Domestic Service and the Formation of European Identity

Before the Servant Project began its activities, on the initiative of the editor of this book, the long term history of domestic service was still in its beginning stage. This volume is the first wide-ranging attempt to determine the role of domestic workers both in past and present times. Domestic service was of major importance in the multi-secular process of urbanization and socio-economic development of European societies. Today, domestic workers (mainly women) represent an important component of international labour migrations to Western countries. Instead of disappearing, as expected for a long time, paid domestic work is currently experiencing a kind of «resurgence».
The contributions assembled in this volume analyze the situation of domestic workers, and contribute to improve knowledge concerning their individual characteristics (gender, ethnic group, religion), origin, motivation and cultural identity, relationship with their own families and those of the employers. Further topics are connections with the home country and place of destination, legal status, rights and duties, in order to understand the current globalization of domestic work.

Contents: Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux: Introduction - Richard Wall: The Social and Economic Significance of Servant Migration - Beatrice Moring: Migration, Servanthood and Assimilation in a New Environment - Christer Lundh: Life-Cycle Servants in Nineteenth Century Sweden: Norms and Practice - Marie-Christine (Lotta) Vikström: Female Domestic Servants in Sundsvall. A Swedish Sawmill Town, during Industrialization - Isidro Dubert: Agricultural Work, Social Structure and Labour Markets of the Rural Domestic Service in Galicia in the Mid-Eighteenth Century - Ofelia Rey Castelao/Raquel Iglesias Estepa: Domestic Service in Spain, 1750-1836: the Domestic Servants of the Clergy - Ludmila Fialová: Domestic Staff in the Czech Lands at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries in the Light of Statistical Figures - Sølvi Sogner: The Legal Status of Servants in Norway from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century - Aurelia Martín Casares: Domestic Service in Spain. Legislation, Gender and Social Practice - Mary Louise Nagata: Domestic Service and the Law in Early Modern Japan - Karen Jaehrling: Political Reforms in the Domestic Service Sector - Aims and Impact - Adelle Blackett: Promoting Domestic Workers' Human Dignity through Specific Regulation - Sheila McIsaac Cooper: From Family Member to Employee: Aspects of Continuity and Discontinuity in English Domestic Service, 1600-2000 - Helma Lutz/Susanne Schwalgin: Irregular Migration and the Globalization of Domestic Work: Migrant Domestic Workers in Germany - Gül Özyegin: Calling the Tune: Domestic Worker's Earnings and Intra-Household Gender Relations in Turkey - Margaret Magat: Women Breadwinners in the Margins: Filipina Domestic Workers in Rome, Italy - Rhacel Salazar Parreñas: Gender Inequalities in the New Global Economy - Pothiti Hantzaroula: The Dynamics of the Mistress-Servant Relationship - Elisabeth Ewan: Mistresses of Themselves? Female Domestic Servants and By-Employments in Sixteenth-Century Scottish Towns - Suzy Pasleau/Isabelle Schopp: The Three Colours of Domestic Service in Belgium at the Start of the Twenty-First Century - Lise Widding Isaksen: Gender, Care and Globalization as seen from Norway - Bronwen Walter: Irish Domestic Servants and English National Identity - Margaret Lynch-Brennan: Was Bridget's Experience Unique? A Comparative View of American Domestic Service over Time and Space - Carmen Sarasúa: Were Servants Paid according to their Productivity? - Shireen Moosvi: Domestic Service in Precolonial India: Bondage, Caste and Market.