Maria Kontos | Recognition Dynamics in a Misrecognised Job Domestic and Care Work of Migrant Women in Europe

Maria Kontos
Recognition Dynamics in a Misrecognised Job
Domestic and Care Work of Migrant Women in Europe
IfS Working Paper #4

In this paper I explore dynamics of social recognition within the domestic and care work relation. I discuss how claims of social recognition intersect on the one hand with the familialisation of paid domestic and care work, and on the other hand with the defamilialisation of the worker. I demonstrate the ambivalences and limitations of social recognition processes within this work relation and investigate the way social recognition processes are determined and constrained by the overlapping of the private/familial and public/economic spheres and logics. I argue that this overlap and the familialisation of the work together with the defamilialisation of the worker are the background for specific claims for recognition normally negotiated in the sphere of familial and intimate relations; and that the familialisation of the work produces recognition claims that ultimately remain unfulfilled. These claims and the responses to them find their limits in the defamilialisation of the worker and the overarching economic interests of the employer. Moreover, I show how cultures of rights influence recognition practices and expectations as intersubjective recognition is embedded in multiple normative structures within the two societies involved: the society of origin and the society of work.