Full Citation
Title: Facts and fictions about white non-Hispanic US-born domestic workers in the USA – are we missing something?
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2019
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: Paid domestic and care work as a labor sector employs at least 67 million people globally (ILO, 2018) and more than one million people in the USA (IPUMS 2017, Duffy, in print). Scholarship on this topic is focused on workers with racial minority or migrant backgrounds. Despite ethnicization and racialization of household work, workers who are white working-class women citizens continue to perform domestic and care tasks for private households (ILO, 2017). In the United States, M.Duffy’s analysis revealed 49.2% participation of White non-Hispanic women, while in the sub-type of care work characterized by personal contact (nurturance) the ratio was even higher, 57.4% (2005). In a European context, employment of white citizens was strengthened by the recent economic crisis (Di Bartolomeo, Marchetti 2016; EPRS 2015). However, these workers are not studied enough, which creates a gap in what we know about the domestic sector, labor market processes and issues of class, ethnicity and race. The purpose of this working paper is to: 1. present the idea of the MajorDOM project, whose purpose is to address the above mentioned gap in research on domestic workers who are neither ethnic nor racial minorities’ members, 2. to report on the project’s activities so far, including working with activist organizations, qualitative interviews and statistical data analysis 3. formulate first thoughts and questions stemming from the research so far, which evolve around the issue of a gap or discontinuity between the racial and/or ethnic composition of household workforce, of the activist organizations, and the public perceptions of the sector.
Url: https://iris.unive.it/bitstream/10278/3760632/1/D5.1.pdf
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Rosińska, Anna Maria
Series Title: MAJORdom project
Publication Number: 5.1
Institution: Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Pages: 21
Publisher Location:
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Race and Ethnicity
Countries: