The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (101 page)

Worker: Do You Have a Problem at Work? For Help or Free Information, Call

the Labor Defense Network''; an accompanying illustration shows a domestic

worker with octopus-like arms, with one hand balancing a crying baby while the

other hands hold a feather duster, an iron, a baby bottle, a stirring spoon, and a soapy sponge. The posters also included tear-off sheets with information on where to solicit legal counsel for domestic work issues, such as salary disputes or sexual harassment. As they distributed the materials, the outreach workers advised

domestic workers on their employment rights and provided resource information

on where to obtain legal assistance for job-related problems. The outreach

workers also distributed small notebooks and encouraged domestic workers to

record daily all work hours, tasks performed, and pay received, so that if a labor dispute should arise, they would have documentation to present in court.

Research, Activism,

Activism, Theory

After I had prepared the text for the novela, I sent the Spanish-language text to several of the immigrant women respondents in my study so that I might elicit

their feedback. Most of them had little to say, and when I spoke with them, they 434

Immigrant Women and Paid Domestic Work

agreed that the project and the materials were useful, but they did not offer

recommendations or suggestions. There was, however, one exception. The

woman who had been most active in using the domestics' network resources

and successful in accumulating an enviable list of jobs, Maria Alicia N., did voice strong views on the novela text. She expressed these views in the form of a

lengthy tape-recorded ``letter.'' Verbal letters recorded on cassettes are sometimes used by some Mexican immigrants to communicate with their family back

home, and Maria Alicia favored this form of communication as she was trying

to control her already steep phone bills. In the cassette she sent me, she spoke of the recent challenges she had faced as a single working mother, her worries about her 12 year old son's affinity with a local gang, and her disappointment in

discovering that her boyfriend of seven years was still married to another

woman in Mexico. But on the upside, her work was going well, as she still

maintained a steady route of employers and was earning more than ever before.

On the subject of the text, she offered many insightful remarks on the subcon-

tracting relationship that are worth quoting:

You asked for my opinion on these novelas that you're making. Look, with my sister it took me a lot of work to make her independent, and little by little she got out on her own with her own houses [to clean], right. Now she works for herself, but it took me a lot of work because at the beginning she didn't like to be left alone. She didn't want to drive, she didn't want to do this or that, but now she realized that she is independent and it would be terrible if she was working for me. Perhaps something would have happened, we probably would have broken off our association.

There have been other occasions. Once I tried to help a woman, and I told her I

would leave her a house. I showed her the house, I took her there, and I told the senÄora that she was my sister. I wanted to give her that house [to clean] and do you believe it? She didn't go the day that she was supposed to do so! So then I looked bad with the senÄora. So I say how is it possible that one can have such great need and not have the desire to work? They are asking god for work, but they don't want to work.

I mean, they are looking for work and praying to god that they don't find it!

So then a cousin, no a sister, of Amador also came here. I told her it was a good business with houses, ``Little by little I'll leave you a few, little by little because now it's really slow.'' I told her, ``You'll make a lot of money very fast, because this is a good job, you earn well.'' So we went to do some houses, and in one of them it

seemed to her that I charged too little, and in another, it seemed to her that I did too much work, that I should only do this and do that. What happens is that people are not conscious that they must make merits. . . . And people just don't want to make that kind of sacrifice.

Maria Alicia responded defensively to the materials I had sent for her com-

mentary. Rather than recalling her experiences as à`helper'' hired to assist

another paid domestic worker, she cited three more recent examples in which

her own hired ``helpers'' had not performed up to the standard she set. In the

above quote she blames her sister for being too dependent, her friend for being

irresponsible and lazy, and her boyfriend's sister for being unwilling to work

hard and accept a low level of pay initially.

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

435

The subcontracting relationship embodies and reproduces inequality among

paid domestic workers. Maria Alicia responded defensively to the text warning

women of the abuses that occur among Latina domestics themselves because the

position that Maria Alicia identified with was as a moderately successful paid

domestic worker who occasionally took on her own helpers. But in fact she

herself had entered the occupation by working as a subcontracted helper for

virtually nothing and living rent free with another Mexican immigrant woman

domestic worker. That relationship seemed too distant for her to even recall, but when I had interviewed her several years earlier, she had complained about it. At that time, she related disappointment and anger with her experiences as à`helper'' subcontracted by another domestic worker who exploited her labor and her situation: `Ì helped her to work a lot, and she did not pay me. Nothing, nothing. I would help her to do three or four houses a day. No, no, no, no, they were giving me nothing! It would have been better if I had never accepted such

an arrangement.''

Maria Alicia's divergent responses in the interview, and then in reaction to the research findings in the form of the novela text, prompted me to see the dual

nature of the domestic workers' networks. Although the subcontracting relation-

ship is just one facet of the network relations, it provides an important means of entry into the occupation for women who lack sufficient contacts with employers. For domestic workers who hire their own helpers, the subcontracting

relationship is a way to yield enough labor to cover an increasing number of

lucrative jobs. I began to see Maria Alicia's comments as reflections of different positions in the network, and I began to conceptualize paid domestic work as a

career where movement is governed in part by the domestic worker's networks

(Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994).

