Latin American Research Review | 2021
Practicing Intersectionality: Brazilian Domestic Workers’ Strategies of Building Alliances and Mobilizing Identity
Abstract
Domestic workers, as essentially black women in highly precarious conditions, lacking social protection, and often not recognized as proper workers, are considered particularly hard, or even impossible, to organize compared to the “standard” male industrial worker. Yet they have been mobilizing for decades in several countries, including Brazil, where they won new labor rights in 2015. Through an ethnographic study of domestic workers’ unions in Brazil, I argue that what has made their mobilization possible is precisely the intersectional dimension of their oppression. While gender, race, and class have produced multiple forms of exclusion, these vectors of oppression have also enabled domestic workers to build alliances with women’s, black, and workers’ movements, thus giving domestic workers more visibility and more resources to organize their members. I have identified three forms of alliance building, each determined by domestic workers’ unions’ particular framing of gender, race, and class issues: rigid autonomy, critical alliance, and encompassing unionism. Resumo Sendo essencialmente mulheres negras em condicoes altamente precarias, sem protecao social e muitas vezes nao reconhecidas como trabalhadoras, as trabalhadoras domesticas sao consideradas particularmente dificeis, ou mesmo impossiveis, de organizar, em comparacao com o trabalhador industrial “padrao” e masculino. No entanto, elas estao se mobilizando ha decadas em varios paises, incluindo o Brasil, onde conquistaram novos direitos trabalhistas em 2015. Atraves de um estudo etnografico dos sindicatos de trabalhadoras domesticas no Brasil, argumento que o que tornou possivel sua mobilizacao e precisamente a dimensao interseccional de sua opressao. Embora genero, raca e classe tenham produzido multiplas formas de exclusao, esses vetores de opressao tambem permitiram que as trabalhadoras domesticas construissem aliancas com os movimentos de mulheres, negros e de trabalhadores, lhes dando mais visibilidade e mais recursos para organizar seus membros. Eu identifiquei tres formas de construir aliancas, cada uma determinada pelo modo com o qual os sindicatos de trabalhadoras domesticas entendem as questoes de genero, raca e classe: a autonomia rigida, o aliado critico e o sindicalismo abrangente.