Last week I assisted to an event organized by Alianza por la Solidaridad titled ‘Participation of female migrants as political subjects’ (translated by me). One of the speakers was Ana Camargo, the person that SEDOAC assigned to be the communitarian psychologist for their new Empowerment Center. One of the themes she covered was transnational motherhood, and I was surprised by what she described as ‘the right to motherhood’. Since the Trump administration has sought to attack Planned Parenthood, and most recently, since the outrage due to the Alabama abortion ban, feminists in the United States have spoken out in defense of women’s constitutional right to abortion. Nearing the end of this event, one woman from the audience mentioned that due to the irregular migratory status that many migrants are under here in Spain, they cannot access reproductive healthcare, and many, cannot abort safely. This person stated that female migrants should also fight for their right to ‘not exercise motherhood’. To this, Ana Camargo answered, that even though there is no denying that migrants need to fight for their access to reproductive healthcare, many of them are mothers and due to discriminatory family reunification immigration policies, they cannot exercise their right to motherhood.
This debate brought me back to Bridget Anderson’s Doing the Dirty Work?: The Global Politics of Domestic Labour, which has informed my research theoretically. Through the empirical research that Anderson conducted between 1995 and 1996 in five European cities, she theorizes about why and how domestic work has been racialized. Anderson’s study has helped me understand the unfitness of standard conceptual tools, typically used to define ‘traditional’ employment, if one is trying to understand the dynamics of the domestic sector. For example, Anderson’s research illustrates that paid domestic workers are caught in the gap of the imaginary divide between public/private. Their position in that gap serves as a bridge for their female employers who have transitioned from the private sphere to the public sphere, thus accessing ‘modernity’. This specifically signals a tension within the feminist movement, by associating women with the private and men with the public, feminists have long disregarded the alternative experiences of women that are subjected to other overlapping hierarchies like race, class, and nationality. The private/public dichotomy does not adequately reflect the reality of paid domestic work, and this reality demonstrates that the transition between the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ world is not linear. As Anderson states, this dualism is a ‘political fiction’.
Even though feminists are not arguing against motherhood, but rather in favor of choice, it seems to me that the ‘right to exercise motherhood’ lies in the shadows, and perhaps is considered by some as too ‘traditional’. To some feminist standards, what is ‘modern’ is to be a woman and not be defined by motherhood. Thus Camargo’s comment on the ‘right to exercise motherhood’ proved to me how these dualisms are not adequately able to reflect the position of migrant domestic workers and how their position, struggles, and demands are in the gap between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’. The speakers at the event stated that migrants need to have another political model, and that there needs to be a rereading of what is considered doing politics or being politicized. For example, they commented that it is political to bring food to their table in their origin country and to pay their rent. Once again, the division between the private and public world seems to be put to test by migrant domestic workers.
On the other side, in the library of the Universidad Complutense I found a rich study titled Mujer, Inmigración y Trabajo conducted by the Colectivo IOÉ (constituted by Walter Actis, Carlos Pereda, and Miguel Ángel de Prada, with the special collaboration of Laura Agustín). This study was conducted between 1999 and 2000 and it was promoted by the Migrations and Social Services Institute (IMSERSO). The study visibilizes the working and living conditions of migrant workers – particularly those that are working in the domestic sector- through in-depth interviews and focus groups. On the other side, due to the intimate relationship between domestic employers and employees, the study also includes analysis of interviews and focus groups done to employers. For my research I plan to the investigate the discriminatory stances, and racialized gazes of Spanish employers towards Latin American and Caribbean people. For this reason, up until this moment, the chapter that includes an analysis of the discourses held by employers of domestic workers, has been particularly useful. It demonstrates the tension in their discourse: while employers talk about a female ‘we’ that is constituted by their employees and them, they still regard their employees as their backwards ‘past selves’. This study argues that for Spanish employers, the current struggles of their migrant employees resemble their own struggles in decades past. Thus rather than seeing migrant domestic workers as positioned in the gap between traditional/modern, and public/private, as explicated by Anderson, employers locate their employees behind themselves in what they consider is the standard linear path towards female progress. Colectivo IOÉ attributes this stance to ‘maternal imperialism’; Spanish employers seem to regard Spain as the country of progress and female liberation and in contrast, the countries of origins of their domestic workers are regarded as places of backwardness.
