Intersections of class and ethnicity in paid domestic and care work: theoretical development and policy recommendations based on the study of 'majority workers' in Italy and in the USA

Project Information

MAJORdom

Grant agreement ID: 799195

DOI

10.3030/799195

Project closed

EC signature date 28 March 2018

Start date 1 August 2018

End date 28 February 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 262 269,00

EU contribution

€ 262 269,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MAJORdom (Intersections of class and ethnicity in paid domestic and care work: theoretical development and policy recommendations based on the study of 'majority workers' in Italy and in the USA)

Reporting period: 2020-08-01 to 2021-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project is about paid domestic and care workers who are citizens, non-migrants and not members of a racial and ethnic minority. I define domestic work as household-based care work which means ‘building and maintaining human infrastructure’ (Duffy, Armenia, Stacey 2015) in domestic settings, like for example, work of nannies, elderly care workers, cleaners and housekeepers.

Paid domestic and care work as a sector employs at least 67 million people globally (ILO, 2018). Scholarship on this topic is focused on workers with racial minority or migrant backgrounds. Despite ethnicization and racialization of PDCW, workers who are white working-class women citizens continue to perform domestic and care tasks for private households (ILO, 2017). In the two studied countries, USA and Italy, local white citizen workers are an important part of the sector and yet they are under-studied. For the USA M. Duffy’s analysis revealed 49.2% participation of White non-Hispanic women, while in the sub-type of care work characterized by personal contact (nurturance) the ratio was even higher, 57.4% (2005). In a Europe, the employment of white citizens was strengthened by the recent economic crisis (Di Bartolomeo, Marchetti 2016; EPRS 2015). While this category of workers remains under-researched, it also unveils hidden dimensions of inequalities within contemporary societies.

The project consisted of policy and data analysis concerning domestic work in the USA, Italy, and of qualitative inquiry on how the intersection of gender, ethnicity and class affects white non-migrant citizen workers in US American and Italian domestic work sectors. For the first two years of the project (1.08.2018-31.07.2020) the research was carried out in the US.

The research objectives are the following:
1. To generate new empirical insights on domestic work,
2. To contribute analytically to the studies of inequality and diversity, and,
3. To formulate policy recommendations to address care and domestic sector.
added to include the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was:
4. To generate new insights on the situation of care and domestic workers during the COVID-19 crisis.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The American part of the study has been completed. I carried out 61 qualitative interviews: 43 with workers and 18 with employers and experts. I analyzed the 2017 IPUMS statistical data and studied the Federal and state-level policy initiatives and activism of the organizations of domestic workers. To meet objective 4 about the impact of the pandemic on the care and domestic work sector, I carried out an online survey for US-based domestic workers in the period August-December 2020 and for Italy-based workers in the period December 2020 and June 2021.

In the US online survey, I collected 100 complete responses, 61 nannies, 14 house cleaners, and 10 home care workers. 57 participants were born in the US, 43 in a different country. I published a report on the impact of the pandemic on domestic workers that was widely circulated and promoted during outreach events (Rosinska 2021). I continued the online ethnography of the activism of American domestic workers’ organizations and thanks to it was able to discover important issues of the stages of advocacy. The pandemic turned out to be a turning point for the care narratives and discourses pertaining to domestic work and domestic workers’ organizations played an important role in these processes, as my analyses revealed (Rosinska, Pellerito 2022).

An online survey in Italy, which was available in Italian, English, and Polish, was carried out in the period between December 2020 and June 2021, its topic was the impact of the first lockdown, especially on domestic workers. It yielded 31 partial responses, and only 12 of them were complete (5 nannies, 2 cleaners, 3 unemployed, 2 personal care workers). The 12 complete survey responses contain extensive answers to open questions that allow understanding of the situation of these participants.

The Italian part of the project has been completed, literature, policy and data review carried out, and 10 recorded interviews were collected in the period January-September 2021, 8 with nannies or babysitters, 1 with nanny employer, and 1 with local government expert; and additional 7 informal interviews. Taking into account the pool of interviews and of survey replies, comparability of results with the American data is achieved when it comes to the experience of the pandemic, especially among the home-based childcare workers.

Among the conference presentations, I want to highlight the semi-plenary talk at the European Sociological Association conference: (2021) Anna Rosińska, Centered On Care. Dispatches From Domestic Workers During The Pandemic. Semi-plenary 04: The Future of Gender Equality in Post-Pandemic Societies, ESA Conference, 31.08-3.09.2021. The session attracted 667 viewers.

In September 2019 I launched a Facebook research page where I kept sharing content related to care and domestic work and my research announcements (https://www.facebook.com/AnnaRosinskaSociologist). The page now has 233 followers (28.02.22). Between 17.09.2019 and 28.02.2022 I published 129 posts, the most popular of non-promoted posts reached between 400-3600 Facebook users.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Studying white non-Hispanic non-Latinx Americans in the USA and white Italians in Italy in this sector does not only address an important gap in the research and public knowledge but also lays the groundwork for the elaboration of more accurate and efficient policies addressing people in domestic employment, irrespective of their background. The project has brought insights into how intersectionality operates on different levels in domestic work activism and about the dimensions of white privilege in household-based care work in the US.

One of the important findings from the research in Italy has been the internal diversity of Italian workers within the domestic sector. Some of them are young (typically student age) and for whom domestic work such as babysitting is a life-stage or a springboard occupation, which is the group more commonly associated with Italian domestic workers. The research has also revealed the presence of older and aging group of Italian workers, who can be in-home care workers, nannies, or housecleaners.

I organized two concluding events of the project:
• On 21.01.2022 there was an English-language international online seminar “Turning the Care Narrative during the Pandemic” with speakers from US-based domestic workers organizations, a Warsaw-based organization, and scholars from the US and Italy. The event had 125 registered participants and more than 50 participants present online throughout the event.
• On 22.01.2022 there was a Polish-language event “Caring across the Ocean” for domestic workers activists: Ukrainian workers from Warsaw and Polish workers from Chicago. There were four Polish workers-activists from Arise Chicago, eight Ukrainian workers-activists from the Domestic Workers Committee in Warsaw, as well as six organizers from unions, organizations or experts from Poland.

The project facilitated the creation of the first domestic workers’ labor union in Poland, established by Ukrainian domestic workers in Warsaw (https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2021/11/16/mutual-support-across-the-ocean-domestic-workers-share-their-struggles-and-successes/).

Matahari International Nanny Training Day April 2019

The Fellow at the UML campus

Screenshot of the website of the Domestic Workers United

Screenshot of the website of the National Domestic Workers Alliance

the fellow at the NDWA assembly, February 2020

NDWA assembly February 2020