available by existing regulations.14 Since
the selected period includes the dramatic social, political
and economic crisis that struck Argentina in December 2001
(which also ended the currency exchange parity, thus
affecting migrants' remittances), the interview sample included one woman of each nationality entering the country after
2001. Respondents were required to be mothers of children
born in their home countries;15 it was required that at least one
of them had been under fourteen fully dependant at the
time of their respective mothers' migration to Argentina. The
following pages present the information collected through the
interviews and discuss how gender dimensions and practices
play relevant and intertwined parts in the networks that
support several of the different stages of the migration process.

Table 3
Women born in neighboring countries residing in BAMA by country of origin
(2001 and 2010) (00 and %).
Argentine National Population Censuses 2001 and 2010.
2001

2010

Country

Total stock residing


in Argentina

% residing
in BAMA

Total stock
residing in
Argentina

% residing
in BAMA

Bolivia
Paraguay
Peru

116,002
187,323
52,389

52
75
73

173,779
306,434
86,615

56
76
73

Table 4 below summarizes a few key socio-demographic


traits of all eighteen interviewees: age, age at migration, age
at childbirth, number of children and educational advancement.
These dimensions trace core responsibilities and resources
critical to the development (and understanding) of migration
trajectories.
All interviewees came from large families (from four to
twelve siblings) dwelling in rural areas, small villages or
major cities. Their formal education ranged from incomplete
primary schooling to complete college studies. Regardless of
educational achievements, the interviews revealed discontinuous schooling experiences related to early entrance into
the labor market. The low number of children per woman is
worth noting, as well as the fact that only three of them had
Argentine-born offspring. The average age of the children
(the eldest in the cases of siblings) was seven when the
mothers migrated to Argentina. As of the date of the interviews,
seven respondents had brought some or all of the children to
Argentina.
Five respondents raised their children as single parents.
Of the remaining interviewees, six were separated from the
father of their children and one was a widow. Thus, prior to
migration, divorce and widowhood had turned these women
into heads of households, a status they singled out as one of
the major reasons for moving to Buenos Aires. Only six of all
interviewed women lived in Buenos Aires with their spouses
and fathers of their children. In half of the cases, the women
migrated first, and their husbands and children followed when
they were already employed and fit to ensure their families'
upkeep in Buenos Aires.
Regarding the work experience of the respondents before
coming to Buenos Aires, none of them had been unemployed
in the source country. All had entered the labor market
before motherhood, and although some had given up work to
raise their children, most were the sole person responsible for
their children's welfare before migrating to Argentina. Their jobs
as nurses, petty shopkeepers, street sellers, cooks or domestic
workers provided barely enough to support their children and
clearly forfeited their access to quality education the main
legacy that they wished to pass on to their offspring.
All interviewees pointed out they had expected to migrate
temporarily (no longer than two years), just long enough to
save the money that would allow them to significantly
improve their life in their home country by buying a house,
starting a business or paying for their children's education.
All of them entered the country as tourists and stayed after
their visa had expired. Of eighteen respondents, ten were

28

C. Courtis, M.I. Pacecca / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 2432

Table 4
Socio-demographic characteristics of respondents.

Paraguayan women
Year of birth
Age at childbirth
Number of children
Age at migration
Education

Peruvian women
Year of birth
Age at childbirth
Number of children
Age at migration
Education

Bolivian women
Year of birth
Age at childbirth
Number of children
Age at migration
Education

Case 1

Case 2

Case 3

Case 4

Case 5

Case 6

Average

1978
15
1
23
Incomplete
primary
education

1978
17
2
21
Incomplete
primary
education

1976
18
1
23
Complete
primary
education

1979
19
1
24
Complete
primary
education

1959
24
3
38
Complete
primary
education

1977
17
3
21
Incomplete
primary
education

18
1.8a
25

1968
23
2
29
Complete
college
education

1974
18
1
21
Incomplete
secondary
education

1966
20
1
34
Incomplete
secondary
education

1966
19
5
34
Incomplete
secondary
education

1969
23
3
26
Complete
college
education

1970
21
1
33
Complete
college
education

20
2.1b
29

1971
20
1
22
Complete
secondary
education

1970
17
1
20
Incomplete
primary
education

1963
19
2
33
Incomplete
primary
education

1966
23
2
39
Complete
secondary
education

1972
18
5
21
Complete
secondary
education

1972
18
3
28
Complete
secondary
education

19
2.3c
27

a,b and c. are not final averages because many of these women, especially those of Paraguayan origin, are young enough to bear more children.

in irregular migratory conditions when the interview was


conducted. To justify this situation, they mentioned the high
cost of regularization procedures and their conviction that,
employment-wise, having proper resident documentation
did not entail any comparative advantages.
Even as independent or autonomous migrants, women's
migration is usually linked to family decisions, and the
family is where gender subordination is most heavily felt.
As household heads, the interviewees decided to migrate
mainly on account of the constraints that economic factors
imposed on their children's upbringing and education. Albeit
a single-handed resolution, migration was decided in the
impoverished context of marital separation and, as such, it
required no negotiation in a subordinate husbandwife relationship. However, family involvement was relevant and most
household members discussed advantages, drawbacks and
schemes for re-organizing the daily life of those left behind.
These issues show that a woman's chance to migrate frequently
depends on another woman stepping in and taking over her
household and childcare duties; which women may go depends
on which women stay.
Knowing that they would probably find jobs as domestic
workers and work long hours, all of them migrated alone,
leaving their children with their relatives. For some of the
women, migration meant relying on another woman (usually
her mother or her sister) to raise her children. Initially, the
divorced women had arranged for their ex-husbands to
look after the children; however, these arrangements were
short-lived, either because the fathers couldn't cope and
handed the children over to the maternal grandmothers or
because the mothers were uneasy about how their children
were being cared for. With regard to the women whose

husbands later joined them in Argentina, the children were left


in charge of the fathers, who received considerable support
from their extended families.
Concerning the organization of the movement, regardless
of the source country three facts shared across all respondents are worth noting:
- the City of Buenos Aires was the direct destination of the
respondents' journeys, i.e., there was no stage-migration;
- except for the Bolivian interviewees, who migrated with
their husbands, the other women stated that their migration was made possible by the support and assistance of
another woman, who had migrated before them and was
already residing in Buenos Aires;
- fifteen women had to borrow money to move to Buenos
Aires; however, none of them resorted to bank loans nor
borrowed from strangers: rather, their trip was financed by
this previous female migrant, who paid for all or most of
the travel costs.
The figure of the previous migrant woman varies according
to the interviewees' source country, the most significant
difference being their generation. The Paraguayan respondents
were assisted by their aunts (by blood or marriage), i.e., by
women belonging to their mothers' generation, who had
migrated several years and even decades before. By contrast,
the Peruvian interviewees received assistance from their sisters
or cousins, i.e., from women of their own generation who had
reached Buenos Aires much later than the Paraguayan aunts.
These preceding migrant women are a fundamental source of
support for newcomers; in general, they have already set up
jobs for the new arrivals even before their departure from their

C. Courtis, M.I. Pacecca / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 2432

hometown, and provided accommodation in their houses


during their first months of their stay in the host country.
With regard to entry into the labor market, the absence of
significant periods of unemployment is quite striking: almost
all the respondents got jobs within fifteen days of their
arrival in Buenos Aires. Besides, during the initial phase of
their residence in the host country, they took jobs as live-in
maids and sent remittances back home while their children
stayed behind in the country of origin.
Due to the characteristics of their own domestic units, the
interviewees had to save considerably to send remittances to
their children and pay off the loans that they had taken for
their journey. During the 1990s, when the Argentine peso
was pegged to the US dollar, live-in maids were easily able to
remit between USD100 and USD200 per month, plus they
could save enough money to pay for their children's trips to
Argentina or their own trips back home. After the 2001 crisis,
the dollar value of remittances dropped to such an extent
that these women were deprived of the opportunity to save
any money. Despite this scenario, they always managed to
send no less than 50% of their income, which means that their
living standards and purchasing power in Argentina were
significantly affected (a demographic outlook on the impact
of the 2001 crisis on immigration can be found in Maguid and
Arruada, 2005). All the respondents mentioned their
punctuality in the sending of remittances (it was the first
thing I always did), and their trust in the remittance
beneficiaries, as they never made any reference to improperly
allocated funds.
In migration contexts, the opportunities for saving and
sending remittances back home are tightly connected to
dwelling cost reduction strategies.16 Thus, in the case of this
survey's respondents, they initially lived in the house of the
woman that aided them in their act of migrating: they
resided there either for free or in an expense-sharing fashion.
In the cases in which the children rejoined the respondents in
Buenos Aires at a later stage, the move to a more adequate
dwelling was funded with the discontinuation of remittances.
Apart from this, the arrival of the interviewees' children led
them to switch jobs from the live-in mode to its by the hour
counterpart.
The respondents brought their children to Buenos Aires at
different times. Several factors seem to account for this: their
job stability, the opportunities for accessing a dwelling with
sufficient privacy for their families and continued schooling
for their children. Besides leading these women to make
adjustments to their jobs as well as arrangements for a proper
home, this decision implied that they would have to care for
and spend time with their children, who were in turn faced
with the need of readapting to their relationship with their
mothers, and adapting to the new location. Added to the
actualization of affection and desires, this led the interviewees
to narrate this particular experience with mixed emotions,
between happiness about reunification and uncertainty about
the forthcoming change in their lives.
For these workers, employment conditions have always
been irregular, even in the few cases where resident status
was regular. Still, their employers often women, like
themselves sometimes chose to give them holiday pay as
well as a year-end bonus. Not only did the interviewees view
these as acts of generosity on their employers' side: but they

29

also failed to perceive non-standard employment as a violation


of their rights as workers or as an act of abuse. This calls for an
evaluation of how the respondents describe their relationship
with their employers.
The interviewees have worked as domestic workers in
family residences, occasionally taking jobs in elderly care. With
only one exception, all of them had been hired by women of
Argentine origin. The initial interview with their employers
usually involved agreeing on working hours, the tasks expected
of them (cleaning, washing and ironing, etc.), their salary and
mode of payment. However, at this point, agency on the
potential employee's side appears blurred: conditions are set
by la patrona (the mistress, as the interviewed women
referred to their employer), and the candidate either accepts or
rejects them, but does not negotiate. For example, a Peruvian
woman once took a job by the hour and, after having worked
for 8 h the first day without having discussed her wages ,
she was paid the equivalent of just 2 h, an amount the potential
employer justified by saying it was what she usually paid all
her domestic workers. These situations tend to occur because
the patronaemployee relationship is agreed upon and takes
place outside a regulatory framework; this is due to ignorance
on both sides of the legal instruments that might prevent
informality and precarious work, and to a general lack of
agreement on exactly what tasks are included in domestic
work and what they are worth.
The blurriness of this situation is comparable to another
issue, which became evident when the interviewees evaluated their work conditions. In general, when they described
them as good or passable they were not alluding to an
employment/contractual relationship, but rather to a personal relationship experienced and expressed in terms of
family and kinship: they treated me as just another family
member. Here the respondents made reference to money
loans, authorizations for long holidays in their home countries,
assistance in obtaining medical appointments, medicines,
textbooks for their children, and other actions seen as favors
or liberalities from the patrona. This mode of treatment is the
prerogative of the employer, who plays the role of head of kin,
distributing resources and gifts in this fiction of kinship.
Whenever the respondents expressed dissatisfaction, they did
so not in connection with excessive job demands but on
account of being treated in such a way that established a
distinct boundary between the family and the employee, a
way which defined their relationship with the household in
terms of market and exchange rather than on the basis of
reciprocity and kinship.
Closing reections: Women working for women
The household, conceived as a space for domestic life and
as a workplace (this being true for both the employer and the
employee, though in differing degrees), becomes a place of
solidarity and hierarchy, of reciprocity and exchange, of gender
and class codes. The patrona and her employee appear in
counterpoint, and the differences between them can be either
exacerbated or softened by gender: the employer may erase
this common denominator and directly exercise the power
afforded to her by class (and by her position as a purchaser of
domestic work) or may use gender to bridge the class gap and
build the kinship and reciprocity fiction. This in turn can be

30

C. Courtis, M.I. Pacecca / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 2432

added to generational differences that may shape dependence


beyond economic considerations and transform the employee
into either her employer's protge or her victim. Unregistered
employment figures in domestic work prove how difficult it
is to earn respect for rights and benefits that are both longestablished and regulated by market and exchange logic in
other sectors. The work contract that might have offered these
migrants access to legal status in the country and would have
led to other rights and better social integration, was thus
held back at the crossroads entailed by the above-described
circumstances.
However, the interviewees' discourse does not suggest
any influence of the employer's condition as a local and the
employee's condition as a foreigner on the relationship between
both. Even though interviewees agreed that discrimination on
the grounds of nationality or irregular residence status may
occur in the street or in institutional settings (such as schools or
hospitals), no such episodes were reported by them within the
household, and nationality does not seem to be pivotal to their
employeremployee relationship. There are no elements in our
corpus that might lead one to think of nationality as a specific or
additional source of ethnic derision, racism or abuse from the
employer. The fact that native (Argentine) women employed in
households are unregistered workers just as often as migrant
women might support the interviewees' perception that being a
migrant has no special bearing at the interactional level between
the patrona and the domestic worker. In this sense, the kinship
fiction and gender/age/ethnicity/class structures seem to operate
just the same for Argentine as for migrant domestic employees.
These interviews have served to unveil the experiences of
women who decide to migrate with the support of other
women, in the knowledge that their most likely job opportunities will be in domestic service, performing women chores
for other women. Female networks support migrant women
before, during and after migration: taking care of their children
in the source country, helping out with the journey, aiding with
accommodation and employment at destination, and providing
jobs. As suggested by Grieco and Boyd (1998), in the cases
under study, gender becomes a core organizing principle of
relationships and opportunities in the context of international
migration. The respondents' decision to migrate was directly
linked to their maternal responsibility to support their children
and give them an education. The act of migrating was supported
and enacted on the basis of ties of solidarity and reciprocity with
other women in their families. Finally, at their destination,
employment as unregistered domestic workers reshapes gender structures and makes it difficult for these migrants to
position themselves as workers endowed with rights and
obligations established by a third-party (i.e. the State) with
which no kinship or reciprocity relationships can be established.
In addition, the cases under study reveal gender as a
condition for essentially dual and conflicting insertion, between kinship solidarity/reciprocity and market exchange. In
the same way as female work in their own households has no
exchange value, but is indispensable because it subsidizes
reproduction costs unmet by salaries, the gendered bonds of
solidarity and reciprocity subsidize the movement of women/
mothers to another labor market (at the destination), where
they take jobs in an entirely feminized and gendered niche.
Although the interviewees consider migration to have
been a source of learning and opportunities, and an experience

modifying their perception of their own ability to manage


uncertainty (see also Aranda, 2003; Stefoni, 2002; Maher and
Staab, 2005), from the perspective of this study, it is evident
that the influence of gender on the migration context tends
to reinforce complex subordination structures that tie social
standing with membership in a certain class, gender, age group
and geographic origin.

Endnotes
1
Following the UN's terminology, we refer to Latin America and the
Caribbean as a region. The term regional migration here refers to migration
processes taking place from or to Latin American countries. More specically,
we speak of intra-regional migrations for dynamics in which both origin and
destination countries belong to Latin America, while the term extra-regional is
used for processes in which either origin or destination countries lie outside the
Latin American region. The term international migrations implies processes
involving international border-crossing, as opposed to internal or inner
migration.
2
According to the UN denition, a domestic worker is a person
employed part-time or full-time in a household or private residence, in any
of the following duties: cook, servant or waitress, butler, nurse, childminder,
carer for elderly or disabled persons, personal servant, barman or barmaid,
chauffeur, porter, gardener, washerman or washerwoman, guard. (UNFPA,
2006: 51).
3
Statistical data on migration and domestic service have been drawn
from the IMILA Project (Investigacin de la Migracin Internacional en
Latinoamrica) run by Centro Latinoamericano y Caribeo de Demografa
(CELADE), ECLAC's Population Division www.eclac.cl/celade. Parcial interpretations of these data can be found in Martnez Pizarro 2003, 2005, 2008
and 2009; and Ksters, 2008.
4
This section revisits the work conducted by the authors as part of the
project Migracin y trabajo domstico: una aproximacin interdisciplinaria, a
larger study requested by ILO Chile in 2005. Fragments by Courtis and
Pacecca (2008, 2010), and by Ceriani et al. (2009 in Valenzuela and Mora,
2009) are reproduced here.
5
Martnez Pizarro, Jorge (2003) points out that in 1970, over 75% of
migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean were extra-regional, and that
this gure dropped to less than 50% in 2000.
6
UN Population Division: http://esa.un.org/migration/index.asp?panel=1.
7
There is also a share of migrant women hired at more qualied jobs
both in the region and away from it.
8
Although we will not expand on the issue in this paper, specics
such as the historical development of domestic work in different countries,
traditions of household organization, forms and range of access to domestic
services, women's participation in the non-domestic labor market and the
composition and dynamics of the domestic work labor market (for instance,
migrant women still share this niche with internal migrant women in Latin
America) would be worth exploring across contexts in order to grasp
nuances in the work conditions and experiences of international migrant
domestic workers (Chant, 1992, Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007, Momsen, 1999).
9
The Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area comprises the City of Buenos Aires
and its surrounding boroughs, and concentrates 32% of the total population
of Argentina.
10
The 2001 census reported 700,000 domestic workers: 88.4% of them
were Argentine, whereas 11.6% came from other Latin American countries,
chiey Paraguay, Peru, Chile and Bolivia. 45% of the total domestic workers
resided in the BAMA.
11
It is important to emphasize the decit of public statistical information
about the employment conditions of domestic workers, particularly due to the
high informality levels of this labor group. It is also worth mentioning that, until
2013, domestic work was regulated by a special regime which dated from 1956
(Decree 386) and granted domestic workers fewer rights than to workers in
general. In March 2013, a new law was enacted for domestic workers (Act No.
26844/13) that incorporates rights such as maternity leave and other security
benets. How this new law will affect domestic workers, and international
migrant domestic workers in particular, is yet to be seen.
12
In the Bolivian case, feminization relates both to the increase of
independent female migrants as well as to men moving with their wives.
13
In the 1990s, two combined processes affected migration from neighboring countries, particularly Peru: on the one hand, the collapse of regional

C. Courtis, M.I. Pacecca / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 2432


economies, and on the other, a currency exchange system in Argentina that
pegged the Argentine Peso to the US dollar.
14
Between 1996 and 2003, access to temporary or permanent resident
status was mainly determined by Executive Order 1023, which contained
the regulations for Migration Act No. 22439/81. This act set the following key
conditions: holding an employment contract (which was restricted later, in
1998), being married to an Argentine citizen, or being the parent of an
Argentine citizen. Another way of getting resident status was through the
bilateral Migration Agreements signed in 1999 with Bolivia and Peru. Finally,
a new migration law was enacted in January 2004, which has opened up
new alternatives for migrants seeking resident status, especially from 2005
onwards. Since the analyzed interviews were carried out in 2005, they do
not fully reect the impact of this legal shift, its reach and limitations.
15
(Not) having Argentine-born children was not relevant to the sample,
neither were the nature of domestic work (by the hour, live-in, formally
employed, etc.), the migration status of the interviewees (regular or irregular/
undocumented) or the presence or absence of a spouse in the source country
or in Argentina. These dimensions were later analyzed on a case-by-case basis.
16
The Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area offers three types of dwellings to
disadvantaged migrants: shanty towns either in Buenos Aires City or its
surroundings; squatted houses; and hotels and boarding houses. All three
dwelling types involve seriously deteriorated infrastructures and building
conditions. Shantytowns are usually located in areas devoid of vehicle access
or public lighting. Squatted houses tend to be concentrated in specic
Buenos Aires City neighborhoods enabled with transportation, public
lighting, schools and stores. Shantytowns and squatted houses are the most
affordable dwelling types, but access to them is enabled only through
contacts: conversely, boarding houses, though more expensive, are open to
anyone who can pay the fee.

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mujeres latinoamericanas y caribeas. Serie Mujer y Desarrollo, 51. Santiago:
CEPAL.
Stefoni, Carolina (2002). Mujeres inmigrantes peruanas en Chile. Papeles de
Poblacin, 8(33), 117144.

Szretter, Hctor (1985). La terciarizacin del empleo en la Argentina. El sector


del servicio domstico. Proyecto ARG/84/029, PNUD-OIT.
Torres, Alejandra, & Mazzino, Pablo (1996). Mujeres trabajadoras en la Argentina
brechas en participacin, remuneracin y poltica pblica. Revista de Trabajo
y seguridad Social, 3(10).
UNFPA (2006). Estado de la poblacin mundial. Hacia la esperanza: Las
mujeres y la migracin internacional. New York: UNFPA.
Valenzuela, Mara Elena, & Mora, Claudia (Eds.). (2009). Trabajo domstico:
un largo camino hacia el trabajo decente. Santiago: OIT.
Zurita, Carlos (1983). El servicio domstico en Argentina. El caso de Santiago
del Estero. Santiago del estero: INCIC, Universidad Catlica de Santiago
del Estero.
Zurutuza, Cristina, & Bercovich, Clelia (1986). Yo trabajo en casa de familia.
Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (CEM).
Zurutuza, Cristina, & Bercovich, Clelia (1986). Las sirvientas: ellas, las otras,
nosotras (Research project: Servicio domstico remunerado y problemas de
sindicalizacin). Buenos Aires: Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (CEM).
Zurita, Carlos (1997). Trabajo, servidumbre y situaciones de gnero. Algunas
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de la Mujer (CEM).

Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Gender and migration from invisibility to agency: The routes of


Brazilian women from transnational towns to the United States
Glucia de Oliveira Assis
State University of Santa Catarina UDESC, Department of Human Sciences, Av. Madre Benvenuta, 2007, Itacorubi, Florianpolis, SC 88035-001, Brazil

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 10 February 2014

s y n o p s i s
In the late twentieth century, thousands of Brazilians left for the United States to make it in
America, inserting Brazilians into the new international labor flows. Brazilian women, like
other Latin American immigrants, became concentrated in housecleaning, a labor market that
is segmented by gender, class and ethnicity. Housecleaning became a female emigration
strategy that allowed women to circulate through the globalized world and insert themselves
in transnational migration. This article analyzes how the configuration of the housecleaning
business and the organization of domestic labor redefined or problematized gender identities.
The data comes from an ethnographic study conducted in Brazil and the New England
region of the United States. As housecleaners in the United States, men and women are
confronted with redefinitions of identities that may or may not imply changes in gender
relations.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
This article demonstrates how Brazilian women insert
themselves into international labor flows, into a labor market
of domestic service, which also includes other immigrant
women. The increased participation of women in migratory
flows has raised significant questions for research and
theories of international migrations, because it reveals that
women are active subjects in the migratory process who
make decisions and provoke changes within family and
gender relations. Moreover, they initiate and undertake their
own migratory projects and do not only accompany their
husbands or sons, as is often portrayed in migratory studies.
Immigrant women are inserted into the domestic services
sector and use informal social networks, the so-called ethnic
enclaves of immigrants, working as caretakers for the elderly,
nannys, part-time cleaning ladies or full-time maids (Anthias,
2000; Assis, 2004, 2007; Fleischer, 2002; Foner, 2000;
Morokvasic, 1984), and in the sex market (Maia, 2009,
Margolis, 1994; Piscitelli, 2007). In this context of feminization of migratory flows, women participate in networks of
care and sex, in a labor market that is segmented by gender,
class and race. Women participate in the transnational flows
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.003

that occur in the globalized world as flexible, precarious and


often invisible sources of labor, because their work takes
place in the private realm. As Saskia Sassen (2003) observes,
the feminization of transborder migratory flows must be
understood in the context of the expansion of the informal
economy that favors the flexibilization and deregulation of
the labor force and creates the conditions for absorbing
feminine and foreign labor.
Anthias (2000), upon analyzing migrations to southwestern Europe in the late twentieth century, emphasizes that it is
not a question of recognizing the proportional importance of
women or their economic and social contributions, but of
considering the role of the processes, discourse, and gender
identities within the processes of migration and establishment
in the destination society. This perspective reveals that a
gendered approach is important for understanding contemporary migrations, although it does not involve a question of
the presence of women in the flows, because even when they
were numerically significant, they were not considered in the
classic studies of migration. As demonstrated by Houstoun,
Kramer, and Barret (1984), since the 1930s, women have
constituted the majority of legal flows to the United States, but
have nevertheless remained invisible in studies on migration, a

34

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

situation that only began to change in the 1970s. Studies by


Morokvasic (1984), Gregorio Gil (1996, 2007), Menjivar (2000),
Pessar (1999), Foner (2000), Anthias (2000) and Chant and
Radcliffe (1992) revealed the theoretical transition that involved
using the category of gender to consider migratory processes.
Until the early 1970s, women were not found in the
empiric analyses or in the studies conducted, as highlighted
by Patricia Pessar (1999), Chant and Radcliffe (1992),
because many authors were influenced by neoclassical
migration theories. There was a presumption that men were
more apt to run risks, while women were the guardians of
the community and stability. This image, favored by the
pushpull theory, understood migration as a result of rational
and individual calculations and relegated women to a
secondary place, without recognizing their work as
immigrants.
The increased female participation since the 1970s took
place in a context of growth of international migrations since
the second half of the twentieth century. Contemporary
migrants, unlike their antecessors, have access to lower-cost
communication and transportation, which has shortened
distances and made contacts more frequent between the
societies of origin and destination.
An important question that remains is the experiences of
women of different national origins in the contemporary
flows. As contemporary migration studies demonstrate, there
is a significant migration of Latin, Asian, African and Eastern
European women that adds new ingredients to the understandings of these movements. These women arrive with
different human capital many of them with a better
educational level and higher qualifications than the women
who arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Contemporary immigrants benefit from the expansion of educational and employment opportunities, and
from more liberal legislation concerning divorce and gender
discrimination. Although these differences are significant,
there are more similarities than differences in the lives of
migrant women from different national origins.
What they have in common is that, like the women who
arrived more than 100 years ago, contemporary immigrants
are found in labor markets segmented by gender and, despite
better schooling and qualification, still steered towards
certain traditionally female occupations, which causes a
field such as domestic employment for example, which had
decreased in the United States and Europe, only to rise once
again in the late twentieth century.
Brazilian women, as well as Mexican, Peruvian, Philippine
and other immigrant women, have left their countries to do
housecleaning in the United States. Hondagneu-Sotelo
(2007) observed that theoreticians of globalization have not
stopped to consider the importance of domestic labor
neither those who celebrate it nor those who criticize it. In
the same way that modernization theories that forecast the
disappearance of domestic service in modern society were
wrong, because this form of labor has grown and continues to
grow, Hodagneu-Sotelo affirms that neither theoreticians of
globalization nor those of modernization were able to foresee
or understand the role of domestic labor in the era of
globalization and post-industrial society. The author observes
that a few feminist scholars and theoreticians began to pay
attention to the recent expansion and dispersion of these

transnational migrant domestic woman workers in various


countries.
Another important factor to be revealed is that this
insertion is not distinguished only by gender, but also by
national origin. Upon analyzing the representations about
women immigrants of different nationalities in recent decades
to Europe, Anthias (2000) revealed how they are categorized
differently, according to racial standards and national origin.
Some would be classified as victims (such as Sri Lankan
women), others would be desired for their supposed submission (such as Philippine women), others would be desired for
their beauty that conforms to Western standards (such as
Eastern European women).
Therefore, the greater visibility of women in recent
international migrations has contributed to problematizing
the crystallized visions about the insertion of men and
women migrants in this process. From the start, the choice
of who will migrate, the reasons for migration, a permanence
or return, takes place within a network of relations that
shape the opportunities of men and women migrants.
This article reconstructs the emigration trajectories of
Brazilian women who left for the United States during the
second half of the twentieth century. The stories of these
women allow us to reconstruct trajectories that began in the
1960s and, in the following decades, established transnational ties between the locations of origin in Brazil the city
of Governador Valadares, in Minas Gerais State and the city of
Cricima, in the southern state of Santa Catarina and the
region of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. The
ethnographic research that provided the data for this study
was conducted in two moments between 2001 and 2004
(Assis, 2004) and in 2008 (Assis & Siqueira, 2009) and was
conducted in two cities in Brazil and in the region of Boston.
In these Brazilian cities, emigration became part of the daily
life of many of their residents and is among the life
expectations of many youthto migrate to America. The
trajectories of women are presented here to demonstrate
how migration became a female strategy for social mobility
or a search for a better life, as the migrants themselves say. In
this scenario, housecleaning, work that has a low status in
Brazil, becomes resignified and offers a possibility to make it
in America and realize the migratory project.
Following Pisicitelli (2008) in her studies of immigrant
Brazilian women, I also suggest in this article that these
migrants are affected by the imbrication between notions of
sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity and nationality. According
to Piscitelli, these notions imply that whether they are white
or brown-skinned, in international flows, they are racialized
in the countries of the North as mestizas. She adds that this
racialization is sexualized.
The accounts of the women whose trajectories will be
reported reveal how this racialization and sexualization of
Brazilian women is intertwined and how the women use
these markers of difference, which at times generate
prejudice and discrimination, to have an advantage in the
labor or marriage markets. As we demonstrate in this article,
based on the experiences of some of these migrant women,
they use attributes of Brazilianness to negotiate their loving
relationships.
We emphasize the trajectories of migrant women to
demonstrate that, although they have emigrated somewhat

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

later than the men, and are confronted with different concerns
than men, they also undertook the adventure of emigrating. In
the process, they wrote their own histories, not only by
accompanying their brothers, boyfriends or husbands, but also
by establishing their own migration routes and networks.
Between the local and the global: Governador Valadares and
Cricima as the starting point of international migration
Brazil, which until the middle of the past century
attracted thousands of immigrants in search of a better life,
has experienced a significant movement of Brazilians heading abroad since the 1980s. Given this movement, the first
academic works classified these emigrants as exiles from the
crisis an allusion to the political exiles of the 1970s who,
to escape the Brazilian economic crisis, were obliged to
migrate, as demonstrated by Sales (1991, 1992), Goza (1992)
and Margolis (1992, 1994). These articles emphasize emigration as an option taken by certain sectors of the Brazilian
middle class to confront the lack of labor opportunities or
opportunity for social mobility generated by the economic
crisis that shook the country in the 1980s the so-called lost
decade.1 The main destinations of this initial flow were the
United States, Paraguay and Japan.
In the case of Brazilians emigrating to the United States, the
studies began by following the route of the migratory flows. The
first studies by Margolis (1989, 1992, 1994), Assis (1995, 1999),
Soares (1995) and Sales (1992, 1995) trace a profile of the
population and pointed to the city of Governador Valadares
(MG) as the starting point for many who reached the Boston
region. We note that in these studies, as in classic migration
studies, little attention is paid to gender issues.
During the 1990s, as demonstrated by the works of Martes
(2000), Ribeiro (1999), Sales (1999a), Reis and Sales (1999),
the flow of Brazilians to the United States remained continuous, making the characteristics of the population in terms of
class, gender and ethnicity more complex, as well as revealing
other starting points for the emigration. The studies reveal that
there was growth in the participation of women and that they
were constructing a niche through their work within domestic
service in the Boston region (Fleischer, 2002; Martes, 2000;
Scudeler, 1999), while men were mainly employed in civil
construction and in the restaurant sector. The studies also try
to problematize the changes in family and gender relations
(Assis, 2003; Debiaggi, 2003; Debiaggi, 2002; Fusco, 2001).
In the 1990s, the city of Cricima emerged as an important
starting point in southern Brazil for emigrants headed to the
United States and Europe. What I would like to highlight is that
during this time migratory networks were constructed and
consolidated in both cities, where one immigrant would
encourage another to emigrate, bringing friends, relatives and
compatriots, as studies by Massey (1997), Massey et al (1987),
Levitt (2001), Gramusck and Pessar (1991) and Hagan (1998)
demonstrate, thus transforming these cities into transnational
communities, as Fusco (2005) and Assis (2004) observe,
establishing transnational ties, and making a significant impact
on the daily life of the cities.
In these Brazilian cities, the most visible impact of
migration is the increase in civil construction and the
opening of small businesses with the resources sent by
emigrants (Siqueira, 2006; Soares, 1995). When they leave,

35

emigrants generally think of returning to Brazil. Thus, for


men and women, the migratory project usually consists of
building a home and mounting a business, which makes the
money sent home an important mechanism for maintaining
ties with the country of origin and demonstrating the
success of the migratory project.
In addition to this more visible aspect, the multiple family,
emotional and religious relationships established among the
emigrants and those who remain are expressed through
presents sent by mail, containers with products from the
United States, trips to Brazil to participate in weddings,
birthdays and parties, or having relatives, usually parents,
come for visits or to help care for the children, or helping other
friends and relatives to emigrate. This demonstrates that, in
addition to monetary resources, there is a circulation of
emotional ties that establishes a field of transnational relations.
News from abroad reaches these cities by letters and phone
calls, and more recently by email or Skype, with reports like
there in the United States, cleaning is not like it is in Brazil,
which causes many women to migrate knowing they will be
doing this kind of work. I met the women whose trajectories I
will narrate in this article during my field work. I use fictitious
names to guarantee their privacy, given that many are still
undocumented, and others preferred not to be identified.
The flow of Brazilians to the United States is predominantly constituted of undocumented immigrants, either
because they traveled with a tourist visa and overstayed the
time they were granted, or because they illegally entered the
U.S. through the Mexican border. Some, as is the case of
various immigrants from Criciuma, who are descendants of
Italian immigrants (who came to Brazil in the nineteenth
century) have Italian passports (and thus do not need a visa
to enter the United States), which creates an advantage when
passing through immigration (Assis, 2004, 2011).
Nevertheless, the period of stay is the same regardless if
the person holds a Brazilian or Italian passport and after this
period, the tourists become undocumented immigrants.
Sales (1999a, 1999b) observed that during the 1980s, Brazilian
immigrants constructed a sense of legitimacy for their
clandestine situation. Although undocumented, they were
able to work under false documents, put their children in
public school, receive hospital care, open bank accounts, etc.
Therefore, in daily life, they did not sense a lack of legalization
(a need for papers). Nevertheless, after the attacks on
September 11, 2001, life became more difficult for Brazilian
immigrants and those of other nationalities. The increase in
measures restricting entrance to the country, granting visas,
the greater rigor at airports, increased prejudice, and criminalization of migrants forced them to question the legitimacy
of the clandestine situation. Those who were undocumented
felt more vulnerable to blitzes by immigration authorities at
their workplaces, problems when passing through immigration at airports and greater difficulties when faced with
situations where they had not previously experienced problems, even though they were undocumented, for example,
renewing a drivers' license or registering children in school.
After 2001, obtaining papers came to occupy another place
in the life and concerns of Brazilian immigrants, who began to
seek strategies for legalization.
Since it involves a contingent of mostly undocumented
migrants, data about Brazilians abroad consists of estimates.

36

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

According to the Ministry of Foreign Relations, based on


information from Brazilian embassies and consulates, it is
estimated that about 2.53 million Brazilians lived in other
countries between 2008 and 2011. The 2010 census2 was the
first to include a question about international migration and
provide a more precise estimate of the number of Brazilians
residing abroad; reaching 491,645 in 193 countries, with
264,743 women (53.8%) and 226,743 men (46.,1%); 60% of
the emigrants were between twenty and thirty-four years
old. Recognizing the large difference in estimates and the
difficulties in data collection, one thing the numbers do
reveal is a significant presence of women emigrants. The
2010 Census also indicates the United States (23.8%) as the
leading destination. Nevertheless, when we look at the total
percentage of emigrants who go to Europe Portugal
(13.4%), Spain (9.4%), Italy (7.0%) and England (6.2%), we
can see that 36% of all Brazilian emigrants head for that
continent, which demonstrates an increased flow to Europe
in the early twenty-first century.
Marcella emigrated to the Boston region in 1988 and
witnessed the growing ow of Brazilians during the
1990s. She arrived with a tourist visa, did not speak
English, and was taken in by relatives. Her plan was to
save enough money to return to Brazil and get married.
Like other immigrant women she became a domestic
maid and, over time, began her own cleaning business.
The years passed and Marcella returned to Brazil a
number of times, but was not able to stay, due to what
she said was the economic instability in the country in the
1990s. With her earnings in America, she was able to
come and go frequently between the U.S. and Brazil. Even
though she did not have documents, as Marcella
established herself, she helped family and friends in their
migratory trajectories, revealing the importance of social
networks for the consolidation of the ow of Brazilians in
the United States. In her statements, Marcella emphasizes
that women here feel more secure, independent, there is
work here, you have opportunity. You can go anywhere,
any shopping center and they don't want to know if you
are a housecleaner or whatever.3
Marcella, a woman who emigrated to try to make a life in
America, does work common among immigrant women
cleaning while always avoiding the police, because she has no
papers; she is undocumented. This experience, which is
common among women from Criciuma and Governador
Valadares that we accompanied during the ethnographic
research, reveals to us that when the women leave, they
insert themselves in a market that is segmented ethnically
and by gender attributes. Domestic work becomes a female
emigration strategy and allows the women to circulate
throughout the globalized world, cross borders and participate in transnational migration.
Gender and domestic laborthe creation of a labor
market niche for Brazilian women
When they leave for the United States, the migrants take
with them the dream of a better life, they want to make it in
America, meaning they plan to work and save money to buy

a house and a car, or mount a business and return to Brazil. In


order to realize this project, however, they must work as
undocumented migrants in jobs that they would not perform
in Brazil. In the case of the group analyzed, the women
consider themselves to be white and from the middle or
lower middle class, with a high school education, and some
have taken classes at college. They worked in Brazil in
commerce, as teachers, in banks or as independent professionals. By emigrating to work in cleaning in the United States,
they are clearly lowering their social position and occupational
status. In this sense, the emigrants interviewed are significantly different from the profile of women who are employed
in domestic labor in Brazil, as demonstrated by Brites (2013)
and Brites et al (2013). In Brazil, it is foremost that women who
have less schooling, are poor and describe themselves as black
or brown who perform these low-pay tasks in Brazil. Thus, these
women, many of whom had their own cleaning ladies or
full-time maids before emigrating, try to redefine the lowering
of their status, highlighting the differences between housecleaning in the United States and Brazil, as we will see below.
Brazilian migrants and those of other nationalities are
employed in the secondary labor market,4 which, as Scudeler
(1999), Martes (2000) and Martes (2000) have pointed out,
is characterized by low salaries, precarious working conditions, little security and high turnover rates. This market is
generally aimed at women, adolescents, migrants and
immigrants, because it requires little qualification or knowledge of the language.
Like other Latin American and Asian immigrants, most
Brazilian immigrants are at the base of the occupational
structure. Men usually look for work in the construction
sector, in restaurants, supermarkets and large fast-food
chains, while women seek employment through networks
of domestic care, housecleaning and baby-sitting, most of
which are poorly paid, require few skills and attract
undocumented workers who speak little English without
providing them basic social security. Although many Brazilian immigrants, both men and women, are from the middle
class and worked, for instance, as bank tellers, teachers or
sales clerks in Brazil, within the migration of they insert
themselves into a different market and thereby accept a
decline in occupational status, which, as we will see in the
case of female immigrants, is resignified through the earnings
they obtain from long hours of work in the cleaning
business. We can also say that, in addition to being inserted
into an ethnically segregated labor market, these immigrants
respond differently to the macro-structural forces influenced by gender relations (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994). Listening to the reports about the trajectories of migration, I found
that many women had already been thinking of doing this
kind of work when they first migrated, because it is
considered the most profitable and safest for those without
documentation and limited knowledge of the English language. Thus, many began working for an immigrant who had
been there for some time and after they learned the ropes,
they sought to set up their own business, even if it was a
cleaning business commonly consisting of the immigrant
herself, a helper who may be a recently arrived immigrant or
relative, and a car full of cleaning supplies.
According to Fleischer (2002), domestic labor is a theme
that has not been very visible in academic studies. The author

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

attributes this invisibility in part to the nature of domestic


labor, as it is very common work that is considered to lack
complexity, that is performed within homes by women who
are usually from classes and ethnic groups that are
undervalued, and that deals with elements related to pollution
(such as garbage, human waste, dirt). Nevertheless, despite
this invisibility, domestic work has been increasing in
countries like the United States. Mary Romero (1997) and
others have emphasized that domestic work is not perceived
as a job, because it is conducted in domestic spaces and related
to family and leisure activities, as opposed to the world of
work that takes place in factories or offices. In this context,
women are identified as natural workers because washing,
cleaning and caring for children are gendered tasks, which are
commonly considered to be female. Upon analyzing the
relationship between bosses and cleaning women in Brazil,
Kofes (2001) notes that while there has been an increase in
domestic employment in European countries such as France,
England and Spain, more extensive knowledge is in circulation
about entering into this type of employment in the United
States. Kofes emphasizes that:
domestic employment involves the circulation of people
between different social and cultural worlds (between
classes, many times ethnicities, people or racialized
groups; between rural and urban; between urban neighborhoods, the circuit is feminine and nearly always, the
circulation is of women). This circuit, in contexts of
transnational migration, is not only geographically expanded, but also qualied in a distinct manner, although
everything indicates that it is predominantly feminine
(Kofes, 2001, p. 23).
This draws attention to a connection between what
domestic employees do in various parts of the world and
between domestic work in Brazil and the United States, a
connection which, during the entire time of the field work,
the immigrants try to hold separate by affirming that
housecleaning in the United States is different than in Brazil.
In relation to this issue, there are reports that describe the
experiences of immigrants during the 1960s.

Women immigrants in the 1960s living at work


In the 1960s, with the first flow of Brazilian women to the
United States, single immigrant women found domestic labor
to be a form of conducting the migratory project, which
provided a certain amount of security, given their status as
single when they migrated, and living at their workplace
offered them protection from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and lowered the risks of living alone
abroad.
Maria, Miriam and Martha emigrated from Governador
Valadares to the United States. Maria emigrated in 1969 at
the age of 24, Miriam in 1980 at 20 and Martha in 1981 at 30.
They were all single and worked in retail in the city of
Governador Valadares. Maria had completed elementary
school and the two younger ones were high school graduates.
Their emigration was primarily motivated by the stories they
heard about the life of emigrants from Valadares in the

37

United States, tales of modernity, the lifestyle and the


possibilities for a better life.
In these women's imaginary, the idea of America is a
land of great opportunities. I thought that here [the USA] was
something from another world (). Maria sent photos [of the
USA] and we wanted to go, to leave that little life. (Martha).
They belonged to the urban lower middle class and lived
with a certain financial difficulty. Maria decided to emigrate
to improve her life. She told her parents of her decision.
I got home, and all choked up, I told my parents that I
wanted to go to the United States. My father said that I must
be joking and left the room. Then I said to my mother: I want
to go with your consent, but if you don't agree, I will go
anyway.
Maria said that her mother spoke with her father, who
agreed and supported the decision by helping her organize
the papers to get a visa and with some of the travel costs.
Upon departure, her father gave her a letter, saying she
should read it when she was in the plane. In the letter, he
recommended she take the precautions that a single woman
must have in a strange land and that she maintain her
dignity. Her parents were greatly concerned because she
planned to emigrate as a single woman.
Maria worked as a maid living in the houses of U.S.
families, because she thought it was safer. This type of work,
living at the job, allowed her greater moral protection, also
from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, because
she emigrated with a tourist visa and did not have permission
to work, which made her situation different from that of
those who first emigrated and were able to get work visas. At
that time, domestic workers did not have any possibility to
obtain legalization.
In 1973, Maria married a Brazilian of Portuguese descent
with U.S. citizenship. This allowed her to become documented. As we show below, this is the most common form of
legalization for women.
When her sisters decided to emigrate, Maria supported
them and provided all the necessary means. She got
documents for her mother, so her sisters could get Green
Cards, except Miriam, who was already living in the U.S. and
had married a Greek man who was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Miriam and Martha began working as domestic cleaning
ladies. We worked live-in jobs,5 an expression that designates this type of work, which Miriam still does until this day.
The work involved dedicating a few hours a day to looking
after the house and living at work. It allows the women to
clean other houses for extra pay.
The three sisters are a family, each has two children, and
Maria and Miriam now have grandchildren. They frequently
return to Brazil, Miriam has an American-style house in
Governador Valadares where she spends her annual holidays.
They all say that they intend to return to live in Brazil at some
point in their lives.
As Hagan (1998), Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994) and Glenn
(1986) observed, when they reach the society of their
destination, many single women's first jobs are a type of
arrangement known as live-in, which means they work as
domestic maids and live at their workplace. This type of work
has historically been considered as a way of incorporating

38

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

immigrant women into the new society, because it means that


recent arrivals will not have to spend money on food, housing
or transportation. These women are inserted into a precarious
form of labor that is not regulated, and in a position where it is
difficult to become legalized. Living at the job means long
work hours, inseparability of work and leisure, and makes it
more difficult to develop contact networks outside the
household. Despite this situation of inequality and exploitation, from the perspective of these women, such arrangements
do allow them to migrate and remain in the United States.
The first fieldwork I conducted on immigrants from
Valadares in the Boston region included some women in this
situation (Assis, 1995). In general, they were middle-aged
women (older than 40) with little schooling, and who had
difficulties finding other kinds of work. However, this was not
the predominant arrangement among Brazilian women who
emigrated in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is not to say
that this strategy of living at work does not take place, but
rather that it is less frequent, and does make a difference in the
these women's trajectories.
Although living at work has advantages, as mentioned
above, the women are also subjected to greater labor
exploitation because limitations to their working hours are
not respected and the pay is much lower than for those who
do independent cleaning jobs. In addition, the limits between
working hours and times of rest are not clearly laid out
(Glenn, 1986). Nevertheless, the greatest problem, and the
greatest difference to Brazilians who have immigrated in
more recent decades is that living at work denies these
women a regular social life and interactions with friends and
relatives. Instead, they often wind up assuming a relationship
of loyalty and dependence towards their employers.
The above-mentioned trajectories of the immigrants in the
1960s corroborate Hondagneu-Sotelo's (1994) reports of
young single Mexicans with an illegal status, which affirmed
that this type of work arrangement offers less risk of exposing
the women as undocumented workers. Despite the disadvantages, according to those interviewed, living at work serves as
protection for recently arrived women, preserving them
morally and preventing them from being pushed into sex
work.6 Finally, the author highlights that after some time,
these women transitioned to daily work and began participating in the regular life of their migrant community.
Living at work was therefore employed as a strategy, to
facilitate one's migratory project and guarantee a certain
amount of security in the early days of their migration. After
some time, they were able to become legalized through
marriage with naturalized foreigners, and could free themselves from this type of arrangement.
Brazilian emigrants in the 1980s
In the 1990s, the flow of Brazilians became continuous,
and housecleaning became an occupational niche of Brazilian
emigrants. Here, the stories of Marcella Lanza, who emigrated in 1988, of Luisa and Roberto Ramella,7 who emigrated in
1998, and of Cludio and Leila,8 will help us understand the
emergence of this labor niche for Brazilian emigrants in the
Boston region.
According to Martes (2000), the Brazilian immigrants
entered the cleaning sector to create advantages over other

migrant groups. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that as


Martes (2000), Fleischer (2002), Melo (2003) and Assis
(2004) have observed, it is not the male Brazilian migrants
who dominate housecleaning but the women migrants
made cleaning businesses. In this sense, the authors cited
show the configuration of a labor niche for Brazilian
emigrants. The women who migrated to the United States
found cleaning to be a type of work that could guarantee they
would make it in America. When men work in housecleaning, they are usually subordinate to women. The women are
the bosses who make the decisions about what to clean,
about the service and pricing, and the men must obey. This
arrangement is usually conducted by couples, as also
observed by Martes (2000) who studied housecleaning and
affirmed that men migrate to work in this service in order to
set up a business for the couple.
What I would like to call attention to here is that in
addition to the different involvement of women and men, the
tasks are also categorized by gender. The workplace (the
office or factory), which is represented as a place of formal
employment, becomes masculineit is not exclusive to men,
because women also work in offices, but it is charged with
attributes of the male gender: competitiveness, efficiency,
rigid norms, and contracts. Domestic work, which is done for
loveand in which the employee is treated as someone in
the family, receives feminine gender attributes: cordiality,
care, informality, and the absence of clear rules.
In this sense, the fact that Brazilian women are concentrated in cleaning, as are other Latin American migrants,
reveals something about gender relations, but also about the
interweaving of class and ethnicity. The increased insertion
of migrant Latin American women in U.S. homes signified a
gradual substitution of AfricanAmerican women for women
from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia, etc. These
women from less developed places in the world cannot
only be contracted for less money and are willing to work
longer and harder, but, due to the precarious economic and
social conditions, are also more docile (Rollins, 1990).
As Parreas (2000) observed when analyzing Philippine
migrants inserted into domestic work around the world, the
globalization of economic markets has extended the policies
of reproductive labor to an international level. Parrenas uses
the term the international transfer of caretaking services to
refer to three levels at which women from the countries of
departure and arrival are interconnected in the division of
labor. According to the author, while women of the privileged
classes pay low wages to Philippine maids, Philippine women
pay the same low salaries to employees who care for their
households. Hochschild (2000) calls this the global care
chain, which is a series of personal links between people
across the globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring.
In the case of immigrant Brazilian women inserted into
housecleaning, many of them had their own housecleaners in
Brazil, because they were part of the Brazilian middle class,
which is also part of this international care network. At the
same time, these women in migration have other women
generally maternal aunts or grandmotherscare for their
families and children in Brazil.
Brazilian women are inserted into a market segmented by
gender, class and ethnicity, working for U.S. families in which
the women work and pay for other women to perform

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

domestic services. For recently arrived migrants, this work,


which does not require much knowledge of the language or
specific abilities, is a good opportunity, because, in addition
to everything else, it pays well. They charge about US$50 per
house, which takes about two hours to clean. The desire of
many immigrants is to work within a market that, in addition
to being considered well paid, is also autonomous.
It is interesting to note that housecleaning acquires the
character of a business, since it is considered well paid, thus
endowing women autonomy and prestige in the Brazilian
community, a status which is very different from housecleaning in Brazil. This distinction in relation to housecleaning in
Brazil is emphasized not only by the couples Roberto and
Luisa, and Cludio and Leila, but also by Marcella, who works
with helpers, who are generally recently arrived migrants.
The immigrants make a point of emphasizing that
cleaning in the United States is not as heavy as it is in Brazil.
They say that the cleaning products are better, U.S. homes
more practical and that it is not necessary to throw water on
everything like they do in Brazil. Nevertheless, they have to
clean kitchens and bathrooms, which is why I consider these
representations as attempts to resignify the character of hard
work and emphasize the gains in relation to the parameters
of cleaning work in Brazil.
The work opportunities can be shaped by gender, as
affirmed by Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994), but in this and other
cases in which men clean with women, the activities are
redefined. The men must learn to execute tasks dictated by
women who understand and dominate these services. As
Roberto reports: Luisa is the boss. She speaks with the client,
who only calls her [he said smiling], she understands more.
The tasks are divided as follows: those that are considered
heavier go to Roberto: he does the vacuuming, dusts and
helps change the bed sheets. When there is laundry to put in
the machine, he does that as well. Luisa cleans the bathrooms
and the kitchen, and mops the floors. The two work very
quickly and do the cleaning in two hours. Luisa is also the one
who reads messages when the owners leave instructions,
arranges the service with them or listens to any complaints
and, for this reason, she is considered the boss. This same
division of tasks was observed in the couple Cludio and
Leila. When the cleaning is done by two women, in general,
the owner of the business does the lighter tasks, such as
cleaning the bedrooms, the kitchen and the bathroom.
Luisa decides where to begin and what to do, and even
where they will skimp on the service that day. Roberto
migrated to clean houses and had to learn to perform work he
did not do in Brazil. It is interesting to note that in this context,
domestic work in the gender attribution becomes more
differentiated, as vacuuming is then considered a male task,
as is doing laundry. Even dusting, which is considered more
delicate work and therefore feminine, is taught to men, who
have to learn to be careful with fragile items. Thus, the tasks
and the utensils are classified according to the relations the
migrants establish with them, and the masculine and feminine
gender attributes are presented with new semantics.
In exchange, in the case of the couples analyzed, it is the
men who are responsible for driving the car. Luisa and
Roberto live in Lowell, a city close to Boston. They leave at
about 7 a.m. to do a cleaning job in Cambridge, then one in
Newton, another in Lawrence, and then they drive 30 miles

