Lara Jüssen
Research Network for Latin America - Ethnicity, Citizenship, Belonging
Interdisciplinary Latin America Center (ILZ)
University of Bonn
Walter-Flex-Str. 3, D-53113 Bonn, Germany, Tel.: ++49-(0)228-73-4467
Please treat confidentially -
Emotions have come to play an ever more important role in todays’ societies which Eva Illouz explains through the spread of a behavioural norm as well as the idea that the human has the duty to optimise his/her emotional life which led to the extension and capitalisation of therapeutical investments and “emotional capitalism” (Illouz 2006). Emotions have been widely used to analyse immaterial labour, especially in feminist literature: (Hochschild 1983) describes how flight attendants and telephone operators dedicate attention to customers’ wishes up to affective exhaustion and loss of sensitivity and a capacity of sensing within private lives.
(Clough 2007) proclaims an “affective turn”, considering the body’s capacity to autonomic responses, within a framework of psychoanalytic critique and technoscientific experimentation with affects. (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2010) stresses the difference between emotions and affects, describing emotional labour as „intention of the subject to be empathetic and attentive to others
(…) deployed in the orientation to the well-being of somebody else”, whereas „affect addresses the impact a feeling or emotion leaves on a person’s body or mind” (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2010, p. 132). Affects are diffuse, unstructured pre-personal sensations, energies or intensities which are relational to others, without being intentionally directed to others, affects being also contextual as they are embedded in a social, economic, historic and geopolitical matrix of power which concretise, for instance, in labour relations. Affects and affectedness were first fameously theorised by (Spinoza 1987 [1888]) in his “Ethic”. By framing affects as ethical, Spinoza highlighted the relevancy of affects for our emotional, intellectual and psychic life, body and mind being involved in the production of affects in an ethical way (which includes positive as well as negative affects and being affected). With (Massumi 1995) affects are autonomous spontaneous bodily intensities leaving imprints that unfold pressing potential as they escape from the virtual permitting for vitality or one’s sense of aliveness. Black studies articulate anger at being denied subjectification as colonised bodies that is evidenced by affective aberrations through which racism is experienced on an everyday basis (Fanon 2008 [1952]; Lorde 1981;
Tate 2013). Affects, as bodily sensations leaving imprints, can arouse through material objects
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or other bodies. Ahmed analyses how ‘happy objects’, images of integrated, assimilated migrants are employed for triggering good feelings for and by the majority society (Ahmed
2010b, 2008). In a feminist critique of happiness, (Ahmed 2010a) points out how feminist activists that speak-out, become affective aliens or feminist killjoys, as they disappoint the affective community’s happiness and agreeability and therewith disturb the social and political order. Black feminist killjoys’ mere bodily presence can provoke the same effect. (Hardt 1999) has posited affective labour within the current capitalist postmodernity, informatisation and service society as a modality of immaterial labour. Affective labour includes a reciprocity and commonality that Hardt explains followingly: “In the production and reproduction of affects, in those networks of culture and communication, collective subjectivities are produced and sociality is produced – even if those subjectivities and that sociality are directly exploitable by capital. This is where we can realize the enormous potential in affective labour.” (Hardt 1999, pp. 96f). With a view to production and creation of life, affective labour develops biopolitical force from below: “Labour works directly on the affects; it produces subjectivity, it produces society, it produces life. Affective labour, in this sense, is ontological – it reveals living labour constituting a form of life and thus demonstrates again the potential of biopolitical production”
(Hardt 1999, p. 99).
(McDowell 2009) describes how material appearance and ideological standpoints, as friendliness, agreeableness, etc. become important aspects of “working bodies” in service societies, – the working body that engages in care, nurturing, respect, comfort, joking, singing or appeasing. Her notions of “working bodies” points at the fact that the whole body is implicated in work, while work has effects upon the body (compare also Wence Partida 2014).
