ABSTRACT
Drawing on qualitative data, this chapter explores native male employers of migrant men who provide paid and home-based care and cleaning services in Italy. Specifically, it focuses on Italian men from different class backgrounds and explores how they assert hegemonic masculinity by acting as ‘managers of care’ with respect to ‘foreign’ workers. The analysis threads together emerging studies of migrant men and masculinities – as well as of masculinities and globalisation – with the growing scholarship on migrant reproductive labour. It shows that male employers’ involvement in reproductive labour is relational, performative and enacted in reference to everyday household responsibilities. It highlights the importance of considering the home as a site of encounter between Italian male employers and transnational migrant workers where the reproduction of hegemonic masculinities occurs. The production of hierarchies of transnational masculinities within ‘globalised homes’ is not only forged upon class and ethnicity but is also influenced by the typology of the domestic chore outsourced and the employers’ individual life cycle stage. The chapter argues that, based on specific positionalities, native men forge their masculinities through practices and discourses of domestic bounding or unbounding, engaging with migrant male workers or else keeping them at a distance.
