Domestic Workers Talk

Domestic Workers Talk PDF Author: Kellie Gonçalves
Publisher: Channel View Publications
ISBN: 1800416776
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 124

Get Book

Book Description
Set in a multilingual cleaning company that serves Anglophone customers in the upper-(middle) class suburbs of New York City, this book presents an ethnographic study into power, language policy and communication from the perspectives of the Brazilian–American employer as well as the company’s Hispanophone and Lusophone employees. Power asymmetries in internal communication demonstrate the employer’s legitimated domination over her employees and her L1 Portuguese as a form of linguistic capital. Employees’ resourcefulness and multicompetence – rather than quantifiable levels of English-language proficiency – determine the extent to which they rely on language brokering to facilitate communication with their customers, directly impacting their agency. The book contributes to current debates on extra-linguistic modes of communication in multilingual settings and thematic analyses of care work, migration, communication and the role of English.

Domestic Workers Talk

Domestic Workers Talk PDF Author: Kellie Gonçalves
Publisher: Channel View Publications
ISBN: 1800416776
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 124

Get Book

Book Description
Set in a multilingual cleaning company that serves Anglophone customers in the upper-(middle) class suburbs of New York City, this book presents an ethnographic study into power, language policy and communication from the perspectives of the Brazilian–American employer as well as the company’s Hispanophone and Lusophone employees. Power asymmetries in internal communication demonstrate the employer’s legitimated domination over her employees and her L1 Portuguese as a form of linguistic capital. Employees’ resourcefulness and multicompetence – rather than quantifiable levels of English-language proficiency – determine the extent to which they rely on language brokering to facilitate communication with their customers, directly impacting their agency. The book contributes to current debates on extra-linguistic modes of communication in multilingual settings and thematic analyses of care work, migration, communication and the role of English.

Silenced

Silenced PDF Author: Makeda Silvera
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Get Book

Book Description
This is a book about the lives and struggles of West Indian women who are employed as domestic workers on Temporary Employment Visas in Canada. In it, ten women tell of their day to day struggles as Black working class women.

Household Workers Unite

Household Workers Unite PDF Author: Premilla Nadasen
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807033197
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book

Book Description
Telling the stories of African American domestic workers, this book resurrects a little-known history of domestic worker activism in the 1960s and 1970s, offering new perspectives on race, labor, feminism, and organizing. In this groundbreaking history of African American domestic-worker organizing, scholar and activist Premilla Nadasen shatters countless myths and misconceptions about an historically misunderstood workforce. Resurrecting a little-known history of domestic-worker activism from the 1950s to the 1970s, Nadasen shows how these women were a far cry from the stereotyped passive and powerless victims; they were innovative labor organizers who tirelessly organized on buses and streets across the United States to bring dignity and legal recognition to their occupation. Dismissed by mainstream labor as “unorganizable,” African American household workers developed unique strategies for social change and formed unprecedented alliances with activists in both the women’s rights and the black freedom movements. Using storytelling as a form of activism and as means of establishing a collective identity as workers, these women proudly declared, “We refuse to be your mammies, nannies, aunties, uncles, girls, handmaidens any longer.” With compelling personal stories of the leaders and participants on the front lines, Household Workers Unite gives voice to the poor women of color whose dedicated struggle for higher wages, better working conditions, and respect on the job created a sustained political movement that endures today. Winner of the 2016 Sara A. Whaley Book Prize

Women's Work

Women's Work PDF Author: Megan K. Stack
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525431950
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book

Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 From National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack, a stunning memoir of raising her children abroad with the help of Chinese and Indian women who are also working mothers When Megan Stack was living in Beijing, she left her prestigious job as a foreign correspondent to have her first child and work from home writing a book. She quickly realized that caring for a baby and keeping up with the housework while her husband went to the office each day was consuming the time she needed to write. This dilemma was resolved in the manner of many upper-class families and large corporations: she availed herself of cheap Chinese labor. The housekeeper Stack hired was a migrant from the countryside, a mother who had left her daughter in a precarious situation to earn desperately needed cash in the capital. As Stack's family grew and her husband's job took them to Dehli, a series of Chinese and Indian women cooked, cleaned, and babysat in her home. Stack grew increasingly aware of the brutal realities of their lives: domestic abuse, alcoholism, unplanned pregnancies. Hiring poor women had given her the ability to work while raising her children, but what ethical compromise had she made? Determined to confront the truth, Stack traveled to her employees' homes, met their parents and children, and turned a journalistic eye on the tradeoffs they'd been forced to make as working mothers seeking upward mobility—and on the cost to the children who were left behind. Women's Work is an unforgettable story of four women as well as an electrifying meditation on the evasions of marriage, motherhood, feminism, and privilege.

Migration, Domestic Work and Affect

Migration, Domestic Work and Affect PDF Author: Encarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136949941
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 235

Get Book

Book Description
Drawing upon several years of research in Germany, the UK, Spain, and Austria, and over 100 interviews with Peruvian, Ecuadorian and Chilean women working as domestic and care workers, this book examines hitherto unexplored areas of the interpersonal relationships between domestic and care workers and their employers.

