Reproductive labour
Introduction
Migration processes are not isolated phenomena
and migration is only one of an interconnected set of linkages between two or
more places. Migration flows are a vital element in an ever changing and
mutually affecting pattern of exchange of goods, services, finance and labour.
Their real impact can only be understood if other aspects such as development,
economic change, trade, social policy matters, cultural exchange, gender
relations, security matters etc are also taken into account.
Under the Transnational Communities Programme I have been
conducting research on migrant domestic workers in private households in the
UK. This has led me to consider the nature of "reproductive labour", why it
should be commodified, and why it is such an important sector for migrant women
across the European Union. The reproduction of labour and social relations is a
critical, but very underdeveloped notion, and certainly one that is not very
much applied to migration theory or policy. But I believe the application of
this offers new possibilities for analysing how it is that migration is
embedded economically, socially, and politically at
local, national, regional and global levels.
As human beings have
plundered natural resources without regard to sustainability, assuming that
these "goods" have been and will continue to be reproduced with no cost, so it
has also often been assumed that productive labour, whether migrant or
non-migrant, simply appears and is maintained "free of charge". Critiquing this
notion of cost free reproduction is I believe important to developing a just
migration policy. Discussions on migration and reproduction have tended to
focus on migration as a means of obtaining labour power for which the receiving
state has paid none of the "reproductive" costs such as education, health etc,
and which may also be returned when no longer productive through old age,
ill-health or unemployment n migration theory. But the picture is more
complicated than this. I want to explore the particularities of
migrant domestic workers to develop the notion of reproductive labour and its
central but unconsidered relation to migration.
Notions of reproduction
"Reproductive labour" at its
crudest can be taken to mean the reproduction and maintenance of workers.
Feminists developed this notion of reproductive labour, including some who
argued that women are central to the capitalist mode of production because,
through their unpaid household labour, they produce labour power itself . The
raising of children, on the one hand, and the maintenance of workers on the
other is largely thanks to the unpaid work of women. As Bennholdt-Thomesen
(1981) puts it:
Within
the present capitalist world economy, housewives and peasants (men and women)
are the main subsistence producers: in different concrete forms both reproduce
labour power for capital without compensation
Cited
Cohen (1987): 78
Like the "peasant" the "housewife" is in decline in many advanced
economies.Its scarcely surprising then that throughout the EU there has
been a substantive increase in demand for private domestic services. Of course,
not all these workers are migrant women, but even a cursory glance at migration
research reveals the importance of domestic work in private households as a sector
of work for immigrant women in the EU. It is singled out in individual country
studies (Black 1992; Psimmenos 1996; Leonetti and Levy 1978; Abadan Unat 1984)
and also more generally (European Forum of Left Feminists 1993; Anderson 2000),
and the importance of domestic work as a sector in legalisation data is notable
(Groenendijk, K and Hampsink R 1995; Marie 1984). So if one is considering the
market for female migrant labour the questions are, why is there an increase in
demand for domestic workers in private households? And, why is this demand
being met by migrant women? Beginning to formulate answers to these throws
interesting theoretical light on determinants and consequences of migration.
At first sight the increase in
demand for domestic workers seems demographically and quantitatively
measurable. Demographic factors such as the rise in elderly population, changes
in family structures, and social policies including the retrenchment of the
welfare state, "care in the community", and intersections of demography,
economics and socio-cultural forces (the changing role of women, feminisation
of labour force etc), mean that, to put it crudely female EU citizens are no
longer spending so much time doing caring work within the family. Yet that
caring work continues to be necessary - and it is difficult to imagine a
society where it will not continue to be so. At a time of massive social,
economic and demographic change, no account has been taken of the needs that
were fulfilled previously by women's unpaid "family" labour. Here then lies
part of the demand for female migrant labour: a cheap form of reproductive
labour that, crucially, is very flexible - for one of the difficulties of
combining paid work outside the home with caring work is the unexpected sick
child, or broken nights before long days of "productive" work. Migrant women,
separated from their families, are available to become "part of the family" for
the employer, twenty four hours a day if necessary.
