Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence » (2nd Edition)

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California.

"Doméstica is a pathbreaking study. It opens our eyes to the hidden world of transnational care-work and calls on us to shape domestic and international policies that will bring basic principles of human rights and social justice into that world. Everyone who is concerned about care and equality should read it."—Lucie White, Professor, Harvard Law School

"Hondagneu-Sotelo challenges the reader to rethink the organization of caring work, the roles of race and immigrant status in the structure of domestic work, the importance of regulations, and the need for legal and personal recognition of the rights and human dignity of each worker."—Bonnie Thornton Dill, author of Across the Boundaries of Race and Class

Los Angeles Times

Opens a rare window into the lives of workers who often speak little English and seldom converse with their employers about anything except housework.

Preface to the 2007 Edition     ix
Preface to the First Edition     xvii
Acknowledgments     xxxi
The Job Today
New World Domestic Order     3
Maid in L.A.     29
Finding Hard Work Isn't Easy
It's Not What You Know...     63
Formalizing the Informal: Domestic Employment Agencies     92
Blowups and Other Unhappy Endings     114
Inside the Job
Tell Me What to Do, But Don't Tell Me How     137
Go Away...But Stay Close Enough     171
Cleaning Up a Dirty Business     210
Notes     245
References     269
Index     279