In today’s Europe, migrant domestic workers are indispensable in supporting many households which, without their employment, would lack sufficient domestic and care labour. Black Girls collects and explores the stories of some of the first among these workers. They are the Afro-Surinamese and the Eritrean women who in the 1960s and 70s migrated to the former colonising country, the Netherlands and Italy respectively, and there became domestic and care workers. Sabrina Marchetti analyses the narratives of some of these women in order to powerfully demonstrate how the legacies of the colonial past have been, at the same time, both their tool of resistance and the reason for their subordination.
Author(s): Sabrina Marchetti
Series: Studies in Global Social History 16; Studies in Global Migration History 4
Edition: e-book
Publisher: Brill
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: xiii,201
City: Leiden / Boston
Black Girls
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Tables
Introduction
1. Keywords
1 Postcoloniality
2 Black Europe
3 Memory and Identity
4 Intersectionality
5 Body Work
6 Home
7 Postcolonial Cultural Capital
2. Differences and Similarities in History
Suriname:
Colonialism and Slavery
Independence
Moving from Suriname to the Netherlands
Migration and Racism in the Netherlands
Living in Rotterdam
Afro-Surinamese Women in the Dutch Care Sector
Eritrea:
Eritrea’s History and Italian Colonialism
Eritrea towards Independence
Eritrean Migration to Italy
Migration and Racism in Italy
Eritreans in Rome
Eritrean Women in the Italian Domestic Sector
PART 1: Postcolonial Migrants
3. Colonial Acculturation and Belonging
1 Black Dutch
2 The ‘Ambivalence’ of Bonds
3 The Case of School Education
4. Paramaribo and Asmara as Culture-Contact Zones
1 Separation and Survival of Domestic Slavery
2 A Hierarchical Cultural Contamination
3 Spatial Propinquity and Cultures
4 Hierarchies within ‘Familiarity’
5 The Case of Mass and Popular Culture
5. Postcolonial Encounters: Arriving in Italy and in the Netherlands
1 Class and Belonging ‘after’ the Migration
2 Asymmetries of Recognition
3 The Legacy of Slavery
PART 2: Migrant Domestic Labour
6. A Labour Niche for Postcolonial Migrant Women
1 Niche Formation and Coloniality of Power
2 Substitution across Class and ‘Race’/Ethnicity
3 Religious Figures and Employment
4 The ‘Good’ Job
5 Agencies and ‘Ethnic’ Representations
7. Narratives and Practices of Work and Identity
1 Everyday (Domestic) Practices and Identity
2 Rhythms and Gestures of Care
3 Self-Identifications between Care, Cleaning and Servitude
4 Time, Tasks and Female Models
5 Time, Body and Enactment of Power
8. Ethnicisation of Care and Domestic Skills
1 ‘Ethnicisation’ and the Right Personality
2 Subservience as a Skill
3 Familiarity with Domestic Work as a Social Position
4 Reversal of Hierarchies
5 Respect and Discipline
6 The Case of Food and Cooking
9. Racism at Work, under Colonial Legacies
1 Racism, Ressentiment and Slavery
2 Home Care as a ‘Scenario of Racism’
3 Spatial Confinement
4 Bodies: Wearing Inferiority
5 Re-Enacting Colonial Times
Conclusions
Appendices
I Notes on the Fieldwork
II Notes on the Interviewees
Bibliography
Index
