Continuing thinking about labor on labor day, I would like to turn your attention to the struggles of mujeres, primarily immigrants, who work inside the homes of other women.

Immigrant women workers today form a pillar of the middle-class family. As nannies, housekeepers and other domestic workers, their status is defined by the strangely intimate nature of their work combined with structural discrimination. A new study presents at their hidden plight in a new light: as a driver of the advancement of the mothers they serve.

There is much talk still in mainstream feminist circles on the work at home vs stay at home mommy divide. Within these discussions however there is little if any analysis of how some women get to make this very decision and who takes the role of housekeeper and child care provider. It certainly isn’t the men of the household, assuming there is even a man in the picture. Rather it is immigrant women who often have never had the luxury of making a choice to stay home or to work outside the home.

The research suggest that “inflows of low-skilled immigrants resulted in a higher rate of childbearing in this population of high-skilled women living in large urban areas.” In addition, this immigration flow “substantially reduced the work-fertility tradeoff facing educated urban American women”—in other words, it enabled working women to balance career and family duties.

So immigrant workers help lift white-collar mothers toward that coveted work-life balance. But back at home, work remains the same as it ever was: hard, endless, and never fairly compensated. The difference for domestic workers, of course, is that they are still outsiders in the home, culturally and professionally. And when overworked and exploited, they end up tending to other people’s families at the expense of their ability to care for their own.

I am not a child care provider per se, but I work with other people’s children. The parents of the children I work with are all two parent homes with the mother staying at home. While I provide a service, I have experienced how some of the parents pick up their children late, cancel at the last minute, don’t show up and try to negotiate down my pay rate so that they can have an hour of shopping time or other tasks that need to get done. What is often ignored is that I am a mother too. Trying to raise my children on my solo income while I also take care of their children. Today, labor day is not a day off for me. I will write my blog posts, feed my children and then go off to ensure the educational success of other people’s children. And this pales in comparison to the struggles of other women who have been organizing in New York State specifically for a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Ms. T: “We are verbally assaulted and we have to stay quiet. Often we end up leaving these jobs when we can’t take it anymore. What is sad and difficult is that sometimes we are not paid a single penny for the work we’ve done. In my case, I have had good, considerate employers but in these years I have also experienced difficulties, which I never thought I would have to endure – discrimination because of the color of my skin and for being an immigrant. They’ve made me sleep in a basement with no heat in the dead of winter. They’ve denied me food during the time I was living in and also forbid me to bring food for myself from outside. I’ve also been yelled out to the point where I was becoming sick with depression and nervousness. I left my last job so exhausted and destroyed I could only think of hurling myself in front of passing cars because I was made to feel so bad I wanted to die. I felt worse than a worm after the way they told me how poor I was and that’s why I was worth nothing.”

Via / Raven’s Eye, RaceWire, DWU