39

to Boston. They then have to go back to Lowell where they


live and have part-time work; they say that the houses in
the city they live in are all taken by other migrants. Thus, they
spend work hours traveling from one city to another.
In general, they do not complain about their bosses,
whom they refer to as clients, but, when I accompanied
Luisa and Roberto on a job, I realized some tension when one
of the U.S. bosses complained about the vacuuming done
the week before. The complaints were made to Luisa because
Roberto doesn't speak English. The emigrants avoided
complaining about their bosses, but when I accompanied
them on cleaning jobs during the field work, I realized that
they did not like the dirtier homes and the more demanding
bosses, and thought better of those who gave tips and
presentsgood clothes and domestic utensils they no longer
needed. Leila showed me coats that she got from one of her
clients. She said: They think that we are poor, so they treat
us like we treat our maids in Brazil, they give us what they
don't use anymore.
When they get home, these men and women still have to
care for their own houses. Here, the men also share the
domestic tasks, which most men in Brazil do not do. Thus,
cleaning and its earnings cause men to recognize domestic
tasks as work, which was invisible to them before. Therefore,
they are more apt to help their wives because they realize
that this work is indeed tiring. I observed this among the men
who I accompanied.
In the case of the couples interviewed, the fact that they
work together and share domestic tasks at work helps them to
perceive the difficulty of the domestic work in their own
homes. Thus, when they arrive at home, Roberto, who did not
help with household chores before they migrated, helped
prepare dinner, take clothes to be washed, and clean the house.
The same can be said of Cludio and Leila, who decide together
what to do with earnings, which, in addition to paying their
debts in Brazil, also allowed them to send their children to the
university (one of them attended a public university and
another a private university). The money was also used to help
close family members in Brazil to pay for their studies, or to
assist relatives who wanted to migrate. Decisions about
investments, paying debts and how to help family members
were taken together. These practices observed in the daily life
of the couples' relationships revealed more egalitarian and less
hierarchical relations, which point to changes in gender
relations in the context of migration. This is not to say that it
is possible to generalize the situation among immigrants,
because in many cases there are conflicts and separations
between migrant couples who do not negotiate these new
situations, it does however indicate another form of looking at
tasks previously considered women's work. Another factor
frequently discussed in relation to cleaning is its business
character, or one immigrant selling a route or schedule for
housecleaning to another. Studies about Brazilian immigrants
in Boston show that when they refer to housecleaning and the
market niche that Brazilians are creating, they address how
difficult it is to set up a schedule and the different ways of
acquiring it, highlighting a form that is considered unchristian
within the community: selling ones cleaning route or
schedule.
The report below discusses the context in which this sale
takes place and how the people who experience this process

40

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

analyze it. Here, I turn to statements by Leila, who, together


with Cludio, purchased a schedule and, after working for
three and a half years, decided to return to Brazil once they
had reached their goals, and sold the schedule to their
daughter Vera. When I was in the United States, Vera was still
adjusting to the business with a friend of hers from Criciuma
who had become her partner. They were both inspired and
there was no tension or complaints from the daughter about
the fact that her parents sold the business to her. Vera even
left a job at a U.S. company where she had been working in an
office (unlike her parents, she spoke English well) to take on
the cleaning business.
According to Leila, they sold the schedule for US$24,000.00,
which is three times what they earned in one month of work.
Leila justified the price by affirming that when they took over
the schedule it was worth US$ 4000 per month and when they
left it, it was paying about US$8000 per month. From their
perspective, they had dedicated themselves to the business,
and had invested not only in the work, but also in relations
with the bosses (they continued to receive news and postcards
from their American bosses, even though they had been back
in Brazil for more than a year). They expanded the business,
and due to this investment,9 were cleaning houses that were
much better than the ones they received. Thus, when Leila's
mother questioned why she had sold to her own daughter, she
showed her mother what the cleaning represented in reals,
how much they earned when they began and when they
decided to sell. After this explanation, Leila's mother understood the decision. In addition, there was no conflict or dissent
between the parents and daughter, because she had already
been getting help in various moments of her stay in the United
States.
Therefore, from the couple's perspective, they were giving
their daughter an opportunity: a business that was built
through lots of work and, if they had simply given it to their
daughter, she would not recognize its value. For this reason,
they charged the price they thought was fair. The daughter
purchased the schedule together with a friend and began to
work. At first, they lost some homes, and according to her
mother, it was because they did not do a good cleaning job.
The daughter then decided to buy the schedule from the
friend, because she was not doing her work well, and this
time the parents helped out and loaned her money. Vera
continues to clean most of the same houses that her parents
did, and the bosses still send pictures of their children and
post cards to the parents who returned to Brazil.
This example is perhaps interesting because, in combination with information from people who got cleaning routes
from friends, it demonstrates the role work ethic plays
among immigrants. This work ethic justifies the sale of work
points, yet often, even with this logic, some people do not
sell. This demonstrates that the cleaning business does not
contradict the notion of solidarity in migrant communities,
but triggers different meanings in a single event, revealing
the ambiguities found in the constitution of a work niche
among Brazilian immigrants in Boston.
Sales (1999a) demonstrated that Brazilian immigrants
construct themselves, and are portrayed in the U.S. press, as a
hard-working people; and are thus welcome as workers. In
the services that they provide (cleaning in general, housecleaning and work with the elderly), they are considered

careful, polite and known for providing good services. The


immigrants use this reputation to add value to the work they
do in the United States and establish a distinction in relation
to other immigrant groups.
Therefore, although it is a business, as observed in studies
of Brazilian housecleaners by Martes (2000), Fleischer
(2002), and Brazilian shoe shiners by Margolis (1994), and
involves competition, it does not exclude reciprocity, and
there is substantive gain for those who purchase a schedule
the trust of future bosses, the work in homes and the
opportunity to have their own business. The sellers believe
that they are offering solidarity because they select who will
buy the schedule. In the reports I collected, I found that they
do not sell to just anyone, a circuit is triggered that involves
networks of friendship and a common origin, and the sellers,
although they earn a considerable profit from the deal
(which, in the immigrant community, is at times a source of
complaints and accusations of lack of solidarity), they still
believe that they are acting in solidarity with those who seek
a schedule.
This, of course, does not mean that there are no conflicts,
complaints or deceptions within this exchange. For the buyers,
there is no guarantee that the house-owners will like the work
of the friend and stay with the service (the buyers are always
presented as friends, with the exception of cases of relatives, as
seen above). For those who buy the cleaning points, there is
also the risk that the people who sold the point decide to
return from Brazil and try to get the houses back, as reported
by Martes (2000) and Fleischer (2002). Conflicts or deceptions
concerning the schedule, however, are merely a possible
outcome, and are not necessarily the rule within the
business. In the cases reported above, those involved did
not experience it in this way. The elements are frequently a
mix, alternating solidarity and conflict in a business that
represents one of the few opportunities to earn money as an
undocumented migrant with little knowledge of English, and
for this reason, it is a source of great contention.
Housecleaning jobs are thus shared, negotiated, donated
and contested. In this migration context, work that is
considered a subaltern service with feminine attributes in
Brazil redefines gender roles and the positions of men and
women when they work together. It is not very common for
men and women to work together because, as the couples
interviewed emphasized, a couple has to be in real harmony to
do so. New gender attributes are established for domestic
activities, some tasks become more masculine and others
more feminine. The women clean the bedrooms and at times
the men help make the bed; cleaning the bathroom and the
kitchen also usually stays with the women. The men take the
clothes that need to be washed, do the vacuuming, which is
considered a heavy service, but at the same time they must
learn to dust without breaking things. The women teach the
men the tasks and inspect to see if everything is cleaned
according to the established standards of cleanliness.
The subaltern status of housecleaning is resignified among
Brazilian immigrants in the United States, because the women
are seen as business owners who earn well, have a car and
contribute substantially to the family budget. They can travel
to Brazil or bring their relatives to the U.S. for a visit. These
gains compensate for the manual nature of the work, which
is heavy and attributed a low status. This aspect was also

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

observed by Martes (2000) and Fleischer (2002). Thus, in light


of the conceptions of many immigrants cleaning in Boston, we
can say that housecleaning in the United States empowers
Brazilian women to enter this competitive business and raise
their status in work and employment, contrary to the findings
of the authors mentioned in the beginning of this text, who
had analyzed domestic employment among Latin and Asian
immigrants.
The experiences of the immigrants are similar to those
found by Carpenedo and Nardi (2013) in their analysis of
Brazilian women in domestic service working in Paris.
According to these authors, despite the fact that these
women are undocumented and subject to precarious working conditions, they are involved in more than simply
oppressive, discriminatory and exploitative regimes that
characterize transnational reproductive work. To a certain
degree, they are able to create spaces of resistance, which, in
some cases, can signify social repositioning in their context of
origin, because migration helps to interrupt the reproduction
of the cycle of poverty in the trajectories of their own lives
and those of their families. It is important to observe that the
women feel empowered, but among the men who clean, I did
not observe this sentiment. For this reason, housecleaning in
the United States becomes a project for women. Although at
times they come home at night very tired and with sore
backs, allergies from the cleaning products, and feeling
depressed about performing tasks they paid others to do in
Brazil, the guarantee of continuous income compensates for
the loss of status.
To help disguise this demotion, Brazilian immigrants call
their bosses clients or customers, which seems to be an
attempt to escape the view that they themselves have of
domestic work and of housecleaning in Brazil. Housecleaning
gains another meaning, instead of being devalued feminine
work that is not recognized as employment, it becomes a
business that helps men and women realize the project of
making it in America. Roberto and Luisa, Cludio and Leila,
as well as Marcella, used the money they earned from
cleaning to buy real estate in Brazil, through which they are
materially concretizing their migratory success and positively
redefining a type of work that has low status and pay in
Brazil. The local materialization of the gains from working in
the United States, leads other emigrants in Brazil to dream of
making it in America.
Finally, the experiences of these women immigrants help us
consider how they not only resignify the place of domestic work,
but also representations of Brazilian women in their emotional
relationships as demonstrated in Piscitelli, Assis and Olivar
(2011). In the case of Brazilian women in Europe, particularly
in Portugal, is an example of this process. Here, the representations of Brazilian women produce an association between
gender and nationality. These representations place certain
essentialized and exoticized characteristics sensuality, joyfulness, congeniality in relation with the insertion into the sex
market, which leads to the discrimination of to Brazilian
immigrants in Portugal (Padilla, 2007; Pontes, 2004). In the
case of the Brazilian immigrants interviewed, categorizations
that articulate gender and sensuality do not produce the same
effects. The image of sensuality is aggregated to the representation of a caring woman, in contrast to Brazilian men who are
not represented as good partners, because they are seen as

41

chauvinist, commanding, unwilling to share domestic tasks,


and thus as exhibiting models of masculinity that are not
valued in the migration context.
This is the case of Marcella Lanza, who had been in the
United States for fourteen years when she was interviewed.
She said that after various romantic relationships, she had
changed her expectations about marriage and the idea of
returning to Brazil. Marcella sought to construct other
romantic relationships in which she could find emotional
fulfillment and well-being, but also security regarding her
immigration status. As being undocumented became more
difficult following the attacks of September 11, she began to
look for a U.S. boyfriend. That's how Marcella met James, an
American, with whom she began a relationship and whom
she tried to win over by using attributes of Brazilian
femininity.
What did Marcella like about James? Firstly, he was not a
jealous man and respected her work, her Brazilian friends,
and her leisure time with them. In comparison, she
considered the masculine characteristics of American men
to be positive attributes. Unlike the Brazilian men from her
past relationships, James gave her the space she felt she
needed to live her life. On the other hand, Marcella did what
she considered important for the relationship and for her
boyfriend. According to her, this is something Brazilian
women do well, even better than American women, for
example, offering a good meal, going out at times to talk with
his friends and maintaining a good sexualromantic relationship. Marcella constructed James' male attributes as
positive in comparison to her previous boyfriends, and
highlighted the security he provided her. In 2003, Marcella
became pregnant from James. The pregnancy made her very
happy because in her account, she could now begin her own
family. They got married on Valentine's Day in a civil
ceremony, and were still married when I met them in Boston
in 2008. The marriage to attain papers also represented a
stable relationship, based on respect and security, combining
affection and interests, as observed by Piscitelli's (2011)
analysis of relationships between Brazilians and their partners in Spain.
Marcella's account reveals a recurring sentiment among
the Brazilian women I spoke with. The sense of security,
autonomy, driving one's own car, and running one's own
business made these women feel more autonomous, free to
make choices regarding their work, leisure time and romantic
life. It is important to emphasize that although Marcella
married James, regularized her status by receiving a Green
Card, she continued her own business called Marcella's
cleaning service.

Final considerations
Classic migration studies describe women as merely
accompanying or waiting for their husbands or sons, and
the importance of their contributions to family income was
not taken into consideration. Therefore, such analyses not
only often hid women's participation, but they also failed to
recognize that long-distance migration takes place within a
complex network of social relations, in which women play an
important role.

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G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344

Thus, although women have predominated in legal


migration to the United States since the 1930s, this
perspective remained outside the scope of scholarly research
and, as a consequence, important aspects of migration and
the establishment of immigrants remained blind spots, as
were the differences among immigrants in terms of class,
gender and ethnicity. Thus, gender-differentiated reasons for
and characteristics of a mobility remained outside the
research focus: migrant subjects were assumed to be male
and there was no visibility of female participation. However,
since the mid-1970s gender and feminist studies have
questioned the crystallized images of women immigrants as
those who wait, or as passive dependents. This interrogation
has led migratory studies to cast another glance at the
migratory process and to question theoretical presumptions
about migration.
The article sought to demonstrate that Brazilian migrant
women are agents in the migratory process and do not
simply migrate to accompany their husbands, children or
relatives. In this process, although they are inserted into a
secondary labor market through working as housecleaners,
they construct cleaning work and its significance in a
different way that sets it apart from domestic work in Brazil.
Thus, although they work every day of the week, doing heavy
work, the fact that they have a schedule of houses where they
work by the hour, which pay well in comparison to what a
housecleaner earns in Brazil, and the fact that they transform
this work into a business resignifies domestic work. This
process allows many of these women to become more
autonomous, and to become active agents in migration in
the United States. These portrayals do not seek to present the
complete spectrum of Brazilian immigrant experiences, but
rather to demonstrate how domestic cleaning although it
has a subaltern character in Brazil allows the women
interviewed to realize their migratory projects and contribute to redefining gender positions. By transforming cleaning
into an informal business, these women resignify this work
thereby evading the creation of a link between their work
and its subaltern character. Although the sale of cleaning
schedules apparently goes against notions of solidarity and is
criticized by some immigrant community and religious
leaders, it is also presented as proof of the entrepreneurial
capacity of the Brazilian immigrants who construct an
specific labor niche for immigrant women. In the view of
these women, the subaltern context of domestic work is
presented in a new semantic in comparison with the
parameters relating to the same type of work in Brazil.
In the case of the Brazilian immigrants interviewed, they
all emphasize the sensation of greater autonomy; The
women here have power and are more respected, some
say. Nevertheless, the difficulties with legalization experienced by the majority demonstrate that this process of
agency does not take place in the same way for everyone or
with the same intensity. Therefore, unlike the Chinese
enclaves in Zhou's study (1992) and Zhou and Logan
(1989), in which the networks of their compatriots offered
women fewer economic advantages than the men, the
Brazilian women interviewed appear to have established
networks offering entrance into and assistance within the
labor market, particularly in the informal cleaning business,
through which they obtain work opportunities and economic

advantages, which, in some cases were better than the jobs


available to men.
By incorporating the category gender into the analysis
of migratory flows, migration is no longer seen as a rational
choice of isolated individuals, but emerges as a process
involving networks of social relations, which include strategies of groups of family members, friends or people from the
same community. In this context, women and men emerge at
different times as the links connecting social networks in
Brazil and abroadthat help out in the days of migration in
the society of destination and with the maintenance of ties
with the place of origin.
These social networks are informed by kinship and gender
norms. Thus, women turn much more help from their
relatives and those who articulate the networks among
other households. Men also find support within these
networks, but the information gathered indicates that they
rely much more on the help of friends to find work and
housing than of relatives. Within this process gender
relations are redefined: in general, women experience
greater autonomy and agency in the destination society, not
only because they earn better, despite conducting work of
low status, but also because Brazilian femininity is attributed
a specific value on the U.S. matrimonial market, creating
possibilities for romantic relationships, which may lead to
legalizationas this is difficult for women to obtain solely
through their work in domestic service. In this way, women
negotiate the attributes of Brazilianity and mobilize them to
affirm themselves positively in the United States, as demonstrated in Marcella's statements. Male immigrants, on the
other hand, feel a loss of status even more, because they are
asked to share their authority, negotiate it, and are
confronted with expectations that call for more egalitarian
relations. As Adriana Piscitelli (2011) observed when analyzing Brazilians working in the sex market in Europe, the
notion of agency can only be understood when economic,
political and social factors are also taken into consideration.
Thus, Brazilian women who set up a business and support
themselves in the United States discover that they are
capable and have autonomy, which gives them a sense of
power and recognition in the society of emigration, and
especially in their cities of origin, where they are able to send
presents and make investments.
Long-distance migration brings about great transformations for the subjects who live this experience; instead of
thinking of it only as a factor that leads to ties being broken, I
sought to conduct a more complex analysis and to demonstrate the constitution of a field of transnationalized relations
that also allows new family and gender arrangements.
Therefore, in contemporary flows, women tend to migrate
alone or as the first in their families, being pioneers in finding
work in the United States, breaking with the image of women
as those who wait or follow in the men's footsteps. Finally,
women become integrated into networks of migration and
are key agents through their articulations of the connections
between here and there.
Endnotes
1
According to Sales (1992:60), emigration would be the most bitter
fruit of our lost decade the denomination economists gave to the 1980s

G. de Oliveira Assis / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 3344


due to the worsening economic indicators because we entered the world
economy through the back door, providing illegal immigrant workers who
escaped the economic crisis.
2
Data from IBGE. Available at: http://saladeimprensa.ibge.gov.br/
noticias?view=noticia&id=1&busca=1&idnoticia=2017.
3
Marcella Lanza 41 years old, high school graduate, interviewed in
January 2002, in the Boston region.
4
For a discussion about insertion in the U.S. labor market see: Sales
(1999a, 1999b), Scudeler (1999), Martes (2000).
5
to live at work means to live at the employer's house. This
arrangement was considered safer by those interviewed in the 1960s,
mainly by young and single immigrant women, because they live in the
house of the family.
6
Work that is quite stigmatized in the migrant group. The same type of
stigma is observed among Brazilian immigrants in relation to women who
work as go-go girls (Assis, 1995; Margolis, 1994).
7
Roberto and Luisa Ramella are from Cricima and granted me an
interview in January 2002, in a city close to Boston.
8
Claudio and Leila, are from Cricima and granted me an interview in
Feburary 2002. They were friends of the couple Roberto and Luisa Ramella.
9
Fleischer (2002, p. 121) also highlighted this aspect of compensation
that the immigrants attributed to the sale of the cleaning business and in this
context relatives also treat the exchange as a business deal, but get special
payment conditions.

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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 4553

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Domestic workaffective labor: On feminization and the


coloniality of labor
Encarnacion Gutierrez-Rodriguez
Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 17 April 2014

s y n o p s i s
This paper argues for an understanding of domestic work as affective labor. It engages with the
affective quality of reproductive labor by interrogating the organization of paid and unpaid
domestic work in private households. Thus, while it attends to debates on emotional labor, its
main focus is on the affective dimension of the social.
It does so by focusing on reproductive labor, in particular, domestic work and developing a
feminist critique of affective labor through the analysis of the cultural predication of feelings
associated with and infused in domestic work. In this regard, the cultural predication
prescribing the social meaning attached to domestic work will be explored within the
framework of feminization and coloniality. Thus, domestic work will be discussed as affective
labor surfacing at the juncture of feminization and coloniality. Following this argument, the
article firstly engages with feminist analyses on reproductive labor, feminization and domestic
work. Secondly, it looks at private households and affective labor. Thirdly, it examines the
relationship between paid domestic work and migration regimes from the angle of the
coloniality of labor. Using these insights, the article explores the sensorial corporeality of
racialized affect negotiated in and around domestic work. It concludes by arguing for a
conceptualization of domestic work as affective labor.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
This article's focus is on domestic work as affective labor.
It engages with the affective quality of reproductive labor by
interrogating the organization of paid and unpaid domestic
work in private households. Thus, while it attends to debates
on emotional labor (Carrington, 1999; Hochschild, 1983;
Illouz, 2007), its main focus is on the affective dimension of
the social. As such this article engages with the impact of
feelings and emotions on social relationships and spaces
(Ahmed, 2004; Brennan, 2004; Sedgwick, 2004). Following
Spinoza's (1994) observation that affect drives us to act, the
article explores the twofold character of affect as a texture of
the social and as socially textured. It does so by focusing on
reproductive labor, in particular, domestic work and developing a feminist critique of affective labor through the
analysis of the cultural predication of feelings associated

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.03.005
0277-5395/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

with and infused in domestic work. It thus contributes to the


debate on affective labor in feminist theory (Corsani, 2007;
Federici, 2012; Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010; Precarias a la
Deriva, 2004; Weeks, 2011).
Engaging with the affective corporeality of domestic work,
this article argues for an understanding of feelings and
emotions as interlaced in the social semantics of place and
time. In this regard, the cultural predication prescribing the
social meaning attached to domestic work will be explored
within the framework of feminization and coloniality. Thus,
domestic work will be discussed as affective labor surfacing at
the juncture of feminization and coloniality. Both processes
describe social classification systems related to the creation of a
hierarchical social order. In order to illustrate this rather
abstract yet material dimension of corporeal affectivity in
domestic work, the article uses interview extracts from a study
conducted with colleagues on the interpersonal relationships

46

E. Gutierrez-Rodriguez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 4553

between female migrant domestic workers and their female


employers in Austria, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom
between 2002 and 20041 (Caixeta, Gutirrez Rodrguez, Tate, &
Vega Sols, 2004), other observations from research on
undocumented Latin American domestic workers employed
in private households in Germany and the United Kingdom
conducted by the author between 2007 and 2013 are also
considered (Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010).
The discussion engages firstly with feminist analyses on
reproductive labor, feminization and domestic work (Caixeta et
al., 2004; Corsani, 2007; Federici, 2012; Precarias a la Deriva,
2004). Secondly, it moves to look at private households and
affective labor. Thirdly, it explores the relationship between
paid domestic work and migration regimes from the angle of
the coloniality of labor (Quijano, 2000, 2005, 2008). Using these
insights, the article explores the sensorial corporeality of
racialized affect negotiated in and around domestic work. It
concludes by arguing for a conceptualization of domestic work
as affective labor. First, let us begin with the debate on
reproductive labor, feminization and domestic work.
Reproductive labor, feminization and domestic work
According to the ILO, majority of domestic workers are
women (82%), many of whom are migrants or children whose
work is undervalued, underpaid, [and] poorly regulated
(ETUC, 2012: 10). These characteristics resonate with features,
which feminist activists and scholars have discussed as
associated with the feminization of labor (Bair, 2010; Bakker,
2007; Elson, 1998). Domestic work epitomizes the social
devaluation of feminized labor (Mies, 1999). This is articulated
economically as the productive contribution of domestic work
is consistently ignored in official calculations of GDP (cf. Ferber
& Nelson, 1993; Folbre, 1994; Hewitson, 1999; Himmelweit,
1995; Prez Orozco, 2004, 2010; Waring, 2004). It is also
articulated socially as domestic work continues to be perceived
as unproductive and unskilled labor, devoid of any societal
value (Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010; Weeks, 2011).
Feminist theory has challenged this perception (cf. Barrett,
1980; Dalla Costa & James, 1972; Delphy, 1984) and insisted on
the constitutive value of domestic work for social reproduction
(Bakker & Gill, 2003; Barker & Feiner, 2010; Bedford & Rai,
2010; Benera, 1979; Dalla Costa & James, 1972; Federici, 2004;
Kofman, 2012; Molyneux, 1979; Peterson, 2009). This calls into
question Marxist views that restrict this labor merely to
the sphere of reproduction by underscoring its productive
force (cf. Jacobs, 2010; O'Hara, 1998; Redclift, 1985). More
recently, feminist research has highlighted the emotional
character of domestic work (cf. Boris & Parreas, 2010;
Carrington, 1999; Hochschild, 1983, 2003; Lan, 2006).
Taking these observations on board and considering the
transformation of the organization of labor in post-industrial
societies, feminist theorists and activists in Spain and Italy have
placed a renewed focus on the question of reproduction
(Benera & Sarasa, 2011; Corsani, 2007; del Ro, 2004;
Fantone, 2007, 2011; Federici, 2006; Prez Orozco, 2004;
Precarias a la Deriva, 2004; Ruido, 2008; Sconvegno, 2007;
Vega Sols, 2009). In doing so, they consider care work
(Spanish: trabajo de cuidados) in particular as a pivotal axis
for organizing precarious work. For example, the Madrid-based
feminist group Precarias a la Deriva has drawn attention to the

significance of care work for social reproduction by focusing on


personal caring activities and re-evaluating the ethical implications of care for society (Precarias a la Deriva, 2004). Thus,
Precarias has complicated the Marxist division of productive
and reproductive labor. Introducing care work as a hybrid
category, Precarias defines care work as a hinge between
reproductive and productive labor. Care work articulates the
increasing interpenetration of these spheres in post-industrial
societies, a tendency that they coined the feminization of
precarity (Precarias a la Deriva, 2004). In a similar vein, other
feminist analyses of the impact of the economic crisis in Spain
and Italy suggest that we depart from taking the feminization
and the precarization of labor as vantage points from which to
understand crisis capitalism (Benera & Sarasa, 2011;
Carraquer Oto, 2013; Carrasco Bengoa, 2013; Federici, 2012;
Martn Palomo, 2008, 2013). Acknowledging that feminization
does not simply refer to the quantitative dimension of the
gendered division of work, that is, to the overrepresentation of
women within low-income and insecure work sectors, this
debate has drawn attention to the historical and cultural
implications of feminization as a process of labor devaluation.
Thus, feminization connotes the cultural predication of work
historically delivered by feminized subjects as inferior.
While the feminist analysis of crisis capitalism emphasizes the relevance of reproductive labor through the lens of
care work, some feminist research warns us not to subsume
reproductive labor under the umbrella term care work.
Care work refers to a specific range of activities engaging
with direct or indirect personal care (Folbre, 2006) and to
professional pathways such as nursing, child care or care of
the elderly. In contrast, domestic work is not considered a
professionwith the exception of the housekeeper in
Germany and Austria, which involves the management of
the household and household workers. Subsuming domestic
work under the term care may obfuscate the dirty work
of physical activities dealing with dirt (Anderson, 2000). Yet,
as numerous studies have shown, in light of everyday
practices care workers very often need to deliver domestic
work and domestic workers are requested to do care work
(c.f., Anderson, 2000; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001; Lan, 2006).
As Silvia Federici (2012) notes, despite the interchangeability
between domestic and care work, the assumption that
reproductive labor is care work and thus affective labor
needs to be critically interrogated.
Federici stresses the historical conditions through which
reproductive labor has been imposed on women and become
a terrain of women's agency and struggle. She notes that the
practices developed in this field that have been passed on
over generations represent the creation of common wisdom
and collective knowledge acquired through experiences of
oppression and resistance (Federici, 2004). For Federici,
subsuming reproductive labor under the label affective
labor fails to acknowledge the persistence of a gendered
division of work, whereby reproductive labor addresses a
specific quality of labor that is related to certain physical
tasks, personal and emotional skills. Thus, the fast-food
female workers who must flip hamburgers at McDonald's
with a smile or the stewardesses who must sell a sense of
security to the people she attends to (Federici, 2012: 122)
are not synonymous with the care workers who need to
complete specific physical tasks and deploy emotional

E. Gutierrez-Rodriguez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 4553

faculties in caring for people. Considering affective labor as


a component of every form of work rather than a specific
form of (re)production (Federici, 2012: 122) blurs the
prevalence of the gendered division of work and its
constitutive role in supporting the cycle of capital production
and accumulation. For example, caring for a child, an elderly
person, or a disabled person requires specific physical and
emotional skills that are not interchangeable with the skills
expected of teachers, office clerks, or flight attendants. While
the latter are required to deal with emotional demands at
work, they are not immediately involved in the physical care
of a person, and their work is not explicitly defined by the
parameters of feminization.
While this critique rightly warns of an overgeneralization of
terms that might obscure the intricacies of the gendered
division of work and the substantial significance of feminized
labor in supporting capital accumulation, the analysis of the
affective dimension entails more than a consideration of care
work. The analysis of affect is not intrinsically related to care
work, though care represents one of the axes of analysis.
Rather, as previously mentioned, the focus on affect addresses
the affective fabric of our being as it highlights the social
texture of our affective becoming. Social encounters and
relations of production and reproduction unfold in spaces of
affective (dis-)encounters such as private households.
The private household and affective labor
Private households are saturated with people's feelings and
emotions. While these feelings and emotions are individually
experienced as sensations, their affective character goes
beyond personal experience. The relational and spatial character of affect transcends the sphere of the personal as affect
defines the impact of feelings on bodies, objects and spaces
(Ahmed, 2004; Brennan, 2004; Massumi, 2002; Tate, 2009). As
such, affect addresses the impact of feelings circulating in a
dispersed manner, which are expressed in fleeting encounters,
and have an impact on people's bodies and psyches. The
orientation towards a specific addressee is not always rationally conceived in the expression, impression, and circulation
of feelings; and, because they evolve within a social context,
they become tangible and intelligible because they bear social
meaning.
Within the private sphere of the household, domestic
workers are immersed in the immediate intimate relations of
the household members. While not always explicitly part of
these relationships, domestic workers unwillingly and unwittingly become involved in them purely by inhabiting the
space. Thus, they not only cognitively participate in emotional work, that is, by attending to the caring needs of the
household members, they are also (in)directly addressed by
the emotions and feelings that circulate within the household. Thinking about affect in private households points to
how feelings affect us and how we are affected by the
energies of others. In contrast to emotions that engage with
the cognitive dimension of feelings, affect are sensations or
stimuli (Spinoza, 1994). These are driven by life forces such
as desire (cupiditas), joy (laetitia) and sadness (tristitia)
(Spinoza, 1994: 160ff.). Affect motivates our thinking and
actions as these energies, intensities and sensations compel
us to act and transform passion into action.2 As such, affect is

47

a relational category, an outcome of encounters and energetic


circuits, which permeates our bodies, and results from our
ability to feel.
In everyday encounters feelings are transmitted from one
person to another, from one space to another. This transmission of affect, called affection (Brennan, 2004), may increase
or diminish our energies. It can affect us in positive or
negative ways. Thus, we might feel relieved, enhanced or
depleted as a result of the impact that energy has had on us,
leaving us with a positive or negative sensation, intensity or
feeling. For example, in the case of joy and love, one can feel
energized, but when one carries the affective burden of
another, either by a straightforward transfer or because the
other's anger becomes your depression (Brennan, 2004: 6),
we are left depleted, sad, exhausted, or apathetic. Our
affective encounters can increase or diminish our energies,
they can animate or disanimate us.
Considering this affective dimension of domestic work in
private households, the first striking aspect in the narratives
of female domestic workers and their female employers is
the depletion of energy associated with this work. Numerous
accounts speak of the draining, exhausting, monotonous, repetitive, apathetic, lifeless feelings attached to
the delivery of tasks like cleaning, making the bed, sweeping
the floor, washing clothes or dishes; but also the routine
structure of preparing meals, grooming or dressing children,
as well as just doing the tasks that need to be done, which no
one feels like doing and no one notices when they are done.
The feelings connected to these tasks are not felt just because
they are supposed to be boring. Instead, boredom is attached
to tasks because boredom is related to the cultural perception
of this work as banal and lacking any social, professional or
financial recognition. Within this context, the feelings and
emotions that are ingrained in domestic work and felt by the
people delivering the work are expressed, impressed,
exchanged, and circulated in the private households. Affect,
therefore, not only unfolds context (Massumi, 2002), but is
also produced in a specific context. Thus, while they are
expressions of immediate bodily reactions and sensations,
which are neither rationalized through language nor situated
in a dominant semantic script, they impact people and places,
and are situated in a social space, such as a private household.
The affective energies attached to the organization and
dynamics of unpaid and paid domestic work in private
households evolve within the logic of the feminization of
labor. As Annie Phizacklea and Carol Wolkowitz assert,
feminization describes the declining terms and conditions of
employment, so that a large proportion of the labor force has
come to experience feminized (that is, poor and insecure)
conditions of work in some cases through deregulation at the
national level. (Phizacklea & Wolkowitz, 1995: 3) Domestic
work signals this terrain of deregulated work, which is abject
and devalued in society. The subjects providing this work are
culturally predicated by signifiers of inferiority, produced
through processes of feminization, and, as we will see below,
also by racialization.
In conversations with female employers and domestic
workers alike, the sentiment of inferiorization is expressed
in their reflection on their positioning as mothers and
housewives. Employing another woman to perform domestic work releases them from this positioning and enables

48

E. Gutierrez-Rodriguez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 4553

them to experience positive feelings. For example, Antonia, a


teacher who lives with her daughter in Vienna, stresses how
happy they are with the person they have employed to do
the household work. She describes her in the following
words, Our fairy, she simply helps uswe both sense it quite
strongly. This just makes us happy. She is like our fairy. I say it
too. She is a fairy [laughs]a real miracle. She lives and
flourishes! And she works like one too. (MAIZ, 2004: 69),
(Antonia, employer, Vienna).
Antonia uses flowery terms to refer to their domestic
worker. Her vital (she lives) and productive (flourish)
potential is noted. Employing a domestic worker enables the
household to engage with positive feelings, which affect the
household and its members in animating ways, while the
domestic worker takes on the negative affective burden
ingrained in this work. For the employer, employing another
person to deliver this work means that she is exempt, at least
for some of the day, from doing this work. Thus, most of the
employers share the feelings that Stephanie summarizes
succinctly, I would get sick of the sight of these four walls. I
mean, I stayed at home for four and a half years. I was
basically the cleaning woman, the nursemaid. Ultimately, I
am happy, that I have a job outside of the home where I am
not confronted with the household or childrenmy own
children. (MAIZ, 2004: 63) (Stephanie, employer, Linz).
Stephanie's feelings toward the option of becoming a
stay-home mother are associated with illness, connoting a
state of physical and psychic deterioration. What is interesting about Antonia's and Stephanie's accounts is that the
feeling of happiness appears in association with another
person doing the household work. Happiness seems to be
felt the moment somebody takes over the depleting aspect of
domestic work, thus freeing up time to engage with
professional ambitions and aspirations, or just to relax with
the family, children, partner, or friends. This sense of
recouping time and personal autonomy might be what the
employers experience when they employ another woman to
do the cleaning or caring work. In employing another woman
to do the domestic work the disanimating feelings related to
domestic work are shifted from the female employer to the
domestic worker. The female employers succeed in escaping
the cultural inscription associated with domestic work as
devalued labor and evading the ascription of their bodies as
inferior under the signifier femininity. Releasing themselves from the responsibility of performing household work
enables these women to regain a sense of well-being in a
terrain that is historically determined and symbolically
prescribed by correlating femininity with subordination,
serfdom, and exploitation. In addition, the affective burden
impressed upon their bodies is transferred to other women.
While employing a domestic worker allows them to partially
escape the abjection projected onto them, they still remain
responsible for delivering and managing this work in the
household (Caixeta et al., 2004; Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010).
Further, in most cases, the female employer monitors the
work performed by the domestic worker. This is also due to
the fact that the male members and/or the children in the
household often fail to fulfill their household duties or are not
involved in household work. As managing household work is
delegated to the adult female members of the household, in
cases where they refuse to perform these tasks and where

finances allow, outsourcing domestic work becomes an


option. However, this option is subject to economic and
political conjunctures such as migration regimes.
Migration regimes and the coloniality of labor
The contemporary organization of domestic work in
private households in Western Europe is sustained by
outsourcing domestic work (Anderson, 2000; Anthias &
Lazaridis, 2000; Lutz, 2008; Triandafyllidou, 2013). Women,
who are poor, migrant or minoritized have taken over this
work. In the case of migrant women, migration policies play a
significant role in determining their access to the labor
market. It is through migration policies that differences are
established between the national (citizen) and the newcomer (migrant) populations. Thereby, this process of differentiation reactivates a mental matrix that is rooted in colonial
racial classification. While not explicitly operating within the
racial matrix, migration policies reactivate this logic of
differentiation through the classification of the population
into different categories of citizens, denizens, and aliens.
When a migrant woman, and in particular an undocumented migrant woman, is employed to deliver domestic
work in private households, the differential system established through migration policies becomes tangible in the
encounters between domestic workers and their employers.
Coupled with discursive regimes and historical perceptions of
the Other to the nation as racially and culturally different,
migration policies are experienced cognitively and also
sensed. These feelings and emotions become palpable in the
everyday encounters between domestic workers and employers, as well as in the places they inhabit. When a migrant
documented or undocumented worker is employed, migration policies enter the field of the private household and with
it, as previously mentioned, a whole cultural realm of
imagining the nation's Other is reactivated. These imaginings
are transferred and negotiated in direct and indirect ways in
social spaces, finding a particular expression in the feelings
associated with objects and places as we see in Carmen's
words next.
The worst for me, we could say, are the toilets! So, you,
you see people who are really spick and span, but you can
forget it. Really! So I wear gloves everywhere. You know
rubber gloves?! [] Because I don't know?! It could be,
they are people who may be super clean, but to the
outside world! But you, you know the people in the
kitchen and in the toilets! So, really! Brushes are available
everywhere! Thank god we drink only tea now! [Carmen
smiles] Brushes, these toilet brushes are available
everywhere! At least, what can you do? What you can
do is make it a little bit cleaner. But it is sprayed all over!
Pee all over! The men cannot pee properly at all! (.),
(Carmen, domestic worker, Hamburg)
With a gesture of disgust, Carmen comments on the
situation in the household where she works. Finding the
toilet dirty leaves her with a sensation of neglect and
ignorance. As Rosie Cox (2006) notes in regard to the
relationship between dirt, cleaning, and status, the way a
domestic worker is socially perceived and treated is related

E. Gutierrez-Rodriguez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 4553

to society's cultural conception of dirt. Those who work


with sewage, collect rubbish, or clean are poorly paid and
mostly exposed to unsafe and insecure working conditions.
Doing dirty work signals the lowest rank on the social
ladder (see also Anderson, 2000). As Cox notes, the status of
the worker becomes inseparable from the status of the work
and it is impossible to improve dramatically the standing of
either without challenging deep-seated feelings about dirt
(2006:7). Yet, dealing with dirt, as Carmen tells us, not only
signals a low social status, it also refers to the affective
economies within society and private households.
All the domestic workers told the research teams about
the depleting feelings they encountered in the households
when it came to the more banal, simple, and socially
disregarded tasks, such as cleaning the floors, removing
fluids, hairs, and general dirt. These tasks are intrinsically
linked to our basic needs and are a constant reminder of our
human condition. As the domestic worker deals with the
physical and affective traces of our lives, the barriers and
boundaries of social differences crumble. This destabilizes the
power asymmetries engraved in the relation between the
domestic worker and the employer. Not only do affective
bonds emerge between the female employer and female
domestic worker, as well as between the domestic worker
and other household members, the domestic worker also
becomes a silent bystander in moments of absolute intimacy
and an addressee of emotions and feelings circulating in the
household (Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2007). Getting to know the
toilets, as some of the domestic workers told us, is getting to
know about the inner lives of their employers. Toilets are
instilled with people's energies, which have an impact on the
domestic worker's body and mind.
Leaving the toilet dirty or not cleaning it with the brush
transmits an explicit message of contempt. For William
Miller, contempt transmits the sensation of not being
noteworthy (1998: 215). While the users of the toilet
might not intend this, the feeling of contempt is conveyed
through the non-use of brushes, fluids, and dirt found. The
way the household members use the toilet reveals a lack of
care in regard to the person cleaning this space. This attitude
uncovers the invisibility attached to domestic work and to
the person delivering this work. Involuntarily, the domestic
worker must face these energies, which negatively impact
her and cause her to feel revulsion and disgust.
Disgust is a strong feeling and, as Sianne Ngai (2007)
suggests, it is a structured and agonistic emotion carrying a
strong and unmistakable signal (335). For Ngai, disgust is not
ambivalent about its objects. Within the context of domestic
work, the feeling of disgust expresses a sensation carried by the
social meaning denoted by this labor. In addition to this, the
social significance of domestic work is defined through the
historical legacy of colonialism, slavery, indentured labor,
serfdom (Banerjee, 2004; Davis, 1983; Morgan, 2004; Rollins,
1985; Romero, 1992), and the contemporary organization of a
heteronormative social order (Carrington, 1999; Gutirrez
Rodrguez, 2013).
While the feelings expressed in and impressed upon
domestic work do not always emanate from it, they do unfold
within it. The impression of feelings of invisibility and
worthlessness are negotiated within this social context,
reviving the cultural logic of abjection as these evolve from

49

a racializing and feminizing script of power. When it comes


to employing an undocumented migrant domestic worker,
the social context prescribing how domestic work in private
households is seen is defined through gender relations and
the logic underpinning migration policies. Within the logic of
the coloniality of power, migration control and management
policies enforce processes of subalternization and the
dynamics of inferiorization are enforced.
Anibal Quijano (2000, 2005, 2008) identifies the coloniality
of labor as one of the axes along which the coloniality of
power establishes a societal system of exploitation based on
the correlation of race and value. As Quijano states, during
colonial times labor was racially codified. While the labor
extracted from those codified as white was considered
productive and superior, the labor power extracted from the
indigenous and enslaved populations was seen as inferior
and, as such, conceived as free exploitable labor (Quijano,
2000). As Quijano (2000, 2005, 2008) and Enrique Dussel
(1995) state, what lies behind this model is the colonizers'
perception of the colonized population as pure objects of
exploitation. As Dussel notes, perceived as the Other of
Europe, the colonized population was subsumed, alienated
and incorporated into the dominating totality like a thing or
instrument (1995: 39). In other words, this population was
reduced to a thingness and treated as raw material. Thus,
Spanish and Portuguese colonialism established a new model
of global power on the basis of which the capitalist mode of
production would evolve (Quijano, 2008).
This logic of subjugation inherent in the establishment of a
racially coded social system still reverberates in the construction of the nation's Other in Western Europe, although it does
not always explicitly operate in racial terms. Though wrapped
in a vocabulary of culture that refers to differences in regard to
religious beliefs, language, norms, and values, the construction
of the Other in Western Europe bears the traces of a pattern
of thinking reminiscent of colonial times. As such, the
construction of the Other as the negation of a European self,
imagined as white and Christian, remains the neuralgic point in
the structure of power that was and even now continues to
be organized on and around the colonial axis (Quijano, 2008:
216). Thus, the coloniality of labor refers to the social
organization of labor and division of work sustained by this
system of cultural codification.
This same model is reactivated within the context of
migration policies. While a colonial system of classification is
not explicit within contemporary national migration policies
within the EU, the divide between citizen and alien (migrant
and refugee) reverberates with the logic of coloniality. This
becomes apparent, for example, in the requirements for migrants
and refugees to be granted entry and settlement, so that they
may establish themselves within the EU. Indeed, migrants from
non-EU states must comply with the constantly shifting and
increasingly restrictive national requirements. Changes in family
reunification policies (Kofman, 2011; Kraler, 2010; Kraler,
Kofman, Kohli, & Schmoll, 2012), visa policies and, in particular,
student visas are making entry and settlement in EU member
states increasingly difficult.
Most of the participants in my research from Latin
America arrived in Germany with a tourist visa. Some of
them were planning to pursue postgraduate studies, but
encountered barriers when attempting to enroll in university

50

E. Gutierrez-Rodriguez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 4553

programs, as their Latin American degrees were not considered valid or, as they were told, they needed to improve their
language skills. The three-month time frame they received
with their tourist visa was insufficient, leaving them with the
option to return to their countries, to continue onward to
another country, or to go underground. The decision to
remain in the country is also a decision to live without legal
residency status. Being without legal residency means
avoiding places where they could be detected by the police,
which severely restricts their access to the regular labor
market. Obtaining employment in a private household as a
domestic worker represents one of the few options for
making a living.
The private household remains an employment sector that
is precluded from standard labor regulations, which makes the
household shaky ground when it comes to the protection of
workers' rights (ETUC, 2012). This is shown in the working
conditions of domestic workers, which are characterized by
oral contracts, unregulated working hours, as well as unsafe
working conditions. Being without legal residency means
falling through the cracks of official protection schemes
(Dvell, 2005; Maroukis, Iglicka, & Gjmaj, 2011). In this
context, it is not only the universal human rights principle of
the right to a dignified life that is suspended, but also basic civil
rights. Indeed, this process of exclusion produces the undocumented migrant as an exteriority to the civil and legal
national norm.
Coming back to the affective dimension of being subjected
to the logic of inferiorization, the position of exteriority that
undocumented migrants inhabit is not only conveyed through
the low social status and devaluation of their labor, but also
through the affective circuits to which they are exposed and
with which they engage. Negotiations around domestic work
between domestic workers and their employers in private
households occur on both the social and affective levels. While
the social dimension speaks about the legal and labor
conditions attached to this work, the affective dimension
draws our attention to how these conditions are felt and
sensed. Sensing the social, feeling the cultural script imposed
on bodies, spaces and objects refers to the realm of affective
encounters.
Thus, the transmission of affect between the domestic
workers and their employers relies on affective bonds
developed, on the caring tasks performed, and on the spatiality
and relationality within which this work unfolds. As Carmen
tells us, the arrangement of objects can transmit energies that
might have an impact on the person sorting out the space. The
attribution of inferiority and worthlessness can thus be
affectively transmitted through the arrangement of objects
and through those racialized affects which haunt spaces.
Racialized affects
While not directly addressed to a person, affect pervades
spaces and has an impact on people's feelings, bodies and
minds. When a domestic worker faces revulsion, contempt, or
being despised, these feelings can produce reactions of refusal
and revolt. Set in this context, Carmen's feelings towards the
toilet remind us of what Ngai (2007) describes as the
racialization of affect. While Ngai develops this approach
through an analysis of the cultural representation of racialized

bodies, the affect transmitted to Carmen seems to attend to a


similar dynamic. As Ngai notes in regard to racialized affect the
context of racialization turns the neutral and even potentially
positive affect of animatedness ugly pointing to the more
self-evidently problematic feelings (2007: 32). In the case of
undocumented domestic workers in private households, this
context is underscored by the exclusionary boundaries set up
by migration policies that subtly underlie the encounters
between domestic workers and their employers. It is in this
regard that feelings circulating in the space and expressed in
these encounters turn ugly, imprinting residues of a racializing script and attributing inferiority onto the body of the
domestic worker. Feelings circulating within a context of
racialization do not always incite us to act, they can also
immobilize us. The feeling of being made invisible, of being
ignored, infuses the domestic worker with the feeling of social
insignificance, it carries the sensation of disanimation. This
stands in contrast to the impact that domestic work has on the
household as an animating force. Thus, while not explicitly
spelled out in any job description, the domestic worker's
presence in the household, and the performance of quotidian
tasks that contribute to the household members' well-being,
infuses this place with life. Therefore, domestic work has an
animating quality, although this effect is not commonly
perceived or valued.
While the domestic worker is required to care for the
household and, as such, contributes to the creation of positive
affective energies, the tasks she is supposed to deliver as well as
the dynamics she occasionally encounters, affectively impress
upon her a low status and a sense of devaluation. Furthermore,
her position as an undocumented migrant places her in a
human rights void and makes her more vulnerable to
exploitation and denigration. When delivered by an undocumented migrant woman, domestic work becomes a neuralgic
node in which the multilayered texture (Combahee River
Collective, 1983) of oppression crystallizes.
Working with and through the affective texture of domestic
work not only makes us aware of how our ability to act is
emotionally driven, but also how emotions and feelings
intersect with as well as carry social meaning. The analysis of
domestic work illustrates that affect focuses on the transgression of the script of representation and (re-)cognition. As well
as this affective dynamics evolve in a social context, even
though they emanate from the spontaneity of our existence,
instantly transforming the normative texture of intelligibility.
Affect dwells in-between the agitations and arousals of our
relational lives and our attempts to make sense of them. Thus,
while emotions and feelings reflect the affective immediacy of
ordinary encounters, they are mediated through social meanings that also reflect historical becomings and geopolitical
positionings.
Set within the context of racism and labor exploitation,
the analysis of affective encounters in private households
that employ undocumented migrant domestic workers sheds
some light on how emotions and feelings are not just
intentional, but are impressed upon objects and spaces.
Thus, the exploration of affect in domestic work tells us about
the impression of ugly feelings on people's bodies and how
this affects their minds and well-being or, in other words,
how these feelings can work to immobilize or disanimate
them. Yet, as we have seen through Carmen's words, the

E. Gutierrez-Rodriguez / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 4553

response to feelings related to attempts at denigration and


subjugation can also be answered with feelings of rebellion
and resistance.
Considering these affective dynamics, the analysis of
domestic work as affective labor not only addresses the
emotional and physical qualities of this labor. Rather, it places
the impression, expression, and circulation of feelings and
emotions in the private household as a point of departure in
any such analysis. Thus, seeing domestic work as affective
labor draws our attention to the productive character of care
and to the extensive dynamics of societal reproduction. It also
brings to awareness the emotional economies organizing the
immediacy of employment relations. The feelings and
emotions circulating in the private households which
domestic workers are exposed to and need to deal with, are
expressions of social asymmetries and articulations of global
inequalities.
Conclusion
The employment of undocumented migrant domestic
workers in private households articulates the re-shuffling of
global inequalities on a local level (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2001).
Set in this context, the understanding of domestic work as
affective labor asks us to contextualize the expression and
impression of feelings within a societal context. Immersed in
the energies of private households, crossed by the racializing
effects produced through migration policies and the logic of
the labor market, domestic work is mediated by and derives
from affective dynamics.
Focusing on the emotional faculties deployed in caring for
others and the affective fabric of the social, the analysis of
affective labor addresses the expression, impression and
circulation of feelings and emotions and how these dynamics
impact bodies, objects, relations and spaces. Thus, the
analysis of affective labor addresses the sensorial corporeality
of the social. As such, it speaks of the more legible cognitive
dimension of feelings and emotions as well as of the
dispersed and unruly dynamics of feelings, emotions, sensations, and intensities.
The analysis of domestic work as affective labor reveals the
sociability of affect and the affectivity of the social. This could
lead us to raise the question on the value this discussion could
add to domestic workers' organizations' claims for standard
domestic workers' rights. Thus, on the level of domestic
workers' rights, the conceptualization of domestic work as
affective labor not only invites us to address demands
regarding the professionalization and regulation of domestic
work,3 but also to go a step further. While the claims for
dignified working conditions (ETUC, 2012; FRA, 2011), portable workers' rights4 (Piper, 2007) and the social recognition of
domestic work as work are fundamental claims in the struggle
for domestic workers' rights, putting affect on the agenda of
working rights strengthens the argument raised that domestic
work is fundamental for the reproduction of society. Looking at
the affective dimension of domestic work makes us realize how
this work is intrinsically linked to the pulses of life, the
relational, reciprocal, and interconnected character of our
social being. Labor in general, and domestic work in particular,
as such need to be conceived in relation to the feelings,
emotions, sensations, and intensities that drive them, which

51

become embedded in places and experienced in ordinary


encounters. Indeed, the tasks performed in domestic work are
intrinsically linked to sustaining personal well-being. Therefore, recognizing this affective dimension in domestic work
requires that we place it at the core of debates on convivial
futures.5 This perspective enables us to set domestic work as
affective labor at the center of the capacity for creating a good
life and enabling a living together.
Endnotes
1
This study was an EU research project on the interpersonal relationships between domestic workers and their employers in private households
conducted in Austria, Germany, Spain and the UK between 2003 and 2004.
Twenty-ve in-depth interviews and ten focus groups were held in each
country with domestic workers from Eastern Europe, West Africa and Latin
America, and with middle-aged, professional White women who were their
employers.
2
For Spinoza passion is affect produced by external causes (Spinoza,
1994: 154).
3
For further discussion, see European Parlament Resolution on
Regulating Domestic Help in the Informal Sector. Retrieved from
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+
TA+P5-TA-2000-0542+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN.
4
With this term Nicola Piper discusses the possibility for migrant
workers to claim rights while they are on the move. In particular, she makes
the case for workers that have worked in a country and have been deported
or needed to leave the country of employment to be able to claim their
salary, redundancy rights and other workers' rights, although they no longer
reside in the country (Piper, 2007).
5
As I argue elsewhere in regard to a decolonial ethic of care (Gutirrez
Rodrguez, 2010), domestic work is driven by the principles of care and
sustainability. This affective fabric of domestic work urges us to reconsider
Carol Gilligan's (1982) ethics of care. Gilligan's discussion of the ethic of care
addresses the question of moral judgment departing from contextualized
and interconnected moral claims. In this sense, the sphere of care becomes a
moral imperative from which to approach questions of reciprocity and
responsibility. As feminist theorists engaging with the ethics of care
(Bowden, 1997; McDowell, 2004; Tronto, 1993, 1995) have argued, a
society based on solidarity needs to share the common understanding that
care and love (Kittay, 1999) are fundamental for communal life (Paredes,
2008).

