The Domestic Worker's Place in the ‘Madam's’ Space. The Construction of the Workspace in the Home of Muslim Madams

Bonnin, Debby; Dawood, Quraisha

doi:10.1080/21528586.2013.784448

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 4 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Domestic workers' silence or invisibility underlies the social relations and power imbalance of the home as a place of work (Bonnin and Dawood, 2013;Fernandez and de Regt, 2014). Therefore, boundary work is not only about the nature of the employment relationship but also about how domestic workers are included or excluded in employers' private households.…”

Section: 'Boundary Work': Social and Physical Distancingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…their 'private' home and domestic workers' 'public' workplace because of the contradictory interplay associated with power differentials and the intimate nature of domestic work in the private household (Bonnin and Dawood, 2013). Further, by recognising and emphasising the household as a workplace, Marchetti (2022: 14) argues that a concerted effort is made to focus on interactions between domestic workers and employers in 'a specific location'.…”

Section: Peer Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

‘Lockdown Work’

Tame,

Zanazo

2023

The Thinker

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores domestic workers’ experiences of ‘lockdown work’, which refers to working conditions during the level 5 to level 3 lockdown period in South Africa during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on in-depth interviews with female black African South African and African migrant domestic workers from Zimbabwe and Malawi, the article provides crucial insights into how the pandemic altered existing working conditions and employment relationships. We use the sociological concept ‘boundary work’ to illustrate the relational dynamic and consequence of social and physical distancing during the pandemic. We argue that social and physical distancing deepened the public-private divide in employers’ private households and domestic workers’ intimate workplaces. The findings show that domestic workers experienced limited or no control over decisions regarding Covid-19-related protocols in their workplace, intensified workloads without additional remuneration, and felt voiceless regarding working conditions because they feared losing their jobs. The experience of lockdown work highlighted domestic workers’ vulnerability because of the asymmetrical and intimate nature of domestic work under new management imperatives that positioned most domestic workers as a high-risk group or perceived carriers of Covid-19. We conclude that the experience of personalism/maternalism and distant hierarchy as forms of boundary work undermined domestic workers’ sense of dignity and employment rights.

show abstract

Section: 'Boundary Work': Social and Physical Distancingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Peer Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Lockdown Work’

Tame,

Zanazo

2023

The Thinker

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The existing studies of domestic work focusing on space as a central notion have mainly tackled the changing boundaries and notions surrounding private space in the presence of a MDW, 39 access and social life in public space, 40 access to housing, 41 as well as political spaces and resistance. 42 In the following sections, through an intersectional theoretical dialogue between anthropology of space and place as well as feminist geography, I offer a spatial reading of the neighborhood of the Filipina MDWs in Beirut that explores placemaking in four different ways: placemaking through a creative use of vacant spaces, placemaking as homemaking that deconstructs the private/public binary, placemaking that blurs the temporal construction of the nighttime city, and placemaking that reveals a growing rate of interracial intimate encounters.…”

Section: Embodiment Space and Placemakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied Placemaking: Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers’ Neighborhood in Beirut

Zein

2020

Mashriq & Mahjar

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Based on a larger ethnographic project that investigates the spatial impact of the kafala (sponsorship) system on the access and mobility of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Beirut, Lebanon, this paper focuses on embodiment and the placemaking of Filipina MDWs in the city. From a theoretical lens that is placed at the intersection between the anthropology of space and place and feminist geography, I argue that the ways in which the precarious and marginalized community of Filipinas creatively makes place for themselves in the city despite spatial exclusion, labor restrictions, and employers' control, ascribe new meanings to these already existing productions of Beiruti space. The argument is delivered through a spatial ethnographic analysis based on two months of participant observation and semi-structured interviews.

show abstract

“…Early influential sociological analysis on the political and gendered nature of domestic work by Jacklyn Cock (1980) highlighted the exploitative nature of domestic work during the apartheid period and paved the way for understanding the complex intersectional nature of domestic work in the South African context. Since then, research on domestic work has been guided by themes that relate to gender (Gaitskell et al, 2010), labour regulation (Jacobs et al, 2013), outsourcing (Du Toit, 2021;Du Toit and Heineken, 2021), migration (Jinnah, 2020), and cultural identity (Bonnin and Dawood, 2013), among others. These studies point to the fact that domestic work accounts for the sustained livelihoods of many women and, therefore, an analysis of their lived experience in the workplace is of paramount importance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘God Gave us Legs to Walk!’

Grundlingh

2023

The Thinker

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Domestic work is a major source of income for many Black African women in South Africa. The experience of domestic workers is mainly shaped along racial and class lines – this is a result of the remnants of the legacy of apartheid, where many Coloured and African women were dependent on employment in the domestic work sphere. This article considers the experiences of a group of Coloured female domestic workers in a coastal town in South Africa. Drawing on ten qualitative interviews, I show how their experiences are framed around issues of mobility – this includes moving to work and moving at work and the consequences of immobility in the world of work. Most research that deals with issues of mobility in domestic work focuses on migration patterns. This novel approach to understanding the notion of mobility for domestic workers contributes to the existing literature on domestic work in South Africa but extends the conceptualisation of movement beyond migration patterns. The article also makes a much-needed contribution to understanding the experience of domestic work in rural settings in South Africa. This is done by exploring the coping strategies that the participants employ to support themselves and their families. Networks and family ties form an essential component of the financial and emotional survival of this group of women. The role of social capital is also investigated as it plays an important role in forging trust and reciprocity among participants of this study.

show abstract

The Domestic Worker's Place in the ‘Madam's’ Space. The Construction of the Workspace in the Home of Muslim Madams

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

‘Lockdown Work’

‘Lockdown Work’

Embodied Placemaking: Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers’ Neighborhood in Beirut

‘God Gave us Legs to Walk!’

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About