This study explores the labour rights discourse produced by Brazilian domestic workers. It shows that the 2015 Brazilian legislation which extended labour rights to domestic workers was not simply a ‘boomerang effect’ of ILO Convention 189 on decent work for domestic workers, or a case of the ‘vernacularisation’ of global rights. Indeed, domestic workers have agitated for equal labour rights since 1936, and articulated the specific rights contained in the new legislation decades before their institutional recognition. Therefore, rather than being an instance of the translation of pre-existing global frameworks at the local level, the case of domestic workers demonstrates the ability of subaltern groups to transnationalise their demands, suggesting that the global South should not be conceived only as a place of rights reception, but also as a place of rights production. In this context, I trace the genealogy of the labour rights discourse as imagined and mobilised by domestic workers in Brazil, and examine the ways in which they have travelled between their subaltern location, the Brazilian state and the international agenda about ‘decent work.’

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O presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar as divergências de percepção sobre o emprego doméstico entre domésticas sindicalistas e domésticas não sindicalizadas. A partir de entrevistas qualitativas e observações participantes nos sindicatos locais de São Paulo, Campinas e Rio de Janeiro, este artigo explora em particular a maneira com a qual as trabalhadoras domésticas articulam as dimensões de gênero, raça e classe. Sugere que existe um "efeito sindical", processo através do qual militantes modificam sua percepção de si mesmos e da categoria e conseguem transformar elementos de opressão em luta coletiva.

On October 29, 2019, a group of intellectuals met at the Sociology Department of usp, at the initiative of the Tempo Social editor, for an interview with Patricia Hill Collins, an internationally renowned American intellectual, who opened new perspectives for Black feminist thought, as a critical social theory. The departure point was Collins new book, entitled Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory, where she explores the parallels between the challenges faced by those activists-intellectuals who coined the notion of intersectionality, and the new challenges faced today. During the conversation, other themes emerged, exploring the author’s research agenda and her previous books, as well as the current challenges for the studies on racial relations and for the anti-racist militance.