Masculinities and the International Division of Care: Migrant Male Domestic Workers in Italy and France

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic data concerning migrant male domestic workers, this article examines the gendered dimensions of the process of racialization in Italy and France. First, it shows that specific racialized constructions of masculinity are mobilized by the employers as well as by training and recruitment agencies. These constructions of masculinity are related to different forms of organization of the sector in each country and to different ideologies about the integration of migrants. Second, the data presented reveal the strategies used by migrant male domestic workers to reaffirm their masculinity in a traditionally feminized sector. In doing so, this article intends to explore the connections between international migration and the gendering of occupations, with regard to the construction and management of masculinities in domestic service. Finally, by examining men's experiences, this article aims to contribute to a more complex definition of the international division of care work.

Negotiating masculinity in informal paid care work

“…This is similar to the situation in elder care, where male elder carers state that they are often turned down by women and therefore usually hired for male users only. As determined also by Scrinzi (2010), this shows that male care workers experience significantly more exposure to sexualisation than women, a situation which is ambivalent: on the one hand, society doubts their heterosexuality because they perform feminised work; on the other hand, they are constructed as hypermasculine in their relation to male children and female clients. In contrast, female care workers are constructed as desexualised.…”

“…The decision of families to hire men is motivated by genderspecific child upbringing. Male childcarers or 'mannies' (Scrinzi 2010) are expected to play football and do all the usual rough-and-tumble things that boys supposedly like and to undertake things in a 'manner appropriate to boys'. Male childcarers are expected to strengthen the masculine identity of their protégés.…”

“…to a large extent performed by migrants, a fact which further contributes to its devaluation. While the majority of migrant care workers are female, the discriminatory processes that symbolically feminise (Parreñ as 2008) and racialise (Scrinzi 2010) migrant men, while migration policies deny them access to formal work, are pushing migrant men into feminised informal work in hospices, cleaning, and care work. As some studies have pointed out, migration destabilises conventional notions of gendered occupations and remakes labour market gender International Review of Sociology*Revue Internationale de Sociologie 347 segregation, as the threat to the migrants' sense of masculinity is linked not only to downgrading social mobility but also to their employment in feminised jobs (Willis et al 2010).…”

Gendered Migrations and Global Social Reproduction

“…Male domestic workers seek to professionalise their work by claiming how what is assigned as feminised and natural when done by women, is an object of training and is learned when they are required to perform the same tasks. They also develop occupational niches within feminised professions, see this job as just one step in occupational mobility, rewrite the femininity of these occupations as peculiar to the destination country in order to negotiate their masculinity (Sarti 2010;Scrinzi 2010) or justify this strategic flexibility in occupational choice as necessary in order to meet financial commitments ). Yet, at other times, as in the case of black domestic workers in Southern Africa, their work is infantilised as it is considered inherently feminine but this may be made acceptable by reinforcing their hierarchised position within a racial order (Bartolomei 2010;Tranberg Hansen 1989).…”

How neo-Marxism creates bias in gender and migration research: evidence from the Philippines

“…This choice has been criticized for running the risk of "falling into the trap of accepting the long-dismissed sex role theory" (HondagneuSotelo 1999), of reifying "stereotypical gendered conceptions of domesticity" (Manalansan 2006), or of endorsing "methodological sexism" (Dumitru 2014). Indeed, other scholars working on migrant domestic workers in Italy included men in their samples (Kilkey 2010;Näre 2010Näre , 2012Scrinzi 2010). In the second edition of her book, Parreñas added interviews with twelve men domestic workers in Italy and explored the extent to which domestic work threatened their "masculinity" (Parreñas 2015).…”