Affections and emotions are intermingled with care and household work more than in most other kinds of labour. The affective dimensions of household work articulate within the hierachised, labored matrix of intimate personal relationships (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2010).
Working bodies of household labourers feel, hug, love, comfort but are also affected by and strained through hurting backbones, heat in the kitchen, aggressive washing-up liquid, stress, anger or disgust while they are moreover extremely isolated and indeed affectively controlled within a private household, especially in the case of live-in workers. The affections the working body has to handle and receives from the employer or protégéd can be contradictory as on the one hand affections and love for children, elderly or employers can be intense, while, on the other hand, the household worker can be affected through the employers’ or protégéd’ bad mood, stress, boredom, or happiness, which the household worker has to manage, while she is not in the position to respond as she pleases but has to adopt her being affected to make it fit.
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As (Gutierrez Rodríguez 2011) shows, the reaction of a household worker to an employer who cries in the kitchen is always relevant, if she ignores it or if she spends comfort, she has to react and handle the situation. In contrast, the workers’ feelings are not respected nor treated in a sensitive manner. An example of how the worker might be deeply affected by tensions among the family she works with, obliging her juggle affects is presented by Alina, who, emotionally overburdened, had to quit her job, as she experienced the situation with her employers, who were in way of divorce, as retraumatising due to own experiences:
She was in an apartment and he in another house. So they had reparted me, one day with one of them, the next one with the other. So if you have the personal trauma of a divorce you’ll say no. Even if it’s not my family it does affect me, so I better go somewhere else, where I’m not so involved, because I’ve been escaping that same thing and I don’t want to go through it again with a family that isn’t even my own
(Alina, Mexico, 26).
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(Tronto 1989) develops an ethic of care based on the difference of males caring about (money, career) and women caring for (others). The latter includes an attentive attitude that transgresses the narrow market centered primacy of the self, balanced notions of authority and autonomy, and an engaged daily life morality of caring that is not feminine (legitimising anything women do), but more nuanced and feminist in order to rethink moral values of society and circumvent the reenactment of male and female spheres into public and private. (Datta et al. 2010) broaden the approach to include a “migrant ethic of care” inspired by articulations of migrant women and men who do paid household work: Care as based on nurturance, including (at times faithbased) moral values such as compassion, empathy, respect, responsibility, discipline and empowering involvement brought up for clients were regarded as values differentiating from
UK based values and served migrant care workers for constructing their work as valuable in spite of poor working conditions and pay. A lack of caring for oneself was detected by the authors, though, that reflected in complaints of being uncared for by employers and the care system they worked in. The arranging of own care within translocal families without help of the welfare and social provisions, ethnic and racialised work-place discriminations, as well as maintenance of an empowering attitude towards low-skilled jobs are negotiations, migrant care workers as well as construction workers have to deal with. The repartition of care, friendship, love and attention needs to be observed as these enable affects and affectedness to articulate in vitalizing and empowering ways.
1 “Ella estaba en un apartamento, y el en otra casa. Entonces me habían repartido, un día con uno, y un día con otro. Entonces como de alguna manera tienes un trauma personal de un divorcio, pues dices no. Aunque no sea mi familia me afecta, entonces yo mejor me voy en otro lugar, donde yo no tenga nada que ver, porque yo vengo huyendo de lo mismo y no voy a caer en uno que encima que ni mi familia es” (Alina, Mexico).