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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Inferiorization and deference: The construction of social


hierarchies in the context of paid domestic labor
Dbora Gorbn a, Ania Tizziani b,
a
b

Conicet/Idaes- Universidad Nacional de San Martn, Parana 145, 5th Floor, Buenos Aires 1017, Argentina
Conicet/Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Juan Mara Gutirrez 1150, Los Polvorines, Provincia de Buenos Aires, 1613, Argentina

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 28 January 2014

s y n o p s i s
In Argentina, domestic work is one of the main occupations for women from low-income sectors.
As in other Latin American societies, it is one of the most paradigmatic forms of contact between
the different social classes. As such, this labor relationship has been analyzed in numerous studies
as a critical location for the reproduction of social differences and inequality. The interpersonal
relationships between employers and workers mobilize categorization criteria and stereotyped
images that reveal wider dynamics regarding the construction of social hierarchies. On the basis of
a qualitative study, the objective of this article is to analyze, in the city of Buenos Aires, the
processes of constructing social hierarchies that are implied by this particular labor relationship.
This analysis seeks to reveal the operations through which employers construct a stereotype of
social inferiority for domestic workers through which they legitimize their dominant position in
the labor relationship, and to examine the tensions and ambiguities of this.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In Argentina, domestic work is, and has been historically, one
of the main ways in which women participate in the labor
market, particularly women from popular social sectors (Gogna,
1993; Pereyra, 2012). As in other Latin American societies in
which this type of work is widespread, it is one of the most
paradigmatic forms of contact between the working class and
the middle and upper classes. As such, domestic service has
been analyzed in numerous studies as a critical location for the
reproduction of social differences and inequality.
In recent decades, domestic work has been the focus of
renewed attention by social scientists. Although gender inequalities are the starting point for many studies, the importance of migratory flows in the structure of paid domestic labor
throughout different regions has turned migration studies into
one of the most relevant approaches for debating this issue
(Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; Lutz,
2002, 2008; Parreas, 2001). These specific migratory flows,

Corresponding author.
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.001

which are generally referred to as the globalization of care


work (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2002), bring women into
contact across borders, creating asymmetrical relationships
between employers from the central receiving countries and
migrant workers (Anderson, 2000; Gutirrez Rodrguez, 2010;
Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; Ibos, 2012; Parreas, 2001). However,
other studies reveal that the origins of these hierarchical
relationships do not lie exclusively in the SouthNorth migration processes that exacerbated issues related to citizenship.
Internal migratory dynamics, migratory flows between countries in the South, and class/race distinctions also create the
conditions for asymmetrical relationships (Brites, 2001, 2007;
Kofes, 2001; Lan, 2003, 2008; Rollins, 1985; Romero, 2002).
When considering the particularities of paid domestic labor in
Latin American societies, researchers have privileged this
perspective (Chaney & Garca Castro, 1993). In these societies,
this type of work has been the primary employment option for
women from popular social sectors.
This article is framed by these perspectives, which revolve
around the analysis of domestic work as one of the crucial spaces
for the construction and reproduction of social hierarchies based
on class position and racial belonging. From this point of view,

D. Gorbn, A. Tizziani / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

we maintain that domestic labor not only expresses the


dynamics of social inequality, but also contributes to updating
and reproducing these in day-to-day life. We aim to analyze, in
the city of Buenos Aires, the way in which domestic workers and,
above all, employers perceive and manage the interactions that
take place within this labor relationship, paying particular
attention to the emotional dimension (Lan, 2003, 2008; Rollins,
1985; Romero, 2002). The objective of this analysis is to identify
the hierarchy and categorization criteria that come into play in
these interactions, and the tensions, ambiguities, and conflicts
present within them.
Different studies (Rollins, 1985; Romero, 2002) emphasize
how the interpersonal nature of the interactions that are
established through domestic work plays a central role in the
way in which the dynamics of this hierarchy are organized.
These studies suggest that the interpersonal rituals that unfold
within the relationship between employers and domestic
workers mobilize categorization criteria and stereotyped images that reveal wider dynamics regarding the construction of
social hierarchies. In this article, we analyze some of these
dynamics, through which a set of personal and social features
attributed to domestic employees configure their social inferiority in the context of this labor relationship. This construction
justifies the material exploitation of domestic workers while at
the same time reinforcing employers' class identity. Such
dynamics have significant effects on the way work is configured
within the sector as a strongly undervalued activity in which the
prevailing labor and salary conditions are particularly unfavorable for workers.
To analyze the hierarchy dynamics involved in day-to-day
interactions between employees and employers, we turned
to certain concepts elaborated by Erving Goffman in his study
on social interactions, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,
in particular the concept of the front. According to Goffman,
the personal front is made up of the expressive features or
elements that the performer identifies with. The features that
characterize the personal front are the main components of
the way in which those interacting define the social situation
that brings them into contact: they provide information
about the differences in social status that separate them and
the role that each party plays in the interaction. In the case of
domestic employees and employers, these personal features
are central components of the way in which they perceive
and handle the connection that is established through this
labor relationship (Goffman, 2009).
We will develop our argument in five sections. After a brief
discussion of methodology, our analysis begins with a description of this employment sector, which allows us to introduce the
ways in which domestic employees characterize their experiences of work. We will show how workers emphasize that the
highly undervalued nature of their work is one of the main
occupational problems they face. In the following section, we
seek to explore how this undervaluing of domestic employees'
work is constructed from the point of view of their employers.
Within this process, a series of characteristics (migration origin,
poverty, ignorance) comes to define the workers' inferiority, in
connection with the profound inequality of their social and
economic situations. These features define a front for domestic
workers that provides information about the subordinate role
that employers attribute to them within the labor relationship
in order to sustain their own position of superiority. In the

55

following section, we focus on analyzing the tensions and


conflicts arising from these attributed roles. In effect, the social
inferiority attributed to domestic workers leads to those hiring
them perceiving them as a threat that must be managed and
controlled. This threat mainly consists of the possibility that
workers will not fit in with the subordinate role attributed to
them, thus destabilizing the labor relationship.
Methodology
The reflections in this paper are based on a set of
qualitative data from different sources. During 2009, a series
of twenty in-depth interviews with domestic workers was
carried out in Buenos Aires. These workers were contacted
via different organizations involved in the sector (unions and
associations), where both interviews and observations of
activities were carried out. At the same time, over four
months, we carried out observations and a series of informal
interviews at two city playgrounds, where we were able to
make contact with workers who take care of children (in
addition to cooking and cleaning).
The ages of the workers in question ranged from 16 to
65 years at the time of the interviews. Five of them were live-in
workers, while the remainder consisted of live-out or day
workers, that is, they resided in their own homes. Threequarters of the workers interviewed were migrants: four came
from different Argentinean provinces and eleven from other
countries (mostly Paraguay, but also Peru, Bolivia, and
Uruguay). Only in two cases were these migration experiences
recent the vast majority had been living in the Buenos Aires
Metropolitan Area for decades. At the time the interviews were
carried out, most had become legal residents in Argentina and
many had started their own families in the country. However,
as we will examine later in this paper, migration origin is one of
the filters through which employers and employees perceive
their class positions, and it plays a significant role in the
processes of constructing the social hierarchies implied in this
labor relationship.
The second data source is a series of twelve in-depth
interviews carried out between 2010 and 2011 with people
who employ domestic workers. The sample is made up of four
men and eight women between the ages of 35 and 69. Three are
single, two divorced and the rest married; nine have between
one and three children. Most contract domestic employees as
live-out workers, but four have live-in workers. All the
employers interviewed belong to the middle or uppermiddle
classes: they are professionals (teachers, lawyers, psychologists,
economists), civil servants, have management positions in large
companies or run their own small businesses.
From our perspective, the study of this labor relationship
cannot ignore the structural inequality that shapes it, a
condition that also affects the relationship between researchers
and interviewees. As Pierre Bourdieu pointed out, the relationship present in an interview is subject to the effects of the social
structure in which that interview is carried out. This relationship
is shot through with asymmetry (Bourdieu, 1993: 609):
It is the investigator who starts the game and sets up its
rules, and is usually the one who, unilaterally and without
any preliminary negotiations, assigns the interview its
objectives and uses. (On occasion, these may be poorly

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D. Gorbn, A. Tizziani / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

specied at least for the respondent.) This asymmetry is


reinforced by a social asymmetry every time the investigator occupies a higher place in the social hierarchy or
different types of capital, cultural capital in particular.
To reduce the effects of these asymmetries, Bourdieu
proposes the practice of active and methodical listening in
order to incorporate the social logic that affects the construction
of data into the analysis. This listening (Bourdieu, 1993: 609),
combines a total availability to the person being questioned,
submission to the singularity of a particular life history
which can lead, by a kind of more or less controlled
imitation, to adopting the interviewee's language, views,
feelings, and thoughts with methodical construction,
founded on the knowledge of the objective conditions
common to an entire social category.
Bourdieu's point is to create conditions so that researchers
can situate themselves at the point in social space from
which all the respondents' views over that space emanate.
According to the author, social proximity and familiarity can
help create the conditions for this type of listening.
In terms of the fieldwork undertaken for this research, this
meant trying to place the social proximity between the
researchers and the employers at the service of the investigation. The fact that we, the researchers, are professional, urban,
middle-class women with current or past experience of hiring
domestic workers undoubtedly facilitated access to the employers we interviewed and enriched the information obtained.
During the interviews, the interviewees shared information,
points of view and experiences that they probably would not
have talked about had they not perceived our proximity to their
own class positions. In contrast, in the case of the interviews
with the workers, the possibility of our being assimilated to the
social position of the employers led to the need to construct a
degree of familiarity with the spaces through which they
were contacted, by spending longer periods of time there and
meeting repeatedly.
The racialization of poverty: towards the construction of
social inferiority
In 2009, domestic service accounted for the employment
of almost 14% of all female wage earners in Argentina, which
represents over one million workers.1 In this highly feminized sector, women make up 98.5% of those employed. The
education level of this population is lower than that of other
wage earners. In socioeconomic terms, most women who
make their living from domestic work come from sectors
categorized as poor or destitute. More than 43% of them are
migrants, of which 32.6% come from another province in
Argentina, and 11% from other countries, particularly neighboring countries (Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) and
Peru. Until 2004, Argentina's migrant population from
neighboring countries was affected by legal frameworks,
which restricted and hindered them from obtaining legal
residency status.2 However, in 2004, a new law came into
effect, enabling migrants from other Mercosur countries
(Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela), and also Chile
and Bolivia to remain in Argentina and obtain residency

permits.3 In this context, an initiative was set in motion in


2005 to regularize the legal status of those who had entered
Argentina prior to this date.4 The initiative advocated
the authorization of temporary and permanent residency
permits and the flexibilization of requisites for residency
applications. These changes implied that migratory status is
no longer a determining factor for the working conditions of
domestic service.
Domestic employees are among the groups with the
lowest individual income levels in Argentina: in 2009, the
average hourly wage for these workers was around 45%
lower than the average salary of all other wage earners. With
regard to modes of employment, according to official data,
around 72% of those employed in domestic service work for a
sole employer. The majority are live-out staff. Indeed, the
proportion of domestic employees residing with their
employers has decreased sharply in the last few years and
accounted for only three percent of those employed in the
sector in 2009. Domestic work is also an area of work with
one of the highest levels of informal employment, despite the
fact that there has been a trend towards formalization in the
last decade: the proportion of workers listed with social
security institutions has gone from five percent in 2003 to
15% in 2009.
However, domestic labor is characterized by the low level
of social protection offered to those working in the sector and
the limited rights to which they have access, in comparison to
other wage earners (see Gogna, 1993; Machado, 2003). For
the past fifty years, activities connected to domestic work
have been regulated by a special regime (the Domestic
Service Statute, Decree 326/56), according to which domestic
employees are excluded from regular worker health and
safety law, have no access to unemployment benefits or
maternity leave, and have longer working days, shorter leave
allowances and lower severance pay than other workers. In
March 2013, a new law regulating the occupation was passed
(Regimen Especial de Contrato de Trabajo para el Personal
de Casas Particulares [Special Contract Regulations for
Employees of Private Houses]). This law seeks to match the
labor conditions of domestic workers with those stipulated
for general salaried workers.
These features make domestic work one of the occupations
with the least favorable labor and salary conditions on the
Argentinean job market. In Argentina, as in most Latin American
countries, it is also one of the most significant occupations for
women from poor backgrounds (Valenzuela & Mora, 2009). As
Avila points out in the case of Brazil, domestic employees are led
into their occupation by the limits imposed by class, ethnicity
and patriarchy. Domestic employment is the closest option on
the horizon of possibilities for women from poor backgrounds,
and presents itself as an opportunity for those who have little
formal education and who move from the country to the city, or
who live on the outskirts of major cities (Avila, 2008: 67). These
unfavorable aspects of the work represent a major part of the
way in which the domestic workers interviewed during our
fieldwork tell of their experiences:
I had a pretty bad time there. My mistress treated me badly;
she kept telling me I was good for nothing and that I would
never get another job. On top of that they were really stingy
about food. I was only given one cooked meal a day, in the

D. Gorbn, A. Tizziani / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

evening, and it was always spaghetti with just a tiny bit of


olive oil, because it's very expensive, as she (her employer, a
woman) used to tell me []. I would start my job very early
in the morning and had a one-hour break in the afternoon; I
would nish around 10 or 11 at night. Sometimes my master
arrived later, around 12, and I would end up going to bed at 1
in the morning. On top of that they only used to pay me
500 pesos under the table!5
(Lidia, 26, live-in domestic employee)
Such accounts that reveal acts of mistreatment and
discrimination are not the most frequent. However, other
elements that appear in Lidia's account are also present in the
experiences of other women we interviewed, notably the
conditions that characterize their occupation: never-ending
work days, low remuneration and no access to the rights and
benefits established by the existing legislation. Nor are these
conditions exclusive to live-in positions, as shown by the
way Andrea narrates one of her experiences as a live-out
domestic employee:
Later I got a live-out job but I just couldn't take it because
there were ve of them. And that woman was so annoying,
she was so annoying. Nothing I did was alright with her.
Everything she always found fault with something, and I
would work like crazy from 8 in the morning to 5 in the
evening. Besides, it was a lot of work; I had to cook and clean
and all that. It was hell, I'm telling you, but the pay was good.
(Andrea, 42, live-out domestic employee)
As in Lidia's narrative, Andrea highlights the harshness of her
working conditions. Her discourse reveals, in addition, two
central elements of the way domestic workers talk of their
experiences: the lack of recognition and the difficulties
underlying the relationship with employers. Even though the
experiences she referred to as hell may not appear frequently
in such accounts, they significantly influence the way employees
represent their occupation.
These unfavorable labor and salary conditions are closely
related to the undervaluing of the work domestic employees
carry out:
The work is very undervalued. I see it in my own case, you
know, the pay is bad. OK, sometimes people aren't interested
in learning, in some cases, not always, but it's like people
take advantage of that because someone hasn't been to
school, because they're ignorant, because they're you
know, from another country or province. The thing is that
people sometimes take advantage of that. People with
money take advantage of that: Ah well, this one's just
another damn negrita de mierda [a commonplace racist
expression that is discussed in greater detail below], we can
pay her peanuts and that's that. And maybe they make
you I don't know stay all day long, you know, and don't
even give you a glass of water. It's totally undervalued.
(Dora, 59, live-out domestic worker)
In Dora's narrative, low salaries and never-ending work days
reflect the fact that, within this labor relationship, the employer
is able to take advantage of workers. This potential exposure
of domestic workers to abusive situations is a reminder of
the fact that it is the employer who defines, almost unilaterally,

57

the conditions governing the labor relationship, which is


established through individual negotiation, with little external
regulation.
The unequal positions of employers and employees in the
configuration of the labor relationship are anchored, in Dora's
discourse, in the profound inequality of their social and
economic situations, in the distance separating people with
money from the ignorant women from another country
or province they hire. This description not only reflects the
employers' opinions, but it also points to the way in which
the least protected social sectors are characterized. The
expression that Dora uses, negrita de mierda, is commonplace
in Argentina and sums up a whole range of discriminatory
opinions that are often used by those from wealthier backgrounds to describe those from poor social sectors. Roughly
translated, it means dark-skinned girl from the provinces or
urban poor sectors. As we discuss in the following section, this
expression invokes a process of racialization of socioeconomic
status, through which working poor and blackness become
one and the same thing, to which the condition of migrant is
added, also in negative terms. This process is characteristic of
the Argentinian context in which any differentiations by
national origin or ethnic group tend to dissolve into an
all-encompassing class-based label (Briones, 2008; Grimson,
2006; Margulis & Urresti, 1999).
The expression negrita de mierda thus identifies certain
physical characteristics with an inferior position, not only in
socioeconomic terms but also in moral ones. In this way, if
domestic work is undervalued, it is not so much because of
the intrinsic characteristics of the activity itself, but because
of the social features associated with those who carry it out.
These features contribute to the construction of a stereotyped
image of domestic employees, the lynchpin of which is their
social inferiority. 6
Managing intimacy: the undervaluing of domestic
workers and emotional labor
In the employers' accounts, hiring a domestic worker is no
small matter. Expressions such as If Perla wasn't here I'd die
(Cami), When she appeared it was my salvation (Elena),
and I wouldn't be able to survive without Mariela (Julia) are
commonplace. In these statements, the presence of the
domestic workers is described using words such as salvation, whereas their absence is associated with desperation
and conflict: I'd die or I wouldn't be able to survive. For
many of those interviewed, hiring a domestic worker is not
perceived as an option, but rather as a necessity. In this
sense, the point at which they decide to hire someone is often
characterized as a breaking point or moment of crisis.
However, availing themselves of domestic and care services
is not perceived as contracting a worker in the conventional
sense, but rather as finding help:
When I didn't have any help I did everything myself and I
spent the whole time swearing and cursing what a
bloody mess they [my children] make, why can't they just
do this, that, the other. But they didn't, and the one
making sacrices was always me. But then I got help and I
stopped cursing.
(Elena, 50, company manager, divorced, three children)

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D. Gorbn, A. Tizziani / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

Though in some cases, the employers share a minimum of


domestic chores between male and female family members, a
large portion of these were exclusively assigned to the
domestic workers. However, it is paradoxical that the same
tasks that employers described as insurmountable when
justifying their decision to hire a domestic worker become
less complex and important when transferred to the worker
in question.
In effect, these discourses reveal a double operation in
which tasks that are initially characterized as difficult for one
person (the male or female employer) to carry out become
nothing more than help when they are undertaken by a
domestic worker. The testimonies gathered all refer to the
work performed by domestic employees in similar ways, in
that they do not actually describe it as being work. As such,
they refer to help, to someone being at home or to
having someone, all expressions that negate or conceal the
labor relationship, as what the person at home is actually
doing there is working.
All of this reveals a very specific way of characterizing
paid domestic work; or rather, it underlines a particular
feature of existing representations of this activity: the
separation between the function being performed and the
person carrying it out, in that tasks are characterized
differently depending on who is performing them. In Elena's
testimony, the use of the word help to describe the work
carried out by her employee characterizes this work as being
somehow incidental. At the same time, it differentiates
between domestic tasks within the home, and between the
helper and the person being helped. The distinction is
fundamentally based on a differential valuing of domestic
work according to who is performing it. In this sense, it is not
so much about the men and women who hire domestic
workers undervaluing the domestic tasks themselves, but
rather the fact that they undervalue the person hired to carry
them out.
According to Romero (2002), this differential valuing
process suggests that the nature of domestic work is not
intrinsically degrading or inferior. As Romero points out, the
degrading nature of the activity arises from the interpersonal
relationship between employers and employees; specifically,
the practices through which employers structure their
employees' work in order to include issues that inferiorize
them (control over their food, the spaces they move in, the
use of uniforms, etc.). These practices reveal the way in
which structures of domination based on class position and
racial belonging permeate interpersonal relationships within
domestic labor. In effect, these degrading aspects of domestic
work are connected with the behavior that employers expect
of their employees in terms of their social, racial and ethnic
characteristics. Romero (2002: 144) (among other authors)
describes this expected behavior as deferential interaction,
one of the nuclei that define the emotional work domestic
employees must provide. This author notes that in addition
to physical labor, the job also implies a significant amount of
emotional labor.
This type of work is related to the way in which
employees handle their emotions in order to respond to
their employer's psychological needs (for company, to be
listened to, etc.). However, this emotional labor is not
reciprocal, in that employers are not there to respond to the

psychological needs of their employees. A large part of the


emotional work that is involved in this occupation consists of
the creation of deferential behavior on the part of the
domestic workers in order to reaffirm, through their
inferiority, class and racial differences and the status of the
employer's family. In her terms, the process that affirms the
status of white middle-class women employers involves
deferential interaction that treats non-white working-class
domestics as inferior (Romero, 2002: 162).
In the previous section, we saw how Dora, when
describing her experience as a domestic worker, emphasized
the situation as being one of undervaluing, in which people
with money take advantage. The possibility of taking
advantage is, in her account, directly related to the way in
which employers represent workers as negritas de mierda.
The expression suggests that the differential valuation of
domestic tasks is anchored to this inferiorizing and discriminatory representation of workers. It also reveals the
importance of the emotional dimension of the work carried
out by domestic employees in terms of the effort they must
make to handle the demand for subordination that this
particular labor relationship implies, and that is experienced
in their everyday interactions with employers.
Being migrants, being poor, being domestic workers
In employers' discourses, the bases on which representations of domestic workers are built are a series of social and
economic characteristics that are attributed to these women.
One of the first such characteristics to be mobilized is that of
employees' origins. In effect, when those interviewed
reconstruct their experiences of hiring someone, the country
or province of origin of the workers frequently represents a
significant piece of information:
I've had a few people working for me. At one point, when
the kids were very little, there was a girl who was with us
for several years, Emma, who was from Santiago del
Estero She was good, but she had to leave, she had kids
of her own, so she left. Then I went through several people
and then came a spell with Carmen, who was Chilean, she
was a lovely lady, she stayed with us for a few years. And
then the last person, who's been with us for more than 11
or 12 years, Federica. She's a young girl, she's from Entre
Ros. No, I mean Corrientes. She's from Corrientes.
(Ana, 58, professional, married, two children)
More than the domestic workers' names, it is the reference
to their country or province of origin that differentiates workers
from one another in the employer's perspective and organizes
the employers' narrative of their experiences of hiring domestic
workers. Beyond the particular nature of their origins, these
references in employer testimonies underline a social characteristic shared by all the workers: the experience of internal or
international migration, specifically the fact that they come
from regions marked by critical social and economic situations.
The repeated mention of domestic workers' origins performs a
double function in employer discourse. First, it reaffirms a
crucial difference between the workers' origins and social
characteristics and their own, which are linked to their
belonging to the urban middle classes. Second, it associates the

D. Gorbn, A. Tizziani / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

workers' origins with certain predictable behaviors or ways of


being:
What I've seen is that women from Paraguay I don't
want to categorize this as something about the nationality. But what always happens to me is that the girls
who've come to my house from Paraguay do things like
this, they're there three or four months and then from one
day to the next they say: I have to go because
something's happened in Paraguay. I don't know, I never
know if they're telling the truth.
(Julia, 34, professional, business owner, married, two children)
In the above quote, Julia associates women from Paraguay
with a lack of stability or reliability. In other cases, women
from Peru are valued because they supposedly are better
educated than other domestic workers. Regardless of whether the characteristics in question are positive or negative, the
reference to domestic workers' national origins helps construct a stereotype and define predictable behavior and ways
of being.
These statements regarding workers' national origins are
implicitly permeated by ethnic and racial characterizations.
However, regardless of specifically national features, within the
context of Argentina's migration dynamic, these classifications
overlap strongly with class distinctions. According to Grimson
(2006), since the 1940s, Argentina has been characterized by a
process of invisibilization of racial and ethnic diversity and the
primacy of a representation based on homogeneity: a European
enclave with no black or indigenous populations. Given this
context, the specific origins of these populations have become
invisible at the same time as they were being socially and
politically incorporated into the development of import substitution industrialization and the rise of Peronism. Migrants from
neighboring countries were not considered as such within this
context. Instead, they were absorbed into the mass of cabecitas
negras (literally, little dark heads), a pejorative name used to
stigmatize the working-class population with some indigenous
ancestry who moved to Argentina's urban centers, mainly from
the provinces in the north. In this context,
any differentiation by national origin or ethnic group
tended to dissolve into an all-encompassing class-based
label, although this was racially marked by darkness.
The poor were said to be black even though [] they
were not actually black in that they were not of African
origin or descent.
(Grimson, 2006: 23)
In a similar vein, the recurring reference to the national or
provincial origins of domestic workers within employer
discourses seems to function as a powerful indicator of class
difference.
This indicator is reinforced by the representation of the
workers' places of residence. In effect, not only do domestic
workers come from different places to their employers, but they
also reside in spaces that are far from their places of work. The
physical distance between the employers' homes in well-off
neighborhoods of the city of Buenos Aires and the places where
domestic workers live crystallizes, in the employer's discourse,
the distance between their class positions. It is a social and
geographic distance that creates difference and a hierarchy

59

between those involved in this labor relationship. The characteristics of the spaces where domestic workers live (shanty
towns, slums or precarious housing) also constitute, in
employer discourse, significant references to the position of
domestic workers in the social structure.
This stereotyped image of domestic workers that employers construct through their discourse, marked as it is by
precarious social and economic situations, is not just another
reference to the social paths of the women they hire. It is a
social, economic, and symbolic location that is associated
with a series of features that are intrinsic to domestic
workers. The stereotype is also linked to certain predictable
ways of being and behaving that have important effects on
the way employers configure their interactions with their
employees. One of the features that recur most frequently is
domestic workers' low level of formal education:
Because you even get the feeling, when you have a maid,
they're generally ignorant, so it's as if I have a kind of
educational commitment. You know, when you teach
someone how to behave.
(Norma, 45, employer, two children)
Domestic employees' education levels are not mentioned
merely as part of their social paths, but are instead presented
as an essential feature of theirs. That is, rather than referring
to the fact that women who do domestic work for a living
have been unable to go to school, such comments designate a
way of being: ignorant. This intrinsic characteristic is one
more in a long list of features associated with different
aspects that define the individual, like their ways of dressing
and talking, their tastes and what they consume:
With the maid I had at that point, I could buy six packets
of biscuits one day and the next there'd be none.
Something was going on, I said. No, I ate them, she said,
I ate them all. There was a voracity about her, you
know? [] What I mean is that it's a problem because
their origins mean that when they see so much food they
become desperate for certain things.
(Julia, 36, employer, two children)
In the discourses of the employers interviewed, these
characteristics gradually outline the social inferiority ascribed
to domestic workers, and thus play a central role in the
legitimization of the subordinated position of workers within
the labor relationship established through domestic service. In
line with Goffman's analysis, these features seem to construct,
from the employers' point of view, a front for the workers that
situates them within the interaction. This front is made up of the
features that are identified with the performer: As part of
personal front we may include: insignia of office or rank;
clothing; sex, age, and racial characteristics; size and looks;
postures; speech patterns; facial expressions; bodily gestures;
and the like. In general terms, front includes both appearance
and manner of the individual: the former tells about the
individual's social status, the latter about the interaction role
the performer will expect to play (Goffman, 2009: 24).
As Goffman points out, it is to be expected that appearance
and manner confirm one another; that is, that the differences in
social status between performers are expressed to a certain
degree through the differences in the roles played by each in the

60

D. Gorbn, A. Tizziani / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

interaction. This is the case because performances tend to


incorporate and exemplify the officially credited values of the
society (1990: 35), particularly forms of social stratification and
class differences. From this perspective, the stereotyped images
of domestic workers play a central role in the way in which
employers construct and legitimize their dominant position in
the configuration of the labor relationship. In this way, they
form part of a discourse, which, by highlighting differences in
social status between employers and employees, seeks to put
each performer in the labor relationship in her place:
Ana really knows her place. For example, Eleo, the one I
had before, used to say things like, I love those shoes,
oooh, can I try them on? I mean, she wanted to be like
my friend or something. Ana never says things like that,
she knows her place
(Cecilia, 38, lawyer, married, three children)

Not knowing their place: the dislocation of roles in the


employeremployee relationship
This set of social characteristics attributed to domestic
workers allows employers to construct and argue their
dominant position in the labor relationship via a process
that is not exempt from ambiguity and tension. In effect, if
the social inferiority attributed to domestic workers is the
condition that enables the labor relationship, this brings with
it certain threats that must be controlled and managed.
I always talk to my friends about this. I always say that
when they leave, they steal things, they take things from
you, which for me is, how can I explain it um the
relationship between the family and the maid is very
paradoxical. It's paradoxical, because it's a woman who
has a lot of needs and who sees a lot of things in your
house, she uses them, she sees them, because she's in your
house. So I really nd it hard to see how a woman who
comes to my house every day and opens my children's
cupboard, if she has a daughter the same age, how can she
not want to take everything? How does she manage that?
(Julia, 36, employer, two children)
One of the first references to the threat resulting from the
social inferiority attributed to domestic workers is the
possibility of them stealing something. As previous studies
have analyzed (Brites, 2007; Kofes, 2001), the suspicion of
theft seems to be an integral part of the link between
employers and employees. This is frequently justified by the
workers' humble origins and the contrast between what
they do not have and what they see everyday at work. Faced
with this threat, employers develop a series of practices that
tend towards control over objects and assets, the definition of
spaces to which workers have access, and the supervision of
workers as they carry out their jobs. These forms of control,
which appear naturalized within the accounts, also operate
in another sense, in that they reaffirm the stereotype of the
workers' social inferiority, as they are presented as being
self-evident effects of inequality.
The potential for theft is not the only source of tension
posed by this labor relationship. If theft can be seen as a
component of the position of social inferiority attributed to

domestic workers, another, more troubling, source of conflict


is linked to the possibility that workers might not fit in with
the stereotyped images of them or perform the roles
attributed to them. In effect, domestic workers frequently
do not know their place, as some employers put it. In her
testimony, Norma observes that I don't like it if they're too
clever. I mean if they're too cocky, over-confident, or if they
seem to want to stand out from the rest. The characterization of workers as cocky or over-confident refers to those
who do not fit in with the performance of social inferiority
expected by their employers.
As such, employees are supposed to know their place, to
play their part, acting out inferiority and transmitting it
through deferential behavior towards those who are in a
socially and morally superior situation within the relationship. Knowing your place in relation to the employer's family
implies that the worker is capable of upholding a convenient
social distance, the limits of which are threatened in
day-to-day coexistence. This can lead, on the part of workers,
to an express performance of the role attributed to them.
Goffman cites an example of this sort of performance (1990:
38):
The ignorant, shiftless, happy-go-lucky manner which
Negroes in the Southern states sometimes felt obliged to
affect during interactions with whites illustrates how a
performance can play up ideal values which accord to the
performer a lower position than he covertly accepts for
himself.
This performance of inferiority is interesting for the way it
displaces employees from the position of passive agents,
lacking initiative, which has often been used to characterize
them.
From this point of view, to perform the role of the employee
is to sustain a front that does not disturb what is expected of
those who work in domestic service: fulfilling their obligations
implies doing so in such a way as to not call the social
superiority of the employer into question. However, the
testimonies gathered here reveal moments in which the front
breaks down and the hierarchical relationship is subverted. Not
knowing your place sums up the way employers characterize
this new situation, in which the domestic worker stops fulfilling
the role that has been socially assigned to her and, through this
rupture, becomes threatening. The following account clearly
reflects this situation:
At the weekends I would go to my club, and one day I
came home at around three in the morning. I arrived and
couldn't believe my eyes; the whole living room was
totally turned upside down. I mean, the ironing board was
in the middle of the room, the television was facing the
wrong way, the table had been moved. It was bizarre. I
had no idea what was going on. I went to the maid's room,
um, Lali I think her name was, I remember her she had
dark hair She always had her hair tied back and she
wore glasses thick as bottles. What a face she had poor
thing. So I went to Lali's room, I used to let her sleep there
at weekends because she had nowhere else to go. She
didn't answer me, so I thought she must be with some
man. But then a woman's voice answers and says, Lali
isn't here. So I said, Can you please open the door? A

D. Gorbn, A. Tizziani / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

girl who I'd never seen in my life opened the door. So I


said, Where is she?, She's gone out dancing; And
what are you doing here?; Sometimes I sleep here at the
weekend. I well it was like I went away at the
weekend and my house was I felt awful, really awful, it
was so invasive, so so they had taken over something
of mine it was horrible. I had a window that looked
onto the street, it was three or four in the morning and I
stood at the window saying, I'm going to kill Lali. But
always in the sense of giving her a good telling off, I'm
going to kill her out of sheer anger

As if you were telling off?a child. And suddenly I see Lali


coming up Avenida de los Incas, without her glasses. I
mean and her hair was all you know? When someone
lets their hair down and is radiant, beautiful. And it was
me my shoes, my jeans, my jumper, my jacket, my
handbag. No, no well I swear you had to be there to see
it. I couldn't believe it [laughs]. It was She looked amazing,
dressed up as me!
(Norma, 45, employer, two children)
Within Norma's account, Lali, stripped of the central
components of her front that make up the deferential
behavior expected of domestic workers, reveals her capacity
to be like her employer. The image the worker offers to the
person who has hired her, dressed in her clothes, without her
glasses, with her hair down, radiant, beautiful, is the image
of an attractive woman and not of an inferiorized child.
That image challenges the superior position in which the
employer has placed herself and reveals the constructed
nature of the differentiation between the two and the
possibility of discovering, in the other woman, an equal.
When Lali is surprised by Norma, the employer's anger is not
only due to the way her employee has used her house, but
also for having transgressed the limits set out for her. Instead,
her anger is mainly connected to the fact that Lali is
discovered in a position of equality with those who hire
her, which subverts the labor relationship.
Returning to the categories used in Romero's analysis,
emotional work becomes central to creating the deference
that confirms and upholds the employer's status. As we saw
in this example, this status depends not only on the
employee's social class, but also on her racial and ethnic
origins and her physical appearance. The threat emerges with
the possibility that the worker might stop carrying out the
emotional work that sustains the hierarchies implied in paid
domestic work. These processes of constructing hierarchies
are the condition for the existence of this labor relationship,
and they reproduce and update themselves in the everyday
interactions between the parties involved in this relationship.
By way of closure
Throughout this text, we have gradually uncovered different
operations through which employers construct the social
inferiority that permeates the way in which they represent
domestic workers and manage their relationship with them. As
we have seen, this process of inferiorization includes, in turn,
different practices of control through which employers handle

61

the threat they suppose is implied by the presence of a worker


in the intimacy of their homes. In effect, this is a labor
relationship that has been made invisible, in which the
connection between the two parties is defined by asymmetry,
which is reinforced in the way the relationship plays out
everyday.
The workers are not recognized as such, but are instead
described as the maid, the girl who helps, and the person
who is at home. These ways of referring to domestic workers
embody, in turn, certain features that make up the stereotypes
within which those who do the job for a living seem to, or must,
fit. As we have pointed out, these stereotypes reveal a process
of social, economic and symbolic positioning associated with
certain ways of being and behaving which make up the socially
expected role which those working in domestic service are
expected to fulfill. This role locates employees in an inferior
position to their employers in the social structure and supposes
that appearance and manner confirm one another. In other
words, the very role of domestic employees supposes that they
must act deferentially, knowing their place namely, that of
maid. From the employer's point of view, knowing your
place becomes a central feature when evaluating those who
do domestic service for a living, as it supposes the upholding of
convenient social distances.
These dynamics reveal mechanisms of constructing social
hierarchies that are not only present in domestic employment, but also configure it as such. Through the way they
handle the link with workers, employers put into practice the
dynamic and conflict-ridden operations that have been
analyzed throughout this article in terms of how they
devalue and inferiorize employees. One of the main sources
of tension in these processes concerns each party's ability to
fit in with established roles. As we observed in the final
example analyzed, when the behavior and image of workers
fall outside the parameters expected of their role, this can
disturb the connection between the parties, as it implies a
dislocation of the roles socially assigned to each of them. If
Norma was so surprised by Lali's transformation, it is because
what she discovered through the scene was the fragility of
the symbolic struggle unfolding at the heart of this relationship due to the negotiation of class-related positions. In short,
what is revealed when the person who is perceived as
socially inferior does not seem to know their place is the
precariousness of the social construction of inequality as an
essential feature of inter-class relations.
Endnotes
1
All statistical data presented in this paragraph and the next comes
from the report Caracterizacin del servicio domstico en la Argentina [A
Characterization of Domestic Service in Argentina], created by the Subsecretariat of Technical Programming and Labor Studies of the Ministry of
Labor, Employment, and Social Security (cited as Contartese, 2010).
2
In the rst instance, this took the form of the Agreement on Residency
for Nationals from Mercosur member states, Bolivia, and Chile, signed in
December 2002. In turn, in 2003, a new Immigration Law, no. 25.871, was
passed, which implied a change of direction in policy discourse by
incorporating two new features: a human rights perspective and a regional
focus (Pacecca & Courtis, 2008: 43). This law establishes the right to
migration as a human right and incorporates the right to the reunication of
the family (Pacecca & Courtis, 2008: 45). It also mentions the state's
responsibility for ensuring that all foreigners legally residing in Argentina
are treated equally and recognize the unrestricted right of access to
education and healthcare, regardless of migratory status.

62

D. Gorbn, A. Tizziani / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 5462

3
This refers to the National Program of Migratory Document Normalization for nationals of Mercosur member and associate states, which
includes immigrants from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay,
Peru, Uruguay, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The program is
known as Patria Grande, which translates roughly as the greater homeland.
For an analysis of the program, see Gallinati (2008) and Pacecca and Courtis
(2008).
4
This working experience corresponds to 2005 and 2006. In the latter
year, the minimum wage earned by live-in domestic workers was 650 pesos.
5
The origins of these stereotypes can be traced back to the social
transformations of the twentieth century in Argentina, specically those
affecting the conformation of the middle classes. Various studies have
explored these changes and the transformation of the models of domesticity
associated with them, including Adamovsky (2009), Pite (2011), Prez
(2012) and Crdenas (1986).
6
There is extensive literature concerning the concept of emotional
labor. Developed by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild, this concept facilitates
the analysis of certain occupations that require the worker to produce an
emotional state in another person through the manipulation and control of
their emotions (1983). Although Hochschild did not develop this concept in
connection to domestic work, it has been widely used in this eld of study.

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& Elizabeth Jeln (Eds.), Las lgicas del cuidado infantil: Entre las familias,
el Estado y el mercado (pp. 163196). Buenos Aires: IDES UNICEF
UNPFA.
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(19401970). Buenos Aires: Biblos.
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and domestic work in mid-twentieth century Argentina. Hispanic American
Historical Review, 91(1), 97138.
Rollins, Judith (1985). Between women: Domestics and their employers.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Romero, Mary (2002). Maid in USA. New York and London: Routledge.
Valenzuela, Mara Elena, & Mora, Claudia (Eds.). (2009). Trabajo domstico:
Un largo camino hacia el trabajo decente. Geneva: International Labour
Organization.

Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 6371

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Domestic service, affection and inequality: Elements of subalternity


Jurema Brites
Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Campus Camobi - Av. Roraima 1000, Prdio 74C, Sala 202 - CEP, 97 105 900 Santa Maria, RS, Brazil

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 29 April 2014

s y n o p s i s
In this paper I intend to present an ethnographic description of the movement of things,
people, and affection in the context of domestic service in Brazil. Looking at everyday
interactions, I explore the sociological dimensions (family organization, gender relations, and
class structure) and the symbolic constructions (concepts of motherhood, childcare,
reciprocity, care, and affection) as well as the political and infra-political dimensions
(domination, subordination, and rebellion) of domestic service in order to better understand
the elements at play in the Brazilian context.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Domestic work1 provides a good starting point for an
analysis of Brazil. It has existed since the early years of
Brazilian society and was based on the exploitation of slave
labor during the colonial period. Although the country's
constitution now recognizes domestic work as a profession,
and domestic workers enjoy the same rights as other
workers, the sector is still predominantly composed of
women who are poor, mostly Black and have little schooling.
My aim in this paper is to unravel the social configurations
that contribute to maintaining domestic work as a space of
the reproduction of inequalities.
Employing ethnographic research methods, I describe, on
the one hand, the differences in the daily organization of
workers' families and employers' families, suggesting that a
stratified complementarity makes domestic work functional
for both parties. On the other hand, taking the feelings
expressed by the people I researched, I would suggest that
the inequalities reproduced in the course of domestic service
are sustained largely through affective ambiguities. I draw a
connection between the accusations of theft against domestic
workers and the possibility of extra-wage payments common
in these situations, because both are agreements that occur
behind the scenes. I investigate these elements in terms of
the transmission of a certain heritage in which things and
values circulate, serving to maintain the relations between

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.03.009
0277-5395/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

employers and their employees as spaces of subordination,


rebellion, and resistance.
This study is the result of intensive ethnographic experience
over the past ten years in Brazil, including episodic research in
the homes of employers, two months of live-in fieldwork in the
home of a domestic worker in Vitria (Esprito Santo), and
daily involvement in the domestic workers' syndicates in Juiz
de Fora (Minas Gerais) and Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul),
in addition to over one hundred semi-structured interviews
composed of open-ended questions with domestic workers in
these three states.
Following an analytical tradition typical for contemporary
(and post-colonial) anthropology, I insist on two points. The
first concerns situated knowledge, demanding that the
researcher assumes the limited vantage point implied in his
or her particular position within race/class hierarchies (Brah,
1996; Spivak, 1994; Strathern, 2006). Like nearly all other
researchers in Brazil, and the majority of people who are not
considered poor, I have extensive personal experience as an
employer of domestic workers, and this fact which involves
a structural inequality in the relation between researcher and
informant should not be omitted.
Nonetheless, the second point concerns the insistence
that our partners in debate are sophisticated, multidimensional characters who are not so easily dominated by the
dominant classes. Members of so-called subordinate groups
have any number of ways of, at least symbolically (and,

64

J. Brites / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 6371

in certain circumstances, politically), reshaping the power


relations that permeate their existences (Ortner, 1995; Scott,
1990; Thompson, 1998). My article aims to highlight this
complex creativity among domestic workers in Brazil.
Although residing away from my own home, at the house of
domestic workers, sharing their everyday life, struggling to
maintain non-hierarchical relationships, my social standing as
a boss was hardly ever forgotten. I was offered many concessions on a daily basis, for example, choosing the menu of the
day or sitting in the only chair of the house. I was, however,
expected to pay for my privileged space. People asked me to
buy all sorts of things: new showers, lice medicine, or anything
that could be sold to help enhance their income. At any rate,
precisely by not hiding that I was a wealthier person, I enjoyed
much intimacy and friendship. I heard confessions, secrets, and
complaints. I read and discussed my final composition with the
research subjects collectively on a number of occasions. Even
though they could read, it was difficult for them to understand
an academic manuscript. With key informants, I negotiated
how some issues would appear in the research. It was hard, for
instance, to persuade them to change their real names. They
wanted their stories to be recognized and their names printed
in the text. However, we reached a deal that would not put
them in excessive exposure, and to compensate for the absence
of their names, I organized photographic exhibitions that dealt
with their life stories so their reputation would be safeguarded
(Brites, 2000).
In this article, my paradoxical position in the field is
especially apparent when I describe theft. I suppose that
being able to listen to the domestic workers' stories and then
comparing them with the situations/versions within my own
social network was advantageous for showing the usefulness of
Clifford Geertz's proposition: Finding our feet, an unnerving
business which never more than distantly succeeds, is what
ethnographic research consists of as a personal experience
(Geertz, 1973: 21).
Domestic service and stratied complementarity
In the Brazilian middle and upper classes, family relations
are routinely permeated by the presence of domestic workers
who normally take care of all the housework as well as
childcare. In the performance of these tasks, just as in the
wages and relationships that go along with them, one can
observe the reproduction of a highly stratified system of
gender, class, and race (Azeredo, 1989). The domestic and
family organizations of employers, as well as the chances of
economic improvement and social prestige for them and their
families as a whole are based on a division of tasks that involves
another woman (generally not a relative). This second woman
may have other notions of family, male/female and mother/
child relations, but eventually these notions adjust as they
grow to complement those of the employer. By observing daily
interactions, practices, and values in these different settings, I
began to realize that the different patterns of family organization were mutually reinforcing, interacting in a sort of stratified
complementarity. By this, I mean the imbrication of social
patterns deriving from different sorts of lifestyles, family
organizations, and values that, although based in different
positions within a social hierarchy, act in a complementary
fashion, reproducing social inequalities.

My analysis is largely inspired by Colen's (1995) studies on


Caribbean nannies and domestic workers in the United States.
Colen coined the concept of stratified reproduction to describe
how reproductive tasks have been distributed according to
hierarchies of class, race, ethnic group, and gender. The author
observes that relations of political inequality and economic
exploitation within various forms of family organization and
gender experiences end up being functional for both parties. In
Brazil, the inequalities between employers and domestic
workers are evident. Differences in class, ethnicity, and access
to consumer goods, education, and better jobs are recognized
and broadly discussed within specialized literature (Goldstein,
2003; Mori, Bernardino-Costa, & Fleischer, 2011; Organizao
Internacional do Trabalho, 2013).
Furthermore, the hierarchical system underlying domestic
service has been bolstered, in particular, by emotional ambiguities in the relation between employers especially children and
women and domestic workers (Goldstein, 2003).
In the negotiation of extra-wage payments, in the exchange of
services completely outside any contract, in the gossip between
women, and in the relations between workers and children, it is
impossible not to recognize the existence of a large amount of
affection. This fact, however, does not impede a hierarchical
relationship, with clear demarcations between employers and
subordinates, i.e. between those who can buy domestic services
and those who, by offering their services, manage to access one of
the less severe alternatives of survival in Brazil.
Domestic workers are usually considered the country's
poorest-paid women. They have little formal education, are
mainly migrants, and their cultures and ethnicities are
stigmatized by the hegemonic system of values. According
to official data from 2008, 61% of the domestic workers in
Brazil are Afrodescendants, 38.2% are Caucasian, and 0.4% are
Indigenous (Fraga, 2010). There are very few studies on the
employing families (Brites & Picano, 2013).
According to the IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e
Estatstica (IBGE), 2009), domestic service in Brazil represents
17% of female employment, constituting the second largest
professional category in the country. This is a massively female
activity about 92.4% of domestic workers are women. This
category also registers very high levels of informality. Only 26%
are formally employed, versus 58% of other workers, and 27%
earn less than the minimum wage. In April 2013, the Brazilian
Congress granted domestic workers the same rights as other
workers. However, changes in the law, although desirable, do
not signify an immediate end to inequalities and prejudices.
Domestic service may not be considered a preferred occupation
in the spectrum of career choices for workers. However, when
other options for entering the labor market are beyond reach,
domestic service appears as a ready alternative for work on the
informal labor market.
Nevertheless, one of my ambitions is to show that, despite
the negative aspects of domestic service, infra-political
relations2 between employers and workers, though at times
undemocratic, still make this activity interesting for workers.
This was one of my most bewildering discoveries during
fieldwork.
The domestic workers I listened to found advantages in
those elements of domestic service that feminist intellectuals
who study work and gender tend to denounce as instruments
of subjugation: extra-wage payment and the possibility of

J. Brites / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 6371

negotiating time off, exchanges resulting from personal and


client relations. Trying to understand the afore-mentioned
attitude, as anthropologists do, from a native point of view, I
found meanings that went well beyond the patriarchal and
capitalist domination suggested in much of the literature on
this theme.
Since I myself am an employer, following the anthropological tradition of thinking the other, I chose to emphasize
the domestic worker's point of view. This option, together
with the use of ethnographic research methods, leads to
interesting considerations on the reproduction of inequality
in Brazilian society, which I have resumed in three key issues:
1. Differences between employers and employees in terms of
family organization and financial income end up generating a stratified complementarity, which justifies the
continuity of paid domestic work in contemporary society;
2. In the family dynamics typical of working-class groups,3
domestic service often turns out to be more advantageous
than other forms of employment.
3. Despite the experience of subordination, it is possible to
observe domestic workers (in the workplace as much as in
their own families) deploying practices and tactics that allow
them to obtain profit from highly unfavorable situations.

The employer's family


In the middle-class families included in the sample,
domestic workers were expected to clean the house and take
care of the children, the elderly, and the family pets. These tasks
were to be carried out in a discreet and affectionate manner,
allowing the adult members of the sample families to engage in
their full-time jobs, usually outside the home.
In general, in these families, the mother, besides having a
full-time job, was in charge of health care, hygiene, and home
decoration. She was also largely responsible for maintaining and
managing the affections of the family's wider network of
sociability.4 The husband took responsibility for the greater part
of family expenses, assuring investment in school and social
careers. He was assigned a few domestic tasks, such as grocery
shopping, taking the children to school, or conducting minor
repairs in the house or on the car. There were no domestic chores
for children and youngsters, especially if they were boys. In
general, they had their days entirely filled with school and
additional courses in English, Mathematics, Music, Dance, and
Sports.5
The domestic organization of this group corresponds to
that of the modern nuclear family model, anchored in
marriage, with the creation and promotion of children as
the most important function of the family enterprise. In these
families, the home is valued as an ideal locus of expressing
intimacy and developing mature and healthy emotional
structures for the members of the home (Aris, 1981;
Donzelot, 1977; Fonseca, 1995).
According to Duarte and Dias (1986), these families end
up having increased visibility in Brazilian society, because
being made up of intellectual and consumer elites they
promote their own patterns of organization and values,
which reflect the standards desirable within a normal,
healthy, and democratic society.

