MAJORdom · Intersections of class and ethnicity in paid domestic and care work: theoretical development and policy recommendations based on the study of 'majority workers' in Italy and in the USA
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-08-01 → 2022-02-28
- EU contribution
- €262,269
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-GF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Intersections of class and ethnicity in paid domestic and care work: theoretical development and policy recommendations based on the study of 'majority workers' in Italy and in the USA
This project is about paid domestic and care workers who are citizens, non-migrants and not members of a racial and ethnic minority. I define domestic work as household-based care work which means ‘building and maintaining human infrastructure’ (Duffy, Armenia, Stacey 2015) in domestic settings, like for example, work of nannies, elderly care workers, cleaners and housekeepers. Paid domestic and care work as a sector employs at least 67 million people globally (ILO, 2018). Scholarship on this topic is focused on workers with racial minority or migrant backgrounds. Despite ethnicization and racialization of PDCW, workers who are white working-class women citizens continue to perform domestic and care tasks for private households (ILO, 2017). In the two studied countries, USA and Italy, local white citizen workers are an important part of the sector and yet they are under-studied. For the USA M. Duffy’s analysis revealed 49.2% participation of White non-Hispanic women, while in the sub-type of care work characterized by personal contact (nurturance) the ratio was even higher, 57.4% (2005). In a Europe, the employment of white citizens was strengthened by the recent economic crisis (Di Bartolomeo, Marchetti 2016; EPRS 2015). While this category of workers remains under-researched, it also unveils hidden dimensions of inequalities within contemporary societies. The project consisted of policy and data analysis concerning domestic work in the USA, Italy, and of qualitative inquiry on how the intersection of gender, ethnicity and class affects white non-migrant citizen workers in US American and Italian domestic work sectors. For the first two years of the project (1.08.2018-31.07.2020), the research was carried out in the US. The research objectives are the following: 1. To generate new empirical insights on domestic work, 2. To contribute analytically to the studies of inequality and diversity, and, 3. To formulate policy recommendations to address care and domestic sector. added to include the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was: 4. To generate new insights on the situation of care and domestic workers during the COVID-19 crisis.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This project is about paid domestic and care workers (PDCW) who are citizens and members of the ethnic majority of the country where they work. PDCW as a labor sector employs at least 67 million people globally and these include not only migrants but also ‘majority’ workers (ILO, 2017). This project contributes to recent scholarship on this topic – mostly focusing on workers with a minority or migrant background – by drawing attention to the workers who are white working-class women, both in the United States and Italy.In the light of the recently passed European Parliament Resolution “Women domestic workers and carers in the EU” (EPRS 2015), it is important to reflect on this labor sector as a constitutive element of employment for working-class women in many countries. More research is needed because PDCW is not only a way of “doing gender”, or “doing” race, ethnicity, migratory statuses, but it simultaneously concerns class differences between women. A comparison between Italy (a Southern European country with a well-grounded tradition of PDCW and high levels of regulation of the sector) and the United States (a Western country of great ethnic diversity but limited regulations on PDCW) is of the greatest interest because in both of these countries ‘majority’ workers account for a substantial portion of PDCW while differing considerably in terms of legal regulations of PDCW, as well as class structure and ethnic composition. The project consists of policy and data analysis concerning PDCW in the USA, Italy and EU, and of qualitative inquiry on how the intersection of gender, ethnicity and class impact impacts on ‘majority’ workers in American and Italian PDCW. The experience of the Fellowship, academic environment of an American and Italian university and the research results will enable the Fellow, who specialized in PDCW in Poland, to develop research and transferable skills and establish her position as an international and comparative scholar of PDCW.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA · VeneziaCoordinatorItaly
- UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS · AmherstUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union