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10966
Domestic Workers’ Movements
Sat Oct 24, 5:00 PM
Ufaque Paiker
In the twentieth century, in response to workers’ mass movements, labor rights were granted to a section of working class considered necessary for uninterrupted capital accumulation. However, simultaneously, workers employed in so-called non-capitalist occupations were excluded from these labor protections. Domestic workers were one such quintessential group of workers excluded from the definition of workers in labor laws. Given this history of misrecognition, demanding labor rights and symbolic recognition has been at the center of domestic workers’ movements across the globe. In this talk, I discuss my book project From Homes to Streets: Articulation in Domestic Workers’ Movements in India and South Africa which is a comparative sociological study of domestic workers’ rights movements in the two countries. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with domestic workers’ organizations in India and South Africa, I provide an account of how domestic workers have presented the case of their labor rights to the state, employers, and wider society. I argue that how domestic workers’ movements have framed their cause in pursuit of legal and symbolic recognition, offers an explanation into the varying degrees of advances they have made in their respective national contexts. I will show how the domestic workers have framed their claims to labor rights building on, often strategically and selectively, anti-caste, feminist, and black consciousness discourse and political forces.

