ABSTRACT
The formation of Domestic Workers United (DWU) is the result of a postcolonial pan-ethnic coalitional politics and a critical response to both United States (US) imperial history and contemporary neoliberal economic ideology, as are individual workers' strategies for addressing uneven workplace conditions in the homes where they work. The migration of West African and Caribbean domestic workers to New York City (NYC) in the late twentieth century is related directly to the intensification of US economic and military interventions in the global South in the period following the Second World War. Reflecting the demographics of the NYC domestic worker industry, the group is entirely female, save couple male volunteers, and Caribbean-le. Understanding the postcolonial character of DWU's activism in New York serves not only to highlight that these workers have immigrated to the United States from multiple formerly colonized countries, but also to enable an insight into how a postcolonial frame influences the coalitional strategies employed by DWU's pan-ethnic organizing.