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The feminist debate on household work rightly criticised the view that household work was done “for (unpaid) love”. Still, real feelings of disgust or anger e.g. while cleaning the toilet, feelings of love can be triggered through the labour of caring, for instance for a child or elderly, even though overshadowed with the melancholy of being far away from own children or parents. Interviewed Latin Americans used the indication of affects and emotions as important part of their condition as household worker, some interviewees regarding themselves as more loving and affectionate than Spanish or employing women. The commodification of household labour within global care chains or global chains of affect extract love and emotional resources from the first and reembedds them through affective labour in the latter. Overlappings of professional and emotional relationships happen in both child- and elder-care, while attachments can become very intense with children. A care-workers affection with her protégé functions as replacement for the affections she has with her own, far-away relatives, which was found to be the case for protégéed children as well as elderly. Workers might develop profound emotional intimacy to cared-for and vice-versa, especially if employment relations are long lasting. Especially strong feelings of attachments were expressed towards professionally caredfor children, with which workers spend often more time than with own children (compare
Browne, Misra 29; Herrera 2013), and sometimes more than the children’s own parents, so they might feel to largely influence their upbringing and education. Within the matrix of social workplace relations, difficulties can arise, when mothers or parents critique the way workers treat children within the children’s presence, as this damages the workers’ authority upon children, making it harder for them to handle difficult children. In case of child care, employers are simultaneously household heads and besides care labour for children, tasks include other works as cleaning the house, doing the washing, cooking, etc., these tasks being also a form a being taken care of, though in a less emotionally involved way. In case of elder care, social implications within the labour relations are constituted differently: employers are daughters or sons of the cared-for who do not necessarily live with the cared-for and the worker, who usually lives in. Therefore, the relationship between employers and workers constitutes in another way.
Though there can be deep affective bonds, the relationships tend to be more distanced in the sense that there is diminished affective involvement by employers with the worker, as the household is not shared. Concomitantly, in case of employers’ discontent with the worker, not implying automatic discontent of the elderly, it is nonetheless easy on an emotional level for employers to sack the worker. So sometimes daughters or sons fire workers, even though the relationship between the elder and the worker is intense and sincere. Marisa, whose labour rights were violated in several ways (she did not get her promised vacations, nor allowances,
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nor was she paid the Sundays she had worked over-time) did develop a deep relationship and close bond to the elderly man she looked after:
There was always the stigma of total gratefulness because you come to a house where you feel that it is your place, where they treat you like somebody equal, so all your politeness and self-restriction later turns into obligation. If you come here and you feel unequal because of not having documentation, not having a home, your mattress, your family, if you then enter a home for working and they treat you like somebody equal, in the sense that they give you affection, they attend to you, that you have your own bed, your own place, this makes a women, and especially an immigrant women who just arrived, have a commitment of politeness and restriction: if it is necessary to work for more hours, I do it. If the elderly has to be super looked after from top to bottom, I also do it. Of course, it’s our task to do it, but there are things that are work and there are things that stop being your work. For instance, if you have off on a Saturday or Sunday and maybe you see that the grandpa is sick and you say: Oh no. I stay. I deprive myself, but because I want my grandpa to be well. I don’t want anything to happen to him. ... All this cordiality and restriction later turns into your obligation. This happened to me. At first I didn’t mind going out or not. ... I was there with him, in my home, I felt in my home, with grandpa, taking care of him, I felt that it was my grandpa and still today I say “my” grandpa, so I felt he was something mine. So you start believing it. But when my husband came I had to say that I couldn’t stay on weekends, that I had to leave. Then there were arguments with the sons, who said: What? No way, no way, no way! They said I had to stay once every three Sundays and so it was. And when there was a weekend where I didn’t have to stay they wanted to force me to stay, and I said no, I’d already told my husband we’d go out and I left and they told me: if you leave, you don’t come back. And I left. I worked up the courage and left. When I came back on
Sunday night there was already somebody else (Marisa, Ecuador, 40).
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Marisa’s experience shows that it was natural for her to mix feelings of affection and familiarity into her care work. She even felt at home in her workplace and produced a strong bond to “her grandpa” who, as she also stated, preferred to be with her than with his sons. Her social relation
2 “Siempre estaba el estigma del agradecimiento total de porque llegues a una casa donde sientes que es tu sitio, donde te tratan como una igual y tal, entonces todo el comedimiento que tu tienes luego se convierte en obligación.
