49th Linz Conference: Towards a Global History of Domestic Workers and Caregivers

12-15 September 2013, Linz

Overview

Organized by:
International Conference of Labour and Social History and the Chamber of Labour of Upper Austria, kindly supported by the Friedrich Ebert-Foundation, the Provincial Government of Upper Austria and the City of Linz

Preparatory Group:
Co-ordinators: Silke Neunsinger (Arbetarrörelsensarkiv och bibliotek, Stockholm), Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam), Dirk Hoerder (Salzburg, Austria).
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, 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)

Background and Approaches:
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.

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? “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. 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.

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.

Venue:
Bildungshaus Jägermayrhof, Römerstraße 98, 4020 Linz, Austria

Contact:
Eva Himmelstoss
International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH)
Altes Rathaus, Wipplinger Str. 8, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Fax +43 (0)1 2289469-391, e-Mail: ith[a]doew.at

Call for Papers

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[a]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[a]doew.at

Program Main Conference

Organized by the International Conference of Labour and Social History and the Chamber of Labour of Upper Austria, kindly supported by the Friedrich Ebert-Foundation, the Provincial Government of Upper Austria and the City of Linz

 

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME (4.5.2013)

Simultaneous translation: English – German

Thursday, 12 September 2013

9.00 – 22.00
Registration of the participants at Jägermayrhof

13.00 – 15.00
Meeting of the Executive Committee and the International Scientific Committee of ITH

15.00 – 15.30 Break

15.30 – 17.30
General Assembly of ITH

17.30 Aperitif

18.00
Conference opening by the ITH President, Berthold Unfried, and others

18.15 – 18.45
Keynote by Shireen Ally (University of the Witwatersrand): Slavery, Servility, Service: the Cape of Good Hope, the Natal Colony, and the Witwatersrand, 1652-1914

18.45 – 19.15
Keynote by Dorothy Sue Cobble (Rutgers University): Farewell to the Factory Model: Explaining the Global Upsurge of Do-mestic Worker Organizing

19.15
Welcome Reception by the Mayor of Linz at Jägermayrhof

Friday, 13 September 2013

8.30 – 9.00
Introduction into the conference by Dirk Hoerder (Salzburg), Silke Neunsinger (Stockholm), Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (Amsterdam)

SESSION I: Definitions and Concepts
Chair: Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk

9.00 – 10.15
Raffaella Sarti, Historians, Servants and Domestic Workers. Fifty Years of Research on Domestic and Care Work (Università di Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’)
R. David Goodman, Reconstructing the Ambiguous Historical End of Domestic Slavery in Morocco (Pratt Institute New York)
Majda Hrzenjak, Slovenian Domestic Workers in Italy: Continuities and Discontinuities within Shifts of Symbolic, Political, Economic and Geographical Borders (Peace Institute – Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies, Ljubljana)

10.15 – 10.45 Coffee break

10.45 – 11.15
Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Chileanización and La Chinita: Ethnicity, Maternity, and Domestic Service in Popular-Front Chile (University of New Mexico)
Marta Kindler & Anna Kordasiewicz, A Historical Perspective on Child Care-Workers in Polish Households (University of Warsaw & University of Computer Science and Economics in Olsztyn)
Magaly Rodriguez Garcia, The League of Nations and its Handling of the ‘mui-tsai’ System (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Reception by the Provincial Governor of Upper Austria at Jägermayrhof

SESSION II: Changing Division of Labour
Chair: Yvonne Svanström (Stockholm University)

14.00 – 14.50
Lisa Krissoff Boehm, Leaving the Employer’s Kitchen for the Drive-Thru Window: African American Women’s Transition from Domestic Laborer to Low-Wage Corporate Em-ployee, 1960-1990, United States (Worcester State University)
Sabrina Marchetti, Migrant Domestic and Care Work through the Lenses of Postcolonial-ity. Narratives from Eritrean and Afro-Surinamese Women (RSCAS, European University Institute)
Christa Matthys, Nannies versus Mothers. Negotiating Perceptions of Motherhood and Childrearing in Aristocratic Households, 1700-1900 (Max Planck Institute for Demo-graphic Research, Rostock)