65

The domestic worker's family interdependence


and antagonism
The families of domestic workers researched are, unlike
their bosses' families, generally extended families, in which
primary attachments are established with relatives, not
necessarily within the couple. These are families characterized by high rates of female-headed households, consensual
unions (instead of marriage), and children in circulation
(fosterage). In these groups, the responsibility for children is
not restricted to the biological parents, but may be shared by
several homes.
Men are expected to be the providers in the poorest
families, but this role is hardly consistent with the precarious
employment and sporadic income available to this population.
Marital unions are easily undone, often lasting no more than a
few months or years. There is a high rate of recomposed
families, with children being distributed around the kinship
and neighborhood network when the mother remarries.6
Men are relevant as sons and siblings. Paternal ties are
maintained by the presence of female paternal relatives
(particularly grandmothers and aunts) in children's lives
(Fonseca, 1985). Fathers are rarely present in the home, but,
since male social spheres and manhood itself are forged in the
street, this absence is not considered entirely strange. In like
manner, notions of womanhood include relegating issues
related to domestic and familiar territory to the female domain
(Duarte & Dias, 1986). It is women, in matrifocal organizations,
who represent the multi-generational family group and
transmit the cultural assets of the group.
Some pages of my fieldwork diary, though a bit extensive,
may illustrate with more vivacity the descriptions above:
Edilene's house, where I originally thought I was going to
be staying, was too small: only one bedroom, a kitchen,
and a porch. I was travelling with my two-year-old son
and, although I was open to the ethnographic meeting, I
assumed sharing the same room with Edilene and her
husband would go beyond the boundaries of my cultural
individual necessity. For different reasons than mine,
Edilene approached me with another solution. Without
giving up the prestige of hosting me, she offered the best
quarters of her domestic group a room at her motherin-law's house, Claudina, who lived next door. In a short
time, I found the ability of having me under her motherin-law's roof was symptomatic of the social organization
of that place.
Although there were walls that separated the houses, the
group's everyday life indicated a common family organization, not only because they were side by side, but from the
family history to the most casual everyday occurrence also
showed an interdependence between residents of different
households.
The main character of this group was Claudina (54 years old
at the time), domestic worker at the same household for
23 years. She was born in Bahia and had worked on a
plantation since she was very young. She had nine
children, of which only three survived. 30 years ago she
moved to Vitria, along with a sister, and both began
working as domestic workers. Of an ill-fated relationship
with a married man, Edinha, the youngest daughter,

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J. Brites / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 6371

was born. After a few years of living in Vitria, she met


Norberto a retired night watchman and her current
partner.
Mr. Norberto, along with a nephew of Claudina's, was one
of the rst invaders of Jardim Veneza, the neighborhood
where they live. After Claudina established herself there
with Norberto, she asked her two married sons to share
the land. Today three houses have been built, where
the solutions of a domestic group overlap its nuclear
organization.
The mother and her youngest daughter live on one side of
the land, the eldest son (Tonho) at the other end. Between
them there is the house of the middle child (Clodoaldo).
With the old couple resides Michele, granddaughter of
Claudina, a seven-year-old girl whose mother, starting a
new marriage, decided to leave the daughter with her exmother-in-law. Edinha (16 years old), Claudina's youngest
child, who left her mother's house six months ago when she
announced she was pregnant, lives at the back of the land,
along with her husband.
In the middle is Clodoaldo and Beatriz's barraco (small
wooden hut) along with their three children (six, ve, and
two years of age). Clodoaldo currently joins his brother on a
job as a bricklayer at Praia Velha. The couple gets up very
early especially Beatriz, who works as a domestic worker
and walks four kilometers each day to her employer's
house, so she can exchange her transportation vouchers for
milk for the kids.
On her way to work she leaves her two youngest children at
the only municipal day care center in the neighborhood,
which is open only part-time. The oldest child, who is six
years old, stays at home alone until two o'clock when he
and his cousin Michele both go to the same day care center.
In a third part of the land lives Tonho (Claudina's rstborn)
and his wife Edilene. Tonho was responsible for the
construction of his mother's beautiful house. As he was
without a regular job for a long time, the son repaid his
mother's efforts by building the house from the ground only
with the help of old Norberto.
Edilene is sometimes disrespected by her relatives and her
husband because she drinks too much, but she is the one
who feeds the whole family group with small leftovers
she brings from her employer's house, sappy fruits and
vegetables tradesfolk discard from their stores and pig fat
or lard she exchanges with the neighbor's son for some
marijuana cigarettes.
Among these three houses, the transit of people, services,
and objects is incessant, creating tensions as well as
complicities (Brites, 2000).
Similar patterns of family organization appear in historical accounts of Medieval and Modern Europe (Aris, 1981),
as well as studies concerned with colonial Brazil (Samara,
1989). There is evidence of similar family forms in many
non-Western societies as well. Hence, rather than seeing
these arrangements as a momentary breakdown of normality
due to economic precariousness, one might think of them in
terms of reproducing traditions in subordinate groups.
Nonetheless, it would be naive to think purely in terms of
cultural and unilateral determinations. It is obvious the
family forms I studied are part of a social system within a

weak state, occurring in a context of material deprivation


where child labor, and not schools, has long been children's
principal mode of access to education (Fonseca, 1999).
The usefulness of the concept of stratified complementarity can be observed here. The co-existence of two family
models one for the domestic workers and the other for their
employers operates to guarantee the promotion of women
and families among the better-off employers, while maintaining the subordination of the more disadvantaged domestic workers.
On one hand, it is not difficult to explain why domestic
workers readily take care of their employers' children with
dedication and even affection: they come from social groups
with a cultural tradition of family organization in which the
socialization of children goes well beyond the four walls of the
nuclear family, where children are often left in the care of other
female relatives or neighbors. On the other hand, with this
type of collaboration, middle-class women easily achieve high
educational and professional accomplishments while guaranteeing the maintenance of the status quo of their group.

Affection and inequality


In almost every employer's home I investigated, children,
when not in school, would spend the majority of their time
with the domestic workers. The parents, away at work,
would leave their children with the domestic worker for
two-thirds of the day. The intensity of contact between
children and their domestic workers created, in various
situations, a bond that went beyond professional ties. I found
photographs of employers' children in the domestic workers'
personal photo albums, often near the pictures of their own
family (a mother in her coffin, a wedding portrait, some
snapshots of brothers and nephews).
When domestic workers are in their own homes, after work
hours, they can hardly stop talking about the achievements of
the children they care for: what the little girl said, what the
little boy did, etc. Their neighbors and family appear to know all
about these children (birthdays, favorite clothes, etc.). It's
almost as if they were part of the domestic worker's family. It is
common even once the employment contract has ended for
the domestic workers to continue to follow the lives of the
children they have taken care of. Occasionally, they will call to
talk to them, consult a colleague who is working for someone in
the social network of their former boss, or simply calculate
their ages, from a distance, remembering their birthdays or
keeping the children's photographs in their albums. In this
context, an employment change can mean a huge affective loss.
In fact, one reason that employees tend to endure poorly paid
jobs is the difficulty of separating from the children they care
for.
There are similar signs of children being attached to their
domestic workers. One employer, for example, reported
how her son fell ill when their nanny had to quit her job. I
heard variations on this theme in countless stories, highlighting an intensity of contact that is not without important
consequences.
The following conversation is very revealing of the
ambiguity of affection and distance present in these relationships, which I will further elaborate on in the next section:

J. Brites / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 6371

Edilene, a domestic worker, told me, with evident pride,


what her boss's daughter a ve-year-old girl, said to her:
_Lene, you could win the lottery, right? Then you could
come around just to play with me. You could have lunch
and lie in mommy's bed to rest, like she does. (Edilene
closes the story saying) Lie in her bed! What an idea!

Subtle distance
The question I would like to pose is: if there is such
intimacy and affection between children and their domestic
workers, how do these children grow up to be adults who
reproduce such rigid hierarchies? At what point do their
worlds separate from one another?
The employers I investigated do not, as a rule, treat their
employees rudely. Children apprehend the social distance
between themselves and the domestic workers through
other channels subliminal information, their parents'
words, and the organization of domestic space.
The maid's room, the maid's bathroom, and the
maid's quarters7 are segregated areas where the respect
middle-class children are taught regarding other people's
possessions disappears. The spaces reserved for domestic
workers in employers' homes do not respect the workers'
individuality. They can be full of rubbish, brooms, buckets,
and anything else that is useless or should remain out of
sight, so as not to disturb the beauty and order of the home.
Another ambiguous dimension is the domestic worker's
body. This woman can hold a baby in her arms, prepare the
meals for the family, clean the house, and wash the clothes,
and though it is not frequent, in some cases, she may even
have to sexually satisfy her male boss.8 But it is out of place
for her to sit on the living room sofa, lie on her employers'
bed, dine at the table with them, or use their bathrooms. In
these cases the domestic worker's body pollutes because it
is not performing servile activities and could strain the
hierarchical order of the home.
Heritage transmission
A walk through the rooms of the domestic workers' homes
generally reveals a huge amount of furniture and appliances
that previously belonged to their employers: old clothes,
furniture, mattresses, windows, and toys. Many scholars have
noted this kind of donation, referring to it as a form of
exploitation used by employers to supplement or replace part
of the wage paid to the employee (Chaney & Castro, 1993). On
the other hand, I propose looking at this exchange of goods
and services an exchange that goes along with most paid
domestic work as a sort of patrimonial heritage. This
perspective has the advantage of understanding the process
as something that goes beyond the narrow sense of money
relations to include the idea of a communication system in
which, besides material things, social meanings are transmitted
(Douglas & Isherwood, 1996). To treat this transit of assets as
patrimonial heritage (Neves, 1982) signifies that something
besides material things is being exchanged in this relationship
(Mauss, 1967). Objects do not exist autonomously. As
material, physical and immediately concrete support of
production and reproduction of social life, they should be

67

considered products and vectors of social relations (Menezes


apud Magni, 1994: 11).
Besides wages, employers give their employees objects,
but only those that are of no further use to them. They rarely
buy new things to give to their domestic workers. Domestic
workers only get what their employers consider useless: old
bras and panties, clothes that are too small for the children, a
stained blouse, a used refrigerator, a discarded decoration,
leftovers from Sunday lunch, etc. One might wonder just
what this donation of second-hand things represents.
The logic of the social relation between donor and recipient
varies according to the things that are given. One of the
messages conveyed through gift-giving is social hierarchy.
According to this ideology, socially inferior people receive
second-hand things: they are second-class people. Trades
also happen within the family, but they depend on the type of
object passed on and especially on its state of conservation.
Consider family heirlooms, for example, whose spirit, according to the Polynesian concept of hau, is in the object passed
down over generations. It is unimaginable that a domestic
worker would inherit the wall clock that belonged to
grandmother. Furthermore, one does not offer old things,
which would otherwise be thrown away, to a superior.
The gift given to a domestic worker signifies the donor's
precedence/excellence over the recipient (Mauss, 1967). In
the objects offered by employers, there is a definite message:
I used it first, I sat on it first, and I ate it first. You can have my
leftovers. The place of things reflects social standings. Just as
the domestic worker occupies residual spaces in the employers' homes, the things she receives are also remainders.
The logical inference here is that, in the relationship between
donor and recipient, the person who gives away second-hand
things has a higher standing in the hierarchy.
The butler did it
During my fieldwork, I came to understand that thefts
attributed to domestic workers present an interesting perspective on the tensions that permeate domestic service. In the
transit of things given as well as those allegedly stolen I could
see a particular mix of affection and antagonism, which reflects
and strengthens the unequal relations of power. I treated this
flow of objects, furniture, clothes, and food, transferred from one
home to another, as patrimonial heritage.
In the same way that, in their oral narratives, employers
highlight the generous gifts given to their domestic workers,
they often complain about the domestic workers' petty
pilfering. In this not entirely consensual patrimonial heritage,
one encounters, so to speak, the underside of the gift
exchange. Consistently described as a surprise (Can you
imagine? I caught her robbing9 me!), as something inadmissible, theft, as a rule, triggers indignation from employers
and is, many times, what leads to dismissal.
However, no domestic worker ever confessed to stealing.
Theft appears in their stories, more often than not, as an
unfounded accusation made by the employers. At times they
do admit theft occurrences, but it appears as something
committed by other domestic workers. The thief is always
someone at a considerable distance, so that no suspicions
might fall on the narrator and her network of friends. Tulia,
who has 43 years of experience in housework, and is a

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J. Brites / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 6371

central figure in her neighborhood network (even acting as a


sort of informal employment agency), admitted to only one
case in which she was accused of stealing.
Tulia: _It happened to me once. I was working for Ms.
Norma and her ring went missing: My ring is missing, my
ring is missing! It can't have vanished just like that! She
shouted this and other such things at me. We already
knew they were suspicious of us. I worked with another
girl, Osmarina, the cook. You see, there was such a ruckus
until we found that ring! I, who had more access to the
closets, spent a full day searching for it. It was in the
pocket of a jacket Ms. Norma had used. She had forgotten
that she put it there and [so she decided] it was the
maid who robbed it, you know?
Jurema: _ And what happened later?
Tulia:_ I told her that before she accused us, she should
rst look for it very well. Then, if she didn't nd it, she
could pressure us on the matter (sic).
The main point here is not to determine whether the
worker is telling the truth, but to realize how much domestic
workers recognize this sort of behavior as an ordinary fact, be
it a potential accusation or an admission of the possibility of
stealing. These narratives not only indicate a discursive
instance, but they are also clues for understanding cultural
conceptions. Tulia's narrative is a vivid indication of her
wisdom regarding the social rules that apply to such
situations. First, she reveals that the confirmed disappearance of something generally triggers accusations against the
household's subalterns. Second, the accusation leads to an
investigation, because her boss as many do announces the
missing indirectly, thereby giving time for employees to
find whatever has disappeared. Third, Tulia reports finding
the object, which, according to her, was dropped somewhere
by her employers. Thus, she points to her employers'
sloppiness or neglect, perhaps due to the little importance
they really give to their belongings (which they know can be
replaced with relative ease). Perhaps the employers rely too
much on the domestic workers for maintaining order. Therefore, she can also easily exempt herself of any possibility of
suspicion. Finally, Tulia admits that domestic workers often
pilfer and, in this case, the employers have the right to demand
back what belongs to them.
Even though the lost object is often found or discovered to
be in use by someone in the family, this detail is not
incorporated into the employers' repertoire as a reference for
the next event. The underlying belief is that domestic
workers obviously steal. Examples of this conviction appear
not only in the fieldwork, but also in everyday Brazilian
affairs. At no time is the possibility of theft implied between
family members; it is always attributed to a stranger.
Maria Suely Kofes (1991) analyzed the accusations of theft
against domestic workers as an effect of their indeterminate
status in their employers' homes. According to the author, the
nature of the work performed by domestic workers within the
domestic space is ambiguous, as the home is the locus of family
life par excellence, organized by kinship relations of affection,
trust, fidelity and intimacy (Kofes, 1991: 236). The accusation
of theft against domestic workers in this context, the
anthropologist suggests, has the symbolic effect of removing

them from the family relations. It is interesting to think of the


domestic worker as a dangerous element, a polluter, in the
words of Mary Douglas (1976). However, placing these
complaints in a communicative context of knowledge and
values, it might be reasonable to suggest that these situations
and accusations of theft represent a chance for dialog between
employers and employees. It might be possible to see the fear
of theft attributed to the poor as a simple imputation of danger,
impurity, or criminal pathology. On the other hand, the
assurance that it was the maid could be result of a tacit
acknowledgment of the extreme inequality that separates
domestic workers from employers. If, in the eyes of employers,
domestic workers are likely to pilfer, is it not for lack of basic
necessities?
This fact leads me to believe that theft committed by
domestic workers is not only expected, but also tacitly
accepted, because a situation of theft, even when verified,
seldom leads to legal or police intervention. Why, despite the
accusations of theft attributed to Tulia, has she continued to
work at the same job for 23 years? Why, when faced with
curiously empty shelves, do employers complain indirectly,
make insinuations, but rarely decide on a radical charge?
Carrier ants: rebellion, rivalry and fun in theft
My ventures in fieldwork (particularly in workers'
homes), as well as my experience as an employer, have led
me to believe that the following anecdote about the missing
clothes of Ms. Dina (Levi-Strauss's wife) might not be pure
colonialist fantasy.
The anthropologist in Saudades do Brasil (Lvi-Strauss,
1994) reports on the unusual privileges of being a young
professor in Brazil where he could afford the services of a
domestic worker. He writes that he unfortunately had to let
her go, because she had the lousy habit of borrowing Ms.
Dina's clothing for Carnival balls.
My impression is that it is not unusual for a domestic
worker to take things without permission from her employer's
home. Nevertheless, when this occurs, the objects are generally
of insignificant value, at least in terms of the employers'
purchasing power: a can of peas, a bar of soap, uncooked
kidney beans, grocery bags, and spare change. Sometimes
domestic workers temporarily borrow something (a dress for a
special occasion, panties, or bras) that employers watch
disappear and come back, after making insinuations about the
missing object. So it would be naive to think that theft occurs
simply for reasons of survival. How then are we to understand
this frequently observed activity that brings to mind the
tireless work of carrier ants?
In my field notes, I registered the narrative of theft told by
an employer (Maria da Penha) to her manicurist (Manoela):
Manoela:_ Did you know that Edilene, the maid, was
scheming to rob things with Tulia? Both of them!
Everything was all arranged! Maria da Penha the
employer's daughter went to the kitchen after lunch.
Edilene had already cleaned the kitchen and she was
washing some clothes. Maria da Penha found bananas in
the garbage bag. Of course, since Tulia is the one who
takes the garbage out, she was passing the stolen goods
on to the other, got it? Maria da Penha, playing the fool,

J. Brites / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 6371

asked Edilene: _Why are you going to throw these good


bananas out? She said the maid blushed and came up
with the lame excuse that she was taking them for Tulia's
lunch.
_Hey, Edilene, you know Mom doesn't like it when you
take things without asking. Why don't you serve a meal
and call Tulia to eat here?
Jurema: _ And what happened then, did they re her?
Manoela: _ No. But Maria da Penha hates the maid, right?
She doesn't know how her mother stands such insulting
behavior. She said she wanted to slap [Edilene] in the face.

The revenge of nemesis: the performative expression of


relations between employers and domestic workers
These narrative examples of accusation suggest that,
together with asymmetric authority relations, the accusations
made by bosses and foreseen by domestic workers point to a
communication process between the parties. Both parties
involved in the conflict develop together the grammar involved
in accusations of theft, almost in a performative ritual, where
both the actors and the audience already know the script of the
affair. A code of speech, gestures, and practices that, although
clearly manifest, is never explicit, but is rather a silent
agreement between the parties about power relations.
In this shared knowledge lies the notion of a hierarchic
society, in which the possibility of justice is less committed to
the equality of individuals than to the relation of reciprocity
between those of unequal status. That is, the asymmetry of
rights and obligations is not questioned it simply exists, as
a fact of life. It is because of this inequality that the charge of
theft can be so easily made against subalterns. However, this
inequality is not a simple relation of oppression between the
rulers and the ruled. There is space for negotiation in which
theft committed by subalterns is a predictable action,
inherent in the relation of social inequality.
When Tulia's boss sets a time limit for the object to be
found, when Tulia admits the possibility that some domestic
worker might have picked up the ring, and when employers
see pilfering as part of the relationship between employers and
employees, they are all recognizing the logic of gift circulation
between the involved parties. In these terms, pilfering could be
interpreted as a sort of revenge of nemesis, a moral principle
expressed in the gift-exchange scheme proposed by Marcel
Mauss, denouncing the imbalance between the abundance of
some and the poverty of others:
Alms are the result on the one hand of a moral idea about
gifts and wealth and on the other of an idea about sacrice.
Generosity is necessary because otherwise Nemesis will
take vengeance upon the excessive wealth and happiness of
the rich by giving to the poor and the gods. It is the old gift
morality raised to the position of a principle of justice; the
gods and spirits consent that the portion reserved for them
and destroyed in useless sacrice should go to the poor and
the children (Mauss, 1967: 1516).
During my fieldwork, the subject of theft had been extremely
recurrent in employers' stories (and confirmed by domestic
workers). Nonetheless, theft has rarely been analyzed in social

69

sciences literature. Specialized literature about domestic service


in Latin America briefly mentions the pilfering issue, connecting
it to the discussion of the adverse and unfair conditions faced by
domestic workers. In these analyses, theft assumes only one
connotation: accusations by employers against their domestic
workers (Chaney & Castro, 1993; Kofes, 1991).
Zaluar (1985) proposes demonstrating how representations of the world of crime, violence, and power among
lower-income families in Rio de Janeiro are constructed from
their own concrete, everyday experiences instead of an
abstract idea of justice or democracy (1985: 140). These
experiences take place within a complex process of interaction
between workers and outlaws involving gender, age, location,
and honor codes that goes beyond a mere reaction to dominant
morality. However, when examining the occasional theft or
pilfering (even citing the increased domestic theft wellknown to housewives in the wealthy classes, Zaluar, 1985,
footnote 12), the author refers the discussion to the concept of
class and to the revolt resulting from the progressive
impoverishment to which the working-class Brazilian population has been submitted.
If, on one hand, Zaluar (1985) draws attention to a typical
dimension of working class actions, on the other, it lends itself
to a sort of economic reductionism already criticized by E.P.
Thompson. The historian (1998) comments on the limitations
of analyses that view the insurrections of eighteenth-century
England as mere stomach rebellions. According to the author,
the riots should be analyzed as a form of popular action based
on custom. Thompson places these events within the context of
class relations in eighteenth-century England, and the guiding
influence of traditional plebeian moral economy. According to
his reading, the riots occurred in reaction to transformations
caused by the incipient capitalist production being introduced
within all kinds of commercial transactions. Working class
resistance is not a given, it emerges in particular situations
of confrontation with the aristocracy and the new model
of bourgeoisie. By analyzing social relations during a period
of transition, the author perceives new meanings within
working-class action that were previously treated as the mere
result of the mechanics of misery.
Following this line of thought, theft and accusations of theft
are analyzed here as constituent parts of domestic work
relations. Besides wages and gifts offered by employers to
their employees, the continuous acts of theft that are supposedly committed by domestic workers illustrate the ambiguities
of class relations and the ambivalences that this type of service
provokes in Brazilian society. The examination of anecdotes
about theft collected during the fieldwork heightens the
complexity of the notion of class resistance, pointing to a
historical configuration of the actions of subordinate populations that are not fully inclined to submit to the dominant
groups, yet cannot do without them. Theft (as well as
extra-wage income given as gifts) opens up a communicational
field between classes and, in this sense, may be thought of as a
performative expression, reflecting a pedagogical space of
power relations in the country.
The recycling practices associated with carrier ant
behavior the pilfering of objects in employers' homes
are much like the direct appropriation of assets, of
splinters, patches, and leftovers, which, according to
Linebaugh (1983), constituted the traditional system of

70

J. Brites / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 6371

domestic production in the eighteenth century. As stated by


the same author, when the monetary system was introduced
into the logic of the production system, workers did not
easily adhere to the work process that intensified their own
exploitation. In order to wipe out popular practices of
supplementary income, a severe punishment system was
developed that brought thousands of apprentices to the
gallows. Scott (1987,1990) undoubtedly an intellectual heir
of Thompson helps read these events as a struggle for the
demarcation of boundaries between public scripts and
occult scripts, in which subalterns take advantage of the
gaps in a system of well-defined behaviors in order to plan
their moves. Their strategies generally with a specific
objective for getting some scraps from the abundance of the
rich rarely take the form of direct confrontation or suicidal
rebellion. Instead, they assume a manner of superficial
compliance and false deference, and, with great skill, try to
make their superiors bite their own tongues, holding them
to their own implicit promises. Here, it is necessary to
remember that, in this tense game, important elements are at
play, such as the fact that domestic workers know much
about their employer's intimate lives and their possible moral
missteps. Nevertheless, these trumps are not enough to
ensure a sure victory for subordinates. These are cards that, in
order to be effective, must be played with a great deal of
wisdom, winning minor victories or, at times, just a laugh.
Conclusion
In this article, I have ethnographically described the
relations that are enacted between employers and domestic
workers in Brazil in terms of a circulation of values, symbols,
and belongings. Far from supposing a symmetrical circulation, I
attempted to demonstrate how, in the flow of things (gifts and
minor theft), of people (the workers that leave their neighborhoods to work in the homes of their employers, as well as the
practice of the circulation of children), and also of affections
(the love these workers have for their employers' children, but
also the vengeance, the suffering, and false accusations) are
elements that complement one another as a result of the
stratified reproduction of different lifestyles of employers and
domestic workers.
Domestic work has always been present in Brazilian society
in a subaltern manner. In former times, it was performed by
slaves, and Black and indigenous women. Nowadays, paid
domestic labor is carried out by a great number of women
belonging to lower-income segments of society and to ethnic
minorities who have few opportunities for formal education.
Despite some legal achievements, domestic labor persists as a
locus of precarious working rights, a lack of social acknowledgment and the stigmatization of the women employed in
this sector.
Based on the ethnographical research carried out in both
employers' and workers' homes, I described the intimacy of
family life in order to show how differences in lifestyle,
economic power, and values are articulated in ways that
reproduce inequalities.
I attempted to demonstrate how the division of reproductive tasks sustains the social standing and lifestyle of
the employers. These practices are surrounded, in turn, by
different conceptions of childcare and maternity between

social classes, which end up generating inequalities that


persist in Brazilian society.
Even though different conceptions and ways of life are
operative for both parts, the relationships are not always well
adjusted or harmonious. Tacit consent about inequality is
maintained by redistributive performances as seen in the
practices of gift-giving and extra-salary payments. Behind the
deference demanded by their bosses, the workers develop
many forms of resistance, aiming to attain small gains in an
unfavorable situation.
Endnotes
1
In this article I refer to domestic work as reproductive activities
performed by anyone within the household. The term domestic service
distinguishes the domestic work that is hired and/or paid for.
2
According to James Scott (1990) infra-politics are everyday forms of
resistance.
3
In Brazil, there is a wide debate on the denition of subordinate groups
as working class, poor, or popular groups for which no parameters were
found in the Anglo-Saxon discussion. See the discussion in Brazil: Fonseca
(2005).
4
In this aspect, middle-class family organization in Brazil does not seem
a lot different from the kin work usually attributed to the North-American
housewife, as described by Di Leonardo (1992).
5
See Tnia Salem (1980) for a description of task distribution according
to gender and generation in middle-class Brazilian families. For a perspective
on the experiences of the middle-class Brazilian family, see Gilberto Velho
(1989), Tnia Salem (1986) and Heilborn (1993).
6
Brazil admits a large diversity of family organizations according to
class, age, race, and gender perspectives (Berqu & Oliveira, 1992; Costa,
2002). Legal marriage is equally common in the various sub-groups. A large
part of the Brazilian population, in general those from the poorest classes,
marks the beginning of marital life through consensual unions and not legal
marriage. Legal marriages generally happen more often in the middle and
upper classes.
7
I used the term maid in a few parts of the text to highlight the
cultural Brazilian reality whose nomination of domestic workers denotes
social inequalities and a notion of a hierarchical distance.
8
Testimonies of sexual and amorous relationships between domestic
workers and their male employers are not uncommon in Latin American
literature, for example, in El Amor en los Tiempos de Clera by Gabriel
Garcia Mrquez. In Brazilian social sciences, one example is Casa Grande e
Senzala by Gilberto Freyre. Felicie Drouilleau (2011) has recently dedicated
herself to writing about the situation in Bogot.
9
The Portuguese language distinguishes robbery (roubo) from theft
(furto) by dening the rst as the unlawful taking of the property through
the use of violence. Ordinarily, in common everyday speech, this difference
is not noted. My informants would always refer to robbery in talking about
any sort of theft in their bosses' homes without relating these incidents to
the use of violence.

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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Intersectionality and female domestic workers' unions in Brazil


Joaze Bernardino-Costa
Department of Sociology, University of Braslia, Campus Universitrio Darcy Ribeiro, ICC Centro, Asa Norte, CEP. 70.910-900 Braslia/DF, Brazil

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 29 January 2014

s y n o p s i s
The paper uses the concept of intersectionality to explore the central role played by the categories of
race, class and gender in the biographies of female domestic workers in Brazil. While showing how
these categories are implicated in the inequalities and subalternization experienced by these
actors, the paper also reveals how female domestic workers have appropriated them to promote
themselves politically as a professional class. Adopting a historical viewpoint, the second part of the
paper shows the formation of a public agenda for female domestic workers' unions and their
negotiation with class-based, feminist and black movements in Brazil. It concludes by showing that
unionized domestic workers have developed an original form of feminism that combines aspects
taken from all these movements.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Domestic labor in Brazil is a symbol of gender, class and
race inequalities, as the majority of the domestic workers in
Brazil are black lower-class women. According to a recent
census, 7.2 million people are professional domestic workers,
93% of whom are female; 61.6% of those females are black
and 38.4% are white. The over-representation of black female
domestic workers can get even more evident: 12% of white
women with a job are domestic workers; the rates increase to
21% for black women (IPEA, 2011).
The existence of a domestic labor force means that there are
high-income families with the means to pay another person's
wages. On the other hand, it means a service that compensates
the lack of basic public service (daycare, for instance). Because of
that, families with a higher income are able to overcome the lack
of some public services by privatizing them, by hiring private
services. Such economic inequalities are connected to both
gender and race naturalization. Domestic labor is naturally seen
as a woman's job and, as such, not worthy of a fair pay, as it
supposedly does not involve special skills. On the other hand,
due to Brazil's colonial history, domestic labor is also seen as the
black woman's natural place.
One of the most evident consequences of those families'
private solutions for the lack of public services is the fragile
state regulation concerning female domestic workers and their
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.01.004

employers. Indeed, female domestic workers have recently


enjoyed legal equalization compared to other jobs. However,
there isn't reliable supervision for domestic labor. As a consequence, only one-third of the domestic workers in Brazil work
under legal conditions. Therefore, the relationship between
domestic workers and their employers shows not only noncompliance of rights, but also a naturalized code of conduct in which
gender, class and race inequalities make domestic workers
susceptible to disempowerment and a violation of rights.
Inside their employers' home, a fragile state regulation
sets the relationship between the female domestic worker
and their employers. In the public sphere, on the other hand,
their unions actively struggle for better state regulation.
Therefore, the female domestic worker unions have tried for
years to create a partnership with the black movement, the
feminist movement and other class unions in order to
improve their rights. In this case, the axes of gender, race
and class power, unlike what happens inside their employers' home, mobilize for democracy and the domestic
workers' empowerment.
This paper aims to explore two dimensions of domestic
labor: the face-to-face relationship between the domestic
worker and their employer, which happens inside the
employers' home, and the female domestic workers' political
mobilization through their unions. Our analysis is based on the
concept of intersectionality. As we will demonstrate, this

J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

concept is helpful in understanding the interwoven relationships of diverse axes of power, the most important of which are
race, class and gender, in the production of both subjugation and
political agency. This approach is effective for comprehending
domestic labor in Brazil, as it takes us beyond discourses that
isolate individual markers of difference by dynamically joining
them. We focus on how the axes of gender, race and class power
act in that face-to-face relationship which disempowers the
female domestic worker. On the other hand, we explore how
those same axes of gender, race and class power acted as a tool
for empowerment and democratic mobilization through the
domestic workers' political organizations. Concerning the latter,
such axes of power are mobilized from exchanges among the
domestic workers' political organizations and the feminist and
the black movements, as well as their syndicates. As a result of
this exchange, the female domestic workers have succeeded in
some aspects concerning their profession's regulations.
This article is divided in five parts. The first part describes
our research methodologies. The following part shows the
theories about the concept of intersectionality. It is good to
highlight that such concept may refer to either disempowerment or empowerment. The third and fourth parts use
empirical data and the concept of intersectionality to explain
how the axes of gender, race and class power interact, on the
one hand, to trigger disempowerment in the female domestic
workers' workplace and, on the other hand, to trigger political
mobilization through their unions. Finally, the last part brings
our final considerations.
Methodology: Listening to domestic workers' voices
Based on the main role of the concept of intersectionality, this
article aims to study how gender, race and class dimensions
work in the private sphere, and how it causes disempowerment
and inequality; and, as far as the public sphere is concerned, how
they result in empowerment and democratic mobilization.
The data on which this research is based on was collected
in two different periods, all from unionized domestic workers. In
2006, as part of a research for my doctorate study, I carried
out semi-structured interviews with twenty-three unionized
workers from five out of approximately forty existent unions in
Brazil. Those unions were based in Campinas (So Paulo state),
So Paulo (So Paulo state), Salvador (Bahia state), Recife
(Pernambuco state) and Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro state). I
also interviewed the leaders of the Domestic Workers National
Federation and did some research in the files of each one of those
unions, as well as in documents and resolutions of the domestic
workers' national congresses.1 During my research, I traced the
history of the Santos Domestic Workers Association, which was
the first political association of female domestic workers in
Brazil, founded in 1936. In 2011, I interviewed five domestic
workers of the unions of the New Iguau district (Rio de Janeiro
state) and the Franca district (So Paulo state). Those seven
unions, especially the five from my 2006 research, have been
in charge of the organization of the domestic workers' national
congresses. They are considered the core of the domestic
workers' movement not only because of that, but also because
they give to us a historical glimpse into the domestic workers'
political organizations (Bernardino-Costa, 2007, 2011).
The interviews were carried out in each one of the abovementioned unions and they took 90 min in average. All

73

interviewees were asked questions about their backgrounds,


first job, union affiliation, their union's political struggles,
experience exchanges and cooperation with the black and
feminist movements, as well as with other class unions,
among others. Interestingly, all of them filled out the consent
and confidentiality terms of the University of Braslia. In
2011, however, during my presentation as a special guest in
the 10th National Congress of Domestic Worker, in Recife, the
interviewed domestic workers asked me to list their real
names in my articles when I was to mention the history of their
political organization; their anonymity was to be maintained
only when I was to mention a specific personal history. This
article, thus, follows their request.
From the methodological point of view, one of the guidelines
in this article is the use of what Enrique Dussel (1996) called
ethical listening. That means to ethically recognize the existence
of the ones who were faded and silenced by the hegemonic
episteme. By listening to the domestic workers, we tried to
undermine the power of the hegemonic speech in the Brazilian
society, especially about black women, who are viewed by the
hegemonic episteme as deprived of rationality and therefore
unable to tell their own histories.
Therefore, as we listened to the interviewees, we intended
to deconstruct a Brazilian belief of harmony between white and
black people, and between rich and poor. The idea of Brazilian
society as one that forged harmonious relationships, especially
between whites and blacks, has been propagated over the
course of the nation's history. We question this perspective;
not only does it obscure diverse forms of violence, but it also
fails to ethically listen to both the black and poor populations
of the country. In contrast to such social and racial harmony
speech, the private sphere of the Brazilian society shows the
axes of gender, race and class power moving towards the
disempowerment of the female domestic worker. On the other
hand, as we listen to the domestic workers telling their stories
about their political organization, we do not notice a process of
victimization, but resistance to oppression, exploitation and
the suppression caused by the country's hegemonic speech.
To analyze the relevant data, our arguments were structured around the concept of intersectionality.
A brief discussion of the concept of intersectionality
Especially in the political and academic fields of gender and
race studies, the concept of intersectionality has been employed
to stress the interconnections between certain categories,
including race, gender, class, generation and sexuality.
Two aspects stand out in the use of intersectionality as a
concept: on the one hand, the homogenizing dimension of
various categories such as class, race, sexuality and gender
has been questioned in favor of highlighting intra-class,
intra-gender, intra-sex and intra-race differences. On the
other hand, rather than utilizing an additive logic in which
the axes of subordination simply compound one other, as
in the idea of double or triple discrimination, the concept of
intersectionality focuses on the interaction between two or
more of these axes of power (Brah, 1996, 2006; Brah & Phoenix,
2004; Carneiro, 2003a, 2003b; Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 2002,
2006; McClintock, 1995; Yuval-Davis, 2012).
In the 1990s, Kimberl Crenshaw, in a dialog with black
feminists on the supposed universalism of woman as a

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J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

political category, was largely responsible for popularizing


the concept of intersectionality, and she herself became an
indispensable reference point in discussions of the topic. In her
work, intersectionality is used to describe the way in which
racism, patriarchal relations, class oppression and other axes of
power generate discrimination and inequalities. Crenshaw
(2002, 2006) emphasizes how the intersectionality of race,
class, sexuality and gender are responsible for oppression and
disempowerment. The metaphor of a crossroads allows us to
understand what the author means by this concept. The axes of
power race, gender, sexuality and class overlap and cross
each other. Crenshaw (2002: 177) writes: racialized women
frequently find themselves in a position where racism or
xenophobia, class and gender meet each other. Consequently,
they are liable to be hurt by the intense flux on these roads. A
person subject to intersectionality, following the author's
metaphor, is like a pedestrian at a crossroads, suffering the
damage caused by collisions from multiple directions. Hence,
the concept utilized by Crenshaw shows the disadvantages,
vulnerabilities, oppressions and disempowerment suffered by
women situated at the meeting point of two or more axes of
power. Crenshaw's examples of sexual and domestic violence,
sexual harassment, discrimination and inequalities in terms of
access to jobs and education reveal precisely the dimensions of
oppression and disempowerment implied by the concept of
intersectionality (2002, 2006).
Crenshaw notes that the dynamics of the axes of power
race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, etc. are not unilateral
in the sense of generating only oppression, since members of
marginalized groups are able to resist and mobilize political
will, individual and collective. The intersectionality approach is
shared by Patricia Hill Collins (2000: 13), who proceeds from the
notion of a dialectic between oppression and activism.
Another author of significant contribution to the discussion of intersectionality is Avtar Brah (1996, 2006). While
drawing attention to the dynamics of oppression, discrimination and exploration in power relations, Brah highlights
the importance placed on the dimensions of activism and
political mobilization in intersectionality. Depending on the
historical context, the difference informing the notion of
intersectionality often leads to more democratic forms of
political agency (2006:16). To understand Brah's position, it
is important to keep in mind that she researched Britain's
black movements in the 1960s and 1970s and became aware
of how the term black was employed as a political category
to mobilize and unite people with African, Caribbean and
South Asian origins in response to their shared experience of
stigmatization, inferiorization and discrimination in work,
education, housing, the legal system and welfare. Initially
taken as a category of subalternization, the concept of
blackness was later used to mobilize colonial subjects who
would never have been previously identified with the term.
Through Brah's research, we become aware that race may have
diverse meanings according to context.
In considering class, race, sexuality and gender as axes of
power, it behooves us to recall Foucault's insights concerning
power. Power is not a property, but a relation. Power relations
alter continually, new conflicts and new points of resistance
spring up all the time, leading to the emergence of new subjects
(Foucault, 1995). Hence, depending on the context, the notion of
intersectionality can be utilized not only to examine negative

effects like oppression and disempowerment, but also to explore


political mobilization.
The concept of intersectionality has the advantage of
allowing us to view two dimensions of power relations: on
the one hand, the production of disempowerment, oppression
and discrimination; on the other, the production of political
agencies, democratic mobilization and political subjects.
The use of this concept also affords us an analysis based on
the interaction of a multitude of axes of differentiation and
power. This concept emphasizes that different dimensions of
social life cannot be analyzed discretely, in search of absolutist
explanations about the processes of power and inequality; on
the contrary, we are reminded of the importance of analyses
that bring together the various existing systems of differentiation in specific local contexts.
Intersectionality becomes an important tool for understanding how discrimination, oppression and domination of
Brazilian domestic workers are produced and stabilized. It also
emerges as an important concept for our comprehension of the
political mobilization of workers in Brazil. Discrimination,
oppression and domination occur primarily in the workplace,
whereas political mobilization operates primarily in the space
delineated by the trade unions representing this professional
category.
Intersectionality between class, race and gender in
the workplace
Revisiting interviews from earlier research on female
domestic workers' unions in Brazil, the explanatory potential
of the concept of intersectionality becomes clear. From the
outset, it is important to stress that the explanatory potential
of intersectionality varies according to the context invoked
by the domestic workers themselves. When the women talk
about their experiences before joining political associations
or unions, the dimension of intersectionality emphasizing
oppression, disempowerment and inequality becomes useful.
But when they discuss their experiences after joining the
unions, the dimension emphasizing agency, empowerment
and political and democratic mobilization comes to the fore.
It is also important to stress that we are not talking about pure
contexts: that is, a context in which intersectionality implies
disempowerment only, and another in which it emerges as a
key element in political mobilization. Rather, I am arguing that,
in any given context, one of these meanings of the concept of
intersectionality prevails over the other without implying the
complete absence of the latter.
Most female domestic workers begin work as children,
recruited from the contingents of poor women with minimal
education who migrate to towns and cities from rural areas.
Their culture, language, dress and race are considered inferior
to those of dominant urban classes. They usually work alone
and sometimes without pay the employers claiming that
they are raising them, as if they were their own children
(Bernardino-Costa, 2011; Chaney & Castro, 1989). Such situations, experienced by domestic workers in Brazil and elsewhere,
especially various Latin American countries, reinforce the fact
that the predominant kind of intersectionality experienced by
these women is one of disempowerment and oppression. In
other words, race, class and gender are experienced in terms of
racism, class discrimination and patriarchy.

J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

In their life narratives, domestic workers frequently cite


markers of their race, class and gender identities to explain
the difficulties and hardships of their everyday lives. All the
domestic workers interviewed started to work at an early
age, when they were children, often after they had been
given to the employer's family to be raised, with the promise
that they would be provided with a formal education and
better living conditions. Instead, they faced a life of daily toil,
very different from the employer's promises to their mothers.
The story of one of the women interviewed, aged 66 at the
time of the interview, clearly illustrates the conditions faced
by many domestic workers in Brazil.
Madalene (not her real name), currently affiliated with
the Recife Female Domestic Worker's Union, remembers her
first job as a domestic worker in the northeastern region of
the country in during the 1950s. She, like other children, was
taken in by the employing family with the promise that she
would be treated like one of their child, with access to good
housing and schools. What in fact followed was an experience marked by discrimination, inequality and differentiation. Her job was to clean the house, wash clothes by hand,
iron clothes with a coal iron, and serve breakfast to her
employers. While the family's children went to school, she
had to stay at home and perform physically exhausting work,
without the right to go to school.
Although Madalene participated in the intimate life of the
family, overhearing their conversations, witnessing their moments of joy and sorrow and generating well-being through her
work, her feeling was that she and the other domestic workers
employed in the home were treated like slaves, their humanity
neglected. Her employers seldom talked to her and often talked
about her in her presence, as if she were not there.
The reference Madalene makes to slave labor is not
adventitious. Although it has metaphorical content in this
reference, there is also real evidence that that job retained
concrete traces of slavery, officially banned in Brazil in 1888.
She worked from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm, without remuneration
and was exposed to physical and emotional violence, and
occupied spaces set apart within the home. Similar to the
slavery period, in which the slaves' quarters were isolated
from the overseer's house, Madalene reports that her room
was separate from the employing family's home.
Another female domestic worker, Carla (not her real name),
younger than Madalene, also described working at an early age,
this time in Salvador, also in the Northeast. Although their
experiences took place in different cities and during different
periods of the twentieth century (the 1950s and 1990s), we
can observe similarities in their narratives, including working
unpaid or for unlawful pay, being overworked and the young
age at which they began working.
Carla told her story as follows:
A woman visited my town and asked my mother to let her
raise me. So my mother allowed her to take me away ().
My experience in that job was very long, very harsh and
very sad. I was nine years old and I had to take care of two
children and clean the whole house. So it was very tough.
I didn't have time to study or play. My playtime amounted
to taking care of two children younger than myself. I
looked after them, bathed them, cleaned the house. I even
cooked. I ironed clothes (). My work was very heavy, it

75

was humiliating. I was beaten. They would burn me. He


(the husband) tried to rape me. I started work there when
I was nine years old and left when I was fourteen.
[Carla, twenty-three years old in 2005, afliated to the
Bahia Female Domestic Workers' Union]
Both Madalene's and Carla's narratives describe an everyday experience of exhausting work and denial of freedom,
including sleeping at the workplace and receiving no pay. What
is notable in their life trajectories is that they were both subject
to their employers' will because they started working in
domestic service while they were still children. Madalene's
narrative like those of other interviewees who cannot be
included here for space reasons is also notable for the links
she herself makes between domestic work and slavery: There
was a separate room in the house, in the backyard. It was like the
slaves' quarters. Carla also recalls an argument she had with her
female employer in the 1990s, when the latter remarked that
slavery should never have been abolished in Brazil.
The encounter between two women in the same domestic
space, one the employer and the other the maid, does not mean
that they will inevitably build a relationship of solidarity just
because they are women. Class and race differences frequently
intersect with gender, producing a hierarchical difference in
the positions occupied by women. The fact that such young
children became domestic workers indicates how much class
forces are a determiner of this fate. Class does not operate in
isolation, but rather in combination with race. If it is true that
child domestic labor is an option for poor girls in the Brazilian
society, it is more so for girls who are poor and black.
Class and race are evident not only at the moment of
employment; they operate throughout the new labor relationship. There is a clear distinction between class habitus
and the racial distinctions that become forms of humiliation,
denigration and dehumanization. On the other hand, in this
context of power relations, gender is also a dimension of life
that disempowers these workers, making them vulnerable to
sexual violence.
The interviewees' life narratives are very similar. Whether
they come from Brazil's northeast (Bahia and Recife), or the
southeast (So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), we come across the
following facts: (a) they begin work as domestic employees
while they are still children; (b) the female employer promises
to raise the child, but she actually exploits her as an unpaid
domestic worker; (c) the women are recruited from poor
families from rural areas; (d) as children, they are obliged
to follow an adult's work routine with no respect for their
physical capacity and well-being; (e) they frequently recount
stories of physical violence, verbal abuse and very often sexual
harassment and violence; (f) their freedom is restricted, the
women are unable to enter and leave their employer's house
whenever they want; (g) they frequently receive no regular
payment; (h) the majority of the women are black (all interviewees were black women).
Examining the interviews, we can note the presence of
multiple axes of disempowerment in their social relationships. The variables of class, gender and race work as markers
of difference, subordinating one woman to the other. Both
Madalene's and Carla's cases show us how the intersectionality
among gender, race and class subdues them. The simple fact
that they are women does not trigger any gender affinity from

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J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

their boss' wife, since they are both from different classes
and races. Similarly, Carla and Madalene come from poor,
rural backgrounds, which explain why they became domestic
workers. Finally, their racial origin black women adds up to
the chain of vulnerabilities, completing the process of naturalization that subjected them, as children, to sexual abuse and, as a
consequence, not worthy of wage. Therefore, the concept of
intersectionality shows us the interaction among the various
axes of power. That enables us to analyze the origins of disempowerment, inequalities and domination. Now, the concept
of intersectionality is different from the idea of double and triple
discrimination. In this given case, there is a dynamic process in
which each one of the axes of power applies their own
energy, and those energies are not nullified by one another. All
considered, Madalene and Carla are subjects of the discrimination, disempowerment and oppression caused by the dynamic
energy of each of the analyzed dimensions, all of which act
equally. The explanatory potential of intersectionality is also
significant, as it builds an inter-relationship among a macrocontext affected by a racist, sexist and class-biased speech, and
the domestic workers' life dynamics.
The intensity of the subjugation is directly proportional to
the fact that these domestic workers are describing a period
of their lives when they were still children. Female domestic
workers gradually become subjects in their workplace as
they acquire experience and reach adulthood. They develop
various strategies to reduce their workload, such as performing
tasks slowly, not cleaning the entire house every day, but just
some areas, and negotiating with their employers (Brah, 2006).
However, one of the decisive factors in domestic workers
becoming subjects again is ceasing to live and sleep in
their employers' house. This independence enables them to
re-establish control over their work time and take days off
work for whatever reasons. Some of the reasons for this change
include: (a) recent urban changes in Brazilian cities in which
the maid's quarters have disappeared from the new architectural designs for middle-class residences; (b) a public campaign
by some domestic workers' unions to combat the idea that they
are the family's daughters and simultaneously encourage the
women to find their own home to live in.
For domestic workers, having their own home opens up a
new world, much in the same way as participating in union
activities, since it allows them to build relations based on
solidarity among equals, breaking with the values imposed by
their employers. As we shall see below, the unions comprise a
social space in which the markers of race, class and gender are
seen positively rather than negatively, variables that interact
with each other to empower, building solidarity between
female domestic workers and other social actors that enables
political mobilization. Therefore, unlike the face-to-face relationship between domestic workers and their employers, the
union becomes a place for the construction of a collective
identity, in which the intersectionality among the axes of
gender, race and class power moves towards a democratic
mobilization and the domestic workers' empowerment.
Intersectionality between class, race and gender in the
female domestic workers' unions
Becoming involved in the political activities of a trade
union is a watershed in domestic workers' lives. Unions are

social spaces that rupture the isolation experienced within


the four walls of the employer's house. Moreover, as argued
here, the unions are also spaces in which the typically
hierarchical relations between domestic workers and their
employers are left behind. Today there are approximately
133,000 unionized domestic workers, corresponding to just
2% of all Brazilian domestic workers (IPEA, 2011).
When we move our analysis to the space of unions, we
encounter narratives of democratic mobilization and empowerment of domestic workers, rather than stories of
oppression. Over the years, since the emergence of the first
political organizations of domestic workers, the recognition
of difference on the part of working class and informed
women, as homogeneous categories, has meant the political
empowerment of women. In addition to strengthening the
collective, the union is a space for the restructuring of the
subjectivity of these agents, in which they collectively affirm
their humanity by transcending the sexist, patriarchal and
racist determinations that they face on a day-to-day basis. In
other words, the unions are spaces for the construction of
friendship, affection and attention, where each woman is
recognized as a unique and full individual by her companions
and friends.
The political and social movement of domestic workers
began in 1936 when Laudelina de Campos Melo founded the
Domestic Workers Professional Association in Santos (So
Paulo state). The organization's explicit objective was to
acquire the legal status of a trade union, which would enable
it to negotiate with the Brazilian government and consequently acquire the official recognition and labor rights
already achieved by other professional classes. Although the
denial of labor rights was the recurrent theme of the first
political organization of domestic workers in the country,
it was no coincidence that Laudelina de Campos Melo
(19041991) was a black activist. She had participated in
black organizations in various cities of the Minas Gerais
and So Paulo states in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1930s,
Laudelina had contact with activists from black associations in So Paulo and was herself an activist with the
Brazilian Black Front (Frente Negra Brasileira, FNB), the
most important black organization in Brazil of the period
(Pinto, 1993). Laudelina was also a member of the Communist
Party, thus able to count on other members' assistance in
writing the statutes of her new association.
In the late 1950s, there was a resurgence of public debate on
the situation of female domestic workers in Brazil, promoted
in particular by black organizations. For instance, the Black
Experimental Theatre (Teatro Experimental do Negro, TEN)
included among its members the actress and domestic worker
Arinda Serafim, who encouraged other domestic workers to
attend TEN's literacy classes and involved them in political
training projects emphasizing their labor rights (Sermog &
Nascimento, 2006). In addition, we should note the public
discussion of a law to regulate the profession and guarantee the
first legal rights for domestic workers (Nascimento, 2003).
Starting in the 1960s, the campaigns run by black organizations in support of domestic workers were given fresh impetus
by the Catholic Church through an organization called Young
Christian Workers (Juventude Operria Catlica, JOC) (Hutchison,
2010). In 1960, the Young Christian Workers promoted the First
National Meeting of Young Female Domestic Workers in the city

J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

of Rio de Janeiro. The following year, the JOC also organized the
First Regional Congress of Female Domestic Workers in the city
of Recife, which brought together workers from the states of
Cear, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraba and Pernambuco (Soares,
2002).
It is important to note that as a labor organization, Young
Christian Workers supported workers as a universal and
homogeneous category. Female domestic workers were not
included in the organization's official campaign agenda
though, due to their specific condition, including the lack of
any legal recognition, while the majority of workers in Brazil
already possessed some rights since the 1930s. Despite their
specificity relative to other professional categories, there were
groups of domestic workers at the meetings of Young Christian
Workers. Odete Maria Conceio, one of the founders of the
Professional Association of Female Domestic Workers of Rio de
Janeiro in the 1960s, reported an incompatibility between
domestic workers and the working class, when the latter was
thought of as a homogeneous group. As soon as the domestic
workers recognized their differences vis--vis other workers,
they set out to establish their own associations in order
to take measures concerning issues specific to them: a
professional category not yet recognized by the State, therefore
without rights, formed by black women from the poor working
class.
While the domestic workers' movement gained ground
through dialog with the Catholic Church, Laudelina de Campos
Melo, living in Campinas, So Paulo, founded the Association of
Campinas in the early 1960s. However, instead of the Catholic
Church playing the main role, in Campinas we note a strong
coalition between the black movement, especially Black Experimental Theatre and the Association.
In the 1960s, the female domestic workers' movement
spread across the country as the result of interactions between
the Catholic Church (with its emphasis on the working class
cause), the black movement and the trade unions. Different
female domestic workers' groups and associations allied with
their partners in distinct ways. During this phase of the
domestic workers movement, the class-based interpretation
of the condition of female domestic workers prevailed at the
national level.
This is also the impression we get of the movement on
reading the resolutions produced during the National Congresses
of the 1960s and 1970s. It does not mean that gender and race
issues were absent, but rather that the political mobilization of
domestic workers was centered on being recognized as part of
the working class and consequently winning the same rights as
other workers. Domestic workers were finally recognized by
Brazilian legislation for the first time in 1972, when they
obtained the right to register their employment, take twenty
days' vacation per year and receive basic welfare coverage. This
law represented the successful outcome of the female
domestic workers' struggle and the movement's primary
aim of achieving recognition of these working women as
members of the working class.
It is important to note that although class struggle had been
the recurring theme of much of the domestic worker movement's activism, such as the campaign for domestic employees
to have their own home, racialcolonialist issues were also
present. For example, domestic workers frequently compared
the maid's room in the employer's house to slaves' quarters, the