Cuando tu vienes aquí y te sientes desigual, desigual en no tener documentación, en no tener tu casa, tu colchón familiar y todo, entonces si entras a una casa a trabajar y te tratan ya como una igual, en el sentido que te dan cariño, de que se preocupan por ti, de que tienes tu propia cama, tienes tu propio espacio, pues todo eso hace que una mujer, y sobre todo una mujer inmigrante cuando está recién llegada, tenga un cometido de comedimiento: si es que hay que trabajar mas horas, pues lo hago. Si es que tiene que estar el señor super cuidado de arribo abajo pues también lo hago. Claro, es nuestra tarea, pero hay cosas que son trabajo y hay cosas que ya dejan de ser tu trabajo. Por ejemplo, si tu libras un sabado o un domingo y a lo mejor ves porque el abuelito esté enfermo y dices: ah no. Me quedo. Me privo yo porque yo quiero que mi abuelito esté bien. No quiero que le pase nada. Entonces todo este comedimiento, como decimos allá, toda esta buena voluntad, pues luego se te convierte en obligación. A mí me pasaba esto. Yo al principio me daba igual salir o no porque mi pareja estaba allá ˗ encima todo el tema de los celos de que te tienes que cuidarte, que eres una mujer casada hace que incluso tu aquí te reprimes. Pues me daba igual salir o no salir. Yo estaba ahí con él, en mi casa, me sentí en mi casa, con el abuelito, cuidándole, le sentía mi abuelito y hasta ahora digo „mi abuelitoˮ. Entonces le sentí algo mío. Entonces uno llega a creerselo.
Pero luego cuando ya vino mi pareja yo les decía que yo no me podía quedar el fin de semana, que yo me tenía que ir. Entonces ahí ya hubo los conflictos con los hijos, que cómo es eso?! que no, que no, que no, me pondrían que iba a ser cada tres domingos me quedaba uno y así paso. Y cuando llegó un fin de semana que no me tocaba me querían obligar a que me tocara, entonces yo no, yo ya había dicho con mi pareja que salía y yo salí y me dijeron si te vas no vuelvas. Y yo salí. Yo me metí el valor y salí. Y volví el domingo por la noche y ya estaba otra persona“ (Marisa, Ecuador, 40).
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toward “her grandpa” combined mutuality, commonality, attachements and conviviality and might have entailed a certain sense of belonging. Nonetheless, this affection articulates within a hierarchised space as “stigma of thankfulness” that made Marisa self-restrain, initially freely and readily assumed tasks turning into obligations. So when she insisted on her right to weekend leave she became unkind, no longer the minded, looked after worker respected as equal.
Ramona’s recounts of her work experiences are totally imbued with how she feels within a house. She recounts how she takes up work as Au Pair in Amsterdam while her emotional sturdiness is low, as she is in grief for her recent father’s death. This might have made her remember her sensitivity to concessions of and equipment with emotional well-being very precisely during the interview. The following statement of Ramona shows how much she wished to come along with the children she began to work with and how she subordinated own feelings to those of the children
I plead to god kneeling that he would give me a bit of happiness with the children, because it was not fair for them that I came like that, they wainting for me and me coming with that sadness, it was not fair more for them than for me (Ramona, Bolivia, 28).
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While Ramona was unsupported and unattended in her loss, the employers also distressed her because of it. On top of that, her employers confronted her with the affective inconsistency of calling her “part of the family” while, simultaneously, disappointing her joyful anticipation of taking part in family activities, as they excluded her from celebrations of her protegéed child’s birthday, even though she was told that she was like an elder sister at other moments:
I didn’t feel comfortable in that house. To start with, I was still sad. If it had been different it might have helped me to change, but no. In fact I got depressed because I felt they weren’t happy with me. Of course, this was normal. But above all things they were very ungenerous. They didn’t let me take part in their family activities. For instance one day the daughter had birthday and they told me “no, you can’t come, it’s only for the family.” But theoretically they told me “you are part of the family, like the older sister.”
