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Abstract

In recent years, labor history has taken a "global turn", increasingly focusing on labor relations in the non-Western world. This article aims to challenge existing perceptions of the history of domestic work in Europe from a global labor history perspective by comparing them with the histories of domestic workers the world over. It seeks to discern continuities and discontinuities in the life cycles of domestic workers around the world over a long period of time. The profound influence of globalization and women's emancipation on the contemporary international division of labor may make it seem quite new, but it remains rooted in older patterns of migration, colonial relations, and gender and ethnic stereotypes. * This paper was presented at the workshop entitled "Zum Verhältnis von global-und nationalhistorischen Ansätzen in der Arbeitergeschichte. Spannungen, Anregungen, Verbindungen" at re:work, Berlin, in January 2015. It was inspired by a collaborative book project following on from the ITH conference "Towards a Global History of Domestic Workers and Care Givers", that was organized 12th-15th September 2013. I wish to thank my co-organizers and co-editors of the book, Dirk Hoerder and Silke Neunsinger, for our fruitful and instructive collaboration. Most of the studies I refer to in this paper draw from the contributions to our book: Dirk Hoerder et al. (eds.), Towards a Global History of Domestic and Caregiving Workers, Leiden 2015. Moreover, many thanks to Corinne Boter for her valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.