De qué manera puede el desarrollo influir y ser influido por el servicio doméstico? En la primera parte se plantean las posibles relaciones entre estos dos fenómenos y en seguida las tendencias generales en la industria del servicio doméstico. Las características de las trabajadoras domésticas se discuten en la segunda parte. En la tercera parte se detallan los patrones del servicio doméstico, el crecimiento económico, la modernización y la migración en Malasia, Zambia y Canadá, lo que revela dinámicas tanto compartidas como únicas y genera preguntas sobre las relaciones entre las trabajadoras domésticas y el Estado, las relaciones raciales, la (re)construcción del papel de género, clase y nociones de modernidad y los vínculos que guardan estas cuestiones con el desarrollo. Las observaciones en la cuarta parte reiteran las tendencias detectadas en los estudios de caso y delinean las inquietudes que de ahí se derivan.;
"We shouldn't celebrate a scheme that brought women from the West Indies to Canada and kept many of them under domination and subordination by Canadian families," says Ms. [Antonia Sealy], a founding member of several community groups. "Personally, I regret making the decision to come on that scheme," she says. "I had a comfortable life in Barbados and a good job in the public service, but I was young and I wanted to travel and seek other opportunities. Had I known better I would have waited and sought out a commonwealth scholarship," she said. Ms. Sealy says that nothing she was told before leaving Barbados could have prepared her for the life of "subordination" at the homes of various families in Toronto.
Discusses the 1978 case of seven Jamaican women who were to be deported from Canada and the questions the case raised about the value of women's labor and discriminatory immigration policies. Elucidates why the women, in their roles as mothers, decided to challenge the orders to leave Canada and illuminates the ways in which racialized women find the means to negotiate in-between spaces that allow them to survive.
