Mar 26, 2009
Super Nanny or Wage Slave? – 3/26/09
Guest Joycelyn Campbell of Domestic Workers United (DWU). DWU consists of Caribbean, Latina and African nannies, housekeepers, and elderly caregivers in NY, organizing for fair labor standards. Women in largely unregulated domestic labor ranging from paid household workers to those experiencing slavery with no pay and violence, are among the most vulnerable segment of our economy.
Commentary
“The first world extracts love from the third world.”
“Globalisations pound of flesh” Author Arlie Russell Hochschild calls it, looking at children left behind by immigrant childcare workers who then transfer huge amounts of love onto children they are employed to look after. “The first world extracts love from the third world. But what is being extracted is partly produced or ‘assembled’ here; the leisure, the money, the ideology of the child, the intense loneliness and yearning for one’s own children” [prol-position news #5 | 2/2006]; Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, Global Woman, (Granta Books, London, 2003), p.15 – 31.
