Introduction to the Special Issue: Men in a Woman’s Job, Male Domestic Workers, International Migration and the Globalization of Care

Abstract

Very little scholarship exists, which investigates male domestic workers. Yet they constitute a highly interesting vantage point from which to analyze the gendered and racialized division of labor as well as the social constructions of masculinity in both contemporary societies and in the past. In several countries nowadays a large number of domestic workers are migrants. By focusing on men employed as domestic workers in different societies, in both the global North and the global South (Italy, France, United Kingdom, India, Ivory Coast, and Congo), the articles presented in this special issue investigate the gendered dimensions of globalization and international migration, while avoiding the essentialist association of ‘‘gender’’ with ‘‘women.’’ They cover a wide range of disciplines (sociology, anthropology, and history) and methodologies (both qualitative and quantitative). Despite this variety of themes and approaches, all identify domestic service as a site where ‘‘hegemonic’’ and ‘‘subaltern’’ masculinities are produced and negotiated at the interplay of multiple social relations. Therefore, they contribute to filling a gap in the recent scholarship about migrant domestic and care labor. Investigating male domestic workers’ practices and the social construction of masculinity within domestic service from the late nineteenth century to the current day, this special issue illustrates not only geographical but also historical variations

Migrant masculinities and domestic space: British home‐making practices in Dubai

“…Although still small in comparison with research that focuses on female migrants and femininities, an identifiable body of literature on migration and masculinities is now emerging (Ahmad 2008; Atherton 2009; Batnitzky et al 2008; Charsley 2005; Datta 2008; Datta et al 2009; Donaldson et al 2009; Gardner 2002; Herbert 2008; Hibbins 2005; Keeler 2008; Kitiarsa 2008; Osella and Osella 2000; Sarti and Scrinzi 2010; Shen 2008). In discussing masculinities, this article builds on a large body of work in geography and beyond that approaches masculinities as plural, diverse and spatially contingent (e.g.…”

“…Beaverstock 2005); indeed, the notion of skill itself is often distinctly gendered in migration policy and mobilities (Kofman and Raghuram 2005). Yet, a few recent studies of the relationship between migration, masculinity and home provide evidence that this line of enquiry might be productive (Atherton 2009; Datta 2008; Pease 2009; Sarti and Scrinzi 2010). Their findings are supportive of Gorman‐Murray’s recent assertion of the ‘mutuality between domesticity and masculinity, where meanings of home and men’s identities are co‐constitutive and interrelational’ (2008, 369).…”

Gendered Migrations and Global Social Reproduction

“…Hence, these intersections of race and class find institutional form. These differences are also gendered with the masculinity of migrant men employed in occupations classed as female (such as domestic work) remoulded in order that it can be accommodated into the racialised, gendered order (Sarti and Scrinzi 2010). Men are sometimes seen as hyper-masculinised and as sexual threats (Tranberg Hansen 1989), at other times their labour is accommodated within dominant forms of masculinity by emphasising the heavy household work undertaken or the work performed outside the house such as gardening or home maintenance (Cox 2012;Palenga-Möllenbeck 2013;Ramirez 2011).…”

The Power of the Vulnerable Body

“…Attention has been drawn, for example, to the ways that women's work in the private sphere enables the making of official international politics, through the work of diplomats' wives, for instance (Enloe 1989), and how women's accomplishments in the market economy are being disregarded in dominant discourses (Tickner 1992, 70). It is also widely accepted that the de-valorization of care work intersects with different hierarchies of gender, race and class (Näre 2010;Mackie 2013), and an emergent body of literature now also recognizes male care workers in the global political economy (see Manalansan 2006;Sarti and Scrinzi 2010).…”