77

house to the owner's mansion and domestic work to slave labor


(Bernardino-Costa, 2007).
The relationship with working class political organizations
has changed over the decades and had regional variations.
In some cities, partnerships were established between the
domestic workers' unions and other trade unions, while in
other cities there were conflicts and mutual distrust. The same
applies to the feminist movement. The relationship between
female domestic workers and feminist organizations began
with great distrust, since freeing oneself from domestic work
was and still is seen as the precondition for being a
middle-class woman and able to work outside the home.
Although less intense, this distrust between the domestic
workers' union and the feminist movement persists in some
unions. But taking the country as a whole, feminist organizations have evidently become important allies in the domestic
workers' political organization. It should be noted that while
the hegemonic feminist movement is an important partner in
domestic workers' setting forth their political agenda vis--vis
the Brazilian State, there are marked differences between the
demands of the domestic workers' movement and the feminist
movement. Besides the hierarchical differences among female
employers and their employed domestics, the themes of
liberation of feminists from the wealthiest classes often do not
resonate with workers who have other notions of the body,
femininity and motherhood.
Positive productive interaction with the feminist movement
increased following the Fifth National Congress of Female
Domestic Workers, held in the city of Recife in 1985, when the
feminist organization SOS Body (SOS Corpo) helped organize
the Congress. On the national scale, the women's movement
despite lingering wariness became a true partner of the female
domestic workers' movement when it supported their cause
during the drawing-up of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution.
The period between the Fifth National Congress of Female
Domestic Workers in 1985 and the enactment of the 1988
Brazilian Constitution was one of intense mobilization among
female domestic workers. The women visited Brasilia numerous times to pressure members of the national congress to
grant rights to those working in the profession. After the 1988
Constitution the struggle continued led now by the legally
recognized domestic workers' unions since the movement
had obtained just nine of the thirty-four labor rights guaranteed to other workers. From the nine rights, the following ones
are worth mentioning: minimum wage, thirteenth salary,
weekly rest day, paid vacation days, pregnancy license and
retirement.
During this period, we can observe the growing national
influence of the Campinas and Salvador unions. The activism
of these two unions also led to the strengthening of the
position of racial and feminist issues on a national level. This
did not mean that union or class-based approaches vanished
or become devalued, but that new connections were made
between class, race and gender. For this new configuration to
come about, the historical dialog between these two unions
and the black and feminist movements was crucial.
The testimony of Creuza de Oliveira, a founding member
of the Bahia Female Domestic Workers' Union, affiliated to
the Unified Black Movement (Movimento Negro Unificado,
MNU) since 1983, shows how the race-based approach was
internalized by domestic workers:

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J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

The partnership between the Unied Black Movement


and our professional group was intensied when I took
part in a meeting in which I asked for support for us from
the black movement. When I rst began to participate, I
hadn't actually been invited, I just turned up. At the start
of the 1980s, the language used in the black movement
was highly academic (). It was difcult for a domestic
worker to understand what they were saying. I knew it
would be difcult for me to understand what they were
saying, but I thought to myself: the language they use is
difcult and I understand almost nothing of what they
say, but I know that the issue concerns me because they
are talking about black people. So regardless of whether
they have PhDs or better economic conditions than me, as
a domestic worker, it concerns me because I'm a black
person too. So I thought the space belonged to me, too,
and I was determined to stay. I stayed and I've participated in the Unied Black Movement for years now.
[(Creuza de Oliveira, founding member of the Bahia
Female Domestic Workers' Union and President of the
Female Domestic Workers' National Federation)]
Creuza de Oliveira calls our attention to the fact that
domestic workers do not adhere unthinkingly to the
discourse and political viewpoint of the black movement;
rather, its race-based approach is critically interpreted and
adjusted to the specific issues faced by female domestic
workers and in particular the life experiences of the black
working class women.
Over the more than seventy years of the domestic
workers' movement's formation, we can see not only the
formation of a resistance movement, but also a movement to
restructure the lives of domestic workers.
This resistance movement is in line with the mobilizing
dimension of the concept of intersectionality, as highlighted
by Avtar Brah (1996). We see in the actions of the 1930s how
domestic workers mobilized a discourse of class and racial
solidarity for the foundation of their first political association.
Perceiving differences between themselves and the country's
middle and urban class, they teamed up with the black
movement of the era for political action. Similarly, race was
employed in the 1950s with the objective of achieving their
first legal gains. However, it was only in the 1960s that the
movement gained a national dimension. Essential to this
were the discourse and political mobilization of the Young
Christian Workers. It is noteworthy that the workers were far
more interested in the political aspects of the organization of
the Catholic Church than in the religious aspects. Some
workers reported to me that their bosses thought that they
were going to the meetings to pray or read the Bible, when in
fact they were involved in a process of political awareness and
activism. The perception of difference between themselves and
other workers is another highlight of that historical moment.
Although they lacked an academic education, the domestic
workers' perception that the working class contained race
and gender aspects also becomes evident in that historical
moment and hence the need for the formation of specific
domestic workers' associations. The interpretations, demands
and political organizations based on gender and race reappear
in the national movement of domestic workers with great
intensity from the 1980s up to the present day. If, from the

1930s to the 1960s, there were coalitions with the black


movement, it was on a regional level, only gaining national
dimension in the 1980s. Initially coalitions with the feminist
movement were productive; although essential for domestic
workers, they were regarded with suspicion for being the
movement of their bosses, whose political agenda did not
represent the issues and demands of a professional category
differentiated by race and economic conditions. Domestic
workers repeatedly said in the 1980s, If emancipation for
bosses is getting rid of housework, going freely about, and
turning us more and more into slaves in their homes, we do not
see liberation. As for the black movement, we perceive a
greater affinity of interests and worldview with the domestic
workers' movement. Although the possibility for solidarity
between the black movement and the movement of domestic
workers always existed, since most domestic workers are
black, this coalition on a national scale, which negotiated with
society and the State, only materialized in the 1980s. Decisive
to this was the black movement's vehement criticism of the
myth of racial democracy, which purported the absence of race
in Brazil (Bernardino-Costa, 2004). Consequently, the demands
of the black movement lacked resonance until the late 1980s.
From that time forth, the black movement gained a place in
the national political arena and domestic workers, and upon
joining forces with the former, strengthened their own position.
Both coalitions with the class movement and the feminist
and black movements were fundamental for the legal
equalization act, through a constitutional amendment passed
in the beginning of 2013. That act removed a paragraph in the
Brazilian Federal Constitution that restricted several social
rights to the domestic workers. Since then, Brazilian domestic
workers have had the right, under official regulation, to a
fixed workweek, overtime pay, unemployment insurance,
guarantee fund for severance pay (FGTS in Portuguese) and
night-shift rates, among others. Nonetheless, this constitutional amendment does not apply to domestic day laborers,
i.e. those working less than three days per week in the house
of a single employer. This subset comprises one quarter of the
entire domestic labor force in the country.
To summarize, what one sees in this political history of the
formation of unions by domestic workers is the emergence of a
black working class women's movement, in which we can
identify the intersectionality between class, race and gender. In
other words, the axes of power of class, race and gender,
once seen as categories of inferiorization and subordination
became and continue to be central to the political and democratic mobilization of domestic workers, thus acting as positive
vectors for the political agency of these women.
Also noteworthy in the context of the unions is the
subjective experience of the intersectionality of race, gender
and class. The unions are spaces not only of political resistance,
but also of the restructuring and resignification of lived experience. The unions act as spaces for the recognition of the
other as a complex subject with feelings and emotions. The
political education and valuation of black women are achieved
through activities that include the revisiting and reclamation of
their historic contributions to the nation and the reinforcement
of the value of black women's bodies and esthetics. In sum, a
political project emerges through the unions' activities and
actions that, by weaving together issues of race, class and
gender, seeks to overcome the dynamics of hegemonic power,

J. Bernardino-Costa / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 7280

which inferiorizes the black woman. It is in this sense that we


are able to understand interviewees' discourse of participation
and membership in union activities as rebirth: only in this
social space were they truly valued as full human beings.
Conclusion
The study of female domestic workers in Brazil shows
how the concept of intersectionality can be used in two main
ways. First as a concept that focuses on the combined effects
of disempowerment and oppression. Second as a concept
that emphasizes the possibility of political and democratic
mobilization.
We have also seen that the meaning of intersectionality
varies according to the social context under study. In the
workplace, the prevailing notion of intersectionality is one in
which the differentials of race, class and gender interact,
disempowering the social actors involved. In the spaces in
which female domestic workers become politically organized, on the other hand, these markers of social difference
work to strengthen the solidarity among themselves and
between these women and other social actors (such as
activists from the union, feminist and black movements).
Female domestic workers gained strength by breaking away
from the socialization and values imposed by their employers,
a rupture achieved in a number of ways, including: reaching
adulthood, acquiring more life experience and learning how
to deal with employers, leaving their employers' house to
live in their own homes, participating in union activities, and
so on.
Another aspect worth mentioning is how domestic
workers subjectively experience intersectionality in the two
spaces discussed above: in the workplace and the union. In
general the workplace is a space clearly characterized by
relations of power, race, class and gender, where the axes of
disempowerment, humiliation, bondage and dehumanization
are experienced, materializing in the simplest of day-to-day
attitudes of the employers, such as not saying good morning to
the domestic worker, not talking to her, and talking about her
as if she were not present. The contradiction within the social
relations taking place inside the home is that while the worker
takes care of the family and creates comfort, well-being, and
cleanliness, she is treated as a piece of equipment or a slave,
disregarded as a human person. Within the framework of trade
unions, the crossing of the axes of power of race, class and
gender are subjectively experienced as factors of empowerment and the achievement of autonomy. In their activism, as
well as in the daily activities of the unions, race, class and
gender are important dimensions in the workers' lives for
the achievement of value as full human beings. Thus, the
raising of the self-esteem of these women, black and
belonging to the poor working class, becomes joy, happiness
and rebirth.
We saw their criticism of political action based only on
social class, as if the working class were homogeneous, without
internal distinctions, and of the hegemonic feminist movement
when the latter fails to see the women's movement acknowledging differences among women, especially of class and race.
Finally, although we observe a greater proximity between the
black movement's agenda and the demands and elaborations
of the domestic workers' movement, the former also becomes a

79

target of criticism when it becomes a black man's academic


movement. Echoing Sueli Carneiro (2003a, 2003b), we
can say that by combining class, race and gender perspectives, the black feminism of the domestic workers' movement blackens and feminizes the demands of the union
movement.
Acknowledgments
I thank Encarnacin Gutirrez-Rodrguez, Jurema Brites
and the two anonymous reviewers for their contributions to
this article, and I take full responsibility for the analysis
developed here.
Endnote
1
Female domestic workers have organized the following ten national
congresses: First National Congress in So Paulo City, 1968; Second National
Congress in Rio de Janeiro, 1974; Third National Congress in Belo Horizonte,
1978; Fourth National Congress in Porto Alegre, 1981; Fifth National
Congress in Recife, 1985; Sixth National Congress in Campinas, 1989;
Seventh National Congress in Rio de Janeiro, 1993; Eighth National Congress
in Belo Horizonte, 2001; Ninth National Congress in Salvador, 2006 and
Tenth National Congress in Recife, 2011.

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Rio de Janeiro: DP&A editor.
Bernardino-Costa, Joaze (2007). Sindicatos das trabalhadoras domsticas no
Brasil: Teorias da descolonizao e saberes subalternos. Unpublished
manuscript.
Bernardino-Costa, Joaze (2011). Trabalhadoras domesticas no Distrito
Federal e suas condies de trabalho. In Natlia Mori, Soraya Fleischer,
Angela Figuereido, Joaze Bernardino-Costa, & Tnia Cruz (Eds.),
Tenses e experincias: Um retrato das trabalhadoras domsticas de Braslia
e Salvador (pp. 133180). Braslia: Centro Feministas de Estudos e
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Brah, Avtar (1996). Cartographies of diaspora: Contesting identities. London/New
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26, 329376.
Brah, Avtar, & Phoenix, Ann (2004). Ain't I a woman? Revisiting
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Carneiro, Sueli (2003). Enegrecer o feminismo: A situao da mulher
negra na Amrica Latina a partir de uma perspectiva de gnero. In
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contemporneos (pp. 4958). Rio de Janeiro: Takano Editora.
Carneiro, Sueli (2003). Mulheres em movimento. Estudos Avanados, 17(49),
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Chaney, Elsa M., & Castro, Mary Garcia (1989). Muchachas no more: Household
workers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Philadelphia: Temple University
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Collins, Patricia Hill (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness,
and the politics of empowerment. New York and London: Routledge.
Crenshaw, Kimberl (2002). Documento para o encontro de especialistas em
aspectos da discriminao racial relativos ao gnero. Revista Estudos
Feministas, 10(1), 171188.
Crenshaw, Kimberl (2006). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity
politics, and violence against women of color. In Linda Martn Alcoff, &
Eduardo Mendieta (Eds.), Identities: Race, class, gender, and nationality
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Dussel, Enrique (1996). Filosofa de la liberacin. Bogot: Editorial Nueva
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Foucault, Michel (1995). O sujeito e o poder. In Hubert Dreyfus, & Paul Rabinow
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Hutchison, Elizabeth Quay (2010). Many Zitas: The Young Catholic Worker
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IPEA (2011). Situao atual das trabalhadoras domsticas no pas.


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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8182

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Editorial

Challenging gender and violence: Positions and discourses in


Swedish and international contexts
Since the mid-1990s the problem of men's violence against
women has been widely recognised in Sweden (Burman, 2010;
Wendt Hjer, 2002). Moreover, feminist and women's human
rights perspectives have often influenced official rhetoric in
gender equality politics and legal reforms. The main goal for
Swedish gender equality policy is that women and men shall
have equal power to form their lives, as well as to engage in
shaping society. Regarding violence the policy emphasises that
men's violence against women in Sweden should be eradicated,
i.e. it includes a vision of zero tolerance regarding gender-based
violence (Prop. 2005/06:155). Legal reforms, especially in the
area of criminal law, with the specific aim to enhance legal
protection for women against gender related violence and
promote gender equality have been carried through. Comprehensive policy initiatives followed by generous public funding
have also been undertaken, particularly in the area of intimate
partner violence and so-called honour related violence, in order
to enhance the knowledge in the public sector of Sweden and to
develop best practices. Despite these efforts, as highlighted this
year in media by the National Domestic Violence Coordinator
(Gtblad, 2013), no decrease in men's violence against women
has been observed.
The articles in this special issue emanate from the work in an
interdisciplinary research group at Ume University, Sweden.
The research group, Challenging Violence, includes researchers
from a diversity of disciplines, e.g. law, public health, political
science, and ethnology. In February 2010, a collaborative project
with other European researchers resulted in a special issue on
Public policies on violence against women in a Nordic context
(Niemi & hman, 2010). In that issue we concluded that
Sweden's policy against gendered violence has been relatively
successful, and the country has a low prevalence of violence
against women compared to other countries. The relative
success might be a result of several interacting societal factors
and of active policymaking. At the same time as the awareness
of different forms of gendered violence has increased in
Sweden, many still unmet needs have also been identified. So,
despite this success, the development and implementation of
legal and health policies to improve women's safety and rights
against violence is still needed.
The aim of this special issue has been to continue our
critical investigation on men's violence against women by
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.12.004

challenging gender and violence from different perspectives


and disciplinary fields. In this collection of articles the issues
addressed span gender equality policies and law to subject
and identity constructions. The presented challenges are also
diverse as regards theoretical and empirical focus. This
diversity notwithstanding the articles also has some similarities. The point of departure for all these articles is Sweden
and the Swedish position on men's violence against women,
even though some topics are dealt with in both national and
international contexts. The main violence themes are intimate partner violence and so-called honour related violence.
Finally, the articles are based in feminist theory with an
understanding of men's violence against women as related to
gender and power structures in society.
The starting point for the work with this issue was a
workshop in 2009 on masculinity and critical studies on men
with Professor Michael Kimmel from State University of
New York, USA. Several of the contributions also aim at
problematising masculinity and violence. First, Michael
Kimmel's essay relates to masculinity as described in the
Millennium Trilogy by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson, one of
the world's best-selling novels of the past five years. The author
brings to the fore a less well-understood aspect of Larsson's
work, the critique of hegemonic masculinity offered in the
novel as well as a template for a new egalitarian masculinity in
some male characters, e.g. Mikael Blomkvist. Kimmel discusses
those characters against the background of shifting gender
arrangements, and suggests that a space is emerging for men
who love women as well as for men who hate them.
The following three articles challenge different aspects of
intimate partner violence and so-called honour related violence in a Swedish context. Monica Burman's article focuses on
a particular aspect of masculinity and violence, how provocation as a male abuse excuse mitigates culpability for the
perpetrator in the Swedish criminal legal context of men's
violence against women in heterosexual relations. She challenges Swedish criminal law's suggestion that the individual
male perpetrator's specific understanding of his violence
should be the perspective from which to understand and
judge his violence. She argues that violent men can and should
be held responsible for their emotional responses to women.
While problematising the possibility of promoting change by

82

Editorial

legal reform, Burman argues that the criminal legal notion of


culpability should be changed in two respects. First, a
commonly expressed notion of emotions as factual should be
replaced by an evaluative conception on emotions. Second,
when provocation is judged, it should be acknowledged how
values and reasons intersect with power relations.
In the next article, Kerstin Edin and Bo Nilsson investigate
violent men's discourses on violence. Men inclined to violence
are frequently squeezed into one-size-fits-all battererintervention programmes with high ambitions for change
that often show little evidence of effectiveness. Some research
even indicates that any changes in men's violent behaviour
might result from factors not at all linked to the programmes.
For this study, ten interviews were carried out with men who
had attended anti-violence programmes within the Swedish
Probation Service. The overall aim was to analyse gendered
identity constructions in the narratives of men attending the
programmes, especially how men articulate the course of
violent events and how they talk about themselves and the
programmes. The authors found that men defended themselves by excuses, explanations, and victim positionings.
Furthermore, the men's gendered identity constructions
collided with the programmes' ambitions of changing men's
conceptions and behaviour.
The contribution by Maria Carbin deals with Swedish policy
initiatives against so-called honour related violence. These
policy initiatives are relatively ambitious, and have primarily
targeted young women as victims, one aim being to make it
possible for them to speak up. The aim of the article is to
challenge the ideal that is articulated in the policies, namely the
ideal of speech as emancipation, and to elaborate the connections between speech, silence, and power. Drawing upon
discourse theory and post-colonial feminism, the author shows
that, despite efforts by policy makers to include and not
reproduce stereotypes, the possibility of speaking is formulated
within a nationalist discursive terrain. The victims are primarily
called upon to speak as non-Swedish representatives. Paradoxically, the inclusion of young women into policy discourse has
led to a particular exclusion and thereby produced new silences.
The following two articles aims at challenging political,
health, and legal positions and discourses on gender and
violence in Sweden as well as internationally. Ann hman and
Maria Emmelin discuss current Swedish international development policies on gender and violence. The article deals with the
problematic relationship between development policies, global
health, Swedish gender equality policies, and violence against
women in a global perspective, focusing on intimate partner
violence and the highly promoted gender mainstreaming
policy. The authors emphasise the need for integration of
gender and feminist theory into development collaboration. In
that way interventions can be grounded in current and actual
knowledge on, for example, gender relations, power structures,
and male hierarchies that constrain and subordinate women
and girls. They also claim that stronger links need to be created
between local activist groups in low- and middle-income
countries and international development agencies. The authors
conclude that it is vital to initiate and formalise a NorthSouth
dialogue between such groups, as well as enhancing South
South dialogue and cooperation.
Eva Nilsson's article challenges the complexities of gender
and violence within international refugee law, mainly from

a discourse theoretical perspective. The legal issue is the


definition of refugee in the United Nations Refugee Convention and the nexus requirement that the persecution must be
based on specific grounds. Women exposed to male partner
violence face particular problems due to this requirement.
For an abused woman to be defined as a refugee it has to be
shown that her membership of a particular social group her
being a woman is the ground for the persecution, that is,
the violence her male partner or ex-partner exposes her to.
Eva Nilsson shows how this essentialist understanding of
the subject in the convention is defended with reference to
a perceived need to preserve the structure and integrity
(the objective, purpose, and language) of the Convention.
The author argues that this also means preserving the power
structures in society. Even though the argumentation suggests
that it is time to abolish the nexus requirement, the conclusion
is rather that we must continue to work with our frame of
thought focusing on the refugee situation and the discursive
constitution of the subject in time and space.
In our view, the articles in this issue give convincing evidence
of the need to continuously challenge how gender, power, and
violence are perceived, constructed, and dealt with in a wide
range of contexts, in a country such as Sweden that frequently
scores well in gender equality rankings. Problems stemming
from the Swedish position on gender equality are recurrent
themes in some articles, as well as the shortcomings of law and
policy in promoting changing gender relations. Some contributions also show how discursive processes and essentialist and
power-imbued understandings of gender, in spite of ambitions to
change unequal gender relations, tend to produce new subordinate positions for women or contain othering processes that are
oppressive for women exposed to violence. However, this
pessimistic view must be nuanced. The articles also give evidence
of a state of affairs where men's violence against women is firmly
present on the political, legal, and societal agenda, both in
Sweden and elsewhere. This gives us an opportunity to promote
change by continuing our challenges to gender and violence.
References
Burman, Monica (2010). The ability of criminal law to produce gender
equality: Judicial discourses in the Swedish criminal legal system.
Violence Against Women, 16, 173188.
Gtblad, Karin (2013). http://www.tv4.se/nyhetsmorgon/klipp/caring%C3%B6tblads%C3%A5-ska-v%C3%A5ldet-mot-kvinnor-stoppas-2295883
Special issue: Violence against women and public policies in the Nordic context.
Niemi, Johanna, & hman, Ann (Eds.). (2010). Violence against women, 16.
Prop. 2005/06:155 Makt att forma samhllet och sitt eget liv nya ml i
jmstlldhetspolitiken [Governmental Bill: Equal power to shape society
and one's own life New goals for gender equality politics].
Wendt Hjer, Maria (2002). Rdslans politik Vld och sexualitet i den svenska
demokratin [The politics of fear. Violence and sexuality in the Swedish
democracy]. Malm: Liber.

Monica Burman Associate Professor, LLD


Ume Forum for Studies on Law and Society,
Ume University, Sweden
Corresponding author at. Ume Forum for Studies on Law
and Society, Ume University, 901 87 Ume, Sweden.
Ann hman Professor, PhD
Ume Centre for Gender Studies, Ume University, Sweden

Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8387

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Men who love women: Pro-feminist masculinities in the


Millennium trilogy
Michael Kimmel
Department of Sociology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 14 January 2014

s y n o p s i s
This article examines the different iterations of masculinity represented by different characters in
Larsson's Millennium trilogy. By examining especially the case of Mikael Blomkvist, and his relationship
to Lisbeth Salander, the article describes the promises and perils of a profeminist masculinity.
[2014] Michael Kimmel. Published by Elsevier Limited. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Voracious readers have been devouring Stieg Larsson's
Millennium trilogy the world over. They're fast paced,
intricately-detailed, and fun to read. A huge draw is punky,
scrawny, tattooed hacker-sleuth Lisbeth Salander. Readers are
probably familiar with the story surrounding Larsson's creation
of such an uncompromising take-no-prisoners feminist hero in
Lisbeth. She's indifferent to fashion, to the feminine mystique;
she's technically competent (a computer hacker); she's familiar
with violence and unafraid to use it in a retaliatory fashion. She
may be the least feminine hero in contemporary fiction, and one
of the most feminist.
Many readers will recognize Salander as an expression of
Larsson's long-held feminist views. He claimed that he was
personally disgusted by sexual violence. As a teenager, he watched
as several of his friends raped a 15 year-old girl he knew also
named Lisbeth. Larsson reportedly never forgave himself for standing
by and allowing it to happen. He eventually became a lifelong
campaigner against violence against women. (Indeed, I met him
once, in 2002, while working with the Swedish Minister of Gender
Equality on a project to reduce men's violence against women.)
From the early 1970s until his death in 2004, Larsson was
unswervingly identified as a feminist. For example, in late

This article has not been subjected to an external review process as it


does not confirm to a scientific format. This has been previously published
as chapter Men Who Love Women: Pro-feminist Masculinities in the
Millennium Trilogy in Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick
Their Asses: Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy in Feminist Perspective,
Eds: Donna King and Carrie Lee Smith (Vanderbilt University Press, 2012).
URL: http://www.michaelkimmel.com.

2001 and early 2002 there were two well-publicized murders of


women in Sweden; a Kurdish woman named Fadime Sahindal
and a Swedish model named Melissa Nordell. Focusing on
culture differences, the Swedish media described Sahindahl's
murder as an honor killing and Nordell's as a crime of passion.
Larsson would have none of it. He called them sisters in death
and stressed the underlying systematic and oppressive patriarchal structure: they were both murdered (by men) because they
were women:
The forms of oppression differ but not the cause of
oppression. The forms vary dramatically between Sicilian
honorary murders, burning widows in India, or battering of
girlfriends and wives on Saturday nights in Sweden. The
culture does not explain the underlying causes as to why the
women of the world are being murdered, disgured, circumcised, beaten and forced into different forms of ritual behavior
decided by men the causes being that men in patriarchal
societies oppress women.This is a systematic violence against
women for this is exactly what it is about and would be
described as such, if violence of the same proportion were
directed against trade unionists, Jews or handicapped people.
Feminism and anti-racism are two sides of the same coin.
[www.therstpost.co.uk/54145,people,news,stieg-larssonremembered by Eva Gabrielsson]

Please note that these words were not written by some crazed
radical feminist male-hating harridans of the fevered popular
imagination, but by the most popular novelist in the Western
hemisphere at the moment who also happens to be a man.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.12.007
0277-5395 [2014] Michael Kimmel. Published by Elsevier Limited. All rights reserved.

84

M. Kimmel / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8387

While it is clear that Larsson's feminism is reflected in the


character of Lisbeth Salander, I want to explore a somewhat
different side of the story one no less compelling, but far
less visible. In Mikael Blomkvist and some of the other men
who inhabit the world of the Millennium trilogy, Larsson has
created characters that embody a complex and ambivalent
new Swedish masculinity a pro-feminist masculinity that
is markedly different from more traditional notions of both
good and bad men.
Misogyny and toxic masculinities in the Millennium trilogy
Mikael Blomkvist is no ordinary masculine hero. Hardly a
James Bond type. He is invariably disheveled, often melancholy, and a bit feckless. But he also emerges as a deeply
moral character, whose sense of ethics leads him to painful
discoveries about the society in which he lives. He is
unmarried (divorced, with a grown child who figures almost
not at all in his life). He is a devoted friend to Lisbeth (yes,
indeed, a friend with benefits in the first volume), and an
attentive lover to Erika Berger, his closest friend and
editor-in-chief (who is married to a man who knows about
and accepts her affair with Mikael, since it enables his sexual
relationships with other men). He is somewhat standoffish
and aloof, self-effacing and even somewhat socially graceless.
Yet his heart (and his powers of deductive and inductive
reasoning) is always in the right place.
What a contrast to the series of foils that Larsson
constructs for him. In each of the three volumes, Blomkvist
is set against men who hate women, as the literal
translation of the first book would have it men who use
women, exploit them, assault and rape them, and who show
contempt for them. In Dragon Tattoo that includes several
elder members of the Vanger family, representing old-money
wealthy industrialists, the old bourgeoisie. They are thoroughly corrupt, venal, and in this case, Nazi sympathizers and
collaborators during World War II (as many Swedish
industrialists exploited Sweden's neutrality during the war
to profit by selling to both sides).
We also meet Nils Bjurman, the scoundrel-lawyer who
becomes Lisbeth's legal guardian through conniving and
deceit. He abuses his position and rapes Lisbeth twice. He
considers these quid pro quo sexual favors, not at all sexual
assaults in return for his promise not to cut her off from
money she earned working for Milton Security.
In Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth exacts revenge on Bjurman,
incapacitating him, and tattooing on his body I am a sadistic
pig, a pervert, and a rapist. Having secretly videotaped him
raping her, she threatens to expose him should he ever
retaliate against her. Indeed, she symbolically castrates him,
promising to release the video if she ever finds him in bed
with any other woman. And when she discovers he is
considering tattoo removal, she threatens to tattoo her
slogan across his forehead.
Effectively neutered in Dragon Tattoo, Bjurman is readily
dispatched in Played with Fire. We now meet a second wave
of bad men men like Peter Teleborian, a psychiatrist and
head of the institution in which Lisbeth was confined. This
confinement itself was a conspiracy of men who hate women
including unscrupulous communist-hating Spo agents and the
sadistic Soviet defector they are trying to protect. Teleborian,

too, abuses his power for sexual access treating Lisbeth as a


sex toy and a human experiment. He knows she's not insane,
but he derives sexual pleasure from torturing her. He will be
exposed as a pedophile in the third volume, as his testimony is
discredited and he is utterly disgraced.
We also meet Lisbeth's father Zalachenko and her freakish
half-brother Ronald Niedermann. Their crimes include the
systematic trafficking of Eastern European and Asian women
into Swedish brothels, where the women are raped, murdered, and abused for men's perverse pleasure and profits.
Zalachenko abuses Lisbeth's mother as well, beating her,
raping her and eventually incapacitating her. Indeed, the
primal crime that sets Lisbeth's trajectory in motion is her
adolescent effort to protect her mother and exact revenge on
her abusive and violent father: after he beats and rapes her
mother, Lisbeth follows him to his car, throws a bottle of
gasoline on his head and calmly lights a match to set him on
fire. (He survives, badly scarred, so that he can return to
menace her in the third book.)
Niedermann is particularly interesting, since he suffers
from a rare malady, congenital analgesia, the inability to feel
pain. What more searing commentary about the man who
would equate masculine power with brute force: that
traditional masculinity is possible only if one is incapable of
feeling anything at all.
Finally, in Hornet's Nest, the toxic masculinities Larsson
exposes expand to include corrupt and calculating bureaucrats, especially those in the Swedish secret police or Spo.
Men like Evert Gullberg and Gunnar Bjork represent a form
of hysterical, masculinity. In their frenzy to make sure that
their secret deal with Zalachenko remains hidden, they are
prepared to sacrifice the lives of any number of people.
Women, in particular, are expendable, disposable, collateral
damage. In this way, agents of the state are no better than
the criminal they are trying to protect. Secretive and corrupt,
these hysterical villains are exposed as fraudulent men and,
significantly, none of these older misogynistic characters
survive the trilogy.
What then are we to make of these men who hate
women? First, Larsson suggests that the sins of the fathers
have not yet been peacefully put to rest. Larsson means this
both literally and figuratively. In the literal sense, the vicious
damage that Zalachenko inflicts on Lisbeth's mother plays
out as a prime mover in Lisbeth's idiosyncratic development
(not that one necessarily needs an abusive violent father in
order to become a feminist hero). Symbolically, Larsson uses
the depraved misogyny of the Nazi wing of the Vanger family
to suggest that Sweden has not yet come to terms with its
shameful past, and that neutrality is often a convenient
cover for unspeakable crimes.
Secondly, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the
sons, in the remarkable entitlement to women's bodies
and sexual access that many of Larsson's middle-aged
men seem to wield. Men like Bjurman and Teleborian are
contemporary heirs to the violent sadistic misogyny of
older generations. They use their government-sanctioned
positions to gain sexual access to women in a way that we
now recognize as abuse, assault, harassment and rape.
Today men face an existential choice about how they will
integrate such misogynistic legacies into contemporary
realities.

M. Kimmel / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8387

Finally, Larsson insists that we acknowledge that the


Swedish welfare state is no refuge from misogyny. More
concerned with image over substance, with making sure the
veneer of civility, social progress and compassion for all its
citizens is unsullied by a far seedier reality, Larsson portrays
the state police, federal crime fighting agencies, intelligence services, and the psychiatric-prison complex as
consistently placing the welfare of men over women.
Larsson also suggests that the dynamics of entitlement
have shifted in the contemporary era. Earlier eras were
characterized by unspeakable misogynistic brutality while
the social surface remained placid. Misogyny was taken for
granted, seemingly untroubled. But the contemporary era
has unsettled that assumed entitlement, rendering it
problematic so that contemporary men do face a choice.
Those who choose to continue to hate women, Larsson tells
us, become increasingly hysterical, caught up in a spiral of
dissembling, a frenzied shoring up of traditional arrangements. These are the men (e.g., Bjurman and Teleborian)
who are the most humiliated and disgraced. They had a
choice about whether or not to act as they did. They chose.
They chose wrong.
Promises and ambiguities in Larsson's
pro-feminist masculinities
Other men in the Millennium trilogy reach that same
ethical crossroad and make very different choices. Mikael
Blomkvist is not alone in embodying a new masculinity. But
he is emblematic of both the promises and the perils of
Larsson's pro-feminist masculinity.
There are several of Larsson's men who act ethically and
caringly either because they are principled and just, or
because they are emotionally consistent. There's Holger
Palmgren, Lisbeth's aging former guardian, now infirm and
in a nursing home, but still as protective and caring as a
kindly grandfather. (His name seems deliberately similar to
that of Olof Palme, the former Prime Minister of Sweden,
who was the avuncular embodiment of the new progressive
Swedish Social Democratic Party until he was assassinated in
1986). Palmgren is a model of what the Swedish welfare
state is supposed to be: providing the social safety net
with care and compassion. Listen to how Larsson describes
him:
He had meticulously fulfilled the requirements of the
authorities and submitted a monthly report as well as an
annual review. In all other respects he had treated Salander
like any other normal being, and he had not interfered with
her choice of lifestyle or friends. He did not think it was either
his business or that of society to decide whether the young
lady should have a ring in her nose or a tattoo on her neck
(Hornet's Nest, p. 203)
Or, this:
He trusted her enough still to know that whatever she
was up to might be dubious in the eyes of the law, but not a
crime against God's laws. Unlike most other people who
knew her, Palmgren was sure that Salander was a genuinely
moral person. (Played with Fire, p.134)
Finally, he chastises himself for not having Lisbeth's order
of incompetence rescinded when he was well. He loved this
damned difficult child like the daughter he never had, and he

85

wanted to have an excuse to maintain the relationship.


(Played with Fire, p. 133)
There's also Dragan Armansky, the director of Milton
Security, for whom Salander works as a freelance private
investigator. Armansky looks the other way at Lisbeth's
rather unorthodox methods of investigation she hacks
computers and reaps the benefits of her results. Armansky
expresses sexual attraction in what could be a compromising
situation for Lisbeth, but accepts gracefully when she rejects
his sexual advances. And, as the trilogy unfolds, we see his
affection for her turn more paternal. Through characters such
as Armansky and Palmgren, Larsson reminds readers that
there are pockets of honor and integrity in the old Sweden.
These men represent a model of Swedish manhood that
seems to run parallel to the misogyny of earlier generations.
Like the Swedish state image, they are avuncular, protectionist, and comforting. They are ethical and dutiful, embodying
the promise of the welfare state to take care of its citizens.
But such avuncular paternalism can also be experienced by
those same citizens as patronizing and even condescending.
By contrast, younger men like Dag Svensson represent a
wholly new version of Swedish masculinity. An intrepid
journalist, Svensson uncovers a trail of sex traffickers, and is
eager to expose them. He is an equal partner with his
girlfriend, Mia Johansson, who is completing her doctoral
dissertation on sex trafficking. Equal partners in life and
work, they are both murdered by Niedermann in large part
because they are a team.
Then there is Paolo Roberto, a tough yet emotionally
responsive boxer who is enlisted by Blomkvist to help find
Lisbeth, and who ends up beaten almost to death by
Niedermann (Paolo Roberto is an actual person, a former
boxer and a celebrity chef, who plays himself in the Swedish
film version of Played with Fire). Larsson seems to suggest in
the character of Roberto that the sensitive new age guy
can also be a boxer that real men not only support
women, but as the poet Walt Whitman says, contain
multitudes.
Svensson and Roberto embody a third-wave pro-feminist
masculinity, one that is accustomed to women's equality in
the workplace, in the bedroom, and even perhaps in the
boxing ring. Other of Larsson's men characters display
ambivalence between advocating for women and capitulating to misogynistic and patriarchal gender arrangements.
For example, Criminal Inspector Jan Bublanski tells Inspector
Sonja Modig that she is both a strong woman and a good
cop (Played with Fire, p. 362). Yet, when he asks if she wants
to file a sexual harassment complaint against a male
colleague who is hostile to her and Modig declines to do
so Bublanski does nothing to further challenge the sexist
workplace environment that marginalizes her (and supports
him).
Ethical masculinity and its (sexual) discontents
Similarly, Blomkvist's embodiment of a new pro-feminist
masculinity is not without its own contradictions and
ambiguities. On the plus side, Blomkvist actively avoids
affairs with women who are not his equal, like the nameless
work experience girl at Millennium he rebuffs when she
shows up uninvited at his house one evening on a pretense,

86

M. Kimmel / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8387

eager for a fling (how ethical can a guy be?). And while he
doesn't care to join in a three-way sexual liaison with Erika
Berger and her bisexual husband, he isn't homophobic; he is
portrayed as perfectly comfortable relating with gay men
such as his colleague Christer Malm.
But there are some gray areas in Blomkvist's pro-feminist
behaviors as well. His relationship with family seems merely
functional and mostly remote. He's a rather indifferent
father to an adolescent daughter he doesn't seem to know
well or see very often. And his relationships with other
women are equally functional and hardly enveloped in
gauzy sentimentalism or breathless passion. While he is an
attentive lover, his relationships with both Lisbeth and
Berger are primarily as friend and colleague. He respects,
admires, and clearly cares about them, but he doesn't seem
to get too sexually excited or emotionally attached. Their
relationships are casual and pleasant, the sex sensible but
hardly passionate. Indeed the only memorably passionate
sex in the entire trilogy is between Lisbeth and Miriam Wu.
And it's passionate largely for Mimmi.
So, while Larsson makes sure to tell us that Blomkvist is a
good lover the women have orgasms, and everyone seems
satisfied sexual passion never drives the narrative. None of
the good guys ever do anything for erotic love. Friendship
and revenge are animating passions, never sexual desire.
Indeed, one could argue that there is a certain desexualizing
of the new Swedish masculinity embodied by Blomkvist. Is
this necessary? Can pro-feminist masculinities embrace a
sexual desire that is neither predatory nor violent?
One reading of Larsson suggests the answer might be
found in the writings of some radical second wave feminists.
For them, normative cultural depictions of men's sexuality
reinforced heterosexuality as predatory, violent, and oppressive to women. Erections signified domination; intercourse a violation or occupation. Under patriarchy, women's
heterosexual desire was collaboration; lesbian sex could be
liberating only if it in no way resembled heterosexuality and
remained non-penetrative. Men's sexuality could be politically unproblematic only if it was denuded of what men had
come to understand constituted desire: aggressive, energetic, possessive. In such a post-patriarchal feminist universe,
gender equality in sex required that mens sex come to
resemble stereotypical feminine sex.
Not so among contemporary third wave feminists. One might
even say that in their pursuit of sexual pleasure as a feminist act,
third wave feminists have embraced a more masculinized
sexuality more agentic and more pleasure-seeking as opposed
to pain-avoiding. The encounter between Lisbeth, the epigrammatic third wave feminist, and Mikael, the embodiment of
an ambivalent second-wave pro-feminism, encapsulates this
dilemma. The constant misinterpretations and vacillations
between being lovers, friends and enemies, capture the
contradictions of this particular historical moment, and, I believe,
provide part of the pleasure of reading the trilogy. But then
Larsson resolves this tension temporarily and in a direction
that leaves this reader, at least, unsatisfied.
Initially, Mikael misreads Lisbeth's love for him a love
that takes her over 1000 pages of distance and even enmity
to get over. In Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth is on her way to deliver
a Christmas gift she bought for Mikael, when she sees him
with Berger on the street:

The pain was so immediate and so fierce that Lisbeth


stopped in mid-stride, incapable of movement. Part of her
wanted to rush after them. She wanted to take the metal sign
and use the sharp edge to cleave Berger's head in two. She did
nothing as thoughts swirled through her mind. Analysis of
consequences. Finally she calmed down (p. 589590).
She throws the gift into the garbage. Her momentary
jealousy scares her: she is vulnerable, and she has made it her
life's project to be utterly impenetrable. She vows to never let
anyone, including Blomkvist, back into her heart.
In the third volume, Blomkvist and Berger decide to end
their affair. It's not that there is anything wrong with it
they both enjoy it, and her husband has accommodated
himself to it. Its just that there is no magnetic attraction
that is enough to sustain it (and Berger recognizes that
Blomkvist's found a new love interest in Monica Figuerola).
And in the trilogy's final scene, Blomkvist shows up at
Lisbeth's apartment. They'd been lovers before, back in the
first volume of the trilogy, although their affair, too, was
somewhat desultory, a bit of momentary comfort amidst all
the fear and violence.
He brings her bagels and espresso. He announces he is
just company.
Now, however, Lisbeth does something she had not done,
feels something she has not felt, since she was a little girl. She
trusts Mikael. He had in fact been a good friend to her over
the past year. He is not a man who hates women.
The cost, however, is their sexual relationship. She looked
at him for a moment and realized that she now had no feelings
for him. At least not those kinds of feelings (Hornets Nest, p.
599). She is no longer attracted to Mikael as a lover. She is no
longer vulnerable, doesn't love him like that.
When Lisbeth Salander opens her door and invites him into
her apartment, she speaks for all the abused women who have
shown themselves to triumph over their victimhood, who have
steeled themselves to prove themselves resilient and indeed
heroic. She also allows the possibility that the term feminist
man is not an oxymoron that men can be friends with
women. Mikael can actually be a man who loves women. He
just may not be able to have sex with them.
A true crime postscript
Followers of Larsson's work probably also know about the
controversy surrounding his estate. Larsson died before any of
his books saw the light of day, and his literary estate is now
worth tens of millions of whatever currency you fancy. As
with many Swedes, he died without a will, having lived,
unmarried, with his partner of more than 25 years (people
who live in countries with national health care, free
education, and other benefits of citizenship have no economic
incentives to marry). As a result, his partner, Eva Gabrielsson,
has been frozen out of the estate, while his brother and father,
from whom Larsson was estranged for most of his adult life,
inherited the entire estate, as the law dictates. And while they
have offered Gabrielsson a modest amount, they have refused
to honor her legitimate claim as the rightful heir to the estate.
Talk about men who hate women! This scandal makes one
wish that Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander were on the
case. No doubt she'd dig up some email that revealed
conspiratorial culpability by his male relatives, and he's

M. Kimmel / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8387

break the story of how, once again, a conspiracy of old-style


Swedish men have manipulated the laws away from justice
and towards their own interests. As with Zalachenko and

87

Niedermann, the real-life male relatives have proven venal


and conspiratorial, and the woman, the true friend, is
dispensed with, as if she were unwanted baggage.

Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8895

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Blaming violent menA challenge to the Swedish criminal law


on provocation
Monica Burman
Ume Forum for Studies on Law and Society, Ume University, Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 17 January 2014

s y n o p s i s
Feminists have long criticized how provocations narrative of a woman asking for it functions
as a legal abuse excuse for violent men and confirms their rationalizations and justifications for
violence. This article aims to challenge a particular aspect of provocation in Swedish criminal
lawnamely, a tendency to individualize and subjectivize culpability in a way that suggests
that the individual male perpetrator's specific understanding of his violence should be the
perspective from which to understand and judge his violence. Criminal legal culpability is
approached as an important aspect in the relationships between gender, power, and violence,
and the author argues that the notion of culpability should be changed in two respects.
The tendency to regard emotions as factual should be replaced by an evaluative view on
emotions and men's responsibility for their emotional responses to women should be judged by
acknowledging how values and reasons intersect with power relations.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In this article, I want to challenge how provocation and
violent men's culpability for their violence against female
partners or former partners are dealt with in the Swedish
criminal law. Criminal legal doctrines of provocation long
have been criticized in Anglo-American feminist legal studies
(Edwards, 2004; Howe, 2002, 2004; Ramsey, 2010; Tyson,
2013). This criticism is directed at the provocations narrative
of a woman asking for it, which functions as a cultural and
legal abuse excuse for violent men and confirms violent
men's rationalizations and justifications of their violence
against women.1 Moreover, defence laws, both provocation
and self-defence, have been criticized for failing to reflect and
respond to the circumstances in which female domestic
violence victims kill their male abusive partners. Because of
this criticism and public debate, often fuelled by particular cases,
legal reforms regarding provocation have been carried through
in Anglo-American jurisdictions. Provocation as a partial defence
that reduces the crime of murder to manslaughter has been
abolished in three Australian states.2 The provocation defence
has also been abolished in New Zealand (Crimes Amendment
Bill 2009). In these jurisdictions, provocation is to be considered
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.12.005

instead by the court as a possible mitigating circumstance when


deciding the sentence.
Debates and reform processes in England and Wales and
in the United States have not resulted in repealing the defence
of provocation. In England and Wales, the provocation defence has instead been replaced by a new partial defence of
loss of self-control (Coroners and Justice Act 2009, Section
55). This defence is applicable if the defendant's loss of selfcontrol is attributable to certain qualifying triggers. One example of a qualifying trigger is things done or said (or both)
which caused the defendant to have a justifiable sense of
being seriously wronged. However, the fact that a thing
said or done constituted sexual infidelity is to be disregarded
in determining whether a loss of self-control had a qualifying trigger. A few US jurisdictions have also introduced
categorical exclusions of some victim behaviours. For example, in Maryland, the discovery of one's spouse engaged in
sexual intercourse with another does not constitute a legally
adequate provocation (Ramsey, 2010). In several of the
above-mentioned jurisdictions, gender bias in self-defence
laws for women who kill abusive male partners has been
acknowledged simultaneously and resulted in reformsfor

M. Burman / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8895

example, in Queensland, Australia, where a separate partial


defence to murder in abusive domestic relationships was introduced in 2010.3
A slightly different picture appears in the Swedish context.
Feminist research, feminist advocacy, and public debate so far
have paid very little attention to the problems of gender bias
and gender constructions in defence laws in general and
as regards provocation in particular. Although several legislative and policy measures in the area of criminal law and
men's violence against women in heterosexual relations have
been introduced in Sweden in the pursuit of more effective
and gender-sensitive law and policy, the law and adjudication
on provocation has not been up for serious scrutiny and
discussion.4 The Swedish criminal legal doctrine on provocation and the ways in which the courts deal with provocation differ to some extent from the Anglo-American ones, as
elaborated below. However, similar cultural and gendered
problems can be observed in Swedish criminal law. Apologizing gendered discourses fit well into Swedish criminal law by
means of the provocation excuse, which blames women for
the violence they are exposed to and mitigates culpability for
the perpetrator (Burman, 2010). Similar observations have
been made regarding discourses among violent Swedish
men themselves (Gottzn, 2012; Edin & Nilsson,
2014in this issue). As mentioned in the beginning, this
gendered-mitigating effect is a familiar problem in feminist
research. With this article, I want to add a specific dimension
to the analysis of this problem, namely, how the Swedish
criminal legal notion of culpability contributes to uphold the
opportunity of mitigating blame in this way and counteracts
possible change. More precisely, the aim of this article is to
challenge a tendency in Swedish criminal law to individualize
and subjectivize culpability in a way that suggests that the
individual male perpetrator's specific understanding of his
violence should be the perspective from which to understand
and judge his violence.
I will carry through my challenge by utilizing an analytical
approach based on feminist legal theory and theories concerning
mens violence against women as related to gender and power
developed within feminist research and critical masculinity
studies. Criminal legal culpability thus will be approached and
analyzed as an important aspect in understanding the dynamic
relationships between gender, power, and violence. I particularly
aim to challenge how provocation and culpability discourse tend
to construct male rage towards women as an inevitable excuse
for violent men that is beyond possible change.
I will start by outlining my theoretical and analytical
framework regarding gender, power, violence, and criminal
law. The next section presents how provocation and culpability are conceptualized and dealt with in Swedish criminal
law, with a focus on case law on men's violence against
women in intimate relations and criminal legal scholarship on
culpability and provocation. Here I will also develop my claim
that the Swedish notion of culpability suggests that the
individual male perpetrator's specific understanding of his
violence should be the perspective from which to understand
and judge his violence. In the third section, I will outline three
problems that follow from the way provocation and culpability are conceptualized and dealt with and argue for the
importance of including gender and power into the analysis
of criminal legal culpability. These problems concern how

89

violence can be contextualized, how power operates through


culpability in criminal law, and how masculinity is constructed as an abuse excuse in a Swedish context of strong gender
equality discourse. Finally, in the last section, I will problematize the possibility to promote change by legal reform and
argue for how the criminal legal notion of culpability should
be challenged and changed in the Swedish context.
Analytical framework
Feminist theorizing regarding men's violence against
women frequently concerns the specific relations between
gender, power, and violence. The violence is seen often as
having two interrelated functions: violence is used on an
individual level by men to exert power and control over individual women, and, on a structural level, it has the effect of
perpetuating systems of domination related, for example, to
gender, race, and class (McCarry, 2007; Thiara & Gill, 2010).
Domestic violence is thus seen as the result of men wishing to
dominate women through violence and coercive control as
well as of a culture that encourages or condones it (Raphael,
2004). In this way, links are created between power systems,
individual acts of violence, agency, and social/legal responses
to the acts. Power systems are in this context conceptualized
as dynamic and contested forces that produce a context of
opportunity within which people choose to resort or not resort to violence. Power systems are seen as structuring forces
defining possible acts and the consequences emanating from
them and thus affecting how people act, the opportunities
that are available to them, and the ways in which their behaviour and how they are situated are understood and socially defined (Burgess-Proctor, 2006; Connell, 2009; Thiara &
Gill, 2010).
Men and masculinities have become increasingly more
central in feminist theorizing about men's violence. The relationships between men, masculinity, and violence are well
documented (McCarry, 2007). It is also argued that there is a
great deal of evidence that men react violently to challenges
to their authority, honour, and self-esteem as men (Dobash,
Dobash, Wilson, & Daly, 2011). Notions of masculinity can
contribute both to making men's violence possible and to its
being excusable and excused (Enander, 2009; Tyson, 2013).
In several contexts, however, neither the problem of violence nor the perpetrator is explicitly gendered (Hearn &
McKie, 2010). And if the perpetrator actually is gendered
explicitly as male, it might well be just a new way of locating
the blame for the violence away from the men who perpetrate
it. For example, if violence is understood as being naturally
associated with men, this naturalness can be invoked to
justify such violence (Hearn, 2012). Men might also be
disembodied from masculinity with the result that the focus
is directed away from the material reality of men's violent
behaviour and interaction and onto masculinity (McCarry,
2007). Or causal power may be attributed to masculinity or
hegemonic masculinity, which thereby becomes the explanation and excuse for the behaviour (Connell & Messerschmidt,
2005; Hearn, 2012). Another possibility that follows with
some approaches to masculinityfor example, some psychosocial narrative approachesis according to Tyson that more
stories are told that permit the long held cultural habit of
reading male violence as an effect of anxiety and/or latent and

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M. Burman / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8895

somewhat defensive response to feeling feminised. Moreover,


according to this story, originary responsibility for these feelings
is said to lie with a woman (Tyson, 2013;176).
My legal theoretical point of departure is feminist legal
theory, in which law is regarded as a societal discourse in
constant interaction with other discourses, and the criminal
legal subject is regarded as gendered, classed, and so forth
(Lacey, 1998; Naffine & Owens, 1997; Niemi-Kiesilinen,
2004; Smart, 1998). This stands in stark contrast to mainstream Swedish criminal legal theory, which emphasizes that
criminal law must be regarded and constructed as an autonomous system as free as possible from values, identity, and
subjectivity in order to achieve the equal treatment of individual offenders and to counteract misuse of state powers
over its citizens. Context, structure, and differences are therefore conceptualized as very problematic to take into consideration in criminal legal theory and practice (Lernestedt,
2010). Consequently, the criminal legal subject is normally
theorized as detached from aspects such as gender and sexuality. In contrast, feminist legal theory emphasizes that it is
impossible to conceive of a criminal law and a criminal legal
subject without interrelations to, for example, social categories, value systems, power, and socially constructed categorizations such as gender. These aspects are already present in
law at the same time as law interacts with them in various
ways. In this article, I also will regard criminal legal culpability
as inevitably interrelated with such aspects.
Viewing criminal law as a societal discourse includes a notion of criminal law as influencing the production of normative
beliefs and gender norms in the social world (Hamilton, 2010).
Criminal law emphasizes that violence and harm to other
people is morally wrong and that domestic violence is not
a shameful private matter but a societal as well as individual
injustice. It is argued that criminal law has a potential to undercut cultural tolerance for violence against women and
promote human rights norms that protect women from
violence (Coker, 2004; Larsen & Petersen, 2001; Raphael,
2004). Law can be seen as even a particularly powerful tool in
the social construction of reality because it is the only discourse
that is backed by the legalized use of force (Hamilton, 2010;
Niemi-Kiesilinen, 2004).
However, feminist research has been concerned seriously
and for a long time about the ways law constructs gender
and the consequences emanating from such constructions.
When legal discourse produces or reinforces gender norms and
constructs gendered realities, it is often done in a damaging
or constraining manner, which increases vulnerability effects,
reproduces social injustices, ignores differences between
abused women, and impedes effective intervention (Albertin,
2009; Coates & Wade, 2004; Hunter, McGlynn, & Rackley,
2010). Law also very often fails to comprehend the ways in
which women are socially harmed by the violence (Hunter,
2008). These problems often are said to be particularly true as
regards criminal law (Coker, 2004; Douglas, 2012; Hunter,
2008). Nevertheless, inspired by Smart and others, my position
is that because violence against women is already in the legal
domain, it must also be addressed there (Howe, 2008; Smart,
1989). Further, I intend to follow Smart by regarding law as a
site for discursive struggle (Smart, 1998) and by conceptualizing law as a site of conflict and dispute and not a place of
refuge or of resolution (Smart, 2012: 164).

