In Belgium, a service voucher scheme-known as Titres Services-was launched in 2004 in order to create employment and regularize the labor conditions of domestic workers. The extent to which this scheme has represented an improvement in domestic workers' labor conditions, however, is still a matter of debate. This article explores the workers' experience of the changes introduced by this scheme. It focuses on Latin American migrants that are currently working under this scheme in Brussels, situating them in relation to their previous experiences and the experience of other migrants who currently work in the informal market. The authors distinguish two tropes in their informants' discourse, which describe their ambivalence regarding these changes. Using the Titres Services scheme's rhetoric, the first one seeks to increase the social status of this occupation by presenting it as a 'profession'. Contrarily, the second trope highlights the limits to professionalization.
Based on ethnographic research conducted in Brussels, this article analyses gender-based constructions in relation to paid domestic work. We focus our attention on Latin American migrants who, unlike migrants from other regions, come from societies where paid domestic work has been the main occupation of women throughout the twentieth century, where it was strongly shaped by a colonial legacy. We identify two main tropes within the discourse of our informants regarding this kind of work: the '(gendered) professional' and the '(domestic) worker'. In our analysis, particular attention is given to the participation of men in paid domestic work within the context of migratory experiences.
In this paper, we propose new conceptual tools for interpreting the human landscape of XXI century Europe. We argue that today's Europe, characterized as trans-modern, can be read as a heterotopic space of Modernity, bounded by two emblematic dates: 1492 and 1942. If during Modernity the social identification pattern is represented metaphorically by the roots of a tree, the metaphor of trans-modern identity is the radicant (Bourriaud). This metaphor suggests a shift in focus for the analysis of memory processes. Instead of collective memory (Halbwachs), suggesting a common understanding and shared values , we propose the notion of collected memory (Young). In trans-modern Europe social memory is constructed from a compilation of memories (national, regional and local) and their counter-memories. To read this new landscape of memory means deciphering-through diachronic and synchronic translations-the radicant syntax connecting transiting transmodern identities.
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