49th Linz Conference, incl. Workshop for Junior Researchers
Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Work
12-15 September 2013
Organized by International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH), in cooperation with the Institute of Economic and Social History, Univ. of Vienna, the International Research Center “Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History”, Berlin, the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, and the Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek, Stockholm.
CALL FOR PAPERS
The conference focuses on the global history of
domestic workers in private homes, a labour market that over time has included,
in addition to physical labour, care for infants, children, and the elderly
(“emotional labour”).
Work done outside of homes in (small) business or caregiving institutions
(hospitals, old people’s nursing homes) will be the topic of a later
conference. Domestic work, now usually designated as “domestic and
caregiving” work, has also been assigned to men in the racializations
that (colonial but also postcolonial) societies imposed on men of colours-of-skin
other than white. Work in households other than one’s own is not only
a global phenomenon with area-specific variations and regimes, it is also
one with a history extending over centuries and changing over the ages,
e.g. the shift extended families – nuclear families – dual-income
families. Migration of women to such service positions is not as new as
some observers claim. Nevertheless, the social sciences have failed to develop
analyses with both long-term historical and global perspectives. The recent
ILO Convention “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” (2011) is
the first international agreement in which domestic workers had a voice.
In the last decade research, esp. feminist research, has increasingly paid
attention to the global history of domestic employees (“servants“)
and to caregiving in private homes. These workers, the vast majority of
whom have been women, have always been especially exposed to employer arbitrariness
and have had a particularly weak negotiating position. Their working conditions
were and are usually hidden behind the walls of the “private sphere.”
Conditions and positions vary depending on societal structures for example
between Latin America, China, and Europe. The history of domestic workers
is and always has been a history of migration. While the migrant status
has often been used to explain the neglect of these women in the history
of the labour movement, working in the households of strangers and migration
for household labour has, in fact, a far longer history than the industrial
labour movement. Research needs to include free and unfree workers, live-in
domestics and service personnel with their own accommodation, men and women,
adults and children, but not apprentices in workshops that are housed in
masters’ homes.
“Towards a Global History of Domestic Workers and Caregivers”
in long-term perspective aims at developing an analysis that, by bringing
this neglected category of working women and men into focus, will contribute
to a new, comprehensive history of labour. What are the similarities and
differences both between the world’s regions and over time from the
early modern to the modern period? What transfers occur? Present-day domestic
work will form the core of the analyses but a historical approach is indispensable.
Presenters from across the globe will help avoid a Eurocentric focus.
Keynote
The relationships between paid, unpaid, and forced (slave) labour and reproductive
work in a comparative perspective taking account of differentiated developments
across the globe. The paper needs to deal with slave labour in domestic
settings, common in some macro-regional cultural structures to mid-20th
century, and with the export or labouring women by remittance dependent
economies.
1. Section: Domestic work and caregiving labour in
the households of others – changing definitions and concepts
Conceptual and social historical introduction to the conference theme
und the development since the mid-19th century and, perhaps, comparatively
the early modern period, including references to slave labour; a survey
and analysis of the multiple societally-structurally differentiated forms
of domestic and caregiving work; analysis of its role in the political economy
of societies with examples from major regions on different continents. This
survey needs to incorporate attempts to professionalize the sector at the
turn of the 19th to the 20th century in view of both labour shortages and
mechanization of household tasks. For the present the assembly-line-type
time and motion studies of care work and the concomitant dequalification
need to be discussed.
Continuities and discontinuities of definitions and terms will be discussed
in a global perspective.
2. Section: Changing division of labour – the
relationship between workers and employers in private households
The core question remains: Who works for whom? How did the constitution
of power relationships regarding gender roles and ascriptions, of ethnicity
and class, change over long historical periods? How do such power relationships
emerge and how are they perceived in global perspective? How may the concept
of “Otherness as a resource,” as an entry-gate to bordered wealthy
societies, be included into the analysis? How did working conditions and
employee-employer relations adapt to the change from private contracting
to profit-oriented agencies and large domestics-supplying businesses? This
Section’s goal is a discussion of the global division of labour and
global inequality as regards reproductive labour in a long-term historical
perspective.
