Role-Identity Dynamics in Care and Household Work: Strategies of Polish Workers in Naples, Italy (original) (raw)
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Often adopting a feminist perspective, the sociological literature on migrant domestic services (MDS) does not make explicit which feminist paradigm it speaks from. This article situates this literature within ongoing debates in feminist theory, in particular the tension between materialist and poststructuralist approaches. Then, it discusses the empirical relevance of each of those two paradigms on the example of the results of original research into the personalization of employment relationships in MDS. The contribution proposes a new way of making sense of the diversity of feminist theories, distinguishing between modern and postmodern approaches. Indeed, since the 1980s, feminist theory in the US and Western Europe has undergone a ‘postmodern turn’, which renders previous typologies much less up-to-speed with recent developments in the field. Then, the article examines which paradigms are implicit in the sociological literature on MDS. Initially, personalization in MDS was mainly seen in materialist terms, as a way to maximize the quantity and quality of labour (including emotional labour) extracted from domestic workers. The emergence of postmodern approaches in feminist theory set off a progressive shift in MDS literature. First, this literature showed that personalization also fulfils identity functions for employers and workers, then it widened its focus to include the affective dimensions of domestic labour (not to be confused with emotional labour). The final section shows how modern and postmodern feminist approaches can be combined within a single research, on the example of original research on personalization in MDS in Belgium and Poland. In particular, the contribution shows that the distinction between material functions of personalization on the one hand, and its emotional/identity functions on the other is not empirically operative. Indeed, migrant domestic workers generally use emotional/identity categories to frame material questions, and vice versa. This final part shows that, rather than representing incompatible approaches, modern and postmodern feminisms complete each other, in this case showing a fuller image of personalization processes in MDS.
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Spain and Sweden represent societies with very different welfare, migration, and employment regimes in a European context, but in both countries, female migrant workers in the private domestic/care sectors experience precarious job conditions. The purpose of this article is to explain the situation of migrant workers in these societies through an analysis of both structural components and the position of stakeholders involved in the private care/domestic services sector. Comparing the cases of Spain and Sweden, I argue that different characteristics of regimes and markets—rather paradoxically—produce similar results for the workers. In both countries, there is pressure to keep the wages low. Work hours are often unpredictable and adapted to the clients’ demands. In Spain, these workers fill the “care gap”, representing a comparably affordable solution to the lack of public eldercare. In Sweden, the private domestic services market expanded after the so-called RUT tax subsidy was implemented in 2007. Here, cleaning companies play a key role as middlemen who receive a large share of the cost for these services. Few actors represent the workers, and those who do find themselves restrained by structural factors (as NGOs in Spain) or ambiguous in their support (as the Swedish trade unions). All in all, the female migrant domestic/care workers in Spain and Sweden apparently form part of the development towards a “migrant precariat” in European societies.
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BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, 2024
This Rahmenpapier of my habilitation discusses the performativity approaches of Bourdieu and Butler as reflexive research perspectives on the social construction of migrant and refugee identities. Focusing on the performativity of speech acts and emotionalized enactments, I employ empirical data examples about commodified and familial care work that reveals how migration and refugeeness are constituted in micro-level face-to-face interactions. Introducing the concepts of doing, undoing and not doing migration/refugeeness, I show different care performances that reproduce, transform or subvert social identities in the interplay of individual agency with the social regulation by institutional, organizational and discursive structures of the national migration, asylum and integration regimes. Throughout the paper, I argue that the social order of migration/refugeeness is biopolitical and postcolonial: drawing on historical images of orientalism, social positions of internal others are constituted and simultaneously subordinated to the majority society. Regulated by biopolitical means of administration and disciplining, social processes of doing of migration/refugeeness generate affective values in the images of internal and external others, who supposedly depend on the care and control of the hegemonic nation. When ‘migrant/refugee workers’ are used as an effective and economical solution to the increasing labor demand of the nation and when ‘refugee families’ become a commodity on the national market of public and private social services, the social order of migration/refugeeness materializes in productive values that benefit the nation state.
2010
In 2008, I conducted an exploratory case study on the employment experience of Brazilian migrants in Dutch cities. While presenting the main findings of this study, I will be focusing on a few institutional and relational elements – law, gender, schooling, and the negotiation of the employment relationship – which became the stepping stones for my current PhD research on domestic services and migrant workers. Quotes from individual interviews with migrants and contributions from social theory will be brought together for a better understanding of the core research questions. How are working conditions negotiated in the domestic services? Does sociodemographic diversity within workers and employers correspond to some heterogeneity in the quality of their employment relationship? What is the role of intermediary elements such as labour law, organized labour, or service companies? And how can we better assess the importance of immaterial resources such as personal bonds, trust, and the sense of possibility? Issues regarding the time and place of my undergoing research will complement the paper. The empirical data collection will be taking place in the area of Lisbon. What has been observed about domestic services there? What context can be defined? Urbanity, post-colonialism and the transformation of gender relations are important issues deserving further attention.
Managing Migration with Stories? The IOM “i am a migrant” Campaign
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This article offers an analysis of the aim, audience, form and content of the “i am a migrant” campaign of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM). We suggest that the campaign directs public opinion in Western ‘host countries’. We furthermore propose that the campaign’s website as a platform for migrants’ voices is not antithetical to the mission of the IOM to manage migration according to a logic of productivity and rationality, but rather a logical extension of it. We show that the migrant narratives presented not only confirm, but also disrupt the assumed naturalness of migrants’ strong ties with their countries of origin, frequently underpinning established policy on the migration-development nexus.
The culture of migrant reception services in Italy An exploratory research.pdf
Rivista di Psicologia Clinica n° 2-2018, 2018
Italy has a long history of immigration, which has become part of the country’s landscape in a complex and varied way, and has led to significant changes in important contexts such as in the school, the workplace, and in the provision of welfare services. And yet, immigration policies still consist in emergency measures that do not recognize the phenomenon in its long-standing and structural dimension. In addition, public opinion is concerned as a result of the alarmist distortion of this issue, as shown by the gap between data on immigration and perceived immigration. Since in this research we take into consideration collusively shared experiences, these misunderstandings cannot be corrected by providing more information on the real data; we posit that the emotional scope must be recognized in order to address this issue. In particular, we asked ourselves how this context - changes brought by immigration, public opinion, and government policies - is represented within the migrant reception services. Accordingly, we interviewed a group of reception staff from the Roman area on the type of service that they think they are offering. The results show how, in their experience, this complex reality of immigration is not evoked: the experience within the services is isolated from the Italian narrative and context. However, the voice of migrants and their point of view, emerge as a resource within these services, as openness rather than isolation.