The NYU library link to Doing the Dirty Work?: The Global Politics of Domestic Labour by Bridget Anderson is: http://bobcat.library.nyu.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=nyu_aleph001627888&context=L&vid=NYU&search_scope=all&tab=all&lang=en_US
The link to Mujer, Inmigración y Trabajo by Colectivo IOÉ is https://www.colectivoioe.org/index.php/publicaciones_libros/show/id/42
All of Colectivo IOÉ’s publications are available in their website and they have several other publications about immigrants in Spain that I may refer to in the next weeks.
Other sources that I look forward to exploring are:
Masterson-Algar, Araceli. Ecuadorians in Madrid : Migrants’ Place in Urban History, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/lib/nyulibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4716800.
The library link to Ecuadorians in Madrid: http://bobcat.library.nyu.edu/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=nyu_aleph005730201&context=L&vid=NYU&search_scope=all&isFrbr=true&tab=all&lang=en_US
Rubio Sònia Parella. Mujer, Inmigrante y Trabajadora La Triple discriminación. Anthropos Editorial, 2003.
Sáinz Cristina García, et al. Inmigrantes En El Servicio doméstico: Determinantes Sociales, jurídicos e Institucionales En La reorganización Del Sector doméstico. Talasa, 2012.
“Stop Racism Not People, Racial Profiling and Immigration Control in Spain.” Amnesty International , Peter Benenson House, 2011, www.amnesty.ch/de/laender/europa-zentralasien/spanien/dok/2011/diskriminierung-polizei/beric ht-stop-racism-not-people.-racial-profiling-and-immigration-control-in-spain.-14.-dezember-201 1.-45-seiten.
Youkhana, Eva. “Creative Activism and Art Against Urban Renaissance and Social Exclusion – Space Sensitive Approaches to the Study of Collective Action and Belonging.” Sociology Compass, vol. 8, no. 2, Feb. 2014, p. 172. EBSCOhost , proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&A N=94063282&site=eds-live .
Youkhana, Eva. “FORMAS DE PERTENENCIA RELIGIOSA Y PROCESOS DE CONSTRUCCIÓN DEL ESPACIO EN LA MIGRACIÓN LATINOAMERICANA: ENTRE VÍNCULOS COLONIZADOS Y REDENCIONES CREATIVAS. (Spanish).” Procesos: Revista Ecuatoriana de Historia , vol. 36, no. 2, July 2012, p. 111. EBSCOhost , proxy.library.nyu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edb&A N=95033338&site=eds-live.\
You’ve got a rich bibliography! I’m very glad to read that you are making use of the Compultense library, which is an excellent resource you, of course, would not have were you not in Madrid. You highlight several of the ways in which global feminisms conflict since the roles of women differ in different contexts. What looks like liberation to one may not look that way to another. And there is an entrenched hegemony of Western feminism that, in stubborn ways, still reflects the Second Wave focus on white, middle-class women’s definitions. What’s more, as you a point out, there is still a racist, imperial view at work that imagines those from Latin America as lower on the evolutionary ladder or, in other words, naturally/biologically less civilized. While I think that’s pretty evident, I still wonder how you plan to collect the opinions of employers in this regard, or if you are going to do a review of the literature and synthesis of the work you’ve found so far? Also, have you done much reading in global feminist discourse? I can send you some sources, if you like!
Yes! the Complutense library has been an excellent resource. I am still working out the interview schedules but I will be interviewing a couple of Profesor Robles’ contacts as well as some employers I got referenced to by acquaintances and friends that live here. My goal is to put those interviews in conversation with previous research done about the topic. If you could recommend some sources about the global feminist discourse I would greatly appreciate it!