ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of immigrant women as in-home child care workers in the United States and focuses on how they are affected by the internal stratification of the market for children’s caregivers. Although immigrant women from Third World countries do the bulk of domestic child care work, they are not the only workers in this market. Immigrant women from Third World countries generally must do the most work for the least money in the domestic child care market: they are perceived as having the least cultural capital, whatever their level of individual caregiving skill or commitment. Domestic employment agencies typically specialize in one sector of the market for child care workers. Immigrant women from Third World countries fall at the bottom of the status hierarchy and few parents treat them as anything close to status equals. In the case of immigrant workers, parents’ face particular hiring difficulties because of the social gulf between themselves and the applicants.
