In the past decade, hundreds of thousands of women from poorer countries have braved treacherous journeys to richer countries to work as poorly paid domestic workers. Scholars and activists denounce compromised forms of citizenship that expose these women to at times shocking exploitation and abuse. In From Servants to Workers, Shireen Ally asks whether the low wages and poor working conditions so characteristic of migrant domestic work can truly be resolved by means of the extension of citizenship rights.

Following South Africa's "miraculous" transition to democracy, more than a million poor black women who had endured a despotic organization of paid domestic work under apartheid became the beneficiaries of one of the world's most impressive and extensive efforts to formalize and modernize paid domestic work through state regulation. Instead of undergoing a dramatic transformation, servitude relations stubbornly resisted change. Ally locates an explanation for this in the tension between the forms of power deployed by the state in its efforts to protect workers, on the one hand, and the forms of power workers recover through the intimate nature of their work, on the other. Listening attentively to workers' own narrations of their entry into democratic citizenship-rights, Ally explores the political implications of paid domestic work as an intimate form of labor.

From Servants to Workers integrates sociological insights with the often-heartbreaking life histories of female domestic workers in South Africa and provides rich detail of the streets, homes, and churches of Johannesburg where these women work, live, and socialize.

About the Author

Shireen Ally teaches in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Reviews

From Servants to Workers is a book of heartfelt ironies, as Ally systematically reveals how policy intended to help domestic workers in post-aparthied South Africa ended up stagnating their integration into the new democracy.. From Servants to Workersis a challenge to the reader's perceptions of domestic workers, no matter how progressively minded that reader is. It is a type of Nickel and Dimed in the South African context, which deepens our understanding of domestic labor and social change.

-- Kelly I. Pike * Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal *



Book Information
ISBN 9780801475870
Author Shireen Adam Ally
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint ILR Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 18mm