Date of Submission

Spring 2017

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Sociology

Project Advisor 1

Allison McKim

Abstract/Artist's Statement

The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of how domestic workers are able to find resistance within their work place. Using eleven in-depth interviews with women working as domestic workers in New York City, this project contributes to the extant literature regarding domestic workers and stratified reproduction. I examine how domestic work is shaped by the intersections of race, class, gender, and citizenship status. These factors contribute to the conception of domestic work as low-skilled labor as well as the denigration and poor treatment of workers on the job. Though workers often have to sustain poor treatment due to their economic vulnerability, my research illuminates the various ways in which workers find resistance within their sites of employment. These interviews reveal the way in which the domestic workers interviewed produced meaning and restructured their work as important, meaningful labor. From my findings, I deepen the theory of stratified reproduction by asserting the importance of worker’s methods of resistance.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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