Ethnicity, Patriarchy, and Incorporation into the Nation: Female Migrants as Domestic Servants in Peru

Abstract

Patriarchy, racism, and nationalism are all lived forms of oppression for the peasant female migrants who become domestic servants in Peru, who, on migrating into the major cities, take up work in middle-class homes as juniors in the existing racial, class, and family hierarchies. Their incorporation into the household in a subordinate position in terms of class, ethnic, and gender ranking entails the systematic denial of peasant ethnic identity and the substitution of middle-class norms of the mestizo nation. The blurring of ethnic-cultural distinctions through the suppression of peasant characteristics takes place in the employers' homes, into which the migrants are ‘adopted’ as the ‘daughters' of a patriarchal family. The social and spatial divisions of labour which underpin domestic service in the this Latin American country thus hold ramifications for the practices and ideology of nationhood and family life both for employers and for employees.