Provocation in Swedish criminal law


In Swedish criminal law, provocation is a partial excuse
applicable to all criminal offencesthat is, it is not restricted
to mortal violence, which often is the case in Anglo-American
jurisdictions. Further, provocation is both a defence and a
possible mitigating circumstance in deciding the sentence. As
a defence, it may lead a court to judge a criminal act as a less
serious crime than an assessment of the other circumstances
(for example, bodily harm) would lead to. It might, for example, mean that an assault that in respect of the physical
harm caused should be judged as aggravated is judged
instead as a non-aggravated assault and therefore subject to a
lower scale of punishment. As a mitigating circumstance,
provocation may (sometimes in conjunction with a defence)
lead a court to mitigate the punishment within the applicable
scale of punishment.
In comparison with Anglo-American jurisdictions, Swedish
criminal law is lacking a detailed legal doctrine on provocation.
The Swedish Penal Code defines provocation as being at hand if
the crime was occasioned by an evident offensive behaviour of
some other person.5 According to criminal legal scholarship,
provocation is constituted by two aspects: first, a factual aspect,
which means it has to be established whether the perpetrator
was provoked, that is, if he or she actually was in an emotional
state of anger evoked by the behaviour of the victim; second, a
normative aspect prescribing that a judgement has to be made
as to whether the perpetrator's reason for being provoked
should be accepted (Jareborg & Zila, 2007; Lernestedt, 2010).
However, there is very little guidance in the preparatory works
of the Penal Code (for example, in relevant governmental bills)
or in case law as regards what is included in the two aspects,
how they are to be judged, and how they relate to each other
(Burman, 2011; Lernestedt, 2010).
Further, neither the preparatory works of the Penal Code
nor the case law clarifies the justification for the mitigating
effect of provocation. Swedish criminal legal scholars argue
that the mitigating effect of provocation should be justified
by the argument that provocation places the perpetrator into
the situation of a moral conflict involving contradictory ethical reasons: a basic demand on self-control conflicts with a
morally acceptable reason for reacting and giving vent to anger.
The actor's sense of anger is seen as an appropriate emotional
response to the provocative behaviour, and a person who,
because of such an emotional response, is placed in a moral
conflict and does the wrong thing is regarded as deserving less
blame than a person who has all the moral aspects speaking
against him (Jareborg & Zila, 2007; Ulvng, 2009; Von Hirsch &
Jareborg, 1987).
Because of the lack of a detailed criminal legal doctrine on
provocation, the Swedish courts seem to have considerable
freedom in how to judge statements and defences of provocation. Apart from an article in 1996 concerning a Supreme
Court case of homosexual advance defence,6 part of a book
(Lernestedt, 2010, which is discussed below) and a book
chapter on emotions and provocation (Burman, 2011), very
little interest has been shown so far in mainstream Swedish
criminal legal scholarship in studying how provocation
is dealt with in the courts or in theorizing and problematizing provocation. However, a feminist legal study of case
law concerning men's violence against women in intimate

M. Burman / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8895

relationships has shown that it is common for the Swedish


Supreme Court and the Appeal Courts to accept without any
further comments or discussions a man's statement that he
was provoked by his woman (Burman, 2007, 2010). For
example, in the following Appeal Court case, where the man
killed his wife, the court stated,
[The man's] story further shows that [the woman], who was
heavily under the inuence of drink, after she woke him up
said things that [the man] took to be very provocative. After
that [the man] fetched his shotgun, loaded it and shot [the
woman] at a close range with one shot from behind. Thus
[the man] has acted without premeditation and in a temper
after feeling he had been seriously offended.7
In another case, where the man was convicted of repeated
assaults and unlawful threats during a period of five years,
the man argued that the quarrels and disturbances that,
according to him, characterized their intimate relationship
were because of the woman's provocative behaviour towards
him. The Supreme Court concluded,
It should also be noted that it must be assumed that the
behaviour of [the woman] under the inuence of drink
on certain occasions might have had an impact on the
development of the rows and disturbances between the
spouses.8
The normative aspect of provocation was tested in a few
cases, but in a clear majority of cases where provocation
was an issue, the courts, without clarifying how the issue of
provocation was judged, either implicitly accepted the man's
statement that he was provoked or, only on the basis of
the man's statement of being provoked, explicitly established
that the woman had provoked the man (Burman, 2010).
Thus, the way Swedish case law deals with provocation in such
cases gives the impression that the individual male
perpetrator's personal and specific understanding of his
violence as caused by his woman's behaviour is the
perspective from which to judge his violence.
Lernestedt (2010), a Swedish criminal legal scholar, has
suggested that the normative part of provocation, if not
abolished, should be changed. His arguments are in line with
how culpability seems to be individualized and subjectivized
in case law on provocation and men's violence against women
in heterosexual relations. He starts from the commonly used
liberal idea that general preventive ambitions with criminal
lawthe wish to influence how people act and thinkmust
be limited in order to prevent punishment being used merely
as a means to promote some good for civil society. The main
function of criminal legal blame is thus to restrict the
possibilities for punishment. In this way, culpability becomes
part of an exculpating and mitigating discourse that tells us
why we should not punish at all or why punishment should
be mitigated, but that fails to present positive criteria for an
individual having to bear the full moral and legal consequences of a crime (Lacey, 1988).
Lernestedt uses the concept of true individual blameworthiness to promote the idea that blame must be individualized
in a certain way in order to meet the retributive prerequisite
for allowing punishment of individuals as a tool for societal

91

purposes. The concept of true blameworthiness, as argued by


Lernestedt, must be constructed and adjudicated without any
consideration of aspects such as general prevention, impacts
on people's behaviours, and values or educational ambitions.
Therefore, in his view, blame should be judged only with the
help of retrospective measures located very close to the
individual (Lernestedt, 2010). His conclusion is in line with
the negative retributive theory on criminal law that dominates Swedish criminal law and legal scholarship.
However, Lernestedt does not elaborate what retrospective measures very close to the individual could be. I suspect
that aspects such as the unique emotions, beliefs, or values of
the individual perpetrator and his reasons at the time of the
criminalized act could count as such measures. This is, as
shown above, much in line with how this issue already is dealt
with often in case law on men's violence against women
in intimate relationships. Further, a notion of individualized
blame in line with Lernestedt constructs the precedence of
the male perpetrator's point of view on his own violence as an
inevitable consequence due to how punishment is considered
having to be justified.
Gender, power, and culpability
In this section, I will outline three problems emanating from
how provocation and culpability are dealt with, as demonstrated in the previous section. In my view, these problems
counteract a feminist understanding of the violence in criminal
law and point to the importance of including gender and power
into the analysis of criminal legal culpability. First, I will argue
that the current construction limits the ways in which the
violence can be contextualized. The second problem regards
how power operates in criminal law through culpability. Finally, I will highlight how provocation and culpability facilitate
a construction of masculinity as an abuse excuse in a Swedish
context of strong gender equality discourse.
The presented view on culpability as regards men's violence against women in intimate relationships facilitates a
discourse in which the violence is understood as caused by
something internal or external to the perpetrator. The contextualizing is directed at finding particular events or factual
aspects that might answer the question of why an individual
man performed the violent act against a female partner or
ex-partner. In this context, power and control are seldom
seen as such factual aspects. In Swedish criminal law, the
interest is instead mostly directed towards aspects such as
psychological deviance or normal psychological disturbances inside the violent man, the latter most often presumed
to be caused either by the behaviour of the woman or by
problems in the intimate relationship as experienced by the
man and interpreted from his perspective (Burman, 2007).
A feminist discourse on violence, on the other hand,
emphasizes the need to contextualize men's violence against
women in heterosexual relations in a way that acknowledges
that this violence occurs in a particular context of perceived
entitlement and institutionalized power asymmetry (Dobash
et al., 2011). Consequently, violence is not regarded as a
result of something primarily inside or outside the perpetrator. Violence is instead viewed as a choice and as a means of
achieving, aspiring for, or maintaining power and control.
Violence is comprehended as functional in that it for example

92

M. Burman / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8895

may end an undesired argument, prove that the violent man


deserves respect, or hold women in relationships (Dobash &
Dobash, 1998; Enander, 2009). Such a feminist discourse will
find it difficult to influence criminal law, however, because of
the current notions of provocation and culpability.
Contextualizing violence in criminal law by taking account
of differently situated male perpetrators' experiences of anger
and of being violated by women is an easy operation. Contextualizing violence in a way that acknowledges the situation
and experiences of differently situated abused female partners or former partners is, on the contrary, difficult. This
impacts on, among other things, what constructions of abused
women's agency can be included in criminal law. Allowing
space for the view that men justifiably may be violent towards
women leads the law to view women as true victims only
if they can be regarded as free from guilt (Bumiller, 1998)
and being free from guilt is often equivalent to being a
non-agent (Mahoney, 1994). Therefore, abused women risk
having to downplay or even deny their agency in order to be
regarded as true victims by the criminal legal system. Further, if women show agency by resisting violent men, for
example, by arguing with the man or leaving the relationship,
they risk being considered as providing morally acceptable
reasons for men to feel violated and to react violently. In this
way, abused women's claims of agency in relation to abusive
men mitigate violent men's culpability. In order to open up
for an understanding of abused women's agency and exposure to violence outside the dominant dichotomy of agency
victimizationthe agency and culpability of violent men have
to be problematized (Burman, 2010).
According to feminist legal theory, an individual man's
violence against his individual female partner or ex-partner
cannot be reduced to a decontextualized act of an individual.
Also, the manner in which culture and power enter a conflict
and merge with it must be recognized. From such a point of
view, criminal law should acknowledge that men's violence
against women in heterosexual relations is very often a
dysfunction of power, not of intimacy (Coker, 2004; Stark,
2004). Instead, when Swedish criminal law enters an individual case of men's violence against women in heterosexual
relations, it tends to merge with the point of view of the male
perpetrator and with discourses that condone violence. Accordingly, Swedish case law subjects abused women to moral
judgements contained in a masculinist discourse, which
seldom takes account of the position and rationality of abused
women. The discourse is masculinist because it justifies and
naturalizes male domination in a set of gender relations in
which the point of view and power of men are taken for
granted (Brittan, 2001). Provocation and culpability, as dealt
with in the Swedish context, can be conceptualized as a legal
construct which gives violent men power to repeatedly attribute blame for their own violence onto women. From my
feminist perspective, such constructions in law help to perpetuate violence and are counterproductive in preventing
men's violence against women.
This gendered power structure in law allows individual
violent men to defend a masculine position of power and a
construction of themselves as normal male subjects by blaming
the women exposed to their violence (Hearn, 1998: Srensen,
2002). In a context where being a man who is violent towards
women is a negative or stigmatized identity, using provocation

and masculinity as an abuse excuse can be an escape route


from being constructed as a violent man. In a Swedish context,
the strong discourse on gender equality must be acknowledged
because there is a problematic relationship between Swedish
gender equality ideology and men's violent practices against
women. According to Swedish gender equality ideology, violence against women is connected to power relations between
men and women in society and incompatible with the goal
and basic values of gender equality (Burman, 2010; Gottzn,
2012). Therefore, as pointed out by Gottzn, a gender-equal
man cannot be violent towards women and a violent man
cannot be gender equal. And because all ordinary Swedish
men are comprehended as gender equal, a violent man must be
someone else; he becomes the other non-ordinary Swedish
man (Gottzn, 2012).
In Gottzn's interviews with Swedish men who had been
violent towards their female partners or former partners, the
men oriented themselves towards the gender equality discourse when they talked about their violence. Defining themselves as good and ordinary Swedish men demanded that
they in one way or another confessed to the values of gender
equality (see also Edin & Nilsson, 2014in this issue).
However, according to Gottzn, men's violence against
women is disguised as a consequence of this process in
which violent men define themselves as gender equal.
Therefore, men's violence against women can continue at
the same time as Sweden might go on naming itself as the
most gender equal country in the world (Gottzn, 2012).
It is obvious, from my feminist legal perspective, that
the concept of provocation should not be allowed to facilitate a construction of masculinity as an abuse excuse.
However, Swedish case law and the idea of true blameworthiness facilitate the status quo. In this way, uncomfortable
and power-imbued questions about violent men's agency, the
relation between masculinities and violence, and the distribution of blame beyond violent men's own experiences and
emotions can be avoided. From a feminist legal perspective,
this counteracts not only efforts to reduce men's violence
against women in heterosexual relationships, but also contravenes change in the overall unequal gendered power relations between men and women in society.
Challenging for change
Feminist scholars have long demonstrated the difficulties
in implementing feminist understandings of men's violence
against women into criminal legal practice. Legal reform
without parallel social and cultural reform cannot counteract
men's violence against women in heterosexual relations,
neither can a criminal justice system lacking professionals
with the specialized knowledge needed to adequately address
abused women's needs and provide supportive treatment
(Albertin, 2009; Bailey, 2010; Bell, Perez, Goodman, & Dutton,
2011; Connelly & Cavanagh, 2007; Hunter, 2008; Meyer,
2011). Even if law is changed with an explicit feminist ambition, notions of gender often find new ways of influencing
legal practice. One such example is the reform in Victoria,
one of the Australian states mentioned in the introduction,
that has abolished provocation as a defence that reduces
the crime of murder to manslaughter. The reform seems to
have resulted in some improvements in how violence against

M. Burman / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8895

women in heterosexual relationships is contextualized. Because provocation instead is relevant as a mitigating circumstance at the sentencing stage, however, excuses for male
anger and violence against women still can influence case law.
Further, there is some evidence that provocation-type arguments might still be successful in the guise of other offences
such as manslaughter by an unlawful and dangerous act
(Tyson, 2013).
With this feminist knowledge in mind, my main line of
argument is not related to how the law on provocation should
be changed or whether provocation should be abolished. Abolishing provocation as a defence and a mitigating circumstance
or changing it in order to respond to the feminist critique
without simultaneously changing the notion of culpability will
probably lead provocation-type arguments to find new ways
into the Swedish criminal legal discourse. As mentioned in
the section on the analytical framework, I do not primarily view
law as simple tool for change. Instead, I consider the law on
provocation and the notion of culpability as a site for struggle
where dominant discourses that are oppressive for abused
women can be challenged. By arguing that the notion of culpability should be changed, I wish to take on a particular
feminist legal method by disrupting the process of gender
construction in law and introducing different accounts that
might be less limiting for women (Hunter et al., 2010).
In my view, the notion of culpability (at least in relation to
provocation) should be changed in two respects. First, the
tendency to regard emotions as factual should be replaced by
an evaluative view on emotions. This should be in line with
how current criminal legal doctrine justifies why provocation
should mitigate blame (i.e., contradictory ethical reasons), but
it seems as if this notion is forgotten repeatedly, especially in
legal practice. Second, men's responsibility for their emotional
responses to women must be judged by acknowledging how
values and reasons intersect with power relations.
An evaluative conception does not regard emotions as
merely physical bodily sensations. Emotions, such as anger,
are instead seen from a constructionist point of view as being
constituted by thought and reason. This is because thoughts
are needed in order to identify and define a specific emotion
and separate it from others (Lupton, 1998; Nussbaum, 2004).
According to Kahan and Nussbaum,
A person experiences anger when she perceives that
another has slighted her in a signicant way. This perception presupposes conventions that specify from whom
a person may legitimately demand respect (from her
social subordinates; from her peers; from certain members of her family; from all members of the community)
and what forms of behaviour count as disrespectful
(insulting words; the failure to include the person in some
important activity; an inappropriate sexual overture).
For this reason, anger can be viewed as a mechanism by
which a person defends her status in the community and
the social norms on which her status depends. (Kahan &
Nussbaum, 1996:347348)
Social norms and conventions are thus necessary components in dealing with anger and provocation, for individuals
as well as for those who are to judge them. Even if the normative part of provocation was abolished, social norms would still

93

be needed in order to judge whether or not an individual


perpetrator's anger was evoked by the behaviour of the victim
(Burman, 2011). Social norms, and thus also aspects related
to, for example, gender, cannot simply be excluded from the
notion and treatment of provocation and should instead be
explicitly addressed.
But this will not be enough to facilitate a more feminist
approach to provocation. Violent men shouldin line with an
evaluative conception of emotionbe regarded as responsible for their emotional responses to women. How a person
deals with emotions and constructs reasons for reacting and
acting, violently or not, should be regarded as a matter of
agency and choice. This responsibility should be judged by
acknowledging how values and reasons intersect with power
relations. This argument is not to be confused with a view in
favour of collective blame or punishment of groups or of
men in general. It is simply to argue for dealing with the
issue of individual responsibility for the way we reason by
judging the values the reasoning is based on and by including
aspects of power on individual and societal levels, instead of
hiding these dimensions within a liberal notion of a value-free
criminal law.
In my view, criminal legal intervention is needed in order
to try to prevent violent men from depriving women of
their rights to autonomy, integrity, and well-being. However,
there is no guarantee that such a notion of culpability that
has been sketched out here will deliver an outcome which is
more favourable from a feminist point of view. It might as
well lead to an even more outspoken confirmation by the
criminal justice system of violent men's rationalizations and
justifications of their violence against women. However,
hopefully a changed notion of culpability will provide better
tools for taking the discursive struggle in Swedish criminal
law one step forward in challenging provocation and gender
constructions in law. Maybe it will also facilitate the implementation of gender equality as a value in criminal law in a
feminist direction, instead of gender equality being a discursive tool which ordinary Swedish violent men, with some
help from the courts, can use to distance themselves from
their abusive behaviour. And one thing is for sure, without
such a challenge to Swedish criminal law, the criminal law
will do no more than continue to facilitate the use of violence
as a tool for men to achieve, to aspire to or to maintain power
and control over women.
Endnotes
1
Regarding violent mens discourses on violence and culpability, see,
e.g., Hearn, 1998; Mullaney, 2007.
2
Tasmania (Criminal Code Amendment Act 2003), Victoria (Crimes
Homicide Act 2005), and Western Australia (Criminal Law Amendment Act
2008).
3
The Criminal Code (Abusive Domestic Relationship Defence and
Another Matter) Amendment Act 2010, see Tyson, 2013, 3942.
4
The most comprehensive reform in Sweden is the Womens Peace
Reform in 1998 in which, among many other legal and policy measures, a
new crime designed to better reect and respond to domestic violence as
experienced by women was enacted. The new crime is named gross violation
of a womans integrity and is partly described and analyzed in Burman, 2010,
2012.
5
The Penal Code Chapter 29, Section 3, 1st paragraph, with amendment
1 July 2010 (SFS 2010:370).
6
Homosexual advance defence is available to heterosexually identied
men who have murdered a homosexual male victim and claim provocation

94

M. Burman / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 8895

because of a sexual advance from the victim. In the article, the author poses
the question when it should and when it should not be justied for a court to
dismiss a perpetrators own opinion regarding the reasons for killing another
person (Trskman, 199596). Regarding homosexual advance defence in
common law jurisdictions, see, e.g., Tyson, 2013.
7
RH 2003:64, p. 312.
8
NJA 2005 s. 712, p. 725.

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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Men's violence
Narratives of men attending anti-violence programmes in Sweden
Kerstin Edin a,b,c,, Bo Nilsson a,d
a
b
c
d

Ume Centre for Gender Studies, Ume University, SE-901 87 Ume, Sweden
Epidemiology and Global Health, Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Ume University, SE-901 87 Ume, Sweden
Department of Nursing, Ume University, SE-901 87 Ume, Sweden
Department of Culture and Media Studies, Ume University, SE-901 87 Ume, Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 19 January 2014

s y n o p s i s
The efficacy of batterer-intervention programmes for men has frequently been questioned,
inviting additional research and development. Men inclined to violence have multifaceted
problems but are frequently squeezed into one-size-fits-all programmes with high ambitions
for change that often show little evidence of effectiveness. Some research even indicates that
any changes in men's violent behaviour might result from factors not at all linked to the
programmes.
For this study, ten interviews were carried out with men who had attended anti-violence
programmes within the Swedish Probation Service. The overall aim was to analyse gendered
identity constructions in the narratives of men attending the programmes how men
articulate the course of violent events and in what way they talk about themselves and the
programmes.
According to our results, men defended themselves by making excuses, explanations and
victim positions. Furthermore, the men's gendered identity constructions collided with the
programmes' ambitions of changing men's conceptions and behaviour.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
Men's violence against women has, again and again, been
described as a major social and public health problem (Walby &
Allen, 2004) and also as a human rights crime (Hearn & McKie,
2010). The perpetrator is almost always a current or previous
intimate partner; this seems to be the case internationally and
also holds for Sweden, where this study was carried out
(Renzetti, Edleson, & Bergen, 2001). Preventing and bringing
intimate partner violence (IPV) to an end require the understanding of complex causal connections that are explained
mostly in terms of personal, societal and socio-cultural factors
impregnated by gender and power structures (Firestone, Harris,

Corresponding author at: Department of Nursing, Ume University, SE-901


87 Ume, Sweden.
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.12.006

& Vega, 2003; Heise, 1998). Consequently, taking action against


violence requires a long-term change at many different levels
in society. Until sustainable alterations have been implemented, most public and research opinions suggest short-term
solutions such as efficient programmes to stop perpetrators of
IPV (Gelles, 2000).
For decades, the US and several Western countries have run
Duluth-inspired batterer-intervention programmes that are
reasonably consistent with cognitive behavioural therapy and
apply a confrontational, pro-feminist and one-size-fits-all approach (Dia, Simmons, Oliver, & Cooper, 2007). However, the
anti-violence programmes might have the wrong agenda,
believing in accomplishing change by confronting all violent
men in the same way (Gadd, 2002). When challenging violent
men's gendered identity, there is a risk in ignoring the
complexity, the emotional processes and the defence mechanisms involved. It is that the intervention might not only be
ineffective, but also that it can sometimes increase tension and

K. Edin, B. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

stress, and thus be dangerous for the partners of these men


(ibid.).
Despite some positive reports saying that the programmes
are making attendees less violent compared to non-attendees
(Gondolf, 2004), it is still tricky to measure behavioural change
and prove whether a noticed change is a result of the programmes or caused by other factors (Silvergleid & Mankowski,
2006). However, and overall, most reviews of intervention
programmes for men inclined to violence have reported quite
pessimistic efficacy reports, inviting additional research and
improvement (Babcock, Green, & Robie, 2004; Feder, Wilsson,
& Austin, 2008; Gelles, 2000; Smedslund, Dalsb, Steiro,
Winsvold, & Clench-Aas, 2007).
Studies of the participants' subjective perceptions of intervention programmes and therapy show different results
regarding to what extent such interventions can facilitate a
change of behaviour. According to Dobash, Dobash, Cavanagh,
and Lewis (2000), Scott and Wolfe (2000) and Silvergleid and
Mankowski (2006), the participants reported positive changes
due to the treatment, irrespective of the fear of legal punishment. However, according to Shamai and Buchbinder (2010),
men can experience treatment as positive and meaningful, but
still use a power scheme in creating relationships. Buttell's
(2003) study shows similar results, illustrating that battererintervention programmes are not effective in changing the level
of moral development. Alexander and Morris (2008) argue that
intervention programmes are more efficient if the men have
already started to change when they start the treatment.
Intimate partner violence in heterosexual relationships
includes two parties, and both of their perspectives are
needed to understand the violence and how women's and
men's agency interact while influenced by hegemonic sociocultural codes of male dominance (Cavanagh, Dobash,
Dobash, & Lewis, 2001). Our research deals with reported
IPV against women and the insider perspective from one side,
i.e. the male side.
This study was carried out with men attending anti-violence
programmes in Sweden, a country ranked as one of the best
regarding the promotion of gender equality (Hausmann, Tyson,
& Zahidi, 2010) and welfare systems in general (Balkmar,
Iovanni, & Pringle, 2008). Gender equality ideologies are
embedded in, for example, legislation and organisational
structures (Eriksson & Pringle, 2005). Nevertheless, men's
violence against women exists, and the Swedish criminal
justice system, which is supposed to be gender neutral, i.e. treat
men and women in the same way, is criticized by researchers
for not being so (Burman, 2010). Consequently, men are
neither expected to take full responsibility to rectify their
behaviour nor are they held entirely responsible for the
consequences of their violent deeds, and this reduces women's
scope and ability to take action regarding their situation (ibid.).
For this study, we presume that the men's stories reflect a
continuous negotiation not only with programmes and professionals' discourses but with more general discourses about
how a man should be and act (Edin, Lalos, Hgberg, & Dahlgren,
2008). Moreover, in this dynamic process of negotiation, we
believe that hegemonic constructions of dominant masculinities are both contested and (re)produced (Cavanagh et al.,
2001; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).
The overall aim was to analyse gendered identity constructions in narratives of men attending anti-violence

97

programmes: how men articulate the course of violent


events and in what way they talk about themselves and the
programmes.
Method
Theoretical framework
In this paper, we use men's narratives and view them as
representations of the social world (Riessman, 1993). However, this does not mean that there is a linear connection
between reality and narratives. Instead, narratives are
interpretations of the real (Edin, 2006), and depend on
several factors, i.e. actual discourses, situations, traditions
and ideologies, etc. People use narratives of different kinds in
the creation of individual and collective identities. Narratives
can be seen as identity claims (Mishler, 1999), e.g. in the
form of contrasting or differentiating oneself from others
(Georgakopoulou, 2007). To regard narratives as both representations of and producers of reality is to say that personal
narratives are something more than just personal. They can,
for example, reflect experiences that others can identify with,
and they contribute to the reformulation of public discourses
(Shuman, 2005). Moreover, narratives emerge not only in but
also through the interview dialogue (Presser, 2008, p. 143).
Somers (1994) describes narratively mediated processes as
constituting social identities and guiding social actions and
interplays.
In line with the narrative approach, we view gendered
identities as socially, relationally and culturally constructed
and as intimately related to discourse. Discourses systems
of meaning (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) are constructed in and
through the language in use, offering gendered positions
(masculine and feminine) that individuals can identify with
(Edley, 2001). However, these positions are not fixed; instead
they are subject to continuous change. Accordingly, identity
will be viewed as a process and as an on-going attempt at
identification (Glynos & Howarth, 2007). Any identity is
contingent, and identities are always failed identities which
never fulfil the telos of subjective identification, thus rendering them vulnerable to further dislocation (Glynos &
Howarth, 2007 p. 129). Thus, the men's narratives are viewed
as attempts to establish a fixed masculine identity, but this
fixation will always be temporary. An important part of
fixation processes is disidentification, which is defined as the
rejection of unwanted positions and attributions (cf. Skeggs,
1997).
In order to explain men's violence and in the quest for a
change, one ought to understand masculinities (and femininities) as being contingent, inconsistent, changing and
complex normative discourses reproduced in sexuality and in
daily interactions between men and women. However, even
if gender and the meaning of violence are changeable
constructs, they are part of the multifaceted practice and
culture where they were formed. For that reason, a change is
not unproblematic because of allied opposition, including
power, and hence a process of negotiation is needed
(Connell, 2005; Edley, 2001; Kimmel, 1987).
The theory of hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 1995) has
received a lot of attention in gender studies, and refers to a
particular idealized image of dominant masculinity to which

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K. Edin, B. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

images of other masculinities (and femininities) are subordinated and marginalized. More recently, the idea of a
hegemonic masculinity as a singular characteristic has been
disapproved of, and the importance of analyses in terms of
hegemonic masculinities has been emphasized (Connell &
Messerschmidt, 2005; see also Coles, 2009; Wetherell &
Edley, 1999). Moreover, criticism has been directed towards
a non-reflexive use of the concept without local, regional,
national or global considerations (Connell & Messerschmidt,
2005; Lusher & Robins, 2009). Others have been critical of
hegemonic masculinity being treated as a set of properties or
fixed character types, and have emphasized the need to view
hegemonic masculinity as dominant as well as a changing
interactive process in which marginalized masculinities
play an important role (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005;
Demetriou, 2001; Hirose & Kay, 2010). In this article, notions
of hegemonic masculinities will be used in an analysis of how
men account for their violence and, in the narratives, reconstruct dominant identities and how these identities relate to
the programmes ambition of changing men's conceptions
and behaviour.
Ethics
The study was approved by the local Ethics Committee at
the Faculty of Medicine, Ume University, Sweden.
Subjects and setting
The starting point for this paper is qualitative research
interviews with ten men participating in similar anti-violence
programmes at three different institutions within the Swedish
Probation Service. The agenda for these programmes included a
minimum of 20 obligatory group sessions but some men could
be mandated to attend further sessions. All the participants
presented themselves as if they had already attended a majority
of the sessions (two men mentioned attending 20 sessions and
one 13). Eight men had been reported for violence against their
female partners (and were court-mandated into the programme), while two had admitted themselves voluntarily as
they had become aware of aggression and violent behaviour in
their relationships. We assume that they had all used violence
in one way or another, but we did not assume anything either
way in this regard, nor did we search for any evidence in
criminal or similar records. The men had a mean age of around
40 years (2960) and all but one were Swedish born. The men's
level of education varied, and they had different employment
positions, from as a blue-collar worker to chief executive officer.
In a write-up from the Swedish National Board of Health and
Welfare (Socialstyrelsen, 2001), the programmes (attended
by the interviewed men) presented themselves as having a
drop-out rate of about 30%, a low number when compared to
large international reviews where the estimated drop-out rate
is commonly reported as around 50% (cf. Daly, Power, &
Gondolf, 2001). They also described the programmes as inspired by Manscentrum in Sweden (Eliasson, 2000) and by
Alternatives to Violence (ATV) in Norway (Rkil, 2002) and as
similar to Duluth-inspired programmes (Pence & Paymar,
1993). The focus of the programmes was to stop the violence by
working on the men's conceptions of masculinity and making
them take unreserved responsibility for their violent behaviour

(Socialstyrelsen, 2001; and see also Edin et al., 2009, 2008; Edin,
Hgberg, Dahlgren, & Lalos, 2009).
Interviews and analyses
All the interviews were carried out by the first author
(KEE): the first three in 2003 and the remaining seven in
2007. The interview themes had proceeded from a broad
project focusing on IPV and pregnancy (Edin, 2006). The
questions were open-ended and dealt with the men's
background, experiences of intimate relationships, pregnancy and parenthood, their current situation and the programme. The interviews lasted about two hours and most of
them turned out to be detailed life stories. Eight interviews
were recorded and transcribed verbatim, while, for ethical
and methodological reasons, handwritten notes were the
source of information for the remaining two. Fictional names
are used for the quotations.
First, the entire narratives were coded into categories and
themes and comparisons were made to look for similarities and
divergences in what the men said, but also in what they did not
say. With inspiration from Bamberg (2004), we then analysed
the narratives at three levels, making it possible to study: i) how
they comprise arguments, characters and positions, ii) how the
men talk and explain the violence, and finally, iii) how, through
different narratives, arguments and explanations, they (re)
construct masculine identities. Thus, an advantage with this
model is that it makes the different steps of the analytical
process visible to the reader. Another advantage is that
narratives can be studied as a result of individual agency
(level 1), as interactively created (level 2) and as discursively
produced (level 3). See also the introductory level presentations in each of the three sections below.
Results
1. Changing narrativeschanging characters
The first analytical level deals with construction of intent
and central characters/positions in the stories, how these
are (re)created and in what way these changed during the
interviews and in relation to the purpose of what is told.
We will, moreover, put forward narrative themes and
genres from the interviews. The gendered identity aspects
of the stories are dealt with further on.
Most of the interviewees described how their relationship
with their partner was good initially. They were happy
and did a lot of enjoyable things together, as is shown in
some of their comments: So in fact it has been a super
relationship (John); It was very good at the beginning.
We had a really good relationship (Simon); and We
thought we were the perfect, happy family couple then
(Kevin).
Besides being a good partner, a wife/girlfriend can also be
presented as a fantastic woman/person. This was exemplified when John described how he and his wife had had
really rough times, but nevertheless they had never raised
their voices or quarrelled:
Yes, I can only say that I think she is a wonderful
person. I would, yes, up to a month ago, I would have
done anything to make us become a couple again.

K. Edin, B. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

However, the interviewees also described how problems


arose and the relationship got more and more strained. The
starting point was often a key event or a fateful moment
(cf. Chatman, 1978; Giddens, 1991). In studies of narratives,
key events are often mentioned as turning points used to
structure life stories. In this case, the narrators evaluate their
lives and, when looking in the rear-view mirror, focus on the
more or less explicit situations that seem most important for
the violent events to come. The key event was usually
followed by a history of decline, and, according to this genre,
the picture of the partner and the relationship changed.
In Mikael's description of how he had loved his girlfriend
and how much fun they had had together, a key event
became apparent when he mentioned that after a year or so
she suddenly started to change and became nasty and
bossy. She stopped being nice to him and did not bother to
comfort him when he was sad. Moreover, she did not
respect him, used bad language, laughed at him and made
him lose face. According to the interviewee, she decided
everything, and he was trapped; he could not do anything
without annoying her: She provoked me a lot during that
time, at home, you know, very much.
Thus, in an interview narrative, the same woman can be
depicted as both very nice and very nasty. Which of these is
chosen depends on the intent of the story, the actual genre
and the chronological position. For example, Allan described
his wife as a warm and understanding person. However,
when the interview homed in on the topic of violence, the
picture changed and she became a nagging woman:
She has been so pushy; whereas before she was so
soft and easy to talk to, nowadays I only feel accused,
accused, accused.
Other characters, who played a central role in the narratives,
were the perpetrator and the victim. The perpetrator was, for
example, visible when the men told a history of awakening
(cf. Flinck & Paavilainen, 2008). Because the men were part
of the anti-violence programme, in one way or another they
related to their identity as a perpetrator (cf. Edin et al.,
2008). In the interviews, this is reected through different
self-reexive presentations:
And every morning I have to wake up with this, with
what I have done. (John)
Thus, many of the men did not deny the violence and some
of them did not have any real problems describing their
experiences and the violent incidents. This is contrary to
other ndings, which claim that men often rationalize and
deny violence (Flinck & Paavilainen, 2008). However, this
does not mean that they accepted the position as offenders
by presenting themselves as malicious offenders. Instead,
they used different narrative strategies in order to make the
character of offender seem less vicious, e.g. by the use of
different explanations. We will elaborate on this under the
next heading.
The position as victim was attributed to the partner and the
children, but sometimes also to the men themselves. For
example, they (re)created suffering characters by making
references to a problematic childhood, unemployment or a

99

bad relationship with the partner, and also by talking about


the social or economic effects of their own violence. They
described an unfair life situation where the consequences of
their crime far surpassed the suffering of the partner:
I have lost both my driving licence and my job, and I
have only done nine years of compulsory schooling.
How shall I pick myself up? (John)
To sum up, at this analytical level we can see self-presentations
in which different and situation-dependent characters/
positions are presented. These examples also illustrate how
positioning is dependent on the narrated situation and the
actual genre. In relation to a history of awakening, the
men to some extent accept the position as an offender, while
they as victims can distance themselves from being abusers.
2. Interactive accounts
The second level is directed towards the narrative (interview)
situation itself and how the narrator positions himself or is
positioned in interaction with the interviewer. However, as
will be shown, the stories are also directed towards a fictive
other, because it seems as if the men address someone
other than the researcher with their stories. Moreover,
they also address themselves, and the telling becomes a
situation where the interviewees can convince themselves
that their version of what happened is the right one. Thus,
the interactive character resulted in the use of different
narrative strategies by which the men were focusing on
making sense of the violence and their behaviour in relation
to the interviewer (cf. Mullaney, 2007) and other potential
listeners.
According to theories of attribution, observers usually seek
explanations within the actors (here, men inclined to violence),
such as that something is wrong with them, while the actors
tend to use external or situational redefinitions to explain and
so make excuses for their own behaviour (Augoustinos &
Walker, 1995). There are both direct and indirect explanations
for the violence in the interview stories, and the direct
explanations have a more obvious interactive character. One
indirect explanation is when the men tell touching life stories
as a background to what happened later on. The violence is
then presented as a consequence of special life circumstances.
John described how he and his wife had had rough times;
they stopped communicating and drifted apart. She lost
interest in him, making him jealous, and it all accumulated
until it exploded under the influence of alcohol. So all this
functions as indirect explanations of what happened and how
alcohol was the direct situational trigger.
Another man (Mikael) mentioned his cultural background as
a direct explanation for his behaviour; he had threatened to
kill his girlfriend's parents. He said that, according to his
background, it was normal to use this kind of abusive
language and to make threats. Living a life under pressure is
also used as a direct explanation; for example, one man
(Allan) talked about stress and being an old lecher as
reasons for his violent behaviour, while Kevin described
childlessness as driving a wedge between him and his wife.
The violence seems, in these cases, to be reactive (cf. Mullaney,
2007); from the men's point of view, it is a reasonable
reaction to an untenable situation. Another example of this is

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K. Edin, B. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

when one of the interviewees (Mikael) described how his


girlfriend forced him to quit soccer training and how this
indirectly contributed to the situation of violence.
All these explanations also have the character of excuses,
and excuses can be a way of denying responsibility because
they state that under normal circumstances there would
not have been any violence. Thus, excuses draw a line
between the violence and the real me of the perpetrator
(cf. Mullaney, 2007).
Some men described experiences of a strange self or being
out of character (cf. Hearn, 1998). They did not recognise
themselves in the situations where violence occurred, i.e.
they did not see themselves as being perpetrators and
thought they were a different person at the relevant time.
This is both an explanation for the use of violence and a kind
of negotiation with the position as perpetrator. However,
this negotiation also (re)produces the perpetrator as being
something odd and unusual (see also analysis, level 3), and
being someone they usually are not; Simon said, It is not
me standing there.
Allan acted similarly when he described the violent situation:
I don't recognize myself in this. This is one way of constructing otherness, and by this he can draw a line between
his true self and the offender, who becomes somebody else.
The responsibility for the violence is transferred to a fictive
person.
One observation can be made here regarding the interactional character of identity constructions. The men use
different explanations and excuses in their efforts to make
sense of the violence in relation to the interviewer and
other potential listeners. This also means that they are
reconstructing masculine identities through processes of
dis-identification a theme further developed under the
headings below.
3. Discursive effects masculinity and changing subject
positions
At this third level, we look at the effects of the interview
stories in terms of discourses and discursive positions: at
how the narrator, directly or indirectly, positions himself
in relation to cultural discourses and normative (social)
positions, either by embracing them or displaying neutrality, or by distancing, critiquing, subverting, and resisting
them (Bamberg, 2004). How can the relation be described
between, on the one hand, subject positions in single
interviews and, on the other hand, more general discourses?
How can the interview stories be understood as (re)
productions of identity and gender?
The doing of men's talk is just one more aspect of the
social construction of men and masculinities []. Men's
talk about violence is not an effect of the past but it is men
themselves doing masculinities in the present (Hearn,
1998, p. 213).

Identication re-establishing masculinity


An important event in the life stories was when the men
described the violence and admitted being violent. Crossing
this border and resorting to violence is degrading for a man,
and the interviewees used different (narrative) strategies to

re-establish a lost status (cf. Mullaney, 2007) and an acceptable


masculine identity. One was showing an ability to take control.
This is similar to Flinck & Paavilainen's findings (2008) regarding men's reasons for using violence in the first place,
which are an example of pursuing a sense of control. One of
the interviewees described his technique for handling and
taking control over the violent side of him. When he felt upset,
he left the house and went for a walk, which was a strategy he
had used on several occasions (Allan).
One seemingly paradoxical aspect of the (re)construction
of identity was that one man described himself as being
hen-pecked. This was evident when Mikael told a story of a
relationship in decline and how his partner changed and
became more and more cocky. She did not respect him
anymore; she laughed at him, calling him a mummy's boy.
Earlier, we described this as an indirect explanation for the
use of violence. If we now analyse the story at level 3,
another observation can be made. Mikael presents a whole
scenario in which he becomes less of a man. In the end, he
could do nothing. She had all the power and she used
his earlier violent behaviour to blackmail Mikael. Even
their child became, according to him, a weapon in their
relationship:
Then I came to her just because she wanted it, but she
never did anything to make me happy during that period.
She never made me happy. She only made me damned
angry all the time, or damned angry she made me feel
both subordinate and unimportant and all of that, you
know.
How can this anti-masculine self-description be understood in terms of discursive positions? How is it possible for the
interviewee to present himself as being hen-pecked? Again, the
victim position is of importance. A victim position is usually
associated with passivity, fear and introverted behaviour,
traits that are often regarded as feminine. However, in the
context of violence and with the interview as a situation of
judgement, the victim position becomes something positive. It can be used as a rhetorical mode to explain unacceptable behaviour a victim has the right to defend himself. To
hit a woman is taboo, and because he crossed this boundary he
needs some kind of explanation or excuse. By presenting
himself as a victim too, he can save face.
What, then, is the effect in terms of gender? One effect is
the (re)construction of a traditional feminine position. This
was evident when Mikael described himself as the victim of a
woman who represented something non-feminine. He was
not a victim of some really powerful enemy, but of a woman
who had abandoned a true femininity. Mikael also (re)
produced a morally superior and stoical masculinity when he
described how his girlfriend used violence:
I have had a cup thrown at my back and things, a coffee
cup at my back, and a remote control at my head, you
know, and I have been hit by her without retaliating.
Thus, he both repositions the identities of victim versus
offender and (re)constructs a stoical masculinity he was
not the first to use violence and he thereby indirectly
legitimates his own behaviour.

K. Edin, B. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

Mikael also made statements about gender and ethnicity


when he mentioned his non-Swedish girlfriend. He pointed
out that it is easier to live with Swedish girls because they are
more into gender equality. The effect of this is two-fold. On
the one hand, he (re)produces an old-fashioned masculinity
where the man is a real man and hence neither subordinated
nor belittled as a mummy's boy. On the other hand, he
establishes a modern masculinity in line with gender equality
ideologies, positioning himself as a representative of this
masculinity. Given that Sweden is a country where gender
equality ideologies have had a major impact on public debate
(Hausmann et al., 2010), through his narrative he can use
gender equality ideas to both explain and compensate for his
deeds.
(Dis)identication negotiations with masculinities
As mentioned above, a self-controlled masculinity is reproduced in the interview narratives. However, the identification process is often complex and can seldom be described
in terms of a straight reiteration. Masculinities are often
blurred by different demands and discourses. At a local level,
situational aspects interfere with both re-constructions of
and negotiations with hegemonic masculinities. This was
evident when Peter described a situation where he scolded
his girlfriend:
Yes, I told her off. I did not use any four-letter words or
anything, but I used very strong language. I told her off
accordingly Yes, and I was mad, bloody mad then; I
probably looked really dangerous then. You see, I have
that disadvantage because I'm a big guy and then you look
threatening as soon as you like if you suddenly get up
from a table and kind of turn towards someone and start
ranting. Then you become threatening. That's how it is.
In this context it can be a disadvantage to be big and strong
and to use rough language. In other contexts, e.g. working-class
masculine cultures, these characteristics are usually powerful
masculine traits (e.g. Willis, 1977). Thus, an established
masculine discourse does not necessarily carry a single
message. Instead, it can be described as an element with multiple possible meanings and it is created depending on certain
circumstances (Hall, 1996).
In the example mentioned above, strong and physical
masculinity is viewed as something negative. This is because it
is articulated by elements or signs that are seen as dangerous,
threatening and ranting. This masculinity becomes a burden
and a sign of a negative masculine position. However, the
interviewee Peter did not fully identify himself with this
masculine position. He described it in terms of you: Then
you become threatening. This generalisation is a kind of
disidentification (Skeggs, 1997) and a description of how he
normally is not. The disidentification was enforced when Peter
related his behaviour to his profession by which he knows how
wrong it is to act threateningly, because it only triggers other
people.
Thus, characteristics of the narratives are the processes
of identification and the disidentification. These processes are
sometimes straightforward, e.g. when an interviewee describes himself as a special type of person. However, it is

101

more common that the processes are complex and characterised by constant considerations and negotiations. The
interviewees admit that they are perpetrators, but at the
same time describe themselves as something other than a
typical perpetrator; as Simon said, It is not me standing
there. Then the processes of identification and disidentification intertwine.
(Dis)identication negotiations with the
anti-violence programme
How are the treatment sessions visible as narratives in the
interviews and how are these part of the interviewees' identity
production? An important aspect of this identity construction is
the men's different ways of showing their disidentification with
the programmes' aims and intentions. On an empirical level,
this disidentification can be identified in the interviewees'
critiques and rejections of the programme.
Some of the interviewees disagreed with having to
participate in the programme at all, because they thought it
was unjust that more violent and worse offenders than them
escaped both punishment and treatment on the programme:
And then you think, there must be things that are much
worse and how the others are even being violent right
now. (Allan)
Others were openly critical towards the programme:
I mean, there are just because one of us has battered,
that does not mean that everyone in the group has done
the same thing, irrespective of whether you have been
convicted or not. Obviously, if one person ignores a red
light, not everyone needs to ignore a red light It's kind
of I don't get the point sometimes. And I have told them
all the time that I have not hit her. I have not done that
and that and that. (Adam)
Adam's critique is rooted in his construction of a victim
position. He not only presents himself as a victim of wrong
accusations, but he also disidentifies with a position as an
abuser. This disidentification has similarities with Wood's
(2004) concept dissociations, which refers to how abusive
men attempt to disconnect themselves from the violence and
the identity of real abusers.
This was also the case when the interviewees were critical
of the collective nature of the programme. They thought that
it was built on generalisations and that all of the participants
were treated in the same way, as if they had all been jealous
and were perpetrators who had hit women. Both Adam and
Kevin emphasized that the accusations of violence were
wrong, and Kevin said that he had never been jealous and
also thought that he was in the wrong place:
I did not recognize anything of what they were talking
about.That programme was a complete waste of time
for me, I think.
The interviewees also viewed the programme as being
part of their punishment (cf. Miller, Gregory, & Iovanni,
2005). They had to attend the sessions and they were longing
for the time when they were over. In the interview with

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K. Edin, B. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

Simon, this was obvious. When he was describing the


schedule for the treatment sessions, he said:
We have four weeks off in July. But I have to come here
on my holiday anyway.
According to Simon, he had to attend once a week even
during his holiday, but then he was free in July. If he failed
to appear at the sessions he would be sentenced to prison
for six months. Thus, some of the interviewees were critical
of the programme and they could not identify themselves
with the position (of a punished abuser) offered by the
programme.
However, in other parts of the interviews the men
described their participation in the programme as a
positive experience, and as an opportunity to develop and
change:
You do learn things I'm sure you do learn something
from this. With those two sitting over there, I mean. What
is he a psychotherapist? And the other one is something. And well, they don't really say much now but we
talk. Then they write some things on the blackboard and
we talk about it in the group then, you see. So of course
you do get some different ideas compared with drawing
your own conclusions. And then you might draw a
different one, because the majority agrees and then you
might say that this is better than what I would do myself
and stuff like that. (Mikael)
In this case, the collective character of the treatment is,
contrary to Adam's descriptions (see above), regarded as
something relatively good. To have the opportunity to share
experiences and views with others is seen as one way of
learning about new perspectives and avoiding wrong conclusions. However, an ambivalent attitude towards the
programme was more common. This is observable in the
interview with Allan. He thought the programme was good,
but:
rst you feel extremely vulnerable and Yes, you really
do feel that you are what you are, a big villain [] This is
terrible, to sit in front of six, seven, eight other people and
then tell them that you yes, but even on the second or
third time, it felt so natural. So I think going twenty times
is a necessity in order to make you feel that you have
cleansed yourself a bit.
Thus, this interviewee is positive towards the programme
and he sees it also as an opportunity to cleanse himself.
However, he also seems to have problems admitting his
crime, and he emphasizes how terrible it is to talk about his
deeds and experiences in front of others.
One concluding example is taken from the interview with
Simon. When he described the treatment, he was a little bit
critical and said he did not like role-plays, because they are
boring and tough, and they create anxiety. He did not want to
mess up and make a fool of himself. However, he also said
that he thought about the programme every day after a
session:
And you think you have got the tools to get by without
using violence from now on? (KEE)

Yes, these are better than none at all. Then you have got
some things to think about too. So then when you come
home, after you have been here, you also reflect a bit. So you,
you've been here once a week but you think about it a little
every day, to some extent. (Simon)
This example is in some ways typical of the interviews
and the interviewees' identity production. Stories about the
treatment programmes are not stories about dramatic
changes in behaviour or revelations, but rather they are
examples of how the interviewees navigate between different discourses and demands.
According to a general therapeutic discourse, the participants in the programme have to take responsibility, admit to
being real villains and accept the position as an offender
before they can become better people (cf. Schrock & Padavic,
2007). This is a common way of thinking in therapy in
general, and it reflects the former discussion of the confession mode. A change of behaviour is dependent on the
person's understanding and interpretation of the event as
something not acceptable (cf. Ludwig, 1985). Thus, the
identity as a perpetrator has to be established and the
individual has to accept this before any change can occur and
he can be reformed and allowed to return to society. The
interviewees seem to be aware of this, which also is a
possible explanation for their occasionally positive descriptions of the programme in a positive manner they talked
the talk (cf. Schrock & Padavic, 2007).
However, they often explicitly disagreed with the programme's content, and these tendencies towards disidentification are in some ways self-evident: no one would like to
be defined as an abuser. However, the disidentification can
also be understood by making references to gender. A man
who abuses women (and children) is not a real man in
relation to general gender discourses; he does not have
enough self-control and he does not live up to the demands
of a breadwinner (Gerzon, 1982) a real man is a provider
who takes care of and is responsible for the family. Such
demands are (indirectly) reproduced in the interview
narratives, for example when the men deny or try to explain
the deviant behaviour that they have been accused of. As was
illustrated earlier, they use different narratives, excuses and
ideas about a strange self and being out of character in their
narratives. In this way they seem to minimize or neutralize
the severity of the behaviour, disidentify with the position as
an abuser and (try to) re-establish a respectable masculine
identity. Normally, they represent a chivalric manhood,
care about women and never abuse them (cf. Wood, 2004).
Thus, by disidentifications and allusions to a strange self and
being out of character, they can confirm their morality and
also avoid the need to develop explicit plans for reforming
their lives (cf. Presser, 2008).