Once one commodifies this
reproductive labour however, the contradictions inherent within this become
clear. The economic cost of reproductive labour is extremely high. According to
UK Household Satellite Accounts the value of unpaid work ranges from 44% to
104% of GDP (depending on how you value it). For those who are paying for child
or elderly care, i.e. a full time worker, if they are using the formal economy,
once they have paid tax and NI out of their taxed income even low rates of pay
can cost the middle class employer a lot relative to their income. There are
attempts to put sticking plaster over this - the au pair system most notably,
where young women are not characterised as workers but as "part of the family"
who "help" in the house, typically picking up children etc and in return are given
"pocket money". UK Home Office guidelines suggest 5 hours a day for 5 days a
week plus 2 nights babysitting, for £35 - well below the minimum wage. Live-in
domestic workers also help obviate this as one can (often informally subtract
the cost of accommodation and food from their wages).
So it is apparent that demand for migrant domestic workers results
from a variety of social and demographic changes, that seem apparently
to have little to do with immigration.
The foundations are apparently being laid
for the effective demand for unrelated caring labour. This will not only affect
women, but also, particularly in the context of an EU-wide international labour
market and the great migrations of labour and refugees arising out of the
break-up of the old Communist regimes, 'outsiders' will inevitably be brought
into this pool of unregularised workers. Hence there are issues of race and
nationality embedded in these developments as well as gender.
(Ungerson 1995:48)
The impact of this demand on both sending and receiving countries
is extremely complex. But I have not explained the amount of non-caring work
performed in private households by migrants. Reproductive labour also
produces consumers. The
servicing of life-styles and consumer goods that would be difficult, if not
impossible to sustain, were the other household members to attempt to do the
work themselves, and which, had the household members to do it themselves, they
would probably not want to sustain, is an important component of paid domestic work.
"Every day I am cleaning
for my madam, one riding shoes, two walking shoes, house shoes, that is every
day, just for one person. plus the children, that is one rubber and one shoes
for everyday school, that is another two. Fourteen shoes every day. My time is
already finished.. You will be wondering why she has so many bathrobes, one
silk and two cotton. I say, 'Why madam has so many bathrobe?' Every day you
have to hang up. Every day you have to press the back because it is crumpled."
(Filipina working
in Paris)
Here I am reminded of the
observation in a Home Office
published piece of research on migration, that the dominance of migrants in low
paid, insecure, "unskilled" sectors does not disadvantage "natives" since "if
migrants do not fill these jobs they simply go unfilled or uncreated in the
first place" (Glover, Gott et al 6.33) i.e. there are some jobs that simply
would not exist if there were not migrants to do them (though arguably this is
not restricted simply to unskilled sectors). Such demand is extremely difficult
to quantify, anticipate, or control through immigration measures alone. The confinement of tasks to those
merely necessary for survival would enable most productive workers to service
themselves, for domestic work is not only about "caring" which is in that sense
necessary work. It is also cleaning houses, washing up, ironing etc. We
do not HAVE to live in tidy, dusted homes nor wear ironed clothes. Madam does
not have to have so many bathrobes in the same sense in which she maybe has to
have her children cared for. Domestic work is reproductive work, and
reproductive work is not confined to the maintenance of physical bodies: people
are social, cultural and ideological beings, not just unites of labour.
Reproductive work, mental, physical and emotional labour creates not simply
labour units, but people. It is necessary work in that without domestic work
humanity would not continue. We need to accommodate the raising of children,
the distribution and preparation of food, basic cleanliness and hygiene, in
order to survive individually and as a species. But domestic work is also
concerned with the reproduction of life-style, and crucially, of status -
nobody has to have stripped pine floorboards, hand-wash only silk shirts,
dust-gathering ornaments, they all create domestic work, but they affirm the
status of the household, its class, its access to resources of finance and
personnel. These two functions cannot be disentangled. To take the example of
clothes washing, even at the most basic level one could argue that this is not
really necessary for survival, but most people across cultures would agree that
stinking clothes can constitute an offence to human dignity, but then exactly
how often they are washed, whether they are ironed etc can quickly become
issues of status. The organisation of our homes and their accoutrements then
demonstrates our position within wider social relations.
