Travelling Ayahs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Global Networks and Mobilization of Agency

Robinson, Olivia

doi:10.1093/hwj/dby016

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Colonial Indian ayahs sometimes made significant income by sailing with British families to Britain and providing their care-labors on ships during the months-long sea voyages (Chakraborty 2020; Robinson, 2018). However, trans-oceanic care-work was a risky endeavor as Indian ayahs were sometimes abandoned by their employers in Britain, without wages and without return passage.…”

Section: The Perspectives Of Ayahsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The historical and anthropological scholarships around South Asian domestic labor are largely self-contained fields of enquiry. Historians tend to treat Indian independence from British rule as a watershed moment and largely limit themselves – following periodization norms – to the precolonial and colonial periods (Blunt, 1999; Banerjee, 2004; Chaudhuri, 1994; Chakraborty, 2020; Dussart, 2022; Robinson, 2018; Sen, 2009; Sinha and Varma, 2019). South Asian anthropologists mostly pick up chronologically where historians leave, and tend to focus on the postcolonial and contemporary periods (Grover et al, 2018; Grover, 2022; Mahanta and Gupta, 2019; Ray and Qayum, 2009; Sen and Sengupta, 2016; Sharma’ 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Care-work for colonial and contemporary white families in India: A historical-anthropology of the racialized romanticization of the ayah

Chakraborty

Grover

2022

Cultural Dynamics

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This article examines interracial gendered care-work through the figure of the ayah (maid) serving white families in India from the late-eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Historical and anthropological scholarships on domestic labor in India remain self-contained fields, and mostly focus on middle-class Indian households. Our comparative study offers insights into the racialized romanticization of the ayah through a trans-temporal approach combining archival work (for British imperial households in the past) with ethnographic research (for Euro-American expatriate households in the present). While exploring the parallels in colonial and contemporary domestic dynamics, and the intertwining of interracial anxieties and sentimentalization, we pay close attention to the subjectivities of Indian ayahs and their changing labor roles.

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Section: The Perspectives Of Ayahsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Care-work for colonial and contemporary white families in India: A historical-anthropology of the racialized romanticization of the ayah

Chakraborty

Grover

2022

Cultural Dynamics

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“…19-54. 15 K. Haskins, The Art-Journal and Fine Art Publishing in Victorian England, 1850-1880(London, 2012A. Robinson, 'Stalking through the literary world: Anna Jameson and the periodical press, 1826-1860', Victorian Periodicals Review, xxxiii (2000), 165-77, at p. 167.…”

Section: Benjamin Dabbymentioning

confidence: 99%

Precarious Professionals: Gender, Identities and Social Change in Modern Britain

2021

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'Precarious Professionals' uncovers the inequalities and insecurities which lay at the heart of professional life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. The book challenges conventional categories in the history of work, exploring instead the everyday labour of maintaining a professional identity on the margins of the traditional professions. Situating new historical perspectives on gender at the forefront of their research, the contributors explore how professional cultures could not only define themselves against, but often flourished outside of, the confines of patriarchal codes and structures. Putting the lives of precarious professionals in dialogue with master narratives in modern British history, the chapters in this volume re-evaluate the relationship between professional identity and social change. The collection offers twelve fascinating studies of women and men who held positions in art and science, high culture and popular journalism, private enterprise and public service between the 1840s and the 1960s. From pioneering women lawyers and scientists to ballet dancers, secretaries, historians, humanitarian relief workers, social researchers, and Cold War diplomats, the book reveals that precarity was a thread woven throughout the very fabric of modern professional life, with far-reaching implications for the study of power, privilege, and expertise. Together, these essays enrich our understanding of the histories and mysteries of professional identity and help us to reimagine the future of work in precarious times.

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“…This article focuses on the experiences of travelling ayahs (servants and nannies) who travelled with colonial families both within and outside the British Empire . 1 Recent studies, including my own work, have focused on the experiences of ayahs in Britain during the 19th and 20th centuries, and on the ways that British government and society engaged with the destitution of colonised subjects in Britain (Datta, 2021a; Robinson, 2018; Saini, 2018). This study expands on the previous literature to focus on the experiences of ayahs in Britain and the rest of Europe under unusually difficult situations of waiting brought about by events at both global and individual levels: at the global level, the outbreak of the world wars and at the individual level, the actions of irresponsible employers who abandoned their ayahs in foreign countries.…”

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confidence: 99%

Stranded: Indian Travelling Ayahs Negotiating Waiting and Repatriation

Datta

2022

Indian Journal of Gender Studies

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The expansion of the British Empire facilitated movement across the globe for both colonisers and colonised. This article focuses on the experiences of travelling ayahs (servants and nannies) who travelled with colonial families both within and outside the British Empire. This study expands on the previous literature to focus on the experiences of ayahs in Britain and the rest of Europe under unusually difficult situations of waiting brought about by events at both global and individual levels: at the global level, the outbreak of the world wars and at the individual level, the actions of irresponsible employers who abandoned their ayahs in foreign countries. In so doing, the article contributes to a nuanced understanding of how the ayahs navigated waiting as gendered subjects, and simultaneously, how they actively attempted to craft their repatriation in the context of the highly gendered expectations attached to women of South Asian descent on the move.

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Travelling Ayahs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Global Networks and Mobilization of Agency

Cited by 9 publications

References 10 publications

Care-work for colonial and contemporary white families in India: A historical-anthropology of the racialized romanticization of the ayah

Care-work for colonial and contemporary white families in India: A historical-anthropology of the racialized romanticization of the ayah

Precarious Professionals: Gender, Identities and Social Change in Modern Britain

Stranded: Indian Travelling Ayahs Negotiating Waiting and Repatriation

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