Discussion
Violence and (changing) gendered identity constructions
This paper is about the narratives of men attending three
similar anti-violence programmes within the Probation
Service in Sweden. We aim to understand their gendered

K. Edin, B. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

identity constructions how men articulate the course of


violent events and in what way they talk about themselves
and the programmes.
From the findings, we argue that men construct ways of
defending themselves as excuses and explanations and used
them to adopt victim positions. In the following section, we
will discuss how the men's identity constructions might
collide with the programme's ambition of changing men's
behaviour. We also want to challenge the programmes with
regards to what extent they could more actively involve the
men in constructing new identities while condemning their
old ones. Before developing our arguments, we will present
some research on the issue of change.
Thus far, there has been no clear-cut consensus in research on what pronounced main factors of change can be
identified, if any. When scrutinizing evaluations of batterertreatment programmes in general, it is important to remember that about half of the men drop out and that they are
significantly different from the completers (Daly et al., 2001).
Moreover, some research indicates that the key to changing
violent behaviour in men attending programmes might come
from factors not even included in the agenda, such as men's
contact with the criminal justice system where there are
consequences connected to the family, which shakes them up
enough for them to realize they have a serious problem
(Silvergleid & Mankowski, 2006). When men attend antiviolence programmes, many processes have already started
and continue in parallel to each other. Hence it is difficult to
distinguish cause and effect (Silvergleid & Mankowski, 2006).
Moreover, changing behaviour is not a straightforward
process and it varies between situations and people (Lehmann
& Simmons, 2007). When following a process of change in male
violent behaviour, it seems quite obvious what the various
steps and concepts look like, and key issues can be identified,
such as increased responsibility, better understanding and
communication skills, and improved independence (Scott &
Wolfe, 2000). The reasons behind such successful changes
might be a reduction of factors strongly correlated with violent
behaviour such as anger, mental health problems and substance abuse (Augusta-Scott, 2009). Most theorists agree that
changes take place by degrees, moving from denial towards
motivation, dedication and a permanent change (ibid.). The
implication of this is that a change is not at all possible for a
person in denial, i.e. moving from denial means approaching
non-violence (Scott & Wolfe, 2000). Whatever the change
looks like, the critical issues are still about what makes men
change and why some do and some don't. Where is the start
button for change?
The analysis in this paper has shown that identity
construction processes to some extent compete with the
programme's ambition of change. From earlier research (Edin
et al., 2008, 2009) and from how the programmes present
themselves (Socialstyrelsen, 2001), it has been found that the
intention of the group sessions is to openly communicate,
show feelings and unreservedly take the blame. These ways
of behaving contradict several characteristics of the masculine identities usually reconstructed in the narratives. However, even with this disparity, we do not know what
influence the programmes have actually had on the men
who attended and were later interviewed. The men might
have started a process of change even if they had not reached

103

an expected and desired level from the programmes' point


of view. Nevertheless, we believe it is important to understand
this identity (re)construction as one way to consider the
complexities in the interventions and, through this understanding, hope to increase the possibilities of change (cf. Edley,
2001).
One seemingly paradoxical masculine identity position is
the victim. The interviewees described themselves as victims
of their own childhood, unemployment, the programme, a
strange self and sometimes also of their wife/partner. This
position made it possible for the men to save face despite
the use of violence against a woman, which traditionally is
seen as a non-masculine act. In other words, due to the victim
position, the interviewees could present themselves as
relatively normal men and the violence as an exception.
Against that background, the need for change does not seem
to be particularly acute.
Thus, the victim position is, together with other excuses,
explanations, and redefinitions, a strategy to secure a
potentially threatened masculine identity. These strategies
are dependent on the narrated situation and context, which
can be related to how the reconstruction of hegemonic
masculinities depends on local contexts and situational
aspects (cf. Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). One concrete
example is that the men in one situation could reconstruct a
modern masculinity with references to Swedish gender
equality discourses, while, within a different context, they
reproduced a traditional masculinity as breadwinners taking
responsibility for their families. Different and sometimes
contradictory constructions such as these might be one explanation for the fragmented interview self-presentations
and for the tendencies to deny being violent. However, they
also illustrate processes of domination, because the men could,
by reproducing gender equality discourses as well as aspects of
the breadwinner, sustain a viable and superior position. They
seemed in both cases to represent a real man. Such processes
of domination can also represent hindrances for change. Men
talked about the programme sessions in a context where
communication is encouraged and there are opportunities to
talk about the violent events. In that way they seemed to be
corresponding to something good, at least from a therapeutic
discourse point of view. However, the men's search for a
credible identity, in a context where they seemed to have felt
more or less accused, probably does not represent a good
starting point for change.
What then, can we learn from these interviews regarding
anti-violence strategies?
The programmes' intentions to change men's values
might appear to work when one listens to what the men in
this study said about sessions that provided opportunities to
talk about the violent events. However, when one scratches
beneath the surface, as in this study, something else may be
revealed. The group-session agenda might have failed to
create a context where it was possible to talk about difficult
things such as setbacks, ambivalence (Dallos, 2006) and
struggles in their daily life interactions (Edin et al., 2008,
2009). Exercising responsibility in order to live up to the
programmes' expectations might cause the men to feel
shame, something they have learned to stay away from,
but which makes men employ an array of excuses,
rationalisations and denials in their efforts to secure a

104

K. Edin, B. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 96106

potentially threatened masculine identity (Lehmann &


Simmons, 2007).
Instead, if men could get more support to realize that
identities are never fixed but are open to change, this may
open up possibilities and encourage a self-chosen responsibility to decide to build up a different masculine behaviour
(Edley, 2001; Lehmann & Simmons, 2007). In programmes,
such an alternative could take the form of a discussion with
men to make them understand their violent manner and
that outbreaks of violence are not isolated events but are
interrelated to other parts of daily life (Hearn, 1998). From
that point on, men might recognize how they can adjust their
behaviour and take on different identities and behaviours in
different situations. This is in line with research showing how
individuals need to actively plan and take control in order to
bridge the big gap between changed beliefs and actually
changing behaviour in real life (Scholz, Schz, Ziegelmann,
Lippke, & Schwarzer, 2008; Sniehotta, 2009). Violent men
often keep their violent behaviour separate from everyday
issues instead of seeing the close interaction between them
(Hearn, 1998).
Previous research has indicated that programmes can
unintentionally encourage men to take only pseudoresponsibility for their actions (Schrock & Padavic, 2007).
Studies of different anti-violence programmes in Sweden,
including this study which looked at three similar programmes
within the Swedish Probation Service, have revealed rather
gender-stereotyped and unreflected professional discourses
and how the agendas in point had also left out many important
inter-related everyday issues, such as sexuality, children and
parenthood (Edin et al., 2008, 2009). Moreover, if gender is
seen as an interactive factor, men's violence ought to be
understood by using an integrated approach, and this means
including both men's violence towards other men and men's
violence towards women (Schofield, Connell, Walker, Wood, &
Butland, 2000). Bringing in discussions about such matters
might be key to making men plan to actively take steps to bring
about a change, not only when it comes to violence but in the
close interactions with men, women and children in daily life,
where masculine behaviour is constructed (Edley, 2001;
Hearn, 1998).
Besides the use of gender theories to understand the
difficulties in making men change violent behaviour, there
are other more general theories that might be helpful. Within
behavioural science, theory of reasoned action (TRA) has
been predominant in efforts to understand and support
behavioural change. Lately, this theory has been questioned
because there seems to be no linear process from changing
beliefs to changed behaviour. The best intentions of change
produce no transformation without an implementation
intention approach, i.e. the person takes control in acting
and planning how the change will take place (Scholz et al.,
2008; Sniehotta, 2009).
Certain alternative and seemingly reliable intervention
methods challenge programmes similar to the ones in this
study and correspond fairly well with the ideas described
above. Some programmes are currently being developed
from evidence-based methods, where several of these
methods converge to a large extent and are in line with
so-called strength-based approaches (Babcock et al., 2004).
One example of such a method is Motivational interviewing,

which is supporting men's readiness to end their violent


behaviour by bringing forth motivation from within the
client and seeing ambiguity as an expected step to
overcome in the non-linear process of change (Dia et al.,
2007). Another is Narrative therapy, which endeavours to
understand and externalize ideas about male identities,
giving violent men a choice to take a new stance towards
dominant and hegemonic masculinities by understanding
the subsequent consequences on themselves, their partners and children and with that possibly taking responsibility (Augusta-Scott, 2009). We are not certain that these
intervention methods would have been suitable for the
men in our study, but we do think it is important to
investigate new ways of thinking and novel types of
treatment which may help bring about the possibility of
change for men who have engaged in violence against
their partners.
To sum up, in this paper we have scrutinized gender
constructions by analysing the narratives told by men attending
anti-violence programmes within the Probation Service in
Sweden. One important finding was that the men's identity
constructions seemed to collide with the programmes' ambitions of changing men's behaviour. The reason for this might be
that the programmes are based on the men's unconditional
surrender, which supports men's various ways of defending
themselves by using excuses and explanations and in that way
constructing victim positions. Thus, in changing violent men's
behaviour it seems just as important to actively involve men in
the construction of (new) identities as it does to condemn the
old ones. How this should take place is a question for future
research; however, men's engagement with treatment has,
significantly, been described as an important factor in decreasing the reluctance to change (Scott & King, 2007; Scott & Wolfe,
2000).
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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 107114

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

The requirement to speak: Victim stories in Swedish policies


against honour-related violence
Maria Carbin
Ume Centre for Gender Studies, Ume University, SE-901 87 Ume, Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 22 December 2013

s y n o p s i s
Over the last decade, political initiatives against so-called honour-related violence have been
undertaken in several Western countries, as well as in the UN. Swedish policy initiatives are
relatively ambitious, and have primarily targeted young women as victims, one aim being to
make it possible for them to speak up. In this article the overarching concern is to explore how
victim stories are used in Swedish policy initiatives. Drawing upon discourse theory and
post-colonial feminism, the aim is to challenge the ideal of speech as emancipation and to
elaborate the connections between speech, silence and power. The article shows that, despite
efforts by policy-makers to include these young women, and not to reproduce stereotypes, the
possibility of speaking is formulated within a certain nationalist discursive terrain. The victims
are primarily called upon to speak as non-Swedish representatives. Paradoxically, the
inclusion of young women into policy discourse has led to a particular exclusion and thereby
produced new silences.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
By the end of the 20th century, single cases of violence
against young ethnicised/racialised women were making the
national news headlines all across Western Europe. The violence
was labelled honour related and articulated as exotic, new and
difficult to understand. Following the publicity about honour
killings, political initiatives have been undertaken in several
countries as well as in the UN to combat honour-related violence
and forced marriages. Denmark, for example (and to a lesser
extent the UK and Norway) has launched initiatives against
forced marriage as part of their immigration policies and could
be accused of using them as part of an agenda of restrictions
upon family reunification (Bredal, 2005; Dustin & Phillips, 2008),
whereas in Sweden the problem has mainly been constructed
as a matter of honour-related violence to be tackled within
immigrant integration and gender-equality policies. Interestingly, it seems as though the issue of honour-related violence has
received more attention in the Nordic countries than in many
other Western countries, at least judging from the media
coverage (Keskinen, 2009: 268) and, in terms of policy material
and the amount of money spent, the Swedish state has dealt with
the issue by far the most extensively. One reason for the Nordic
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.12.002

countries in general and Sweden in particular to devote such


efforts to combating honour-related violence may be traced to
what several researchers describe as the image of Sweden and
the Nordic region in general as the gender-equal society
(Keskinen, 2009; Towns, 2002; Tuori, 2007).
The debates and political initiatives against honour-related
violence were, however, initiated during the post-9/11 time of
the so-called War on Terror waged by the Bush and Blair
administrations. Thus, these measures were often launched in
the name of nationalist assumptions about gender equality and
intertwined with an agenda of policing immigrant, frequently
Muslim, communities (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Korteweg &
Yurdakul, 2009; Meeto & Mirza, 2007; Phillips & Saharso, 2008;
Prins & Saharso, 2008; Wilson, 2007). The war on terror, along
with the growing surveillance of migrant communities, represents a retreat from liberal multiculturalism and what in Dutch
policies has been described as a turn to neo-realism (Korteweg
& Yurdakul, 2009). The war on terror has furthermore awakened
a familiar stereotypethe dangerous, fundamentalist brown
man who is understood to be too rigid in his views on women
(Bhattacharyya, 2008). As a consequence, any identification of
the specificity and particularity of violence against ethnicised/
racialised women in the West is in danger of reproducing an

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M. Carbin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 107114

understanding of Islam and people from the Middle East


as problematic and particularly hostile towards women (Sen,
2005: 42).
Thus, policy-makers have been faced with a dilemma: to
talk about honour killings as such runs the risk of fuelling
racist understandings. On the other hand, formulations of the
problem in universalist terms as part of men's global violence
against women risk missing the particularities of these
crimes. Sweden provides an interesting case in analysing
policy efforts against honour-related violence not only
because the Swedish state has been eager not to construct
the problem as emanating from religious views and as a
matter of Islam,1 but also because of the impact of a feminist
agenda in relation to Swedish policies on violence against
women in general (Carbin, 2010; Wendt Hjer, 2002).
Despite major policy efforts and intense political debate
on the topic, few academic studies of these policies have been
undertaken so far.2 This article thus examines how the
problem of violence against young women from ethnicised/
racialised minorities has been represented within policy
discourses against honour-related violence. The task set up
here is twofold. Firstly, I wish to explore subjectification
processes. I intend to illustrate the self-identities available to
victims of violence. This includes an analysis of the potential
effects in terms of possibilities and restrictions for subjects to
speak politically. Secondly, the article aims to elaborate
theoretically on the connections between silence, violence,
speech and power: How are some forms of speech made
possible, whereas other utterances are made impossible
within political discourses? What are the terms and conditions for speaking? (How) is speech politically enabling?
(How) can a feminist post-colonial understanding of the
problem be formulated? Thus, in this article, I intend both to
provide a critical investigation of the complex relationship
between speech, silence and power in Swedish policies on
honour-related violence, and to discuss alternative ways of
representing the problem. Before I embark on the analysis, I
will describe the methods and materials used in the article,
and will give a brief overview of feminist postcolonial theory,
and how it has been used in the analysis.
Materials and methods
The research material for this article consists primarily of
handbooks and surveys on honour-related violence from
Swedish County Administrative Boards produced between
2003 and 2010. In 2003, nationwide initiatives against
honour-related violence were launched, which continued
for the next several years: all Swedish County Administrative
Boards were given the task of mapping out the extent of the
problem. Some of the boards in the larger counties, along
with some municipalities in larger cities, not only produced
reports on the spread of the problem, but also published
handbooks on how civil servants could deal with victims. In
this article I have focused on those documents that include
testimonies by, and stories about, the young women who are
portrayed as victims, since the aim is to analyse the
possibilities for victims to speak. The article is thus based
on the analysis of seven out of around 40 of the documents
from the County Administrative Boards (see reference list).
Added to this, a couple of documents from a women's NGO

(Terrafema shelter for immigrant women) have been


included (see reference list) in order to explore the extent
to which alternative stories can be found outside governmental bodies.
In this article, a discourse analytical reading of the policy
documents is used in order to explore the subjectification
processes and underlying assumptions within the policies
(Winther Jorgensen & Phillips, 1999). Discourse analysis is
not a method in the strictest sense, but rather a way of
approaching and thinking about a problem. In this case I
have analysed the representations of the problem by
drawing upon Michel Foucault's work in order to analyse
who is able to tell the truth about honour-related violence,
the ways in which they are able to talk about the problem,
and what the consequences are in terms of power (Foucault,
1983). I have searched for utterances or testimonies from
the victims in the policy material about explanations of the
violence and descriptions of the situation of the victims of
the violence.
Post-colonial feminist theory
In my analysis of the positioning of victims, I am inspired by a
postcolonial feminist paradigm. The term postcolonial is here
primarily used as an analytical concept (and not as a historical
era) in which processes of subjectification are related to colonial
structures. Postcolonial theory provides insights into on-going
and intertwined constructions of race/ethnicity and gender, as
well as exclusions in terms of national belonging and capitalism.
Gayatri Spivak (1993), Lila Abu-Lughod (2002) and Sara Ahmed
(2002) have, for example, analysed how the establishment
of the white, western, individual, feminist subject requires a
binary opposition who becomes the Other woman. This Other
woman as a victim of patriarchal oppression contributes to the
constitution of the western woman as emancipated, free and
autonomous and helpful. Thus, postcolonial feminist theories
offer a necessary critique from within feminism, pointing out the
importance of locating feminist struggles within colonial settings
and posing questions regarding the naming of others as well as
the simultaneous self-representation of us. The act of naming,
the very construction of the policy problem, the naming of
nation, gender and race/ethnicity is thus at the heart of my
analysis. However, these theoretical insights are not only used in
order to analyse the inclusion of the immigrant girl in Swedish
policy discourse but they are also drawn upon in order to discuss
the possibilities of an alternative feminist politics in relation to
the problem of violence against racialised and/or ethnicised
women.
Immigrant girls: from margin to centre
At the beginning of the 1990s, few, if any, political efforts in
Sweden were devoted to combating violence against young
women from ethnicised/racialised minorities. At that point in
time the problem of violence, threats and control of young
women from family members was not taken seriously (de los
Reyes, 2003; Schlytter, 2004). Nevertheless, only ten years later,
initiatives against this type of violence were at the centre of
Swedish political debates (Carbin, 2008). Two cases, the murder
of Pela in 1999 and the murder of Fadime in 2002,3 led to
intense and polarised media debates in Sweden (Ekstrm,

M. Carbin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 107114

2009; Hellgren & Hobson, 2008; Reimers, 2005). While many


politicians, especially from the right, claimed that a nave
multicultural understanding of migration was part of the
problem, others said that the lack of effort was due to racist or
ethnocentric understandings of the young women and their
families. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 2000s, ideals of
multiculturalism as a positive asset were in retreat (Mulinari et
al., 2009). The data analysed here shows that talk of honour
now proliferated in what one could call a discursive explosion. The Swedish language was thereby enriched by new
words such as honour-related problems (hedersrelaterade
problem), honour-limitations (hedersbegrnsningar), honourconflicts (hederskonflikter), and honour-related family life
(hedersrelaterat familjeliv). As a consequence, a new political
subject position was constituted and introduced into Swedish
politics: Vulnerable girls (utsatta flickor) or Girls with other
ethnic and cultural backgrounds (Flickor med olika etnisk och
kulturell bakgrund).
Let the girls speak
One core theme in the policy discourses analysed here
concerns the failure of Swedish society to protect young women
from their so-called patriarchal families. It was stated by
practically every political party, as well as by the government,
that Swedish society had betrayed young women by not taking
them seriously. This was the starting point for young women to
claim certain rights. There was no prior enabling convention or
authorisation for immigrant girls to speak and to tell the
Swedish authorities about their situation. In this sense, the
efforts of the government on behalf of vulnerable girls and girls
with other ethnic and cultural backgrounds were to enable
them to speak politically and to make their voices be heard. It
was also stated in policy documents initially that we have to
listen to the girls, since they were regarded as voiceless,
silenced and oppressed (Carbin, 2010). The demand for young
women to speak emanated partly from an emancipatory
agenda. Indeed, the Swedish authorities wanted to solve the
problem and improve the situation of victims of violence. For
example, threats and controlling behaviour by family members
against young women were more likely to be taken seriously.
The need for specific shelters for young women was investigated and victims of violence were not automatically sent back to
their family or other relatives (who could be part of the
problem). Thus, the problem was now recognised as being a
collective form of violence within families. The Swedish model
of men's violence against women had up until then focused on
individual men's violence against former or current partners.
This specific violence against young women from ethnic
minorities did not fit this model, however. As a consequence, it
was not perceived as violence but as generational conflicts, for
example (de los Reyes, 2003). When the problem was
recognised as violence, young women (and men) seeking
help from the Swedish authorities were more likely to get
support. To sum up, young women were now able to speak as
victims and thus to receive the support granted to victims of
crime.
While young women were now enabled to speak politically
and to claim their rights, the opportunities to speak were
formed within certain discursive structures. As Prins and
Saharso (2008) put it, being in the political spotlight has

109

proved to be both a blessing and a curse for immigrant women.


In this case, one consequence of the political initiatives against
honour-related violence was a call upon young women to speak
and to articulate their experiences. Instead of being voiceless,
girls were now required to speak, and not only victims of
violence, but all young women with parents from the Middle
East in general, and girls with a Kurdish background in
particular.
At the heart of the wish to emancipate oppressed groups
by letting them speak lies a paradox. At the same moment as
a subject is called upon, or an event is given a name, the
possibilities of speaking are significantly reduced. This means
that, at the same time as a specific insight is won, several
other possible insights are lost, as Nikita Dhawan (2007: 62)
describes it. The dilemma in this particular case is obvious.
With the construction of the problem as honour related,
there already follows a reduction of possibilities. Before 2003,
politicians struggled over the question of how the problem of
violence against young women from ethnic minorities was to
be defined and named. In 2003, this uncertainty and
multiplicity of possible definitions was reduced to honour.
Thus, the opportunity for the subjects to speak was organised
and restricted in advance since the problem was defined as
honour-related violence.
The political goal to let the girls speak and let us listen
to the girls is moreover connected with the idea that
speaking means liberation, and that letting the girls speak
up forms an emancipatory policy as such. Therefore, in the
following I intend to interrogate the function of these
testimonies within policy-making: How are stories of
violence, pain and suffering used in public policy?

Authentic stories
Stories of violence, honour and forced marriages have been
circulating for some time now in Western European public
spacesnot least by way of bestselling novels or dramadocumentaries such as the novel Marie de force by MarieThrse Cuny, which describes the life of French-Moroccan Leila
who is married against her will, or the best-selling book Desert
flower (which also was made into a film) by Waris Dirie and
Cathleen Miller, which tells the authentic story of a girl in
Somalia and deals with genital mutilation. Consequently, we
have become familiar with reports of the oppression of women
in some country far awaypreferably in North Africa or the
Middle East. The stories are often marketed as individual,
authentic narratives and an imaginary Western reader is
assumed to lack knowledge and insight into the strangeness of
these unknown societies and cultures (Karlsson, 2006). The lack
of knowledge on the part of Swedish society is also a central
theme in the policy field of honour-related violence. Utterances
such as this type of violence is new to Sweden are common.
For example, one central theme in policy documents concerns
the idea that Swedish society lacks fundamental knowledge
and that Sweden has been unaware of the problem of
honour-related violence. The sense of not knowing, of not
being able to explain or control the situation causes problems
for Swedish policy-makers and fuels the search for a knowable
and easily representable victim, with a coherent narrative. Thus,
as a consequence of this lack of knowledge, a need for authentic

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M. Carbin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 107114

stories is articulated in Swedish public policy, as demonstrated


in the quotes below:
The handbook offers information about the honour problematic. It entails a short description of honour thinking, its
cultural and geographical spread, its connection to family
and clan, but not to a certain religion. This part of the
handbook also includes an authentic description of the
situation for a young woman.
During the last few years, we have gained more knowledge
about honour-related violence. Above all, through the girls'
own stories.
[(Lnsstyrelsen Sdermanlands ln, 2005: 3)
(Socialstyrelsen och Lnsstyrelserna, 2005: 10 Nationellt
konsultativt std).]
These extracts show that the stories of young women are
central in the establishment of the new policy field. Hence,
one way of acquiring knowledge is through the testimonials
of young women from ethnic minorities. Indeed, their stories
do provide knowledge about some problems that might
otherwise have been neglected in policy and practical social
work. The problem is now recognised as violence and efforts
are being made to combat it.
There is a tendency to view the victims' stories as the
absolute truth, as if they show reality as it really is. The stories
of young women are thus treated in policy documents as
pure, non-ideological, neutral reflections of reality. It is the
suffering of the child that touches the Swedish nation, not the
suffering of the parents, fathers, mothers or women. The
child or girl represents innocence and is seen as being
without strategic motives. This means that young women/
girls are seen as ideal victims (iek, 1999: 299). Despite the
fact that almost all policy documents state that both young
women and young men can be victims of honour-related
violence, the ideal victim is a young woman. Young men are
not articulated as victims in the same way that young women
are. That is, when it comes to the construction of the policy
problem, the young woman as victim has become an identity.
Young women can more easily be regarded as ideal victims,
as passive and above all as definitely not responsible for the
violence.
The problem as I see it is not so much that young women
are asked to speak and tell their stories. The question is
rather, as Foucault has put it: who is able to tell the truth,
about what and with what consequences in terms of power
(Foucault, 1983). Interestingly, in this case young women
from ethnic minorities have become truth-tellers of Swedish
public policy on honour-related violence, rather than social
workers, gender researchers or researchers with a competence regarding racism, migration and ethnicity.
Consequently, young women are perceived as both ideal
victims and optimal truth-tellers. Not everyone can be seen
as an optimal truth-teller. Instead, Foucault summarises the
requirements of a truth-teller as a person who speaks out of
duty, who speaks freely and who risks something by telling
her story. In particular the last criterion, to speak against
one's personal interest or to say something that goes against
the grain, is very important in order for a subject to pass as an
optimal truth-teller. Fadime, for example, who spoke in the

Swedish parliament before her death, has been constructed


in political debates as such a truth-teller. Her words have
been repeated and circulated in parliamentary debates,
anthologies and elsewhere.
The question to which I turn next, is what the truth-teller
is expected to talk about. We have already concluded that the
girls are required to speak, now let us turn to the content of
the speech in order explore the relationship between speech
and power.
The non-Swedish self
Jamila was 23 years old the rst time I met her. It was late
summer 2002 at a caf that could be reached through two
entrances. In Swedish society a lot was circulating around
the upcoming elections. The election campaigns centred
upon schools and public care issues. In front of me sat a
woman who made me realise that nothing in modern
Sweden concerned her. She lived in a medieval world
that I had only read about in history books. In the middle
of Eskilstuna, Jamila sobbed and trembled. It was difcult to understand anything but the words, help me, help
me.
[(Lnsstyrelsen Sdermanlands ln, 2005: 4, s. 13)]
In the search for knowledge about honour-related
violence, a recurrent theme can be found in the narratives.
Young women are portrayed as markers of the border of
Swedishness (see also Akpinar, 2003). Interestingly, Fadime
and other victims of this violence are seen as truth-tellers in
relation to something wider than just their own individual
situation. They are thus called upon to explain the violence
and to tell Swedish society about their culture or their
geographical background. Individual stories thus become
paradigmatic examples of how it is. Added to this, the
individual story should preferably confirm ideas about
Kurdish/Arabian/Middle Eastern values as being the fundamental problem. Researcher in social work Barzoo Eliassi has
noted a similar phenomenon in his interview study on how
young men and women with Kurdish backgrounds negotiate
their identities within the dominant Swedish society. Young
women with a Kurdish background are constantly asked
questions about their families, such as whether their fathers
will allow them to go to the cinema or on a date. As Eliassi
notes, when young women say that they are not oppressed,
the reception is usually that they as individuals are unique.
They are perceived as the exceptions, whereas the father
who kills his daughter is constructed as the rule and proof of
the woman-hostile Kurdish culture (Eliassi, 2010: 188). Thus,
individual stories of families in harmony or families with
ordinary conflicts between parents and children are not
regarded as the truth about Kurdish culture. The story about
honour-related violence has to be about values from the
Middle East in order for the speaker to pass as a truth-teller.
The agent of these stories is Swedish society or the Swedish
listener rather than the girl. Here we can see how the
representation of the Other involves a double representation
that has as much (or even more) to do with the image of
the Swedish listener or viewer. To represent and reflect the
voice of the victim lends the representative an aura of goodness
and pride. A feeling of being the voice of the victim also gives

M. Carbin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 107114

legitimacy to the policy efforts. The embodiment of the reader is


the figure of a Swede who should feel better about stories of
success and that the girls have been saved from their families.
The process of saving someone, as Lila Abu Lughod describes it,
not only involves the rescue of someone from, but equally
important is the fact that it means to save the person to
something (Abu-Lughod, 2002: 789). In this endeavour,
presumptions are being made about the superiority of the
society to which victims of violence are saved. Thus, the project
of rescuing young women builds on ideas about Swedish culture
and society as better, more gender equal and a safe haven for
young women. Hence, there is a danger in the use of these
testimonials. As Sara Ahmed has shown, stories of pain involve
power (Ahmed, 2004: 22). Ahmed warns against the
fetishisation or commodification of suffering in the political
arena (Ahmed, 2004: 32). Here, individual pain is appropriated
in the service of creating a national self-understanding of
Sweden as a gender-equal and essentially good society.
While testimonies of non-Swedish, sometimes cultural,
oppression and pain are common, the young women are also
(and sometimes in the same policy document) represented as
autonomous and free individuals, as will be discussed in the
following.
The Individual(ised) Self
Diana thinks that the trials she has gone through have
increased her self-esteem. She has been forced to rely on
her own ability to solve upcoming problems herself.
Today Diana sees herself as emancipated from her family
and from cultural expectations, and this has made her
strong and independent.
[(Lnsstyrelsen Sdermanlans ln, 2004: 4, p.23)]
In this narrative, we understand that the young woman has
left her oppressive family and chosen a new life. What is
apparent in the stories is how young women are called upon and
asked to speak from an individual viewpoint, not as cultural
beings, not as women, but as individuals. The ideal self in these
handbooks and surveys is a person who is capable of leaving her
home and family and starting a new life detached from her old
one. These stories are about individuals who, in one way or
another, have been saved from their immigrant family and have
overcome the pain involved in their lives. The narrative is
hopeful. Despite the pain Diana has suffered, the intended reader
is assured that she has changed and that this progress has
occurred due to the rescue efforts of Swedish society. The
Swedish reader will certainly feel better when reading these
stories of rescue, hope and progress. The (private) pain of
the girls is evoked in policies on honour-related violence, as
something that demands a public (collective) response (Ahmed,
2004: 20). Yet, the point of identification with the girls is not the
pain in itself, but rather the choice to leave their family and to
enter into Swedish society.
In another of the surveys from a National County Board, a
young woman's words about her situation in her family are
repeated:
It is wrong that I constantly have to adapt to others and I
nd it difcult that I cannot nd my self.
[(Lnsstyrelsen Vrmland, 2004: 4, p. 20)]

111

The policy documents produced by the National County


Boards are thus either talking in terms of cultural/geographical
differences or in a more universalist frame in which the girls
can speak as individuals, who have left their belonging behind.
The young victims are thereby allowed to speak, and are
represented, in a dichotomous relationship: either as cultural/
non-Swedish victims or as active individuals who have left
their family and thereby can pass as Swedish.
Alternative stories?
The question, however, is whether there are alternative
ways of representing and possibilities of speaking outside of
these governmental, state discourses. In order to find more
marginal stories, I have analysed material from a shelter for
immigrant women. In one of their pamphlets the words of a
young woman are represented in the following way:
If people just could see us immigrant girls as Swedes, I
think that things would be much easier for us. We would
not be treated differently, and maybe then we would know
exactly what we are here in Sweden. Immigrant girls who
ght for what they believe in are often misunderstood. We
are heard as the voices of the oppressed. No! We are not
oppressed in our homes, we are oppressed by the Swedish
people and their opinions.
[(Terrafem, 2004b, p. 74)]
The discursive violence of racism and stereotyping is here
brought into the public domain and defined as a political issue
that needs to be included when talking about honour-related
violence. Swedish society is here seen as the problem, rather
than the solution. This is clearly an alternative story that aims
to point out other types of problem than only the immigrant
family. Another of the pamphlets from Terrafem is called: Let
the girls talk: A book from the project Refuse to be called a
victim. In the brochure, eight young women are represented
with photos and names, and in the introduction we can read
that:
In your hand you hold a pamphlet by girls who are
talking. They talk about themselves, about what they
think, how they feel, what they experience and what's on
their minds. They are all different, as you will soon
discover, and they all have a foreign background. They are
denitely not victims.
[(Terrafem, 2004a, p. 10)]
The central position of the girls themselves in the
discourse on honour-related violence is thus confirmed by
all parties, even though the frames for speaking vary slightly.
Nevertheless, the possibilities to resist and to tell alternative
stories are limited by the fact that these young women are
already called upon to speak as cultural representatives. They
are presented with the option of either confirming that they
are cultural representatives, or resisting and questioning the
problem as part of their culture, as in the quote below:
Many think that we immigrant chicks are oppressed and
that we are not allowed to do what we want. That is yet
another thing that makes me frustrated. () I try to
ignore these things and only show what I as a person have

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M. Carbin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 107114

to offer. I am not a victim because of my origin, and I


refuse to be a victim.
[(Terrafem, 2004b, pp. 5657)]
This young woman wants to underline that she is
definitely not oppressed, not a victim. Instead she is of the
opinion that the major problem she faces is the stereotype of
her as an oppressed immigrant girl. As a consequence, her
alternative story tends to be framed in an individual, liberal
language, closely related to stories of the individualised self.
The possibility of speaking as a victim is, as Beverly Skeggs
has shown, problematic for subjects who are already seen as
not respected and lacking cultural value (Skeggs, 1997).
Hence, the possibilities in talking about the problem in terms
of vulnerability seem limited. There is instead a need to claim
one's respectability as an individual, not as a victim. This
means that alternative stories, here represented by the
pamphlets from the women's shelter, also have a tendency
to run into the pitfall of talking in terms of either/or. It seems
difficult for these young women to move beyond the
dichotomous thinking of either oppressed or free.
Silence as resistance?
I have found that the testimonies of victims of honourrelated violence have two effects:
Firstly Their utterances serve as a double representation.
That is, while the girls are allowed to speak, they
are representing themselves and at the same time
Swedish society is represented as good and gender
equal. Locating the problem within the immigrant
family serves as a way of hiding problems related
to Swedish society, such as ethnic discrimination
and racism. Thus, the victim stories presented by
the county boards have the effect of silencing
institutional racism and the function or dysfunction of Swedish welfare institutions and the failure
to consider racism.
Secondly Violence as a problem and more precisely how
control, threats and violence operate is silenced.
The stories represented here are more about the
motives and causes of violence, than the violence
and the situation of young women. Thus, as a
consequence, these stories are used in policy
discourse to confirm what Swedish society already
knowsnamely, that this is a culturally specific
form of violence that occurs in immigrant communities from the Middle East.
Speech can indeed form the grounds for emancipatory
politics and the importance of previously silenced groups
making their voices heard in liberal democracies should not
be underestimated. However, speech is today seen as almost
identical with emancipation and automatically perceived as a
positive value: speaking up, speaking for oneself, speaking up
for the other, giving voice. To be required to speak also means
to be silenced in a particular way. This is perhaps most visible
in the alternative stories produced by women's NGOs, which
break with the cultural script but nevertheless remain
trapped within the logic of either oppressed or free. Thus,
speaking is already silence. In order to understand young

women victims, and to develop policy tools, it seems as


though Swedish policy-makers have to reduce the victims to
knowable subjects, to stereotypes that can be easily grasped.
As if they can gain access to difference, the unknown and the
particularities of the Other through her self-expression. As if
we can simply hear what she has to say. Yet, as Sara Ahmed
points out, the Other represents otherness precisely because
she is not understandable or easy to represent (Ahmed, 2002:
561). Here lies a paradox: Swedish society desires to know
and understand the situation of these young women, yet the
moment they are represented within policy discourses, they
are reduced to stereotypes, and as such remain impossible to
understand.
I would thus like to draw attention to the problematic side
of speech and the underlying assumption that speaking up
leads to liberation in this particular case. Speech can be
formed by regulatory, hegemonic discourses whereby making your voice heard partly mirrors the hegemonic ideals. As
Wendy Brown puts it:
Silence, as Foucault afrms it, is then identical neither
with secrecy nor with not speaking. It instead signies a
particular relation to regulatory discourses, as well as a
possible niche for a practice of freedom within those
discourses.
[(Brown, 2005: 87)]
If there is a requirement for some subjects to speak out, to
talk about their situation, then Foucault insists that we ask the
question of why people have to speak in the first place. What are
the techniques of power involved in letting the girls speak?
Both Swedish public policy and the media demand that
young women and men with backgrounds from the Middle
East talk about How it is to live in such oppressive families.
The very terms and conditions placed upon speaking are
therefore narrow and restricting. In this sense, a niche for the
practice of alternative speech must be created outside of
these spheres. In relation to these interpellations, silence
might form a strategy that disrupts the discourse. Especially
since the discourse is so reliant upon the truth-telling victim
or the representative of the group. To answer the call is
already to accept the interpretation of oneself as culturally
deviant and consequently to legitimise the order of the
discourse. Few scholars have explored the value of silence.
The political goal in our mediated culture seems to be to
make oneself visible, but what about trying to escape, being
absent, being silent: could this be a form of resistance?
Researcher in social work Barzoo Eliassi shows in an
interview study how a pupil with Kurdish background chose
not to talk at all when the teacher kept on bringing newspaper
articles on honour killings to the classroom (Eliassi, 2010: 195).
In this case, silence becomes an obstruction to both the
requirement to speak and the nationalist assumptions underlying the discourse of honour killing. It can be read as a refusal
to participate for strategic reasons. However, silence can only
provide a solution under certain specific circumstances. While
stories from young women cannot be seen as the ultimate
truth about their culture they cannot be dismissed altogether.
As Sara Ahmed (2004) writes, on the one hand, pain and
suffering cannot form the ground for feminism, but on the
other hand suffering cannot be excluded from a feminist

M. Carbin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 107114

agenda. Thus, stories of violence, threats and control cannot


provide the foundation for feminist politics or knowledge
claims, but a feminist politics of solidarity demands something
more; it is not enough only to listen to these narratives.

Towards a feminist politics without secure grounding


The major dilemma for feminists in relation to the problem of
so-called honour-related violence is that highlighting domestic violence issues in specific minority cultural/religious/ethnic
communities runs the risk of stereotyping these communities
as particularly violent and backward. It separates out this form
of domestic violence as a special cultural phenomenon requiring special cultural knowledge. On the other hand, not
recognising the particularities of the violence and the specific
situation of these victims runs the risk of generalising and
drawing upon ethnic majority, middle-class women's problems as the universal problems. How can a political alternative be formulated that does not fall into the trap of either
culturalising or universalising the problem? The dilemma of
how to form a politics that does not fall into the trap of either
reducing young women into tokens, or ignoring the violence,
remains.
Swedish policy discourses, as I have shown, are primarily
formed as either culturalist or universalist speech (see also
Keskinen, 2011). While, in the UK context, a policy dilemma
has occurred that is caught between multicultural tolerance
and cultural stereotypes (Meeto & Mirza, 2007), in the
Swedish policy context the multicultural discourse has been
marginalised (Carbin, 2010). Some researchers claim that a
human rights perspective is what is needed in order to solve
the dilemma and to develop a more neutral perspective
(Meeto & Mirza, 2007). Others argue that intersectionality
might serve as a solution to the problem (Dahrvishpour,
2006; de los Reyes, 2003). I think intersectionality (in the
version developed by black feminism) is a necessary
approach in the sense that it includes different power
dimensions, and as such it is important politically. Yet, I am
not convinced that building a feminist political approach on
intersectionality is enough in order to form an ethical
approach to the problem of how to encounter particular
others, and other others (see Ahmed, 2002). An intersectional approach would include race/ethnicity and class as sites of
power and analyse the interconnections between them and
the interconnections with gender, which is necessary. I
would nevertheless argue that intersectionality alone cannot
provide analytical grounds for understanding the negotiations going on in the debate on honour killings. The
intersectional approach risks reducing young women to
objects of knowledge, as transparent and within our grasp.
In this case, a postcolonial feminist reading must also take
into account the way in which processes of naming, and
thereby constructing Others and the Self, in themselves
generate possibilities and restrictions on speech. Only by
acknowledging power and privilege within feminist movements, and by understanding that there are different agendas
and different struggles, can a common ground for feminist
political strategies be identified and the beginning of a
process of solidarity be formed. However, this is also not
enough to challenge and really make a difference in feminist

113

political struggles. Added to this, we must also question the


very ideal of reaching the knowable other.
According to Judith Butler (2003: 10), we are all
constituted politically by the social vulnerability of our
bodies, attached to, and exposed to others. Vulnerability
should not be regarded as an intrinsic quality of an existing
subject (for example a victim of honour-related violence),
but constitutive of the human condition. This suggests a new
mode of ethics that holds at its centre the vulnerability and
interdependency of being (Shildrick, 2000). An insight that
we are all vulnerable might also open up the possibility of
speaking for victims of violence, without being forced to
speak either as a victim or as a free individual. This might
open up a possibility to talk about vulnerability and
specificity without being reduced to a cultural stereotype. If
vulnerability is seen as the human condition, it might not be
necessary to take a stance against it, and to refuse to be a
victim. In line with Butler and Shildrick, I would also argue
that it is necessary for those in more privileged positions who
wish to be allies in struggles for social justice to unlearn
knowingness and to become comfortable with their own
epistemic vulnerability. This means that those in privileged
positions need to develop a politics without secure grounding
without easy solutions such as human rights or intersectionality.
The idea that one has to know the other is part of a striving
towards control. The question is whether one should not instead
try to unlearn knowingness and to become comfortable with
epistemic vulnerability. The very idea that we cannot know and
should not seek to know and control might form a starting point
for transforming ethical relationships and creating a platform for
meeting the particular other.
Endnotes
1
See Carbin (2010) for a discussion of the fact that Islam and Muslim
minorities are never mentioned in the policy documents. Instead, the
problem is articulated as having to do with values from a certain
geographical region of the world. Today, however, the liberal-conservative
government is investigating the issue of forced and arranged marriage, and
whether these inquiries will lead to a tightening of family reunication
policies is still unclear.
2
Apart from Carbin (2010), there are few policy studies available.
Sabine Gruber (2011) explores school initiatives and policies.
3
I name these victims by their rst names since this is how they were
discursively named in the media and in policy documents, and also because I
do not want their family names to be constantly connected with the
traumas.

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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 115122

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

Development policies, intimate partner violence, Swedish


gender equality and global health
Ann hman a,b,, Maria Emmelin c
a
b
c

Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Epidemiology and Global Health, Sweden
Ume Centre for Gender Studies, Ume University, Sweden
Department of Clinical Sciences, Social Medicine and Global Health, Lund University, Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 14 January 2014

s y n o p s i s
This paper discusses current Swedish international development policies on gender and
violence. It deals with the relationship between development policies, global health,
promotion of gender equality, and violence against women in a global perspective. The focus
is on intimate partner violence and the highly promoted gender mainstreaming policy.
Theoretically, our point of departure lies within a feminist notion of gender relations, power
structures, and male hierarchies that constrain and subordinate women and girls and which
expose them to gendered violence. We claim that stronger links need to be created between
local activist groups in low and middle income countries and the international development
agencies. It is important to initiate and formalize a NorthSouth dialogue between such
groups, as well as enhancing SouthSouth dialogue and cooperation.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
This paper deals with the relationship between international development policies, especially the latest Swedish
development policy, global health, promotion of gender
equality, and violence against women in a global perspective.
We want to take a closer look at the strategies, the history,
and the goals for development policy and their links to
preventing violence against women, promoting gender
equality, and global health. We argue that results from
gender research on violence against women and feminist
notions of gender inequalities need to be taken into account
in development policies regarding gendered violence. We
also argue that stronger links need to be created between
local activist and/or feminist groups in low and middle
income countries and the development agencies. It is
important to initiate and formalize a NorthSouth dialogue
between such groups, as well as enhancing SouthSouth

Corresponding author at: Ume Centre for Gender Studies, Ume University,
SE-901 87 Ume, Sweden.
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.12.001

dialogue and cooperation. To the best of our knowledge,


there is lack of theoretical discussion as to gendered violence,
global health, and gender mainstreaming (GM) in Swedish
development policies.
In 2010, the Swedish government launched a new policy
for gender equality in Sweden's international development
cooperation for the years 20102015 (Sida, Government
Offices of Sweden, 2010). The policy strongly emphasizes
gender mainstreaming as a means for reaching the goals for
gender equality. The overall objective is gender equality,
greater influence for women, and greater respect for women's
rights in developing countries, and the four areas put in focus
are women's political participation and influence, women's
economic empowerment and working conditions, sexual and
reproductive health and rights and women's security, including
combating all forms of gender-based violence and human
trafficking (Sida, Government Offices of Sweden, 2010). The
policy also acknowledges the role of poverty reduction as a
means to enhance gender equality (and the other way
around). Women and girls are the most important target
groups for interventions, but the policy underlines that these
depend on political will and an involvement of both men and
women. The human rights perspective is prominent and the

116

A. hman, M. Emmelin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 115122

policy is in line with the 1979 UN Convention on the


Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(UN, 1979). The policy also touches upon the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) as a basis for changing gender
relations (United Nations Resolution A/RES/55/2, 2000). It
clarifies that unequal power relations are key aspects for
understanding gender inequality. In sum, Sweden's development cooperation policy can be viewed as a progressive policy
in line with international frameworks for development.
Although the Swedish development policy does not
explicitly deal with gender equality as a key issue for
improved health, we, as global and public health researchers,
will frame the discussion in this paper about gender equality,
development policy, and gendered violence from a health
perspective. There is a lack of debate on these topics, since
most deliberations about gender equality and development
policies focus around issues of economy, democracy, human
rights, and political power. We claim that gender equality is a
proxy for improved health of any population, as it empowers
women and girls, which in turn improves the economic
status of families and society. We thus start this discussion by
describing men's violence against women, focusing on
intimate partner violence (IPV), as a major global health
problem. Thereafter, we present a description of the main
characteristics of development policies on gender in general
during the last three decades, followed by a broad overview
of the current Swedish development policy with its gender
mainstreaming approach and focus on the rights of women
(Sida, Government Offices of Sweden, 2010). Finally, we
discuss and problematize the opportunities and challenges of
integrating research results on IPV into development cooperation for increased gender equality. We acknowledge the
importance of scrutinizing different forms of gender-based
violence (GBV) such as female genital mutilation, prostitution, trafficking, sexual torture, and rape as a weapon in
warfare from a gender policy perspective. However, in this
paper we restrict our focus to men's violence against women
within a relation, through what in many settings is labeled
intimate partner violence.
Thus, the aims of the paper are threefold: (a) to describe
men's violence against women as a global health problem;
(b) to highlight different approaches (including the Swedish)
in development policies for gender equality; and (c) to
discuss and problematize the need for integrating research
results on IPV and feminist theory into development
cooperation for increased gender equality.
Intimate partner violence and global health
Intimate partner violence is a major global health
problem. It is a human rights concern embedded in the
imbalance of power between men and women (Campbell,
2002; Jewkes, 2002a, 2002b). Intimate partner violence is
one form of gender-based violence that involves current or
former partners in heterosexual as well as homosexual
relationships. This paper focuses specifically on the violence
perpetrated by men against women since this is the most
common form of IPV and has well documented negative
effects on women's health (Krantz & Garcia-Moreno, 2005).
In 2005, WHO presented the results from a multi-country
study on what they, at that time, labeled domestic violence

(WHO, 2005). The study was performed in 11 countries and


was the first study to use a standardized methodology that
allowed for comparisons among different settings. The crosssectional surveys, performed both in urban and rural settings
were preceded by formative (qualitative) research to assure
that the questionnaires were adjusted to the socio-cultural
context of each of the settings. Much effort was made to ensure
that the specific ethical concerns involved in studies of partner
violence were taken into account (WHO, 2001). In the WHO
study, physical violence included actions such as being beaten,
hit, kicked, choked, burnt, or threatened with a weapon by a
current or former partner/husband, while sexual violence was
defined as being physically forced or threatened to have sex or
to do something sexually degrading. The study confirmed the
seriousness of men's violence against women but also showed
a large variation in both lifetime and 12-month prevalence of
physical and/or sexual violence. The lifetime prevalence of
physical and/or sexual violence reported, varied between 15%
and 71% in ever-partnered women aged 1549 years. The
corresponding figures for past-year experience ranged from 4%
in Japan to 33% in Tanzania, 49% in Bangladesh, and 54% in
Ethiopia (Garcia-Moreno, Jansen, Ellsberg, Heise, & Watts, 2006;
WHO, 2005). These figures were in line with estimates from
other countries of the South, not involved in the WHO study,
such as Haiti, Nigeria, and Uganda with prevalences ranging
from 11% to 52% (Gage, 2005; Koenig et al., 2003; Okenwa,
Lawoko, & Jansson, 2009). Figures from the Swedish setting,
where also less severe types of violence were included,
indicated that 12% of women have been subjected to partner
violence during the past year (Lundgren, Heimer, Westerstrand,
& Kalliokoski, 2002). More recent estimates specify a past
12 month exposure of 8% to physical violence and 3.2% to sexual
violence (Lvestad & Krantz, 2012).
Intimate partner violence is associated with injuries as well
as several other severe health-related consequences (Campbell,
2002). Depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorders
are well-documented health effects as well as reproductive
health problems (Campbell, 2002; Deyessa et al., 2009; Ellsberg
et al., 2008). Feelings of shame, guilt, and poor self-esteem
have also been reported to accompany violence experiences
(Valladares, 2005). In addition the WHO study indicated that
exposure to violence increased women's vulnerability to
alcohol and drug abuse, suicidality, maternal mortality, and
HIV infection (WHO, 2005).
The causes of IPV have been described as multifaceted and
elaborated in an ecological model developed in the late 1990s
(Heise, 1998) and further detailed in recent years (Ellsberg &
Heise, 2005, Heise, 2011). The model illustrates how factors
at the individual, relationship, community and macro-social
level interact to influence the risk of violence within intimate
relationships (Heise, 2011). At the macro-social level gender
order, cultural and economic factors are central in influencing
norms, sanctions, attitudes and behavior at the other levels.
According to Heise this means that certain individual risk
factors may be enough to cause abuse in some socio-cultural
or community settings but not in others. In her review Heise
(2011) assesses the evidence of links between risk factors IPV,
and the effectiveness of interventions to reduce such violence.
She concludes that there is strong scientific support for the link
between country level of IPV and norms that accept violence
for conflict solving and encourage views on masculinity that

A. hman, M. Emmelin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 115122

involve control and aggression. Several studies have shown


that IPV is more common in societies with pronounced
unequal gender power relations, subordinating women and
girls (Jewkes, 2002a, 2002b; Lawoko et al., 2007; Okenwa et
al., 2009, 2010; Rani et al., 2004). These gender attitudes and
norms are often internalized also among women themselves,
which was evident in the WHO multi-country study as well as
in studies from Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa (WHO, 2005;
Oyediran & Isiugo-Abanihe, 2005; Uthman, Moradi, & Lawoko,
2009, Uthman, Lawoko, & Moradi, 2010). In these studies
women, to a varying degree believed that a man had the right
to beat his wife under circumstances where she has not
completed household work adequately, has refused sex, has
disobeyed her husband, or has been unfaithful. Interventions
targeting the gender order and the accompanying norms are
few but promising. Heise (2011) gives examples from
countries such as South Africa, India and Ethiopia were gender
transformative approaches have targeted both men and
women to challenge existing gender norms. The results
indicate a positive impact but the studies often have methodological limitations making it hard to show an actual reduction
of violence. Health care and judicial systems are also influenced
by gendered norms and attitudes on IPV in that women may
receive limited support and avoid disclosing violence experience. These norms can also decrease health care personnel's
and police' preparedness to ask and act about violence (Edin,
2006; Jewkes, 2002b; Laisser, 2011).
Garcia-Moreno and colleagues (WHO, 2005) have pointed
out that the elimination of violence against women is not
included in the specific targets or indicators of the MDGs
(http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm).
In their report, they examine each of the goals for its relevance
and the strategic opportunities it gives for prevention and
reduction of violence. They see clear links to all the MDGs and
suggest that the goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
may influence violence against women by protecting the
poorest and most vulnerable women. Another example is
that targeting universal primary education will encourage
schooling for girls and, if successful, contribute to reduction
of violence. The authors also indicate that the goals relating to
reducing child mortality, maternal health, and HIV/AIDS, will
depend on taking violence against women into account since
exposure to violence often hampers prevention and care. Also,
the goals to ensure environmental sustainability and to develop
global partnerships for development could have included
gender-empowering interventions advocating against violence
against women. However, the authors' strongest claim is, in
support of the UN Task Force on Education, that the millennium
goal to promote gender equality and empower women should be
expanded to have a clear target to reduce lifetime prevalence of
violence against women by 50% by the year 2015 (Grown,
Gupta, & Kes, 2005).
This means that intimate partner violence is seen both as
a gender equality problem and a global health issue that
hinders the progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It is a public responsibility that has to be
acknowledged and responded to. Of course it also poses a
challenge for country development policies to advocate
actions and interventions to reduce intimate partner violence
and to increase gender equality also outside a country's own
borders.

