Arlie Hochschild coined the term “Global Care Chain” to describe the process through which women leave their families and communities to care for others in richer nations, leaving a vacuum of social reproduction in their home countries. This vacuum is then filled by poorer women who assume the caretaker’s role. Thus, the macro dynamics of…
Week
Antiwork
In a recently published article entitled “Nothing but Joy: The Welfare Rights Movement’s Antiwork Freedom Dream” NYU professor Wilson Sherwin draws from archival records to recount how welfare rights activists made bold strides in the development of antiwork politics. Sherwin invokes Robin D.G. Kelley’s concept of “freedom dreams” – the imaginative interventions through which activists…
Storytelling at SEDOAC
SEDOAC was recently invited to participate in an artistic project with Usera Feminists. The group is collecting oral histories from women in the neighborhood to adapt as theatrical performances. At the meeting I attended, two of the participants presented one such performance to a crowd of senior Spanish women in a small auditorium of Usera…
Breaking Glass Ceilings or Cleaning Them?: Feminism and Domestic Work
The connection between feminism and domestic labor rights may seem obvious to academics. However, according to domestic workers themselves, the link that unites the Spanish feminist movement and migrant domestic workers in Spain is fragile and contentious. I sat down with five senior SEDOAC members to gather their thoughts about the relevance of feminism to…
Contours of the Field
“Sociologists who study organizations sometimes use the term ‘field’ to describe a set of organizations linked together as competitors and collaborators within a social space devoted to a particular type of action—such as a market for certain products, the pursuit of urban development, or the realm of electoral politics. Agreements struck among the organizations that…
SEDOAC’s Right to Madrid
Urbanization, we may conclude, has played a crucial role in the absorption of capital surpluses, at ever-increasing geographical scales, but at the price of burgeoning processes of creative destruction that have dispossessed the masses of any right to the city whatsoever….The urban and peri-urban social movements of opposition, of which there are many around the…
“Those who love peace…”
It has been about three days since I arrived in Madrid and my first triumph has been finding a bed to sleep in and, indeed, actually sleeping in it at regular hours. This summer is exciting as it is stressful for all Gallatin fellows, but completing research abroad presents its own set of obstacles no…
History Made: The Ratification of C189
On Friday, June 11th, after eleven years since its passage, Spain finally ratified the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Convention on Domestic Workers (C189). This policy, adopted in 2011, codifies labor standards for those employed in the domestic care sector. It entered into force in 2013, ratified by 35 states, only eight of which belonged to…