This revelation allowed me to see that there is mobility within an occupation

that is generally held to be either static or the route to upward mobility by

changing occupation. Paid domestic work has typically been seen either as à`bridging occupation'' that facilitates acculturation and mobility into industrial employment for rural±urban migrant or immigrant women (Broom and Smith,

1963; McBride, 1976) or as an `òccupational ghetto'' for women of color

(Glenn, 1986; Romero, 1987, 1988). For women such as Maria Alicia, paid

domestic work is neither a static position nor the route to jobs in the formal

sector of the economy. Even in paid domestic work conducted outside the pur-

view of formal regulations, some immigrant women can move up the ranks and

obtain better employers who offer higher pay and better working conditions,

more houses to clean, and, eventually, their own ``hired help.''

Are Feminist Sociology and Activism

Activism Compatible?

Francesca M. Cancian (1996) discusses some of the ways in which mainstream

academic power structures and careerism dissuade sociologists from incorporat-

ing social change into their research agendas, and she correctly, I think, emphasizes that vast structural changes in universities and academic publishing are

436

Immigrant Women and Paid Domestic Work

necessary to change traditional approaches to scholarship. These broad, struc-

tural changes are necessary and will require a concerted, organized effort on the part of feminist sociologists, especially those in relatively senior, decision-making positions. But in the interim, or simultaneously perhaps, more limited,

circumscribed innovations might be pursued by individuals.

The interactions between research, activism, and theory related in this chapter

suggest that feminists with academic careers can combine traditional academic

scholarship with social change activism. In fact, feminists working within aca-

demic careers may find a double pay-off, as I did, to integrating social research and activism. On the one hand, there is the satisfaction of having an impact,

however modest, on enhancing the social conditions of the people one has

studied. This advances the notion of reciprocity to another level, and, if one is predisposed to asking existential ``so what?'' questions about the social significance of one's research, it may provide some answers. On the other hand, the

experience of seeking outlets in which to implement research findings may also

advance previous interpretations and theoretical implications drawn from the

original research. The prospects for sociologists who wish to apply their findings toward women's equality would seem to have increased with the proliferation of

new feminist research. In the instance I have discussed here, research and theory informed activism, but it was the dissemination and advocacy work that in turn

allowed me to gain new insights from my findings and interpretations.

30

The Subject and Societal

Movements

Alain Touraine

It is initially essential to distinguish three types of collective action. The first type of collective action involves social demands, and occurs at the level of

organizations; and the second involves political crisis and occurs at the level

of institutions and decision-making centers. The third, which is increasingly

important and with which I am concerned, is one that responds to conditions

in a deinstitutionalized society in which common beliefs no longer unify and

where the Self is fractured. These conditions give rise to societal movements

that involve the personal and collective struggle for the unification of the

Subject. In contrast with collective action involving social demands, which

are based on economic calculation, or those involving political crisis, which

lead to political demands, a societal movement relies on a collective deter-

mination to acquire a fundamental cultural resource, such as knowledge,

recognition, a model of morality, and, most especially, the will to become a

Subject.

To make this more concrete, in collective actions involving social demands or

under a political crisis, the language is political, even though the collective action may occur in an industry, firm, hospital, university or neighborhood. For example, whenever a recession throws people out of work and lowers wages, a

population may rise up with strong demands, but they have few chances of

raising consciousness by fostering an understanding of the situation or even an

ideology. The actors' consciousness focuses on their own situation, on calcula-

tions for proving the validity of their claims, justifying demands about living

standards or the strain of their work, or making comparisons with people in

other socioeconomic categories. There is no reference to power relationships, or to the society's basic cultural orientations. Nor is there a reference to a social Subject, or to conflictive relations about the social uses of a cultural model, or to shared cultural orientations.

438

Alain Touraine

The Distinctiveness

Distinctiveness of Societal Movements

Just as the sociology of rational choice and interests has diligently studied social demands, and functionalist sociology has dwelled on institutions in crises, the

third type of collective action requires analyses that center attention on how

actors aim to change a society's key cultural models and how they are managed.

Such a movement is recognizable because it brings together three characteristics: a conflict between social actors contending over the social relations whereby a

society reproduces itself; a positive reference to the cultural values at stake in the conflict; and an idea as to how the Subject is joined to the societal movement.

It is never easy to detect whether a collective action contains a societal move-

ment, with long-lasting consequences. The long, massive strike of May 1968

(with its demonstration on May 13, for which a million persons turned out)

appeared at the time to have been a political crisis with only short-term effects.

Yet a quarter of a century afterwards, there is no denying that it changed society and introduced cultural themes into politics. Therefore, we must consider it to

have been a major societal movement with continuing consequences.

A societal movement is based on neither an economic calculation nor political

pressure. It relies on the will to acquire a fundamental cultural resource (knowledge, a model of morality such as socialism or equality) and on the will to

become a Subject. This will is not expressed in a vacuum ± not in the solitude of a personal experience but in social relations and in a way that respects and

advances personal and collective freedoms. Societal movements criticize social

relations involving inequality, domination, and power, but they go beyond that

in appealing to an ethics of collective responsibility.