The making of ‘proper’ homes: Everyday practices in migrant domestic work in Naples

Abstract

Changing from a country of emigration into one of immigration has been one of the major phenomena of Italian society in recent years. One of the realms where this has been most evident is in Italian households employing migrants for domestic service and care work. This article looks at domestic and care practices in the everyday life of a Neapolitan household. Based on participant observation conducted in Giuseppe's apartment, it shows how the traditional Neapolitan way of life can be maintained by employing a live-in worker. It discusses some of the contradictions and tensions involved in this kind of work, and, by looking at everyday life, it also questions depictions of vulnerable migrant workers at the mercy of their employers.

Keywords:

• migration
• welfare state
• domestic work
• care work
• home

Acknowledgements

This article is a revised version of a paper that was the ASMI Graduate Essay Prize 2007. The research was made possible by a generous grant from the Helsingin Sanomat 100-years Foundation, Finland. I am also grateful to Professor Russell King and Dr Katie Walsh at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, and to the anonymous referees for their very useful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

Note

1. All the names are pseudonyms.

2. It has become common to differentiate between live-in and live-out domestic work. ‘Live-in’ work refers to labour arrangements where the worker lives with the employer's family; ‘live-out’ work where she or he works on hourly basis (Anderson 2000).

3. This study is my doctoral thesis, which started at the University of Helsinki and is now being completed at the University of Sussex.

4. In fact, my study reveals that migrant workers tend to avoid households with signore who did not work.

5. Approaching human life as rhythmic choreographies of space and time organisation is also part of the tradition of early social geography, especially in the ‘time-geography’ developed by Torsten Hägerstrand (1975). Interestingly, in reviewing Hägerstrand's work, Allan Pred (1977, 208) uses very similar metaphors as Kaufmann to describe this approach. He talks about observing the ‘“choreography” of the individual's existence’ and the ‘weaving dance through time-space’.