Domestic labour relations in India Vulnerability and gendered life courses in Jaipur Päivi Mattila Interkont Books 19 Helsinki 2011 Domestic labour relations in India Vulnerability and gendered life courses in Jaipur Päivi Mattila Doctoral Dissertation To be presented for public examination with the permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences in the Small Festive Hall, Main Building of the University of Helsinki on Saturday, October 8, 2011 at 10 a.m. University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences Department of Political and Economic Studies, Development Studies Interkont Books 19 opponent Dr. Bipasha Baruah, Associate Professor International Studies, California State University, Long Beach pre-examiners Dr. Bipasha Baruah, Associate Professor International Studies, California State University, Long Beach Adjunct Professor Raija Julkunen University of Jyväskylä supervisors Adjunct Professor Anna Rotkirch University of Helsinki Professor Sirpa Tenhunen Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Helsinki copyright Päivi Mattila published by Institute of Development Studies University of Helsinki, Finland ISSN 0359-307X (Interkont Books 19) ISBN 978-952-10-7247-5 (Paperback) ISBN 978-952-10-7248-2 (PDF; http://e-thesis.helsinki.fi) graphic design Miina Blot | Livadia printed by Unigrafia, Helsinki 2011 CONTENTS Abstract i Acknowledgements iii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Research task and relevance 2 1.2 The scope and scale of paid domestic work in India 7 From colonial times to contemporary practices 7 Regulation of domestic work 11 Gender inequalities in India and Rajasthan 14 1.3 Previous research 18 Paid domestic work in the global North and South 18 Previous research on paid domestic work in India 24 1.4 Research questions 29 1.5 Outline of the dissertation 31 2 Theoretical approaches and concepts 33 2.1 Studying hierarchies in paid domestic work 34 Domestic labour relations as class relations 34 Intersectional hierarchies in the Indian labour markets 42 2.2 Other key concepts for the study of paid domestic work 47 Commodification of care 47 Maternalism 49 Vulnerability at work 52 Approaching children’s work 58 Servants or domestic workers – a note on concepts 61 2.3 Work and the life course 65 Female life course and work in India 67 Intergenerationality in workers’ trajectories 69 3 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES 71 3.1 Methodological and ethical choices 71 On positioning 71 Studying hierarchical relations 77 Solidarity through research? 79 Gendered choices 81 Studying working children 83 3.2 Methods and research data 85 Establishing relationships 85 Observation and interviews 89 The analysis of data 99 4 ORGANISATION of PAID doMESTIC WorK in Jaipur 101 4.1 The scene: middle class domesticity 103 Middle class women as household managers 104 Kripa’s day: supervising domestic workers in an upper middle-class home 108 4.2 Organising paid domestic work 111 Commodified part-time work 113 Maids at work 118 ”I don’t have to go for a single thing”: the live-in arrangement 123 4.3 Reluctant dependencies 129 4.4 Reasons for hiring domestic workers 132 Wage-earning women and housewives 132 Domestic work as a class marker 135 Preferring manual labour to household appliances 137 4.5 Conclusions 138 5 LABOUR RELATIONS in TRANSITION 143 5.1 Between maternalism and contractualism 143 Nostalgic glorification of past relations 143 Patron-client or employer-employee relations? 148 The contested gift and other maternalist practices 150 From “like a family member” to “human being”? 157 5.2 Class anxieties and mistrust 161 “They think they can become like us” 161 “Domestic danger” and talk of mistrust 167 Reasons for employer anxiety 170 5.3 Managing “fear of servants” 174 Building trust and other safety measures 174 Child workers as a safety strategy 178 5.4 Conclusions 181 6 WorKing CONDITIONS – the CONTINUUM of VULNERABILITY 184 6.1 Recruiting workers 185 Recruiting maids 185 Live-in workers – echoes of patron-client relations 187 Continuity in work relations 190 6.2 The struggle over wages and leave 193 Maids’ wages 194 Remuneration of the live-in workers 198 Pushing for standards, negotiating leave 201 Isolated live-in children – the most vulnerable 206 6.3 Exploitative employers? 210 6.4 Conclusions 212 7 HIERARCHIES in PAID doMESTIC WorK 215 7.1 Caste transitions and fixities 216 Caste in transition 216 Cooking, waste management and purity rules 221 7.2 Gender, age and life-stage in employer preferences 226 A gendered division of labour renegotiated 226 Unmarried boys and girls as live-in workers 228 Employer anxieties over sexuality 231 7.3 Drawing boundaries 235 Fine-tuned preferences: ethnicity and religion 235 Workers as genetically inferior, stigmatised and dirty 238 Everyday consequences of inferiority 242 7.4 Conclusions 246 8 WorKing MOTHERS and DAUGHTERS 250 8.1 Female work-life courses 250 The parameters of women’s labour market participation 251 The impossible housewife ideal 255 Transmission of work within the family 256 Marriage and work trajectories 258 Motherhood and wage work 260 8.2 Precarious girlhood 264 Girls as income providers – an implicit intergenerational contract 265 The detrimental dowry 270 Anxiety over sexuality and family honour 273 Working girls and education 280 Lack of future prospects 285 Workers’ perceptions of children’s work 287 8.3 Conclusions 291 9 HUMan TREATMent or WorKERS’ RIGHTS? 