3. Section: Working conditions and reasons to seek
and accept work in the households of others
Working conditions for domestic and caregiving workers are often
described as degrading. But many similarities notwithstanding, attention
needs to be paid to variations over time and space. Work in the context
of live-in arrangements may make sense as cost-saving arrangements –
especially for migrants who need to defray the cost of migration and who
need to acculturate. Migration may be intended to improve the financial
situation of the respective worker’s family, it may be an opportunity
to sponsor migration of the family, or it may be a strategy to escape from
extremely unequal gender hierarchies in the society of origin. While such
work may be seen as dirty and degrading, it may also be perceived as well-ordered,
gratifying, and satisfying, or as doubly exploitative physical and emotional
labour. Such work may have to be accepted under duress or force, it may
be wage-work without emotional attachment, or it may serve as training period.
Some live-in employees experience lifelong dependency and exploitation,
others assume positions for a limited period of time to prepare for labour
in and management of their own households. Working conditions vary between
live-in service and daily commuting to work either from self-rented accommodations
or the employees’ own family household. Migrations may involve intra-regional
or transcontinental moves; they reflect both dynamic and ossified (micro-)
regional and global divisions of labour. It is the goal of this Section
to analyze the broad range of motivations and life-projects of domestic
workers in global perspective as well as the role and impact of state and
international regulation in the legal and political sphere.
4. Section: Mobilization – resistance –
organization
The history of the labour movement has long regarded political and trade
union mobilization of workers in the domestic sphere as weak or non-existent
since processes and organizational structures usually did not correspond
to those of the industrial, male unions. Like proletarians in factory labour,
domestic and caregiving workers often have no other options or means to
feed themselves and their families. But the latter are subject to particular
constraints due to the intimate relationship of the secluded home, to the
walls separating the “private sphere” from outside scrutiny.
For domestic and caregiving workers resistance against unacceptable working
conditions often involves resistance against unacceptable living conditions.
What types and patterns of resistance emerge over time? How do groups of
workers, especially women, mobilize and organize to improve their working
conditions? What is the impact of global networking?
Thus this conference expands the traditional history of both the classic
labour movement and the history of male and female working-class culture
in the productive sphere by incorporating the reproductive sphere –
including care for children and the elderly (“emotional labour”).
Work regimes range from paid to enslaved household work. The overall goal
is an inclusive gendered history of men’s and women’s work in
the inextricably entwined spheres of productive and reproductive work.
Call for Papers
Proposed papers need to address the above conference topics and have to
include
- abstract (max. 300 words)
- biographical note (max. 200 words)
- full address and email-address
- the targeted thematic section and workshop or conference.
The workshop, 12 Sept. 2013, is intended for
ongoing research on the level of doctoral dissertations.
A special effort will be made to include papergivers from all regions of
the world.
The organizers hope to be able to reimburse travel costs, grant applications
are pending.
Proposals to be sent to Silke Neunsinger: silke.neunsinger@arbark.se
Dates
- Submission of proposals: 1 Sept. 2012
- Notification of acceptance: 1 Oct. 2012
- Deadline for full papers: 1 Aug. 2013
- A publication of selected conference papers is planned, final manuscripts
due 1 April 2014.
Preparatory Group
Co-ordinator: Dirk Hoerder (Salzburg, Austria)
Co-ordinator: Silke Neunsinger (Arbetarrörelsensarkiv och
bibliotek, Stockholm)
Co-ordinator: Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (International Institute
of Social History, Amsterdam)
Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam)
Raquel Varela (Instituto de História Contemporânea,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
For the ITH: Berthold Unfried (Institute of Economic and Social
History, Vienna University), Eva Himmelstoss
Advisory Committee
Josef Ehmer (Universität Wien)
Donna Gabaccia (University of Minnesota, USA)
Vasant Kaiwar (Duke University, USA)
Amarjit Kaur (University of New England, Armidale, AU)
Elizabeth Kuznesof (University of Kansas, USA)
Sucheta Mazumdar (Duke University, USA)
Contact
Eva Himmelstoss
International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH)
Altes Rathaus, Wipplingerstr. 8, A-1010 Vienna, Austria
Fax +43 (0)1 2289469-391, e-Mail: ith@doew.at