117

Development policy, gender mainstreaming and intimate


partner violence
In international debates, there has been ongoing discussion about how to integrate gender issues into the efforts of
improving the life and health of people in less advantaged
societies. To better discuss and problematize the opportunities and challenges of integrating research results on intimate
partner violence into development cooperation, we will here
briefly review the history of recent international development policy and gender. This history can be summarised as a
transition from the invisibility of gender and women, via an
emphasis on women's issues, towards, finally, a gender
mainstreaming policy.
The ideas and conceptions of development policy work
were primarily, in the 1960s and 1970s, initiated from the
Global North with less engagement from local people in the
Global South, the so-called developing countries. We do not
want to disregard the hard work of feminist activists and
advocates in the Global South and their struggle to change
women's lives and to combat gender based violence, for
instance in the UN, Gita Sen and Naila Kabeer have been
essential in advocating women's voices from the Global
South. We agree however with feminist, social science
researchers that in the larger global development policy
discussions women from the Global South were often
marginalized (Connell, 2007; Connelly et al., 2000; Schech,
1998). There was a belief that a transfer of goods, know-how
and values from the Global North to poor countries would
facilitate their development. However, many times, the basic
needs and rights of people, especially women and girls, were
neglected in the governmental development programmes;
and men's violence against women was seldom on the
agenda in development interventions initiated from the
Global North. Women were often invisible in all stages of
traditional development policy (Kilby & Olivieri, 2008).
Much of this discussion centred on the Western helper
and the Third World beneficiary. For a long time, it was this
question of we and the rest that distanced people in the
Global South from those working in development policy
programmes initiated from the Global North. The consequent obvious risk of ethnocentrism marginalized disadvantaged groups and those who were the focus of development
aid.
Due to heavy criticism of these policies and the way
they were implemented in the 1970s and 1980s, there was
a shift of focus towards women, which was supposed to
place women's issues at the centre of development policy
and aid (Mohanty, 1988; Walby, 2005). Accordingly,
development policies started highlighting women's specifically disadvantaged positions in poor settings (Schech,
1998). Women's lobby groups and activist organizations in
the Global North as well as politicians urged for a more
comprehensive inclusion of women since prior development
programmes had failed to reach women's needs. The drive to
include women resulted in a strategy usually labeled Women
in Development (WID) (Connelly et al., 2000; Schech, 1998).
The WID strategy resulted in a variety of implementations
through special organisations for women's issues such as
women's bureaus, women's desks, and women's offices.
These were often established in close collaboration with

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A. hman, M. Emmelin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 115122

international development policy bodies. It was a reaction to


meet the criticism of the previous exclusion and invisibility of
women; thus, it was constructed to enhance women's access
and inclusion in development processes.
Unfortunately, the WID strategy to a large extent failed to
integrate women, and instead forced gender issues into a special
organisation focusing on women only, setting aside other bodies
of importance for real change in gender relations (Connelly et
al., 2000; Schech, 1998). It never really addressed the basic roots
of gender and gender inequality such as male-dominated power
structures and gender regimes in social institutions. The WID
strategy was permeated with an essentialist notion of the
differences between women and men and argued for a
traditional development in terms of modernization theory and
economic growth. There was an underlying assumption that
this would reduce gender inequalities, therefore decrease the
role of gender as an analytical category and focus more on
individual achievement (Connelly et al., 2000). We argue that,
since gendered power structures were not targeted this might
even have contributed to an increase in gender segregation.
During this period, men's violence against women and IPV were
neither prioritized on the development policy agenda of the
Global North nor in health research.
The WID strategy was thus heavily criticised and put
under scrutiny by feminist activist groups as well as by
gender researchers. Accordingly, during the 1990s, new goals
were established and new strategies formulated for the
development policies that emphasized mainstreaming of
gender issues into all forms of work for development, labeled
Gender and Development (GAD) (Connelly et al., 2000).
Unlike WID, the GAD approach accounts for gendered power
structures and how these play a key role for both men and
women, i.e. not specifically for women. The GAD perspective
acknowledges the social construction of gender relations and
how they affect women's and men's lives. It also touches
upon intersectional perspectives and the importance of the
relationship among, for instance, gender, class, and ethnicity.
The GAD approach proposes strategies that address practical
needs and disruption of gendered power structures. The GAD
therefore argues for a gender mainstreaming approach and in
the UN World Conference on Women at Beijing in 1995, all
189 national governments adopted a strategy to focus on
gender equality as a means for development (Rathgeber,
2005).
The critique of development policies and the transformation from WID to GAD was initiated in several international
women's and gender conferences such as in Mexico 1975,
Copenhagen 1980 and Nairobi 1985. The mainstreaming
strategy was also adopted by the WHO and its framework for
gender equality in health. WHO defines gender mainstreaming
(GM) as follows:
If health care systems are to respond adequately to
problems caused by gender inequality, it is not enough
simply to add in a gender component late in a given
project's development. Research, interventions, health
system reforms, health education, health outreach, and
health policies and programs must consider gender from
the beginning. Gender is thus not something that can be
consigned to watchdogs in a single ofce, since no single
ofce could possibly involve itself in all phases of each of

an organization's activities. All health professionals must


have knowledge and awareness of the ways gender affects
health, so that they may address gender issues wherever
appropriate and thus make their work more effective. The
process of creating this knowledge and awareness of and
responsibility for gender among all health professionals
is called gender mainstreaming (http://www.who.int/
gender/mainstreaming/en/index.html)(WHO, 2007).
The World Health Organization strongly emphasizes that
IPV and violence against women are severe threats to public
and global health. WHO suggests a number of preventive
strategies for ending the violence that need to build on
evidence and empirical scientific results. WHO also suggests
efforts for increased collaboration with international agencies and organizations to reduce IPV (http://www.who.int/
mediacentre/factsheets/fs239/en/)(WHO, 2012).
Swedish gender equality policies, development policy and
intimate partner violence
Sweden adheres in many ways to the international
umbrella of strategies and implementation of gender
mainstreaming strategies agreed upon in the UN and
WHO. As mentioned in the Introduction to this paper, the
Swedish government has launched a new policy for gender
equality in Sweden's International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) for the years 20102015 (Government
Offices of Sweden, 2010). The overall objectives of the Sida
plan are to contribute to a reduction of gender-based
violence and to promote the rights and the economic and
political empowerment of those subject to gender-based
violence mainly women and girls in Sida's partner
countries and in humanitarian assistance. The policy
emphasizes gender mainstreaming as the means to reach
gender equality aiming at (i) actively applying and integrating the gender perspective, (ii) targeting specific groups
or issues, and (iii) conducting a gender-aware dialogue with
partners. Women's agency and rights are highlighted as key
targets for intervention for women's increased political
participation, economic empowerment, and working conditions. It also highlights sexual and reproductive health
and rights and aims to tackle all forms of gender-based
violence. In addition, it indicates specific intermediary
outcomes relating to prevention, legal measures, and
service and care for victims and survivors. In Sida's gender
policy document of 2005, two main areas of strategic
support are (i) strengthening rights, and (ii) power
structures and relations. The 2007 a Budget Bill identified
as the main thematic priorities: (i) the economic empowerment of women, (ii) sexual and reproductive health and rights,
(iii) the political participation of women, and (iv) women's
security. Sida management is also obliged to give Sida staff
resources, incentives and competence development in the
field of gender equality and gender mainstreaming and to
include gender equality in the monitoring and evaluation of its
own actions.
In order to contextualise Swedish international development policies, it is important to remember that Sweden,
together with the other Nordic countries, ranks high in
international comparisons regarding gender equality (World

A. hman, M. Emmelin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 115122

Economic Forum, 2011). Swedish gender equality policies are


often referred to as being both progressive and effective. They
are often used as a normative standard for the rest of the world.
The gender equality discourse is strong in Swedish society, and
politicians agree that gender equality is a key issue for
development and wealth in any given society. There is also
political consensus that this gender equality is important to
protect against reactionary forces that would push women
back to household duties and reproductive work (Srlin, 2011).
The main goal for Swedish gender equality policy is that
women and men have equal power to form their lives, as well
as to engage in shaping the society. This implies that they
should have the same opportunities, rights, and obligations in
all spheres of life. The policy is formulated so that the
overarching goals are equal distribution of power and influence
between men and women, economic equality between women
and men, and equal distribution of unpaid care and household
work. Last but not least, the policy emphasizes that men's
violence against women in Sweden should be eradicated, i.e. it
includes a vision of zero tolerance regarding gender-based
violence (Prop. 2006/06:155).
Therefore, and in line with the main discourse of national
gender equality in Swedish public policy, gender is strongly
integrated into the aims and the activities carried out in
Swedish development programs in the world (Sida, 2010:1;
Silfver, 2010). Linking the issue to development policy
implies hope that the Swedish notion of gender equality
might be transferred to other social contexts. Sida has
adopted a definition of gender-based violence that includes
what is being perpetrated by whom, for what purpose, and
with what effect. The types of violence specifically mentioned
in the plan are female genital mutilation, violence in the
name of honour, violence against lesbians and homosexuals,
sexual violence in conflict, and domestic violence. The four
entry points clearly relate to the Millennium Development
Goals and state that gender-based violence is a violation of
human rights; working for its elimination is crucial for
poverty reduction, reversing the spread of HIV, and the
protection and promotion of sexual and reproductive health
and rights (Sida, 2007).
The need to integrate research results on IPV into
development cooperation for increased gender equality
Issues of gendered power structures, patriarchal societies,
male dominance over women and girls that restrict their
agency and participation, and violence against women, have
started to be integrated into development policy, but from
policy to practice, there still remains much to be done. Our
concern is how gender mainstreaming policies in Swedish
development programs can make use of research results, for
instance from health research. It is therefore vital to pose the
question of how research on the magnitude and consequences of violence can contribute to gender equality and
development policies.
Researchers on gendered violence and health often
suggest, on the basis of their results, interventions such as
changes in legislation to combat normative systems that
suppress and violate women's agency in order to decrease
IPV. In addition, they often suggest changes in health systems
so that IPV may be integrated into everyday clinical routines

119

as well as training of personnel to detect IPV. However, these


suggestions fall short if they are not acknowledged and
integrated into general health policies and legislation. The
health researcher's role is usually to suggest changes in
policies or evaluate interventions, but seldom are they
actively involved in policy making, as their main focus is
academic work.
Several feminist scholars have pointed to the danger of
exporting gender policies from the Global North to the Global
South and the obvious risk of a continuation of colonial
relations and dependencies (Baell, 1998; Connelly et al.,
2000; Kilby & Olivieri, 2008; Moser, 2005; Schech, 1998). The
risk of de-contextualization is obvious if gender analysis
frameworks for analysis are adopted with little cultural
sensitivity or consideration of differences in public discourses,
legal systems, and gendered norms, as often presented in
research on gender and violence. Further, there is an obvious
risk of essentializing the woman to a subject of similarity,
regardless of social context and conditions, and without
taking into consideration the widespread differences in
socio-economic living condition and power structures that
affect gender relations. Criticism has been raised, in
feminist and post-structural research, of the essentialist
notion of the female subject in development projects (Baell,
1998; Kilby & Olivieri, 2008; Schech, 1998). Schech outlines
this critique by using Nussbaum's dichotomy and the choice
between a universal measure of quality of life for all men
and women or the use of a variety of different norms
selected from different cultures (Nussbaum & Clover,
1995). Development policy has thus been infiltrated by a
paradigm that is largely influenced by a notion of Western
modernity and a Western approach to development. This
has been the cornerstone for both the Women in Development and the Gender and Development policies, and there
is reason to suspect that the approaches have not really
benefited poor, marginalized, or women exposed to violence
(Connelly et al., 2000).
Post-developmentalists, post-colonialists, and post-structural
feminists have therefore paved the way for a renewed view
on gender and development. As Schech (1998) outlined
already in 1998, Australia's development policies ought to
move away from a hierarchal model of Western modernity
to a more cooperative approach that emphasizes partnership. Baell (1998) defines this process of changing approach as moving from aid-dependent relations towards
development partnerships (Baell, 1998). Further, Kilby and
Olivieri raise the question whether women's rights can be
advanced within a neo-liberal framework (Kilby & Olivieri,
2008). The point of departure for all this critique is GAD
and the rights approach. They argue that the focus on
women-only projects actually marginalized women from
broader (and male) power structures and that this policy did
not empower women. The view of women of the Global South
in development policies from the Global North has been
criticized by feminists from the Global South for being racist,
ethnocentric, and essentializing women as a homogenous group
of victimized, poor women without agency (see for instance
Mohanty, 1988).
Whereas WID, on one hand, separated women from
development work, the GAD strategy, on the other hand, had a
tendency to be too instrumental and technicalan approach

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A. hman, M. Emmelin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 115122

which might not benefit women and girls. In addition, there was
no guarantee that gender mainstreaming meant including
women; instead, mainstreaming gender often meant malestreaming, i.e. men in power defined the core issues so that
women's prioritised needs and rights were obscured or left out
(Moser, 2005; Mukhopadhyay, 2004).
In a recent self-evaluation of gender mainstreaming
policies, conducted by Swedish development agency Sida,
the evaluators stress that it is still important to create
incentives for gender mainstreaming, not only internally
inside Sida, but also externally among program partners
(Sida, 2010:1). They state that gender analyses are often
conducted, especially at the beginning of program activity.
There is, however, a concern that Sida has been poorer in
maintaining the same incentives later on in the work
process of program interventions. It is concluded that
gender is largely absent in program monitoring and
evaluation. There is thus a risk that gender issues are
concealed and that this hinders the internal learning
process among Sida staff for further advancement of the
development policy. However, Sida does exercise and
emphasize a strategy of dialogue, which would certainly
benefit women if they are approached as collaborating
agents in their own right.
There is also conceptual confusion as to the use of the
concept of gender in development debates (Warren, 2007).
This is the case also in current Swedish policies on IPV and
development programs. It is of concern that Sida still uses the
old concept of gender role in its recent policy for development collaboration (Sida, 2010). We would have appreciated a
more up-to-date and theoretically driven use of conceptual
frameworks presented in gender research so that the terminology in development policies could be based on contemporary gender/feminist theory. Drawing on old sex role theory, as
presented in a rather structural-functionalist notion, to describe and analyse gender inequalities of today is not only
misleading, but will also obscure analysis (Connell, 2007;
Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).
The need for cultural sensitivity in development policies is
obvious, but often this is neglected. Usually the issue of
violence against women is dealt with separately, which in
turn increases the risk of being rendered invisible and not
part of general interventions to improve women's lives and
health. Also, health research on violence against women is at
risk of falling into this pitfall of neglect, even though gender
researchers on IPV often claim cultural sensitivity as a key
aspect of the outcomes of research. One example where
cultural sensitivity is in focus is the WHO multi-country
study of 2005, which emphasizes the importance of adapting
questionnaires to the specific cultural understanding of
gender and violence (WHO, 2005). The issue is about giving
women a voice and about always having in mind whose voice
is doing the talking.
It is also important to include local feminist groups and
activists from the Global South in the dialogue. In many
countries of the Global South, which are now targets for
development collaboration, there is an existing body of
feminist activists, which have long traditions of activism and
engagement in policy making. These NGOs form an important
counterpart to development agencies of the Global North that
can contextualise and sensitise the problems with IPV and give

women a voice in ways to empower women and increase their


agency. This partnership approach would certainly facilitate
and probably effectuate development cooperation so that those
in need of interventions on IPV, i.e. women and girls, can have a
say.
The gender equality discourse in Sweden is rather topdown, emanating from governmental legislation and national
policy; heading towards local policy and governance in
municipalities, companies, and even family life. In line with
Eveline and Bacchi (2005), we argue that there is an obvious
danger that adopting a gender mainstreaming approach will
not enhance gender equality as it may turn into merely a
question of administration and management. Eveline and
Bacchi state that the very understanding of gender in a
specific context will guide the whole work at an early stage of
the process. It will certainly have a bearing on how equalities
are understood and articulated, which in turn will affect
policies and strategies for change. Further, they argue that
power asymmetries are usually not in focus in gender
mainstreaming, and they claim that it needs to go beyond
traditional approaches of difference between men and
women. Instead they suggest so called gendering-awareness
mainstreaming in which they advocate for a shift from the
noun and category gender to a verb and a process gendering.
Sweetman (2012), in her editorial on gender, development
and mainstreaming policies, is also critical of the way
mainstreaming policies have been used from the mid-1990s
and onwards. She still regards gender mainstreaming as an
international priority as well as a local reality and she
emphasizes that without local connections to activists and
feminist groups, the policy may hamper real change and be
counter-productive to local struggles and initiatives. We agree
with Sweetman and believe that combating intimate partner
violence requires complex and comprehensive strategies that
include both mainstreaming policies that take into account not
only governmental efforts but also grass-root movements'
initiatives in a local context. In this regard, we look forward to
strengthened relations between Swedish development policies
and such local initiatives.
Conclusions
We want to emphasize the need for an integration of
gender health research on IPV and violence against women as
well as an integration of gender and feminist theory into
development collaboration so that proper interventions can
be grounded in current and actual knowledge. Further,
we stress that Swedish development policies on gender
mainstreaming in general have a good intention but, to be
effective, they need to be more solidly grounded in both
activist movements in the Global South as well as in current
gender theory developed in gender studies. There is a need
for a sustainable dialogue among development agencies,
health researchers, and activist movements in order to
develop more democratic and participatory frameworks for
reducing intimate partner violence and violence against
women.
The question of who is in focus in these policies is
relevant. It is also a question about who is in power to define
the problem of IPV and gendered violence. The risk of
taking the male as norm is obvious in male-dominated

A. hman, M. Emmelin / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 115122

societies, often patriarchal in their structure, where women


have little or no power to speak in public and where men
usually talk about women as being in their place.
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Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 123131

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Women's Studies International Forum


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif

The refugee and the nexus requirement


The relation between subject and persecution in the
United Nations Refugee Convention
Eva Nilsson
Ume University, 901 87 Ume, Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Available online 24 January 2014

s y n o p s i s
The challenge that my paper deals with is the complexities of gender and violence within
international refugee law, taking women exposed to male partner violence as a starting point.
The focus is the definition of refugee in the United Nations Refugee Convention and the
requirement that the persecution must be based on specific grounds, the nexus requirement.
My analysis shows that the Convention is grounded in an essentialist understanding of the
subject and that the preservation of its structure and integrity also means preserving the
power structures in society. The argumentation suggests that it is time to abolish the nexus
requirement and the limitation of the grounds, but my conclusion is rather that we must
continue to work with our frame of thought focusing on the refugee situation and the
discursive constitution of the subject in time and space.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
My paper deals with the challenges posed by the complexities of gender and violence within international refugee law,
taking women exposed to male partner violence as a starting
point. The focus of my challenge is the definition of refugee in
the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) and
the requirement that the persecution must be based on specific
grounds, the nexus requirement. The definition covers only
persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership
of a particular social group or political opinion. In many states,
such as Sweden, women are recognized as constituting a
particular social group, making this a ground of particular
interest in my analysis. In the case of male partner violence it is
also this ground that is often invoked. In this instance it must be
shown that the violence stems from her membership of a
particular social group. In this way, the persecution (violence)
and the ground for persecution (being a woman and thus part
of a particular social group) are separated as being
non-constitutive of each other. My paper challenges this
separation between the subject and the persecution. It is
challenged in the light of studies revealing that women and
0277-5395/$ see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2013.12.008

these women in particular have difficulties showing that the


persecution that they fear is grounded in their membership of a
particular social group. It is also challenged in the light of
theories that the subject is constituted in discourses through
processes involving actions such as persecution.
This means that the analysis has both an empirical and
theoretical starting point. The theoretical starting point will
be described more thoroughly, since it is primarily that which
will contribute to new knowledge in this area of law, while
the empirical starting point that the definition of refugee
has been interpreted historically within a framework of male
experiences will only be used as a backdrop in the analysis,
since it is well-established internationally (see UNHCR, 2002a).
Hence, this is an argument that has been made, well and
extensively, for the past twenty years (see e.g. Bailliet, 2012;
Bhabha, 2004; Crawley, 2001; Edwards, 2003; Freedman, 2010;
Heyman, 2005; Kneebone, 2005; Macklin, 1995; Mascini & van
Bochove, 2009; Randall, 2002; Spijkerboer, 1994; Tuitt, 1996).
In Sweden too, studies suggest that female asylum seekers are
discriminated against in the asylum determination process
(Cheikh Ali, Querton & Soulard, 2012, p. 30. See e.g. Bexelius,
2008; Feijen & Frennmark, 2011; Segenstedt & Stern, 2011;

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E. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 123131

Zamacona Aguirre, 2008). I myself have made a contribution to


this argument in a recently published article (Nilsson, 2012).
The point of departure for that article was the changes that were
made in the new Swedish Aliens Act (SFS 2005:716) of 2006
concerning the definition of refugee, implying inter alia that
persecution on account of gender should be covered by the
definition, and empirical studies showing that these changes
have had little impact in practical applications. The conclusion in
my study is, however, that there is a gap not only between the
law and practical applications, but also between the international legal framework and the changes made in national
law. Instead, it seems that gender equality is not favored in the
policy area of asylum, while it is a commonly observed feature in
other policy areas. Accordingly, under the threat of masses of
asylum-seekers crossing our borders, there are very limited
possibilities for taking gender into account, as globalization and
the feminization of asylum-seekers increases this threat. It is
particularly the case if we revise our self-image as a good
and equality producing state (non-refugee producing state)
and acknowledge that it is not only the other women (and
children) that are being oppressed. Holding on to international
refugee law may from this perspective seem impossible,
applying it in a generous spirit even less possible.
The study, however, also raised questions about the basic
premises in the international legal framework upon which
the changes were based. As already mentioned, this is the focus
of the current article. In other words: this article takes the
theories and studies referred to as starting points for an analysis
of problems concerning the international legal regime, but it is
the international legal regime that is the focus of my analysis and
that is the subject of my challenge.
I will start with a description of my theoretical starting
points. I will then turn to the international legal framework.
In this part of the paper I will provide a background to and
description of the 1951 Convention and its definition of a
refugee as amended by the Protocol relating to the Status of
Refugees (1967), giving a more detailed description of the
membership of a particular social group ground. I will then pay
particular attention to statements made by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR, concerning the
interpretation of the concept. The Commissioner's statements
are not legally binding, but they provide legal interpretative
guidance for interpretation of the Convention and Protocol.1 In
many states, including Sweden, they also form the basis for
recognizing women as constituting a particular social group
which makes them important in the analysis. Thereafter follows
the analysis and discussion, where I will problematize the
Convention's basic design, the nexus requirement and the
separation that it implies, in the light of the theories and studies
referred to. Finally, I will present my conclusion.
Theoretical starting point
The analysis starts from a critical perspective based on a
feminist legal theory. A feminist perspective on law represents
an expansion of the field of women's legal research, from
research into legal issues with direct relevance to women to
research from a more complex, systems-critical perspective
into the premises and assumptions upon which law is based
(Gunnarsson & Svensson, 2009). It involves both a distrust of
law and a desire to change the power system, which is linked to

sex/gender and signifies and shapes the law (Nilsson, 2007a).


However, an intersectional perspective is also used. This is a
critical perspective that expresses an understanding that
gender does not include one social position but many and
focuses on the interaction between various power structures
(Crenshaw, 1989, 1991).2 In contrast to power analysis based
on the asymmetric position of different groups in a hierarchical
order, however, an intersectional perspective seeks to examine the context in which the definition of groups and the
separation into different (and unequal) categories becomes
meaningful and a basis for the exercise of power. It is, therefore,
essential to examine the temporal and spatial design of the
exercise of power but, as well as challenging the boundaries of
time and space, an intersectional perspective also offers an
opportunity to transcend the analytical divisions created by
the categories of class, sexuality, gender and race/ethnicity.
To examine how e.g. class is intersected by both gender and
race stereotypologies, or how the constitutive role of sexuality
functions in the creation of a gender order, means questioning
the logic of distinguishing3 which sustains the notion of
homogeneous and hierarchically divided power relations. This
is a form of analysis which requires that attention be paid to
the discursive structures and material conditions that make
these categories meaningful and indispensable conditions for
the exercise of power. From this perspective, it is not only the
relationship between different categories which is of interest;
the question is rather how these categories are created and
given meaning in specific contexts (de Los Reyes, 2007; de Los
Reyes & Grndahl, 2007).
This is a contextualized approach to law and legal
knowledge which builds on social constructionist thinking. A
social constructionist theory of law focuses on how law relates to
the social, in that it not only regulates something that exists prior
to law, but is also in itself part of the social construction of that
same reality (Burman, 2007). A common approach among social
constructionist researchers is discourse analysis where theory
and method are intertwined, in a theoretical and methodological
totality, focusing on language. However, within discourse theory
there is not one single approach but a series of interdisciplinary
and multidisciplinary approaches (Winther Jrgensen & Phillips,
2000). Some of these include detailed linguistic analysis; some
do not (Fairclough, 2003). A number of key premises, however,
constitute the basis for most discourse analysts, however,
building on social constructionist theory: First, discourse analysis
assumes a critical approach to taken-for- granted knowledge. It
means that our knowledge and our worldviews are not seen as
mirror images of the reality out there, but as a product of our
way of categorizing the world. Secondly, it is assumed that the
way we understand the world and the categories and concepts
that we use are historically and culturally specific. Discursive
action is a form of social action as it helps to construct the social
world (including knowledge, identities and social relationships)
and thereby preserves certain social patterns. Thirdly, it assumes
a relationship between knowledge and social processes. Knowledge is thus seen as something which is produced in social
interaction, where one builds common truths and fights for what
is true against what is false. This means that all forms of social
interaction, but especially linguistic ones, are of great interest.
Fourth, it assumes a relationship between knowledge and social
action. In a particular worldview, some forms of actions are
natural and others unthinkable. Different social worldviews

E. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 123131

lead to different social actions, and the social construction of


knowledge and truth therefore has concrete social consequences
(Burr, 1995; Winther Jrgensen & Phillips, 2000).
In addition to these key premises there are also differences in
the approaches that I have been mostly inspired by, Faircloughs'
critical discourse analysis and Laclau & Mouffes' discourse
theory. Hence, Fairclough, in contrast to Laclau & Mouffe,
distinguishes between discursive practices and other social
practices. This means that some social phenomena function
according to other logics and must be studied using other tools
than discourse analysis. In Laclau & Mouffes' discourse theory no
distinction is made between the discursive and non-discursive
social practices, i.e. all social practices are seen as discursive. That
does not mean that everything is reduced to language in the
discourse theory, but that discourses are material. Some have
perceived discourse theory, in such way that when everything is
seen as discourse, reality ceases to exist. This perception is built
on a misunderstanding. As in critical discourse theory, both a
social and a physical reality exist. In discourse theory, however,
the physical reality is completely superimposed, i.e. all social
phenomena are considered to be organized according to the
same principles as the language. As the signs in the language
are relationally defined and only gain their meaning by being
distinguished from other signs, social actions only gain their
meaning in relation to other actions. Accordingly, all social
practices can be seen as articulations, because they reproduce
or alter the ordinary meanings assigned to them. In discourse
theory, the analysis aims to (according to a concept taken from
Jacques Derrida) deconstruct the structures that make up our
natural environment, i.e. the analysis serves to prove that the
given organization of the world is the result of political processes
with social consequences. The struggle to form meaning is,
therefore, an important focus in concrete analyses (Winther
Jrgensen & Phillips, 2000. See also Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, 1990).
This means that critical discourse analysis focuses on the use of
discourses as a means of exercising power (Niemi-Kiesilinen,
Honkatukia & Ruuskanen, 2007).
Furthermore, discourse theory provides a more developed
theory about the constitution of entities and identities,
especially regarding group formation and collective identity
which makes it of particular interest in my analysis.
According to discourse theory, there is no objective relationship that determines into what groups a social space is
divided. Instead the formation of groups is always inclusions
in a non-determinable terrain and, like any other discourse, it
serves only to rule out alternative interpretations. Through
the discursive formation of groups we exclude the other,
the one in relation to which we identify ourselves, and also
ignore the differences that exist within a group and hence all
the other ways in which we could also have formed groups.
One important element in group formation processes is
representation. Since groups are not predetermined in a
society but exist only after being first expressed in words,
someone has to talk about or to a group or on their behalf.
The situation is not that a group is first created and then
represented, but that the group and the representation are
constituted in a single move, and once a group is represented
it involves the entire community image, because the group is
constituted in relation to other groups. Group formation is
thus part of the struggle concerning how the whole myth of
society is to be given its content and, conversely, different

125

social images imply a direction about how people should be


divided into groups. Group formation is therefore political
(Winther Jrgensen & Phillips, 2000. See e.g. Mouffe, 2005).
In my opinion, law, as a social practice, represents a
discursive practice that helps to create and reproduce unequal
power relations between social groups. In addition, legal
discourses have a privileged status among social discourses in
that they have state power behind them, providing legal
discourses with an exceptional power to shape social relations
(Niemi-Kiesilinen et al., 2007. See also Burr, 2003; Smart,
1989). For instance, construing violence in the private sphere
as emotional, as individual actions taken for personal reasons,
also means construing it as a social problem, placing the
responsibility for the protection on the home country (Nilsson,
2012). The consequence of this construction in law is that
many of these women will be without protection, since in their
home country they are often dependent on their violent men
for their support and protection (Jastram & Newland, 2003).
Many of these women may also be threatened by their own
family if they attempt to leave their husband or partner, as it
may be perceived as dishonoring the family (UNHCR, 2008).
The law's constructions of violence and how it is understood in
relation to the subject is therefore of fundamental importance
for these women. As pointed out by Kyambi the refugee is, in
fact, constructed in law by the process by which he [!] is
recognized as a refugee for the purpose of the law. (Kyambi,
2004, p. 26.)
The international legal framework
Refugee status, on the universal level, is governed by the
1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of
Refugees. These two international legal instruments have been
adopted within the framework of the United Nations and are
legally binding on those states which have ratified or acceded
to them. The 1951 Convention was adopted after the Second
World War, as the refugee problem had not been solved and
there was a need for a general definition of who was to be
considered a refugee, to replace ad hoc agreements adopted in
relation to specific refugee situations which had been the
situation earlier (UNHCR, Handbook, para. 7). The definition is
given in Article 1A. The first paragraph of the article deals with
statutory refugees, i.e. persons considered being refugees
according to international agreements adopted before the 1951
Convention. The second paragraph gives a general definition,
according to which the term refugee shall apply to any person
who:
As a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and
owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion, is outside the
country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such
fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that
country; or who, not having a nationality and being
outside the country of his former habitual residence as a
result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is
unwilling to return to it. []
Hence, the application of the Convention is limited to
events occurring before 1 January 1951. The Contracting

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E. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 123131

States may also, under Article B choose to restrict the


application of the Convention to events occurring in Europe.
By acceding to the 1967 Protocol, states undertake to apply
the substantive provisions of the 1951 Convention to
refugees as defined in the Convention without the 1951
dateline and without geographic limitations. The definition
covers only those persons who are outside the country of
their nationality or, if the person is stateless, outside their
usual country of residence. Accordingly, internally displaced
people are not covered. Furthermore, the paragraph only
covers persons who have a well-founded fear of being
persecuted. The persecution feared must also be based on
specific grounds, in that the definition covers only persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion. Finally, it is a
requirement that the person is unable, or unwilling, to avail
herself/himself of the protection of that country. Apart from
these provisions of inclusion, the Convention also contains
provisions of cessation (Article 1C) and exclusion (Articles
1D, 1E and 1F) from refugee status.
As described in the Introduction, it is the nexus
requirement (the limitation of grounds) that is the focus of
this paper. Among the five grounds enumerated in the
definition membership of particular social group is of
particular interest. It is considered to be the least clear and
is not defined by the Convention itself. According to the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, consistent
with the objective, purpose and language of the Convention,
this category cannot be interpreted in such a way as to render
the other Convention grounds superfluous or to function as a
catch all that applies to anyone fearing persecution. Thus,
to preserve the structure and integrity of the Convention's
definition of a refugee, a social group cannot be defined
exclusively by the fact that it is a target for persecution.
Nonetheless, according to the guidelines, persecutory action
toward a group may be a relevant factor in determining the
visibility of a group within a particular society or may even
cause the creation of a particular social group in society. It is
also pointed out that there is no closed list of groups that
might constitute a particular social group. Instead the term
should be read in an evolutionary manner, open to the
diverse and changing nature of groups in various societies
and evolving international human rights norms. According
to the guidelines a particular social group is a group of
persons who share a common characteristic other than their
risk of being persecuted, or who are perceived as a group by
society. The characteristic will often be one which is innate,
unchangeable, or which is otherwise fundamental to identity,
conscience or the exercise of one's human rights. Consequently, the definition includes characteristics which are historical
and therefore cannot be changed, and those which, though it is
possible to change them, ought not to be required to be
changed because they are so closely linked to the identity of the
person or are an expression of fundamental human rights, as
well as groups that are based on a characteristic determined to
be neither unalterable nor fundamental but that, nonetheless,
are perceived as a recognizable group in that society. Hence,
the definition includes two approaches: the first, referred to as
the protected characteristics approach, or the immutability
approach, and the second, referred to as the social perception
approach. Both approaches are based in state practice in

common law jurisdiction. According to the guidelines, in civil


law jurisdiction most decision-makers place more emphasis on
whether or not a risk of persecution exists than on the standard
for defining a particular social group (UNHCR, Handbook, paras.
58). The requirement that the persecution must be based in a
convention ground is, however, usually still maintained, e.g. in
Sweden (see Wikrn & Sandesj, 2010, pp. 167 ff.).
According to the UNHCR guidelines on gender-related
persecution the size of the group has sometimes been
used as a basis for the refusal to recognize women
generally as a particular social group (UNHCR, Guidelines
on international protection: Gender-related Persecution,
para. 31). However, in these guidelines, as well as in the
guidelines on membership of a particular social group, it
is emphasized that the size of the purported social group
is not a relevant criterion (UNHCR, 2002a,b). The
guidelines on gender-related persecution also state that
sex can properly fall within the ambit of the category of
social group, with women being a clear example of a
social subset defined by innate and immutable characteristics, and frequently treated differently from men.
Their characteristics also identify them as a group in a
society, which subjects them in some countries to different
treatment and standards. A distinction is, however, made
between the terms sex and gender, according to which
gender refers to the relation between women and men based
on socially or culturally constructed and defined identities,
status, roles and responsibilities that are assigned to one sex or
another, while sex is a biological determination (paras. 3
and 30). The importance of this distinction was later emphasized in the UNHCR Handbook for the Protection of Women
and Girls.
Furthermore, according to the guidelines on membership
of a particular social group, cases asserting refugee status
based on this ground frequently involve claimants who face
risks of harm at the hands of non-state actors, with women
who risk being abused by their husbands or partners being
one example. In this connection it is noted that situations
may occur in which a claimant is unable to show that the
harm inflicted or threatened by the non-state actor is related
to one of the five grounds. The situation of domestic abuse is
given as one example, where a wife may not always be able
to establish that her husband is abusing her based on her
membership of a social group, political opinion or another
Convention ground. In those cases she may be able to
establish a valid claim for refugee status if the state is
unwilling to extend protection based on one of the five
grounds, i.e. the harm visited upon her by her husband is
based on the State's unwillingness to protect her for reasons
of a Convention ground. Hence, the causal link between the
persecution and the ground may be satisfied where there is a
real risk of persecution at the hands of a non-state actor for
reasons which are related to one of the Convention grounds,
whether or not the failure of the state to protect the claimant
is Convention related, or the risk of being persecuted at the
hands of a non-state actor is unrelated to a Convention
ground, but the inability or unwillingness of the state to offer
protection is for a Convention reason (UNHCR, Guidelines on
membership of a particular social group, paras. 20, 22 and
23 and UNHCR, Guidelines on gender-related persecution,
para. 21).

E. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 123131

The structure and integrity of the Convention


As described, membership of a particular social group is
regarded as the ground that has the least clarity. It seems,
however, that the position taken by the UNHCR concerning the
interpretation of this criterion is also somewhat ambivalent.
Although it is stated in the guidelines that persecutory action
toward a group may be a relevant factor in determining the
visibility of a group in a particular society or even cause the
creation of a particular social group, it is pointed out at the
same time that, in order to preserve the structure and
integrity (the objective, purpose and language) of the
Convention, a group cannot be defined exclusively by the fact
that it is targeted for persecution. According to the guidelines,
there is no closed list, of exactly which groups may be
characterized as a particular social group. Instead, the term
should be read in an evolutionary manner, open to the diverse
and changing nature of groups in various societies and evolving
international human rights norms. Thus, for this reason the
UNHCR position is also ambivalent, as it prescribes both a
historic and an evolutionary interpretation of the concept. In
my opinion, these disparate positions reveal theoretical inconsistencies which can be explained by the fact that the
Convention's basic design was laid down during a time when
the mainstream western perception of the subject as an
autonomous and sovereign unit prevailed, while the guidelines
are based on state practice of a more recent date, reflecting the
social turn and changes in this historic perception of the
subject. The theories reflected in state practice are however only
partially implemented in the UNHCR guidelines. Even if the
social perception approach and a couple of other statements
made by the UNHCR reflect these theories, it is obvious that
they are alien elements in a discursive structure marked by
essentialism (cf. also the discussion by Verdirame, 2000, pp.
588 ff., particularly on p. 594, about the definition of the four
groups in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, 1948.). Perhaps, this is particularly
obvious when it comes to the category of women. In this case it
is explicitly stated in the guidelines that the defining characteristics are innate and immutable which reveals that the UNHCR
position is also somewhat ambivalent. This is, however, a
perception that can be challenged in light of the theories
described (but also, today more than earlier, in light of changed
realities). It can also be challenged in the light of its
consequences for women. In the following part I will elaborate
these challenges more thoroughly, starting with the empirical
basis for my analysis (the backdrop).
Preserving the structure and integrity but also the
power structures in society
To begin with, the requirement that the persecution must
be based on specific grounds can be challenged in the light
of studies disclosing that women have particular difficulties
showing that the persecution that they fear is grounded in their
membership of a particular social group. As described, this
empirical basis has also been an important starting point for
the UNHCR. The situation for women is, however, starting to
change, and the guidelines mentioned above on gender-related
persecution are one part of a process that is raising awareness
and acceptance of how gender-related forms of persecution

127

can fall within the refugee definition, according to the UNHCR.


Women and children exposed to various forms of genderrelated persecution are also now being recognized as refugees
in many countries. It is only very recently, however, that a
growing number of countries have also recognized women and
girls who are victims of domestic violence as refugees (UNHCR,
Handbook for the Protection of Women and Girls). There are
substantial differences in the protection offered, however,
among those states which recognize victims of domestic abuse
as refugees on the grounds of social group. According to one
line of reasoning recognition is restricted to those cases where
the state fails to protect the victims of domestic assault because
they are women. Another line of reasoning simply finds that
women who are subjected to domestic violence are persecuted
because of their social group (women), since their gender is a
substantial factor in their persecution (Kelley, 2002, pp.
559568, on p. 565, with further references).
Sweden is one of the countries that recognize genderrelated persecution. After a revision in 2006, the definition of
refugee explicitly covers persons who have a well-founded
fear of persecution on account of their gender,4 i.e. persons
who, according to the previous legislation, were granted
protection in accordance with a special safeguard provision
as persons otherwise in need of protection. It was also
established in the preparatory work that gender may
constitute membership of a particular social group and
that persecution in the private sphere may be a basis for
obtaining refugee status (prop. 2005/06:6). These changes
were made in order to implement the UNHCR guidelines but,
as already mentioned above, the studies carried out so far
suggest that they have had little impact on practical
applications. In my opinion it is not only the practical
applications that are problematic; a closer reading of the
preparatory work reveals that the gender perspective
implemented in the legislation is also a gender biased
perspective. In the investigation, on which the Government
Bill is based, there is a discussion about wife-battering where
it is pointed out that there may be many reasons why a woman
is exposed to serious battering, for instance because she has
been unfaithful, or is accused of being unfaithful, the primary or
driving force normally being jealousy. According to the
investigation it would be far-fetched to say that the action of
the man in these cases is a result of her membership of a
particular social group (SOU, 2004:31, p. 126). In my earlier
article (Nilsson, 2012) I argue that it is not so far-fetched,
however, to say that the expressions that the jealousy takes or
is allowed to take (actions available in the situated emotional
repertoire), are due to her membership of a particular
(subordinate) social group. For, if one assumes (which the
investigation does) that it is mainly women who are exposed to
such persecution, why then is it men who do the hitting? Do
women not get jealous? If not, is that related to gender? And, if
they do get jealous, why do they not hit because of it? What is
more, if we acknowledge feelings or the expressions they
take or are allowed to take (violence) to be gendered, how
can we even differentiate between gender (ground) and
violence (persecution)? There is no analysis of this in the
investigation. Yet, the structural abuse of which this persecution is an expression is construed as emotional, as individual
actions taken for personal reasons, just because it is manifested
in a family context.5 Thus, women who risk abuse from their

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E. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 123131

husbands or partners may be excluded from refugee status


because the persecution that they risk is not defined as being
based on membership of a particular social group (she is not
beaten because she is a woman). Should the abuse nevertheless
be defined as being on account of gender, there is also the
requirement that the state's inability to provide protection is on
account of gender and not simply due to lack of resources or
inefficiency.6 Hence, Sweden embraces the more restrictive line
of reasoning described earlier, among those states that recognize
victims of domestic abuse as refugees on the grounds of social
group. The consequence of this restriction is that women from
countries that lack resources or countries with an inefficient
state administration are discriminated against in comparison to
male victims of persecution, as this is not required in
non-gender-related cases when persecution is exercised by
private actors.
Paradoxically, it was precisely constructions such as these
that formed the basis of the criticism that was the starting point
for the UNHCR guidelines on gender-related persecution. As
described above, in the area of refugee law, there has been
criticism both before and since the adoption of the guidelines. In
my opinion, this is not only because of differences among states
in the protection offered, i.e. a lack of implementation of these
guidelines but the Convention's basic design and some of the
positions taken by the UNHCR are also problematic, in relation to
women exposed to male partner violence. In the guidelines it is
presumed e. g. that it is difficult to demonstrate that the abuse in
such cases is related to a Convention ground, which reproduces
the particularity of this abuse but it also puts the statement in
the Swedish preparatory work about jealousy in a different
light. Hence, to be determined gendered or structural, general
patterns of abuse must be shown, but in the refugee area of
law it seems that domestic abuse is not acknowledged as a
universal7 pattern of domination and control. Accordingly,
when the persecution is familiar to our own gendered practices
or when they are otherwise considered too general the link
between the persecution and the ground is denied. If the
othering mechanisms are strong enough, however, the violence
may qualify as structural. So, in order to be considered
structural, the violence must not be familiar or general, but
other (Nilsson, 2012. See also discussion by Bailliet, 2012, pp. 44
and 46; Freedman, 2010, p. 191; Mascini & van Bochove, 2009, p.
130, as well as discussion about the universality of this kind of
violence by Randall, 2002, p. 17, and Charlesworth & Chinkin,
2000, pp. 12 f. Cf. also discussion by Barsky, 1994, pp. 17 ff.,
particularly on p. 5, about constructing an appropriate refugee
or the suitable other). In other words, only abuse that differs
from our own (naturalized) structures is seen as structural.
As I see it, gender is always present, cutting through every
relation (Sweden is not exempt from this, despite its commonly
observed high level of gender equality.), i.e. every action is
gender-related in some way, together with other discursive
power relations such as class and ethnicity (Nilsson, 2007a). It
may be for this reason that it has proved to be so difficult to see
our own power structures, or to accept that there is such a thing
as persecution on account of gender (cf. Noll, 2000, pp. 9 f.;
prop. 1996/97:25, p. 290).
The logic of separation (between the subject and the action)
in this case presumes a logic of distinguishing (see above) that
sustains the notion of homogeneous and hierarchically divided
power relations, but also preserves the power structures in

society. From this starting point, the distinction that is


reproduced in the guidelines between the terms sex and
gender are also problematic, as is the statement that the
defining characteristics of the category women are innate and
immutable. In my opinion, it is open to question whether it is
possible to distinguish between sex and gender (cf. Folkelius &
Noll, 2000, pp. 15 f.; Noll, 2000, p. 9, in polemic with Daley &
Kelley, 2000, pp. 148174) and whether the defining characteristics of the category women are innate and immutable.
Furthermore, in my view, persecution, along with other
discursive practices or actions, is an essential element in the
constitution of subjects, both at a group level and an individual
level. Interesting, in connection with this, is the criticism of
Butler, referred to in the in the above-mentioned Swedish
investigation. She asks how feminist criticism should respond to
scientific discourses which proclaim facts about what sex is
and wonders if sex is not as culturally constructed as gender
(Butler, 1990a, p. 10). Butler's views are perceived, in the
investigation, as a denial of the existence of a physical reality,
and questions whether such a theory can be taken seriously
(SOU, 2004:31, p. 166). Butler, however, makes it clear that her
criticisms do not mean that she ignores the physical realities or
the importance of physical bodies. She also stresses the need to
speak to and for women (Butler, 1992, pp. 4, 8 and 1317).
According to Butler [t]he foundationalist reasoning of identity
politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in
order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently,
political action to be taken. Butler's argumentation is that
there need not be a doer behind the deed, but that the doer is
variably constructed in and through the deed and that it is the
discursively variable construction of each in and through the
other that is of interest in her analysis (Butler, 1990a, p. 181.
See also discussion by Butler, 1990a about identity as an effect
on p. 187 and Butler, 1990b, p. 339, and the discussion about
discursive and non-discursive social practices, above).
The understanding of sex as dual and dichotomous
(where the defining characteristics of the respective category
are innate and immutable), is, however, a perspective that fits
like a hand in a glove with the liberal (gender) project (see also
Nilsson, 2007a, p. 159; Widerberg, 2000, p. 129). Some people
wonder how it will be possible to come together politically, if
we can no longer define what a woman is, biologically or
culturally. Others believe that the definition is precisely what we
must let go of if we are to be truly political (Lindn & Milles,
2002, p. 18). As described, questioning essential identities does
not mean that we cannot continue to use the terms working
class, men, women, black or other significants to refer
to collective entities. The possibility of political struggle on
the basis of these significants also remains (Mouffe, 1992,
pp. 370 ff. See also Mouffe, 2005, particularly on pp. 5 f.).
Conclusion
To sum up, my analysis shows that the Convention is
grounded in an essentialist understanding of the subject and
that the preservation of its structure and integrity also
means preserving the power structures in society. It has been
established by the UNHCR that the Convention's basic design
(its structure and integrity) requires persecution to be on
specific grounds, where the persecution can contribute to
but not in itself constitute, the subject. The Convention's

E. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 123131

structure and integrity did not, however, prevent the 1967


Protocol or previous limitations of space and time from being
removed (events occurring before 1 January 1951 and in
Europe). Furthermore, there are no limitations of grounds in
the protection following the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (1966) (art. 7) or in the Convention against
Torture (1984) (art. 3). These instruments are, however,
limited in other ways. Universal protection against persecution
is thus lacking. Furthermore, there is a lack of international
protection for persons fleeing for reasons other than persecution. This applies e.g. to the so-called climate (or environmental) refugees, an issue that has received considerable attention
in recent years.8 This is a group of refugees that really
challenges the Convention definition of refugee, and the
nexus requirement in particular, but also, as with women,
our self-image as a non-refugee producing state, since the
material conditions (the social and physical reality) for these
refugees, as well as for other refugees from the poor world, is in
fact, to a great extent, a consequence of our actions (see also
Barsky, 1994, pp. 6 and 246, with further references). There are
therefore, as pointed out by de Los Reyes & Mulinari, reasons
for problematizing time and the role of history when it comes
to the creation of meaning and legitimacy in an unfair world
order. A discourse which displaces the issue onto other times
and places has namely been conducive to hiding the way living
conditions for the others in the poor world has been a
precondition for the welfare of us in the rich world (de los
Reyes, & Mulinari, 2005, in reprint 2010, p. 76.).9
My argumentation suggests that it is time to abolish the
nexus requirement and the limitation of the grounds and focus
instead on the protection available in the home country,
regardless of a relevant motive. That was my conclusion to
begin with, but I also realized that it might make the Convention
less useful as a legal instrument, presuming that law requires
delimiting in one way or another. So, my conclusion would
rather be that we must continue to work with our frame of
thought. As argued, questioning essential identities does not
mean that we cannot continue to use the terms. What we need
to do is to re-negotiate them, focusing on the refugee situation
and the discursive constitution of the subject in time and space,
i.e. how categories are created and given meaning in specific
contexts. Perhaps it is ironic that I stress the importance of time
and space, when the previous Protocol was added to make the
Convention universally applicable, regardless of time and space.
My aim, however, is the same: to increase its universality. This
is perhaps also ironic (cf. note 7, above). I believe that this is the
challenge: exploiting the given, dichotomies and categories,
acknowledging pluralism.10
Acknowledgements
In addition to the referees of this paper, I wish to thank
participants in the research theme Violence at Ume Centre
for Gender Studies (UCGS), Ume University, for comments
on drafts of this paper.

129

together with the conclusions that the UNHCR supports, provides guidance for
application.
2
For more recent international literature on intersectionality, see e.g.
Grabham, Krishnadas & Herman (2009), Lutz, Herrera Vivar & Supik (2011),
McCall (2005), and Yuval-Davis (2006).
3
Compare the term principle of keeping apart [isrhllandets princip],
introduced by the historian Yvonne Hirdman in her theory about the gender
system. The principle of keeping apart means that the relationship between
men and women is dichotomized. In symbiosis with this principle is the
principle of the male primacy norm. This means that qualities which are
perceived as masculine are valued more highly than features and tasks that
fall within the female sphere, leading to a hierarchization (Hirdman, 2001).
Compare also with the term logic of detachment [avskiljandets logik],
introduced by the legal scholar Eva-Maria Svensson, referring to the
separation between law and society that traditional legal scholarship builds
upon (Svensson, 1997).
4
In the Act, the term sex is used, referring to biological as well as social
sex. See prop. 2005/06:6, p. 34. In the English translation of the Swedish Act
the term sex is translated as gender. See Chapter 4, Section 1 of the Aliens
Act, SFS 2005:716, available in English at http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/
5805/a/66122.
5
Similar results can be found in recent research from other countries.
See e.g. Freedman (2010). See also Kneebone (2005, p. 24).
6
The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women has
criticized Sweden in this respect and has stated that this interpretation
of the law, which would introduce a double persecution requirement,
diverges from the UNHCR gender guidelines (see HRC, 2007, 6 February).
7
I use the word universal to capture discursive structures and
hegemony, i.e. I lay no claim to universalism. Instead I believe that time and
place are central categories in analysing and denaturalizing socially and
historically created inequalities, such as men's violence against women (see also
de Los Reyes & Grndahl, 2007, particularly on pp. 14; de los Reyes, 2007 on pp.
101 ff., as well as discussion by Mouffe, 2005, particularly on pp. 83 ff. and 120 ff.
and Butler, 1992, p. 8). For a discussion of challenges that an intersectional
analysis grounded in a structural framework provide for understanding the role
of culture in domestic violence, see Sokoloff & Dupont (2005), particularly on p.
58.
8
This was i.e. an issue for the Human Rights Days that were held in
Stockholm in November 2011. Program available at http://www.mrdagarna.
nu/index.php/en/programme/fullstaendig-programlista.
9
Migrants also contribute to our welfare in terms of brain-draining
or social dumping. Migrant women e.g. are often recruited into
women-specic jobs that are unprotected and low paid. See a
discussion by Jean dCuhna at http://www.saynotoviolence.org/aroundworld/news/ve-questions-jean-d-cunha, and de los Reyes & Mulinari,
2005, in re-print 2010, on pp. 85 and 102 ff. See also Calleman (2011).
10
See also Nilsson (2005, 2007b), as well as Laclau (1996, p. 59),
according to which the impossibility of a universal ground does not
eliminate its need: it just transforms the ground into an empty place which
can be partially lled in a variety of ways (the strategies of this lling is what
politics is about). See also discussion by Laclau (ib.) about the death of the
subject, universalism and particularism, particularly on pp. 29 f.

References
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Prop (2004/05:170). Ny instans-och processordning i utlnnings- och
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and process in aliens and citizenship matters].
Prop (2005/06:6). Flyktingskap och frfljelse p grund av kn eller sexuell
lggning [Governments proposal, refugee status and persecution on account
of one's gender or sexual orientation].
SOU (2004:31). Flyktingskap och knsrelaterad frfljelse [Government
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Endnotes
United Nations Ofcial Documents
1

See e.g. http://www.unhcr.se/en/resources/legal-documents/guidelinesand-positions.html. In Sweden it is established in the preparatory work (prop.


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Convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, New York.
(1948, 9 December). (78 UNTS 277).

130

E. Nilsson / Women's Studies International Forum 46 (2014) 123131

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International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, New York. (1966, 16
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Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, New York. (1967, 31 January). (606
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UNHCR (2008). Handbook for the Protection of Women and Girls, Geneva.

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