Feminization and the coloniality of labour: The case of undocumented Latin American domestic workers in Western Europe

While the demand for domestic and care workers in the EU is increasing, due to the growing incorporation of women into the labour market, an aging population and the privatization of social care, the possibility of entry and settlement for non-EU citizens in the last ten years has been restricted. Meanwhile, State programmes that seek societal answers to domestic and care work are rare. Offers such as “cash payment for care” have individualized care by giving the responsibility of organizing it back to the households. Refusing to assume sole responsibility for the household, professional women opt together with their household members to employ another woman to do this work.   

Drawing on the example of Latin American women living in Germany, Austria, Spain and the UK, I will discuss the juncture between migration policies, feminization and the coloniality of labour.  Juxtaposing the private households with the dynamics of global interdependencies, the local face of the gendered and racialized division of work of the modern/colonial world system becomes a tangible and immediate reality in private households in Western Europe. It is in this regard that the legacies of a colonial order, reactivated through racial and gendered segregation in the labour market and dehumanizing migration policies, are felt on an individual level and mobilized in our everyday encounters, bringing us back to Anibal Quijano’s analysis of the ‘coloniality of labour’.