And on the day of the girl’s birthday I woke up and told myself “the first birthday I’ll witness in Europe, let’s see how they celebrate it.” I got up really happy and was trying to help when they told me “no,
Ramona, you go to your room, take something for breakfast, this is only for the family.” From that moment I started saying no, no, no. I started to feel awful and got more and more depressed (Ramona).
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3 “Le rogaba a Dios de rodillas que por favor me dé un poquito de alegría con los niños, porque no era justo para ellos que yo venga así, ellos esperándome y yo venga con esa tristeza, no era justo para ellos más que para mí”
(Ramona, Bolivia, 28).
4 “En esa casa no me sentía a gusto. Para empezar aún estaba triste. Si hubiera sido diferente a lo mejor me hubiera ayudado a cambiar, pero no. Más bien me hundía más porque sentía que no estaban contentos conmigo. Claro era normal también. Pero más que todo eran muy mezquinos. No me dejaban participar en sus cosas familiars. Por ejemplo un día la niña tuvo cumpleaños y me dijeron “no, tu no vas, solo es la familia”. Pero ellos teóricamente me decían “tu eres parte de la familia, como la hermana mayor”. Y ese día que era cumpleaños de la niñita, me levanté y dije “el primer cumpleaños que voy a ver en Europa, a ver como lo celebran”. Me levanté contenta así todo y estaba intentando ayudar y me dice “no, Ramona, tú vete a tu habitación, llévate algo para desayunar, esto
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So, the definition of Ramona being part of the family or not was not only set by the employers but it also changed according to their desires. In a difficult life situation, this confusionary referrence to her position within the household made Ramona feel even worse. Being called
“part of the family” is similar to maternalism in that it results from a contradictive application of affections by employers within a power matrix of hierarchic social relationships. By evoking an affectionate relationship with the worker through calling her “part of the family”, the employers can obfuscate the nonetheless commodified asymmetrical employment relationship which makes them feel better about employing a precarious household worker. It also serves to diminish the workers’ negotiating power in terms of pay and conditions as any claim or demand the worker might articulate runs the risk of deteriorating ‘good’ relations as they evidence the workers unkind, selfish attitude. “Becoming part of the family” creates an illusion of affective relations that emphasises commonality of employers and workers and rejects the commodification of human relations, which is nonetheless there, real and underlying, even though affectionate relations, in some instances, can indeed be encouraged by it. Being treated as part of the family functions in a most necropolitical sense as an erasure of the workers’ own family and thereby as a denial of workers’ humanity and deep depersonalization through being perceived, really, only in the occupational role, depriving the worker of her life, family and personhood outside of the employers’ home and enabling the employers to feel good, happy and honorable as they treat the worker in an “inclusive” way (Anderson 2000). Similarly, maternalism (compare e.g. Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Anderson 2000) confirms the employers
‘kindness’ and female ‘honour’ toward the childlike, helped, pitied and dishonorable worker, being particularly insidious as “it seems to offer some kind of equality between domestic workers and employers as women, whereas in fact it is precisely that commonality which it works to deny, reinforcing superiority and inferiority” (Anderson 2000, p. 145). In both “being part of the family” as in maternalism, labour extracted from the worker is attempted to be maximized, while contradictions come up as the worker presences family intimacies she keeps silent upon, while she is also the families’ status giver. Moreover, in “being part of the family” and in maternalism, social, emotional and indeed human relations remain always hierarchically labored, care commodified and reduced to money, even though with a different focus than in
Gioconda Herrera’s critique of transnational commodified or financialised “care” relations based on remittances that can obtain a wage-like function for relatives or care providers in homes countries (Herrera 2012). Herrera’s transnational commodified care relations are not es solo la familia”. Entonces desde ahí dije no, no, no. Empecé a sentirme fatal y me iba hundiendo peor”
(Ramona).
