Black girls : migrant domestic workers and colonial legacies

Author(s)

    • Marchetti, Sabrina

Bibliographic Information

Black girls : migrant domestic workers and colonial legacies

by Sabrina Marchetti

(Studies in global social history / series editor, Marcel van der Linden, v. 16 . Studies in global migration history / editor, Dirk Hoerder ; editorial board, Bridget Anderson ... [et al.] ; v. 4)

Brill, c2014

  • : hardback

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [183]-200) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In today's Europe, migrant domestic workers are indispensable in supporting many households which, without their employment, would lack sufficient domestic and care labour. Black Girls collects and explores the stories of some of the first among these workers. They are the Afro-Surinamese and the Eritrean women who in the 1960s and 70s migrated to the former colonising country, the Netherlands and Italy respectively, and there became domestic and care workers. Sabrina Marchetti analyses the narratives of some of these women in order to powerfully demonstrate how the legacies of the colonial past have been, at the same time, both their tool of resistance and the reason for their subordination.

Table of Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Keywords 1. Postcoloniality 2. Black Europe 3. Memory and identity 4. Intersectionality 5. Body work 6. Home 7. Tactics 2. DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES IN HISTORY Suriname 1. Colonialism and slavery 2. The Independence 3. Moving from Suriname to the Netherlands 4. Migration and racism in the Netherlands 5. Living in Rotterdam 6. Afro-Surinamese women in the Dutch care sector Eritrea 1. Eritrea's history and Italian colonialism 2. Towards the Independence 3. Eritrean migration to Italy 4. Migration and racism in Italy 5. Eritreans in Rome 6. Eritrean women in the Italian domestic sector PART I - POSTCOLONIAL MIGRANTS 3. Colonial Acculturation and Belonging 1. Black Dutch 2. The 'ambivalence' of bonds 3. The case of school education 4. Paramaribo and Asmara as 'Culture-Contact Zones' 1. Separation and survival of domestic slavery 2. A hierarchical cultural contamination 3. Spatial propinquity and cultures 4. Hierarchies within 'familiarity' 5. The case of mass and popular culture 5. Postcolonial Encounters: Arriving in Italy and the Netherlands 1. Class and belonging after the migration 2. Asymmetries of recognition 3. The legacy of slavery PART II - MIGRANT DOMESTIC LABOUR 6. A Labour Niche for Postcolonial Migrant 1. Niche formation and coloniality of power 2. Substitution across class and 'race'/ethnicity 3. Religious figure and employment 4. The 'good' job 5. Agencies and 'ethnic' representations 7. Narratives and Practices of Work and Identity 1. Everyday (domestic) practices and identity 2. Rhythms and gestures of care 3. Self-identification between care, cleaning and servitude 4. Time, body and enactment of power 8. 'Ethnicisation' of Care and Domestic Skills 1. 'Ethnicisation' and the right personality 2. Subservience as a skill 3. Familiarity with domestic work as a social position 4. Troubling reversals of hierarchies 5. The ambivalence of a caring personality 6. The case of food and cooking 9. Racism at Work, Under Colonial Legacies 1. Racism, ressentiment and slavery 2. Home care as a 'scenario of racism' 3. Spatial confinement 4. Bodies: wearing inferiority 5. Re-enacting colonial times Conclusions Appendices I - Notes on the fieldwork II - Notes on the interviewees Bibliography Index

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