ILPC 2026

The present paper explores and analyses mutuality in paid domestic work relationships. Since last century feminist activists and theorists contested the disposition to consider paid domestic work from work theoretical frameworks. Private and public domains, productive and reproductive processes needed to be discussed from a historical and present point of view, as Silvia Federici has done. Other authors made very important contributions like Arlie Hochschild, to consider some obvious but not visible aspects involved. The arguments introduced in Time Bind, the idea of the second shift, the externalization of domestic work, where very provocative and substantive contribution to research and debate. Paid domestic labor takes place within domestic space and time is connected to family life. Time and space of intimacy and mutual practices indicate the particular processes involved. This is crucial when caring is the main activity. It is also critical for live in domestic workers, who are mostly migrant women. Intersectional approach contributed to make visible the multiple dimensions that interact simultaneously in their experience: gender, class, ethnicity, and how they reinforce each other. During 2016 the Group Human mobilities, work and human rights developed a university extension project with Uruguayan domestic workers union: Derechos y afectividad en el trabajo doméstico asalariado. One of the commitments in this project was to design a research project concerning working and employment conditions, and health of domestic workers in Uruguay. The research project (2017-2018) Relaciones entre condiciones de trabajo, bienestar y trayectorias vitales en el servicio doméstico en Uruguay obtained the financial support of the Research and Development Programme (I+D) from the main scientific agency related to public University: Comisión Sectorial de Investigación Científica (CSIC, Udelar). It is being conducted from a combined methodological approach that includes qualitative and quantitative studies. The qualitative study has a biographical and narrative research approach. It is based on life histories of domestic workers in Uruguay. This paper is based on qualitative empirical data from this Research and Development Project, leaded by the authors, Principal investigator and members of the Research Group: Human mobilities, work and human rights, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad de la República (Udelar), Uruguay.