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place-based in McDowell’s sense of requiring the simultaneous corporeal presence of the service provider and its’ receiver in a same place (McDowell 2009). This diminishes the power of their affective intensity. The commodification of care as in “being part of the family” or maternalism is in contrast place-based and therefore develops biopowerful affective intensity which articulates as a simultaneous power to in- and exclude that might be described through a form of double binding. Double binding is a communication theory to explain schizophrenia through the paradox of inconsistent communicative messages in terms of spoken words, tones, gestures or practices typically produced by a hierarchically superior actor. The following quote provides another example of a contradictory way of being treated or double binding. After changing her Au Pair family in Amsterdam, Ramona’s negative experience in the first house together with her emotional disorientation seem to make her regard her situation improved in the second household, although her employer was extremely demanding and regarded as difficult by other workers. She recounts that she worked up to 16 hours a day, while between ethnicised encouragements and commands her reward were occasional attentions and not to be reproached her sorrows.
My employer started saying I was the best Au Pair in 12 years, the first Latina, that they’d always come from Africa, above all for the language, from Africa, England, Ukraine, Poland, she always brought girls from these places. But they couldn’t stand her, they left and complained at the agency and the agency wanted to fine her because she didn’t comply to work hours. They told her five hours but she made them work a lot more. And she even negotiated income, but even then they didn’t want that. So it was more psychological stress. The girls couldn’t handle it anymore, there was a point when they said “I’ve had enough!” They yelled and left crying, but she didn’t mistreat them with bad words, this was the problem.
She wanted you to be on her, but at the same time she sent you to do many things and you didn’t have the time and in the end she asked you “have you done it?”, “no, not yet”, “but why, Romi, please”, “but if you called me and don’t let me”, “alright, alright, then go and finish it now, it’s ok,” but she wouldn’t become infuriated either, and when she left you’d say “My God, thank you, now I can work properly, I won’t have to be running all over the place.” This way I could stand her, I cried many times but I could stand her because I knew that deep inside she had a good heart, deep inside she was a good person, she was not mean and she understood me in my sadness when I was crying or when she saw I was very sad.
She didn’t tell me: “Ramona, why do you have this look on your face? Please, you can’t work in my house like this”, like the other employer told me, that the children and so on and so forth. This employer always said “Please, Thank you,” and kissed me, which made me a little happier. Well, this employer is affectionate but also so dependent that she can’t be by herself, I think she called my name 200, 300 times a day: “Ramona, Ramona, Ramona.” It came to a point where it stressed me out. I couldn’t take it anymore. All I did was cry. But I wasn’t going to argue or fight with her or anything. And many told me
“let’s see if you can take it, because nobody can take this employer, she’s not mean, but she will stress
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you out.” She tells you to do one thing, then she sends you for another immediately and she doesn’t let you do anything, she calls you every minute (Ramona).
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So, the employer being bossy but not unfriendly, even nice, triggers again a contradictory double bind situation that reflects in Ramona’s way of being excessively demanded and affectively exhausted. As the employer was constantly after her, calling and distracting her, the employer even impeded that Ramona would be able to bring up necessary concentration to do things proper and calmly. After having completed the Au Pair year in Amsterdam Ramona’s employers brought her to Bilbao by car from where she continued by bus to her employers’ friends in Madrid, in order to work there as live-in. Since then she was irregular. While she was confronted with being totally ignored and neglected within the new household, simultaneously, her former employer from Amsterdam was calling her crying, asking her to return, as she was unsatisfied with her new workers, Ramona having to handle her former employer’s frustration, additionally:
At this house nobody ever greeted me when arriving, and worse than that, they didn’t even look at me.
Sometimes I wanted to greet them, “how are you?” not kiss them or anything, just say “how are you?”, but she started to talk as if I didn’t exist. I only existed for her to tell me: “Ramona go get this from over there.” So I thought “oh my God, how I hate Spain, I want to go away form here.” Then my [former] boss called me in tears because I had come here and then she said the new girls had caused her a lot of problems.