14.50 – 15.15 Coffee break

15.15 – 16.15
Lord Mawuko-Yevugah, Changing Composition of South Africa’s Domestic Workforce and the Reconstitution of ‘Otherness’ (University of the Witwatersrand)
Seemin Quayum & Raka Ray, Creating Class through Cultures of Servitude (University of California, Berkeley)
Marina de Regt, Mobile Women, Moving Lives? The Impact of Ethiopian Women’s Migra-tion on Gender Relations, Labour and Lifecycle (Free University Amsterdam)
Andrew Urban, Settler Colonialism and Colonial Labor Systems: Domestic Service and the Politics of Chinese Restriction in the ‘White Pacific’ (Rutgers University)

16.15 – 18.00 Discussion

18.00
Dinner at Jägermayrhof

Saturday, 14 September 2013

9.00
SESSION III: Working Conditions
Chair: Shireen Ally (University of the Witwatersrand)

9.00 – 10.05
Cecilia Allemandi, Towards an Insight into the Living and Working Conditions of Wet Nurses in the Late 1800s and Early 1900s in the City of Buenos Aires (University of San Andrés, Buenos Aires)
Dana Cooper, Unintended Imperial Consequences: A Comparative Historical Examination of Irish and Filipina Women’s Migration as Domestic Caregivers within the British and American Empires (Stephen F. Austin State University)
Walter Gam Ngkwi, House Boys, House Girls and Baby Sitters: The Mobility of Indentured Labour (Domestic Servants) in Cameroon, c.1920s-1990s (University of Buea)

10.05 – 10.30 Coffee Break

10.30 – 11.45
Victoria Haskins, ‘The matter of wages does not seem to be material’: State Intervention and Wage Regulation for Indigenous Domestic Workers Under the Outing System in United States, 1890s-1930s (University of New Castle)
Colleen O’Neill, The ‘Intermountain Girls’ and American Indian ‘Domestic Relocation’ in the Post-War Era (Utah State University)
Robyn Pariser, Designing Domesticity in Colonial Tanzania, 1919-1961 (Emory University)
Yukari Takai & Mary Gene de Guzman, Young and Experienced: Transnational Trajectories of Filipina Domestic and Care Workers in the late-Twentieth-Century Toronto (York University)
Ratna Saptari, Domestic Service and the Experience of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Two Indonesian Cities (Leiden University)

11.45 – 12.30 Discussion

12.30 – 14.00
Lunch at Jägermayrhof

SESSION IV: Resistance – Mobilization – Organization
Chair: Lex Herma van Voss (Den Haag)

14.00 – 14.50
Traude Bollauf, Dienstmädchen-Emigration (Wien)
Eileen Boris & Jennifer Fish, Decent Work for Domestics: Feminist Organizing, Worker Empowerment, and the ILO (University of California, Santa Barbara & Old Dominion University)
Fae Dussart, Domestic Dialogues: Negotiations Over Servant Selfhood (University of Sussex)

14.50 – 15.40
Henrique Espada Lima, Wages of Intimacy: Domestic Workers Disputing Wages in Brazilian Higher Court in the XIXth Century (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Amrita Pande, Clandestine ‘Unions’ and the Counter-Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon (University of Cape Town)
Vilhelm Vilhelmson, ‘Lazy and disobedient’. The Everyday Resistance of Indentured Servants in 19th Century Iceland (University of Iceland)

15.40 – 16.10 Discussion

16.10 – 15.30 Coffee break

16.30 – 18.00
Silke Neunsinger & Yvonne Svanström, Summary and moderation of the Concluding Discussion

18.00
Dinner at Jägermayrhof

Sunday, 15 September 2013

Departure of the participants after breakfast

”Program

Organized by the International Conference of Labour and Social History and the Chamber of Labour of Upper Austria in the frame of ITH’s 49th Linz Conference (12-15 September 2013), kindly supported by the Friedrich Ebert-Foundation.