Work Won't Love You Back

Work Won't Love You Back PDF Author: Sarah Jaffe
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568589387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Get Book

Book Description
A deeply-reported examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives. You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whether it's working for "exposure" and "experience," or enduring poor treatment in the name of "being part of the family," all employees are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do what we love. In Work Won't Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe, a preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements, examines this "labor of love" myth—the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. Told through the lives and experiences of workers in various industries—from the unpaid intern, to the overworked teacher, to the nonprofit worker and even the professional athlete—Jaffe reveals how all of us have been tricked into buying into a new tyranny of work. As Jaffe argues, understanding the trap of the labor of love will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. And once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.

Our Homes, Our Stories

Our Homes, Our Stories PDF Author: Karien van Ditzhuijzen
Publisher: HOME - Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics
ISBN: 981115838X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Get Book

Book Description
Have you ever wondered what life is like for a migrant domestic worker in Singapore? In Our Homes, Our Stories women that work in Singapore as live-in domestic workers share their real-life stories. They write about rogue agents, abusive employers, complicated relationships, and that one thing they all suffer from the most: missing their families back home - in Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and India. The women write about sacrifice, broken trust, exploitation, lack of food, salary deductions and constant scolding; but also about supportive employers, the love they have for the families they take care of, or how they use their time in Singapore as a stepping-stone to realise their dreams for the future. “It is my hope that these stories will prompt us, in this country, to do better as employers and to be better as humans.” Audrey Chin - Singaporean writer “I hope the readers will find my story inspirational and maybe even a little bit enlightening.” Jo Ann Dumlao - Domestic Worker and writer “A home is where you find unconditional love, compassion, support, where you forget your pain and fears; a safe haven where you get the courage to smile at life again.” Sai - Domestic Worker and writer “Hopefully our book will show that we are not only workers, but we are human beings.” Novia Arluma - Domestic Worker and writer All proceeds of this book go to HOME, a Singaporean charity that has supported and empowered migrant workers since 2004. All the writers in Our Homes, Our Stories are part of the HOME community, either as volunteers on their one day off, or as residents at HOME shelter for ill-treated domestic workers.

Migrant Domestic Workers and Family Life

Migrant Domestic Workers and Family Life PDF Author: Maria Kontos
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137323558
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book

Book Description
This timely and innovative book delivers a comprehensive analysis of the non-recognition of the right to a family life of migrant live-in domestic and care workers in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and Ukraine.

Domestic Workers of the World Unite!

Domestic Workers of the World Unite! PDF Author: Jennifer N. Fish
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479881430
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
From grassroots to global activism, the untold story of the world's first domestic workers' movement. Domestic workers exist on the margins of the world labor market. Maids, nannies, housekeepers, au pairs, and other care workers are most often ‘off the books,’ working for long hours and low pay. They are not afforded legal protections or benefits such as union membership, health care, vacation days, and retirement plans. Many women who perform these jobs are migrants, and are oftentimes dependent upon their employers for room and board as well as their immigration status, creating an extremely vulnerable category of workers in the growing informal global economy. Drawing on over a decade’s worth of research, plus interviews with a number of key movement leaders and domestic workers, Jennifer N. Fish presents the compelling stories of the pioneering women who, while struggling to fight for rights in their own countries, mobilized transnationally to enact change. The book takes us to Geneva, where domestic workers organized, negotiated, and successfully received the first-ever granting of international standards for care work protections by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization. This landmark victory not only legitimizes the importance of these household laborers’ demands for respect and recognition, but also signals the need to consider human rights as a central component of workers’ rights. Domestic Workers of the World Unite! chronicles how a group with so few resources could organize and act within the world’s most powerful international structures and give voice to the wider global plight of migrants, women, and informal workers. For anyone with a stake in international human and workers’ rights, this is a critical and inspiring model of civil society organizing.

Souls Forgotten

Souls Forgotten PDF Author: Francis B. Nyamnjoh
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956558125
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book

Book Description
One day, Mama Ngonsu told her son: "Normally, a child grew up and stayed around to help his parents. The world has changed, and things are no longer as they used to be. Things must not be normal all the time, otherwise life would not be life." When Emmanuel Kwanga gets a University scholarship, he travels from the lake and hills of Abehema to the Great City. Everyone in the village has invested in him their hopes for the good life. When the life they've imagined is cut short by the University guillotine, Emmanuel Kwanga must struggle to make sense of what the good life means - for himself and for Abehema - in a world where things are no longer as they used to be. This novel is about coming of age and coming to terms in Mimboland. It is also about the fragility of life and the strength of the human spirit. The filth and screaming splendor of the city and the perplexed tranquility of the village are juxtaposed, as the tension and conviviality between tradition and modernity are lived and explored. Roads and drivers, dreams and public transport link different geographies. Faltering along or speeding away, these spaces of risk, frustration and solidarity are filled with popular songs as vehicles for understanding events and relationships. With every crossing of the Pont de Maturit the story flows, and its mysteries surge. In this novel, the worlds of the living and the dead intermingle, as do the natural and the supernatural, the visible and the invisible.