Labour, Legality and shifts in the Public/Private divide

Abstract

This article discusses the changing role that work performed in private homes has played, and continues to play, in migration law in the Netherlands and at the EU level. It explores to what degree work performed in the home is defined as (exploitative) contractual labour or as inherent to family life, and what this means for claims to residence rights as a precursor to citizenship. It does this by reviewing case law of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) and of the European Court of Human Rights (EctHR) against the background of the Dutch case. It reveals tension between how citizenship is constructed and reproduced at the national level and how it is constructed and reproduced at the EU level. Following Adam McKeown, this article concludes that different perspectives on (reproductive) labour as a qualification for citizenship may reflect different perspectives on (reproductive) labour and the quality of citizenship. POLICY IMPLICATIONS• Third Country Nationals must be allowed to reside in the EU with their EU children, to ensure the latter's effective enjoyment of fundamental rights.• Policies to combat trafficking of domestic workers must respect family life.• Family migration policies must allow individual family members enough scope to resist exploitation within families.• Policies concerning labour protection, social protection and migration should no longer take the breadwinner-citizen as point of departure, but the current reality of flexible labour relations in which the distinctions between home and work, and between employment and self-employment, are no longer sharply defined.

Gender and free movement: EU migrant women’s access to residence and social rights in the U.K.

“…Examining citizenship from a gender perspective brings to the fore questions concerning how rights and entitlements, and the conditions attached to those rights -to move, reside, work and access social provision -are underpinned by assumptions regarding gender roles and relations, with gendered effects in terms of access to rights (Lister 2003, Benhabib and Resnik 2009, Lewis 2002. At the same time, gender divisions in relation to paid and unpaid work/care fundamentally shape women's experiences as citizens and migrants, as workers and family members, and their access to rights that depend on work or family relations (Kofman 2007, van Walsum 2013, Anderson 2009. As such, free movement from a gender perspective raises questions regarding not only the gendered nature of free movement rights in terms of the categories and conditions attached to EU citizens, but the gendered effects in terms of access to rights to residence and entitlements to social benefits after moving to another country.…”

Zeitdiagnose Männlichkeiten Schweiz

“…The re/productive gender division in citizenship has been questioned in Western European countries by gender-equality discourses in combination with EU legislations (Fernandez and Jensen 2013;Morris 2014;Paciulan and Preibisch 2013;Ruffer 2011;Schrover and Moloney 2013). However, Switzerland stands out with a maternalistic gender regime alongside a highly restrictive migration one (Huddleston et al 2011;Valarino 2016).…”

“…The Swiss migration regime has been labelled as highly restrictive (Huddleston et al 2011) where non-EU foreigners struggled to earn legal settlement and other rights. In addition, Switzerland's gender regime is inspired on the male breadwinner/female caregiver ideals Valarino 2016).…”

“…Vaterschaftsforschung entstanden (vgl. hierzu Baumgarten et al 2012Baumgarten et al , 2020Liebig/Peitz 2018Maihofer et al 2010Nentwich 2008;Stamm 2016;Valarino 2016;Wehner et al 2010). Weitere wichtige Beiträge zur kritischen Männlichkeitenforschung stammen u. a. aus dem Bereich der Sozialen Arbeit (Stiehler 2009;Graf et al 2015) und den Bildungs-und Erziehungswissenschaften (Hadjar/Lupatsch 2010; Forster 2020) sowie der Professionssoziologie (Zinn 2019a, b).…”