Transnational Perspectives on Women's Domestic Work: Experiences of Brazilian Immigrants in the United States

Abstract

SUMMARY This article focuses on immigrant women's transnational experiences and perceptions of paid and unpaid domestic work. The dominance of work was an evident theme throughout the interviews with 26 Brazilian women who had been employed in domestic or food service work in the United States. Various intersections of gender, class, culture, and migration were evident in the women's changing definitions of work, measures of the quantity and quality of their paid and unpaid domestic work, and perceptions of their own fluid identities as Brazilian women, domestic workers, and immigrants. Through their daily lives and work experiences these immigrant women made concerted efforts to forge, maintain, or recreate contacts and connections with values and perspectives from both Brazilian and U.S. society. In the process they created dynamic transnational understandings and perspectives on women's domestic work.