From Employers' Homes to Political Rallies: How South African Domestic Workers Mainstream Their Rights

How do marginalized workers position themselves in the context of mainstream politics? This paper examines the case of the domestic workers’ movement in South Africa to show that often marginalized section of workers, particularly those lacking disruptive power, position themselves such that their issues resonate with the prevalent hegemony in a specific historical context. This resonance of specific issues with the hegemony allows workers to strike up a conversation with the ‘public’ and mainstream their issues. To establish this argument, the paper draws on the ethnography of the domestic workers’ movement in South Africa. The paper shows that the South African domestic workers’ movement positions domestic workers in three crucial ways: 1) as caregivers for South African society, who contribute to the growth and prosperity of the capitalist economy; 2) as urban poor Black women whose plight as workers is a remnant of apartheid and therefore a disgrace for the democratic nation, and; 3) as disenfranchised African population, who irrespective of their national origin, do not find dignity in the rainbow nation. Through these framings, domestic workers amplify the significance of their rights and transform them into mainstream political issues that merit political parties’ attention. The findings contribute to scholarship on labor and social movements by examining how marginalized groups craft leverage when they lack conventional sources of power.