Partial Citizenship and the Ideology of Women’s Domesticity in State Policies on Foreign Domestic Workers

Abstract

My paper revisits the concept of “partial citizenship” that I introduced a decade ago in the book Servants of Globalization (2001b: 48-51). Partial citizenship refers to the absence of full juridical rights for migrant domestic workers at both ends of the migration spectrum. I revisit this concept in order to elaborate on the gender dynamics in the cultural logic that shapes the policies regarding foreign domestic workers of receiving nations. Elaborating on the limited citizenship rights that many receiving states grant foreign domestic workers, my paper illustrates how states often 1) refuse to recognize their need for foreign domestic workers and consequently limit them to an irregular status or 2) refuse to recognize domestic workers as laborers and limit them to a conditional residency status that binds them to a sponsoring employer (in other words, they are seen as a member of the family of a sponsoring employer or someone not independent of that sponsor, hence an extension of them). An earlier version of the paper was printed in 2010 in a volume edited by the panel organizers: Parreñas, Rhacel. “‘Partial Citizenship’ and the Ideology of Women’s Domesticity in State Policies on Foreign Domestic Workers,” Care and Migration, eds. Ursula Apitzsch and Marianne Schmidbau, pp. 127-140, Opladen and Farmington Hills, MI: Verlag Barbara Budrich, 2010.