Conclusion

Abstract

This concluding chapter argues that the book's analysis confirms previous research on Latin American domestic workers' experiences published mostly in Spanish and Portuguese, while generating new insights. The book's findings, when viewed along with research from other parts of Latin America, suggest that the experiences of nonmigrants, internal migrants, and international migrants in the region are quite similar. Their working conditions are equally dismal. Domestic workers are exploited as a subclass of worker, a subclass of human, whether they were born in the same country as their employers or not. They are always the other. Setting migration aside, then, as the primary variable explaining exploitation, the book's analysis focuses on three dimensions of oppression that act as obstacles to domestic workers' rights: social reproduction, informality, and class. Scholars and activists can target these obstacles in the effort to improve working conditions.