Migration and Domestic Work : Imiscoe Short Reader

This open access short reader offers a systematic overview of the scholarly debate on the experiences of migrant domestic workers at a global level, in the past as well as in present time. It tackles the nexus between migration and domestic work with a multi-layered approach. The book looks into the issue of (paid) domestic work in migratory contexts by investigating the feminization of migration, thereby considering the larger framework within which this specific phenomenon takes place. The author explains notions such as the “international division of reproductive labor” or “global care chains” which emphasize the inequality in the way care and domestic tasks are distributed today between middle-class women in receiving nations and migrant domestic workers. Moreover, the book shows how women migrating to work in the domestic work and private care sector are facing a complex landscape of migration and labor regulations that are extremely difficult to navigate. At the same time, this issue also addresses employers’ households who cannot find appropriate or affordable care among declining welfare states and national workers reluctant to take the job, whilst legal regulations make difficult to hire a domestic worker who is a third country national. As such this book offers an interesting read to academics, policy makers and all those working in the field.

Sabrina Marchetti is Associate Professor in Sociology at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. She is mainly specialised on issues of gender, racism, labour and migration, with a specific focus on the question of migrant domestic and care work.

In the past, she has worked at the European University Institute as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow and Jean Monnet Fellow. She has been post-doctoral fellow at the Gender Excellence Programme of Linköping University in Sweden. She holds a Phd from the Graduate Gender Programme of Utrecht University.

She has been the Principal Investigator of a Starting Grant project funded by the European Research Council entitled “DomEQUAL: Paid domestic work and global inequalities” (2016-21) about the labour rights of paid domestic and care workers in India, Philippines, Taiwan, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Germany, Italy and Spain. She is currently the coordinator of the Italian team for the H2020 research project “VULNER: Vulnerabilities under the global protection regime” (2020-23) coordinated by the Max Planck Institute in Halle.

Her previous books in English are “Black Girls. Migrant Domestic Workers and Colonial Legacies” (Brill, 2014) and “Employers, Agencies and Immigration: Paying for Care” (Ashgate 2015, with Anna Triandafyllidou), “Global domestic workers: intersectional inequalities and struggles for rights” (Bristol UP 2021, with Giulia Garofalo Geymonat and Daniela Cherubini).