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Last Updated: Saturday, 06 September 2008 - 5:45 PM |
Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (Paperback), by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, University of California Press, 341pp.
In Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo's Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning
and Caring in the Shadow of Affluence, readers explore, along with the
researcher, an oft overlooked element of domestic labour in America. In
examining this particular manifestation between the haves and have
little, Hondagneu-Sotelo has provided a "scholarly" treatment where
Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed fell short. This is by no means an
indictment of Ehrenreich's work, quite the contrary. Ehrenreich's
Nickel and Dimed is approachable by the many levels of readers that
seek to understand the phenomenon of the working poor and their
interaction with affluent Americans (here, I speak specifically of
Ehrenreich's chapter two titled "Scrubbing in Maine"). However, in Domestica, Hondagneu-Sotelo has opted to focus her research on
immigrant domestic workers, specifically Mexican and Central American
women in Los Angeles. In so doing, her research provides insight into
the minds and worlds of both parties who engage in what can easily be
termed a "love hate" relationship; one where, out of necessity, both
the employer and employees are in need of one another. In addition, Domestica serves to highlight some of the struggles of members of
America's largest "minority" population (be they documented or
otherwise). While Hondagneu-Sotelo relegates her analysis and
interviews to women in the Los Angeles area, this reviewer is of the
opinion that her research may well be duplicated in other cities with
similar populations and yield like outcomes.
Reading this work, I began pondering the future of work and workers
and four questions came to mind: (1) As America becomes more diverse,
will the question of immigrants holding less than desirable positions
along the socio-economic margins become of increasing interest to
researchers and politicians such that worker-friendly policies emerge?
(2) If so, what forms will later policy manifestations assume? (3) What
will such a shift mean for the future of economic relations between
these two disparate groups? (4) Also, will America continue to
marginalize employees that hold the critical job of caring for our
young such that we ensure a future of troubled youth due to attachments
to caregivers and the familial realities of economic and social
stratification? History has shown if we ignore questions not unlike
these, problems are sure to result.
Historically, "love labor" had been performed, initially, by
captive African American women and later those under strict laws (Jim
Crow) of mobility, both physical and social. With the relative
ascension of African Americans into the socio-economic sphere of
marginal acceptance in America, certain forms of work are left to the
cheaper, and sometimes unpaid, labor force of immigrant women.
Increasingly, such workers are admitted into affluent homes in America
through informal networks. For this brief iteration, we consider
Hondagneu-Sotelo's Part Two titled "Finding Hard Work Isn't Easy."
Here, Hondagneu-Sotelo discusses the other worldly process where women
in need of domestic workers and the women in need of domestic work come
in contact with one another.
This "whole other world" is highlighted when Hondagneu-Sotelo
writes, "most prospective employers looking for paid domestic workers
in Los Angeles bypass employment agencies, newspaper ads, or other
formal job announcements, which they find expensive, slow, and
unreliable. Instead the majority rely on their co-workers, neighbors,
friends, and relatives when they seek domestic help." This in
itself is telling in that it pulls from Granovetter's theory of the
strength of weak ties as mentioned in Deirdre Royster's Race and the
Invisible Hand. Applied to Hondagneu-Sotelo's work, there exist, in the
domestic worker community, ties that allow for a potential employer in
need of workers to gain access to a network of domestic workers with
the ability to refer friends and/or family members to employers in need
of domestic assistance. Additionally, such a process not only allows
for a socially and economically unequal relationship to ensue and
continue for years in some cases, it also provides the foundation for
further entrenchment of unequal employee and employer relations rooted
in economic exploitation.
Whereas many of these workers are not earning a living wage, some
employers exercise great pains not to flaunt their affluence. In one
telling moment, Hondagneu-Sotelo writes, "some employers try to snip
off the price tags on new clothing and home furnishings before the
Latina domestic workers read them because they fear the women will
compare the prices of those items with their wages - which they
invariably do. While some employers often feel guilty about 'having so
much' around someone who 'has so little,' the women who do the work
resent not their affluence but the job arrangements, which generally
afford the workers little in the way of respect and living wages"
(xi-xii). In this instance, we witness the uneasy but, to the employer,
necessary relationship between the affluent employer and the unaffluent
worker. Additionally, we note how workers, through Hondagneu-Sotelo's
in-depth interviews, indicate that they would rather that requests come
not "as a symbol of servitude and a humiliating affront" to one's
dignity, but that their work is seen for what it is, essential to the
functioning of the household in which they are employed.
In producing a work with statistical data on domestic labor in Los
Angeles, coupled with the voices of women on both sides of the issue,
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo has done an admirable job of broaching the
subject of the uneasy relationship between affluent women who require
domestic assistance and unaffluent immigrant employees that work and,
in some cases, live among them. Of the many good points in this work,
her in-depth interviews with employees and employers are most
revealing. Not unlike the work of Ehrenreich in
Nickel and Dimed and
Katherine S. Newman in No Shame in My Game, Hondagneu-Sotelo allows
readers to, as Newman suggested, gain a clearer understanding of the
interconnections between people and networks that a purely quantitative
work would not permit. That being said, this reviewer applauds
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and her effort to provide a clearer
understanding of the women we see on train platforms and in bus
terminals that dot American cities and suburbs of affluence.
© Copyright 2006 by Radical Scholar, Inc.
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