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Over recent years, there has been a notable shift in feminist scholarship regarding the study of women's labor in the home. While in the 1960s and 1970s, research focused on the significance for women's oppression of unpaid domestic labor, since the 1980s more attention has been devoted to the role of paid domestic service in oppressing racial and ethnic minority, and working class women. The growing interest in paid domestic labor reflects a reflection among some feminists feminists that the employment of domestic households is a crucial means through which asymmetrical race and class relations among women are structured. ...In this article, we argue that in advanced states women's work iin the home cannot be fully understood without addressing statuses of members of household units and female migrant domestic workers.... Using the Canadian Live-in Caregiver Program as a case study, the article will demonstrate the pivotal role of private domestic placement agents in negotiating citizenship rights for migrant domestic workers and their employers. Rather than approaching domestic labor as an abstract and universal category, we instead draw attention to the variations among women positioned differently in terms of their class, race, and citizenship regarding labor performed in the home. Our analysis is based largely on intensive qualitative interviews with ten of the leading domestic placement agencies in Toronto, Ontario. Additionally, we observed several national and international meetings and conferences organized by placement agencies and consulted a wide variety of policy documents and secondary sources. --From introduction

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press