There is no total amount of
housework that can be divided up fairly between equal partners and as reproductive
work is concerned with the social and cultural reproduction of human beings,
the actual doing of the work - who does it, when and where - is a crucial part
of its meaning. More than a reflection, it is an expression and reproduction of
social relations, of relations between genders, and increasingly it is not only
gendered, but "racial"/ethnic identities that are reproduced through household
labour. As different meanings are assigned to different jobs, so notions of
what is appropriate in terms of gender and race are played out and the
identities of workers and employers are confirmed. So the employment of a
migrant domestic worker enables the expression and reproduction of the proper
role of racialised groups and their proper relations to European households as
servers, doers of dirty work that citizens are too important to do. When the
worker is charged with looking after children these identities are quite
literally reproduced. As a Filipina in Athens described:
"I heard children playing,
they are playing house. The other child said, 'I am a Daddy', the other child
said, 'I am a Mummy', and then, 'She is a Filipina'. So what does the child
mean, even the child knows or it's already learning, that if you are a Filipina
you are a servant inside the house."
Citizens,
whether male or female, go out and participate in "society", and behind them are the ghostly, racialised
figures of non-citizens, facilitating their participation, but also reproducing
their social status.
But centering the notion of human reproduction has implications
for migration policy beyond that of recognising the existence and necessity of
migrant domestic workers and therefore giving them visas.
It requires for example a different approach to "family reunification" usually
"wives" joining husbands, assisting in renewing and servicing their labour
power, facilitating the home as a place of refuge and recuperation as well as
often working themselves in either the formal or the informal labour market. It
also requires recognition of the cost of human reproduction. Many
women who have not left children, but who came to work abroad in the prime of
their lives talk of the sacrifice of never having children because they have
never had the chance. And what is the consequence of the loss of such
reproductive labour on the sending countries - again we have something very
difficult to quantify. While there has been some work done on the multiple
connections between migration and development, "brain drain" and remittances,
little has been done on "global care chains", and there is a complex
loss of reproductive labour when women who are not carers leave: who cleans the
homes, cooks the meals, has sex, etc, how is this gap filled or is it not
filled at all - and what are the consequences of either? As I have emphasised
throughout this piece much of this is not quantifiable, but that does not mean
it can be ignored with no economic consequences.
The demand for female migrant
labour to work in private households therefore is deeply embedded in social
constructions of gender and race as well as social policies and demographic
pressures. I think that this could equally well be argued for that other major
source of female migrant employment, the sex industry. To further understand
this is very important, particularly if we are to take seriously the struggle
against trafficking in human beings. Traffickers are after all supplying a
market - there is work for these women and girls and money to be made out of
them, or they wouldn't be being moved in the first place. Understanding how
such markets are constructed, and are related to socially tolerated markets and
attitudes, is as important as understanding trafficking methods and routes if
we are really to stamp out this form of exploitation.
References
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et al (eds) Of Marriage and the Market: women's subordination in
international perspective London CSE Books.
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Report by Sir William Beveridge, London: HMSO
Cohen, Robin (1987) The New Helots: Migrants in the
international division of labour London: Gower
Collinson, Sarah (1994) Europe and International
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Engels, Frederick (1884) The Origin of the Family,
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Glover, S., Gott C. et al (2001) Migration: an economic
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Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette (1994) Gendered Transitions:
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Migration Report 2000 IOM/UN
Massey, Douglas S.
(199) 'Social structure, household
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Employment, London: Routledge
Simon, Julian (1993) 'The Economic Effects of Migration' European
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