ABSTRACT

This groundbreaking book brings together two key themes that have not been addressed together previously in any sustained way: domestic service and colonization. Colonization offers a rich and exciting new paradigm for analyzing the phenomenon of domestic labor by non-family workers, paid and otherwise. Colonization is used here in its broadest sense, to refer to the expropriation and exploitation of land and resources by one group over another, and encompassing imperial/extraction and settler modes of colonization, internal colonization, and present-day neo-colonialism. Contributors from diverse fields and disciplines share new and stimulating insights on the various connections between domestic employment and the processes of colonization, both past and present, in a range of original essays dealing with Indonesian, Canadian Aboriginal, Australian Aboriginal, Pacific Islander, African, Jamaican, Indian, Chinese, Anglo-Indian, Sri Lankan, and 'white' domestic servants.

chapter |18 pages

Introduction

Decolonizing Domestic Service: Introducing a New Agenda

chapter 1|19 pages

An Historical Perspective

Colonial Continuities in the Global Geography of Domestic Service

part I|107 pages

Anxieties and Intimacies

chapter 2|18 pages

Domesti-City

Colonial Anxieties and Postcolonial Fantasies in the Figure of the Maid 1

chapter 3|16 pages

Settling In, From Within

Anglo-Indian ‘Lady-Helps' in 1920s New Zealand

chapter 4|18 pages

‘Ah Look Afta De Child Like Is Mine' 1

Discourses of Mothering in Jamaican Domestic Service, 1920–1970

chapter 5|16 pages

‘Always a Good Demand'

Aboriginal Child Domestic Servants in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Australia

chapter 6|18 pages

Maids' Talk

Linguistic Containment and Mobility of Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon

chapter 7|15 pages

Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore

Historical and Contemporary Reflections on the Colonial Politics of Intimacy

part II|85 pages

Domination and Resistance

chapter 8|19 pages

‘Strictly Legal Means'

Assault, Abuse and the Limits of Acceptable Behavior in the Servant–Employer Relationship in Metropole and Colony 1850–1890

chapter 9|10 pages

Imperial Legacies and Neoliberal Realities

Domestic Worker Organizing in Postcolonial New York City

chapter 10|9 pages

Tactics of Survival

Images of Aboriginal Women and Domestic Service

chapter 11|19 pages

‘I Would Like the Girls at Home'

Domestic Labor and the Age of Discharge at Canadian Indian Residential Schools

chapter 12|22 pages

White Mistresses and Chinese ‘Houseboys'

Domestic Politics in Singapore and Darwin from the 1910s to the 1930s

part III|115 pages

Legacies and Dreams

chapter 13|17 pages

Baby Halder's A Life Less Ordinary

A Transition from India's Colonial Past? 1

chapter 14|17 pages

From Our Own Backyard?

Understanding UK Au Pair Policy as Colonial Legacy and Neocolonial Dream

chapter 15|16 pages

Taking Colonialism Home

Cook Island ‘Housegirls' in New Zealand, 1939–1948

chapter 16|20 pages

British Caribbean Women Migrants and Domestic Service in Latin America, 1850–1950

Race, Gender and Colonial Legacies 1

chapter 17|19 pages

Contemporary Balinese Cruise Ship Workers, Passengers and Employers

Colonial Patterns of Domestic Service

chapter 18|20 pages

A Contemporary Perspective

‘Picking the Fruit from the Tree': From Colonial Legacy to Global Protections in Transnational Domestic Worker Activism

chapter |3 pages

Conclusion

Agency, Representation, and Subalternity: Some Concluding Thoughts