Coordination: Silke Neunsinger (Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek, Stockholm), Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam), Dirk Hoerder (Salzburg, Austria)

Working language: English

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME (8.5.2013)

8.30
Welcome and practical information by Dirk Hoerder, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk and Silke Neunsinger

8.40 – 9.30
Section I: Changing Definitions and Concepts
Chair: Silke Neunsinger (Labour Movement Archives and Library, Stockholm)

Raffaella Sarti (Università di Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’, Italy): Historian, Servants and Domestic Workers. Fifty Years of Research on Domestic and Care Work

Section II: Changing Division of Labour

9.30 – 10.15
Chair: Raka Ray (University of Berkeley)

Bela Kashyap (University of Cincinnati, USA): Who is in Charge, the Government, The Mistress or the Maid? The Cases of Women in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia
Li-Fang Liang (National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan): The Politics of Carework: The Everyday Practices of Live-in Migrant Care Workers and Their Care Recipients in Taiwan

Comment: Shireen Ally (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)

10.15 – 10.45
Coffee break

10.45 – 12.00
Chair: Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (Wageningen University, The Netherlands)

Carolina Uppenberg (Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden): Changes in the Servant Institution During the Swedish Agrarian Revolution – Gender Division of Labour, Increasing Stratification and Constructions of Femininity and Masculinity
Mareike Witkowski (Carl von Ossietzky Universität, Oldenburg, Germany): Inequality Under the Same Roof. Domestic Servants Between 1918 and 1960. Live-in Servants in Germany
Adéla Souralova (Marsaryk University, Brno): Vietnamese Families and their CzechRepublic: Mistake on the Global Map of Paid Child Care?

Comment: Yvonne Svanström (Stockholms Universitet)

12.00 – 13.00
Lunch at Jägermayrhof

13.00 – 14.30
Section III: Working Conditions and Reasons to Work in Households of Others
Chair: Silke Neunsinger (Labour Movement Archives and Library, Stockholm)

Dimitris Kalantzopoulos (King’s College, London): Domestic Work in Cyprus, 1925-1955: Motivations, Working Conditions and Colonial Legal Framework Between 1920 and 1959
Jessica Richter (Universität Wien, Austria): Serving, Helping Out, Working – Domestics in Austria (1918-1938)
Jaira Harrington (University of South Florida, Tampa) & Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman (University of Chicago): Ties that Bind: Localizing the Occupa-tional Motivations that Drive Union-Affiliated and Non-Affiliated Domestic Workers in Salvador, Brazil
Ana Gutierrez (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK): The Conundrums of Emotional Labour and Domestic Work: Latin Ameri-can Women Migrants in London

Comment: Magaly Rodriguez Garcia (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

14.30 – 15.00
Coffee break

15.00 – 15.45
Section IV: Mobilisation – Resistance – Organization
Chair: Dirk Hoerder

Lokesh (Delhi University, India): Making the Personal, Political: The First Domestic Workers’ Strike in Pune Ma-harashtra
Marie-José L. Taya (ILO & Kent State University, UK): ILO’s Action Programme for Promoting the Rights of Women Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon

Comment: Raffaella Sarti (Università di Urbino ‘Carlo Bo’, Italy)

15.45 – 16.30
Final Discussion
Chair: Marcel van der Linden (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)

18.00
Start of the Main Conference

 

Please note:
The Linz Conferences are gatherings of ITH’s members. Participants to the Linz conferences pay only a modest fee – compared to other similar conferences. Further expenses (if they cannot be covered by grants) are covered by the member institutions. Participants delegated by members are therefore given priority. The conference fee is payable by all participants and is to be paid in cash at the conference secretariat in Linz.