Legislation and Its Discontents: Consequences of the Peruvian Household Workers Law

Peru is currently understood as one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America, one whose wealth is highly concentrated in the capital, fueling an incredibly centralized and unregulated flow of labor. Many indigenous internal migrants work as trabajadoras del hogar in Lima, situated within a vulnerable context since their work is highly gendered, private and contained within the intimate space of the home, where discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender and class looms. Colonial relations persist in the apartments and homes across wealthy districts of the capital, yet meanwhile Lima moves ever so forward by pushing costly modernization projects, developing its booming tourist industry, and promoting its global culinary fame.

Peru passed national labor protections for trabajadoras del hogar ten years ago, though with negligible improvements in the lives of its household workers. Based on nine months of in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, I investigate the nature of the outcome of political inclusion and state-granted labor rights in Lima for household workers, privy to capital’s growth and yet [arguably] further marginalized through labor regulation, which grants few benefits, offers no minimum wage, and lacks real enforcement in practice.

When the state steps in to regulate the informal sector, what possibilities and potential problems result? How does the implementation and specifics of legislation come to bear on the lives of those it attempts to protect, offer benefits to, or bring into political inclusion? My dissertation grapples with the intersection of gender, law, the state, and the political economy of domestic work in Peru with specific attention to new organizing strategies for household workers in the face of myriad obstacles. When and how can the law matter in the case of informality, and what else is to be done?