CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Carpenedo Rodrigues, Manoela |
|---|---|
| Title | Brazilian Women in the International Division of Reproductive Work: Constructing Subjectivities |
| Summary | This study aims to comprehend how Brazilian transnational domestic workers are subjectivated through migration, gender and reproductive work. Through Foucault’s argumentation on the production of subjectivities, this research analyzes the effects of the migratory événement in the life of ten Brazilian women working in the Parisian reproductive sector. An historical approach was introduced in order to enhance the understanding of the status and subjectivities of transnational domestic workers. As the findings suggest, the migratory événement can be characterized by a multifaceted set of experiences and elaborations that respond not only to oppressive and an exploitative regimes but also provide domestic workers, to some extent, spaces of resistance, which enable them to recreate their lives through migration in an empowering and emancipatory way. On the one hand, Brazilian migrant domestic workers experience subordination and exploitation within their labor lives in Paris. Their undocumented status, lack of rights, informal labor contracts, restricted job opportunities and unequal relationships between employer and employee contribute to their hardship, subordination and sub-human status. On the other hand, despite their precarious situations, migrant domestic workers are able to reinvent themselves through a set of resistance strategies. This study stresses the importance of both their individual forms of resistance as well as their solidarity networks that enable the survival and coping of the migrant women. Firstly, they are able to reverse their diagram of subordination through migration and the thereby ceasing the reproduction of poverty. Secondly, the set of resistance strategies (creative solidarity and sisterhood) emerge as fundamental elements in their lives that are able to protect and defend these women within a foreign context. These supportive networks stress the agency of these women by promoting new social organization that clearly creates new “esthétiques de l'existence” equipped to confront the individualistic social mandate. |
| Supervisor | de Haan, Francisca |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/carpenedo-rodrigues_manoela.pdf |
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