297 9.1 Everyday resistance and bargaining power 298 9.2 Regulating workers’ rights 305 Should workers have rights? – Employer perspectives 306 Workers’ views on regularisation 311 The fight for recognition 313 9.3 Conclusions 321 10 CONCLUSIONS 323 10.1 Commodified labour relations and persisting traditions 323 Class anxieties 327 The continuum of vulnerability 328 Stratified labour markets 330 10.2 The precarious trajectories of female workers 332 10.3 Towards contractual labour relations? 334 10.4 Significance of the study 335 10.5 Emerging questions and future research 337 References 341 Annexes 367 abstract This study explores labour relations between domestic workers and employers in India. It is based on interviews with both employers and workers, and ethnographically oriented field work in Jaipur, carried out in 2004–07. Combining development studies with gender stud- ies, labour studies, and childhood studies, it asks how labour rela- tions between domestic workers and employers are formed in Jaipur, and how female domestic workers’ trajectories are created. Focusing on female part-time maids and live-in work arrangements, the study analyses children’s work in the context of overall work force, not in isolation from it. Drawing on feminist Marxism, domestic labour relations are seen as an arena of struggle. The study takes an empirical approach, show- ing how paid domestic work is structured and stratified through in- tersecting hierarchies of class, caste, gender, age, ethnicity and religion. The importance of class in domestic labour relations is reiterated, but that of caste, so often downplayed by employers, is also emphasized. Domestic workers are crucial to the functioning of middle and up- per middle class households, but their function is not just utilitarian. Through them working women and housewives are able to maintain purity and reproduce class distinctions, both between poor and mid- dle classes and lower and upper middle classes. Despite commodification of work relations, traditional elements of service relationships have been retained, particularly through ma- ternalist practices such as gift giving, creating a peculiar blend of tra- i ditional and market practices. Whilst employers of part-time work- ers purchase services in a segmented market from a range of workers for specific tasks, such as cleaning and gardening, traditional live-in workers are also hired to serve employers round the clock. Employers and workers grudgingly acknowledged their dependence on one an- other, employers seeking various strategies to manage fear of servant crime, such as the hiring of children or not employing live-in workers in dual-earning households. Paid domestic work carries a heavy stigma and provide no entry to other jobs. It is transmitted from mothers to daughters and working girls were often the main income providers in their families. The diversity of working conditions is analysed through a con- tinuum of vulnerability, generic live-in workers, particularly children and unmarried young women with no close family in Jaipur, being the most vulnerable and experienced part-time workers the least vulnerable. Whilst terms of employment are negotiated informally and individually, some informal standards regarding salary and days off existed for maids. However, employers maintain that workings conditions are a matter of individual, moral choice. Their reluctance to view their role as that of employers and the workers as their em- ployees is one of the main stumbling blocks in the way of improved working conditions. key words: paid domestic work, India, children’s work, class, caste, gender, life course ii acKnoWledgeMents This has been a good journey. It would have been very different, and probably impossible, without the help and support of the many people and institutions who have helped and supported me in so many ways. I warmly thank my two pre-examiners, Dr. Raija Julkunen and Dr. Bipasha Baruah, Associate Professor at International Studies, Califor- nia State University, who will also act as my opponent. I was honoured to have them read my work in such a thorough manner. Their wise and constructive comments and the appreciation they both showed of my research helped me to put the finishing touches to the study. I am deeply indebted to the three supervisors I had during this process. First of all, I thank Dr. Anna Rotkirch, my main supervisor, for her unfailing support, her intellectual inspiration and her smooth but efficient guidance, not to mention all those coffees in Delicato, all of which continued even after she left the University to work elsewhere. Secondly, I thank Professor Ulla Vuorela for her supervision and support in the early years of the process and for seeing potential in my initial tentative efforts at a research plan.