She didn’t call me once, but uff, many times, sometimes I was working and she would tell me: “I want you to come back, we’re going to bring you here in April, we’re going to Ibiza for vacation on 15 th but we’ll come to Madrid to see you and we’ll have a good talk, but we’ll be coming by airplane,” she said,
“and not by car, so, if we reach an agreement we’ll send a car to Bilbao to the same place where we left you and from there you can come back to Holland.” This was the plan, and she’s telling me they’ve done everything wrong, nobody can do it like you, they only do what they want, and she learned about many
5 “La señora me empezó a decir que era la mejor Au Pair en 12 años, que era la primera Latina, que siempre habían venido de África, por el idioma más que todo de África, Inglaterra, Ucrania, Polonia, siempre traía de ese lado chicas. Pero no la aguantaban, iban y se quejaban a la agencia y la agencia le quería multar a ella porque no cumplía con los horarios de trabajo. Le decían cinco horas pero ella las hacía trabajar mucho más. Y le negociaba incluso el sueldo, pero aún así no querían. Por eso era más estrés psicológico. No podían las chicas, llegaba un momento que decían “¡no puedo más!” Gritaban y se iban llorando, pero ella no les trataba mal con palabras feas, ese era el problema. Quería que estés atrás de ella, pero a la vez te mandaba hacer muchas cosas y no te daba tiempo y luego al final “¿ya hiciste?” te decía, “no es que no he terminado”, “pero por qué Romi, por favor”, “pero si tú me has llamado, no me dejas”, “vale, vale, entonces termina de hacer eso, no pasa nada”, pero tampoco se enfadaba así feo digamos y cuando se salía decías “Dios mío, gracias, ahora si puedo hacer los trabajos así en orden y no voy a estar yendo para allá y luego para acá.” Así la aguantaba, lloraba muchas veces pero la aguantaba porque sabía que en el fondo tenía un buen corazón, en el fondo era muy buena persona, no era mala y me entendía en mi tristeza cuando me veía llorar o cuando me veía muy triste. Ella no me decía “Ramona ¿por qué estas con esa cara? Por favor así no puedes trabajar en mi casa”, así como me ha dicho la otra señora, que los niños que no sé qué. Siempre la señora me decía “please, thank you” y todo besitos, me alegraba un poco. Bueno, esa señora es así amable pero es muy dependiente que no puede estar sola, al día creo pronunciaba mi nombre 200, 300 veces: “Ramona,
Ramona, Ramona.” Llegó un momento que me estresaba. No podía. Lo único que hacía es llorar. Pero yo no iba a discutir con ella ni pelear ni nada. Y me decían muchas “a ver si aguantas, porque esta señora, nadie la aguanta, mala no es, pero te estresa”. Te manda a hacer una cosa, luego te manda al momento y no te deja hacer nada, esta llamándote cada minuto (Ramona).
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problems that I had already told her but she didn’t want to believe me, because those people had worked for three years in that house and she trusted them. In the end she realised I was right and also called me in tears saying: “I believed everything you told me, you were my angel” (Ramona).
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Ramona is recipient of neglect, commands or own attention, being, on an affective level, always at the employers’ mercy and dependent upon her employers’ emotional situation. This affective relatedness is intensified, as employers’ communicative addressings are live-in workers’ largely only affective inputs by other persons. It is not wondering that Ramona’s narratives are imbued with affective exhaustion. Asked about what employers might expect from her she starts doubting whether they regard her as human being, a person with a heart, a family and feelings at all:
The only thing employers expect from you is to do your tasks like they tell you to. If they see you’re not doing your job, they are not ok with it. This is the most important thing. They don’t care if… some do treat you well and might worry if you’re suffering. I think they see us more than like people… sometimes
I think: Do they realise we have a heart and feelings, do they think about it, that we have a family behind us? I don’t say they should ask me about my family or anything, but rather simply realise this woman gets tired because she’s a human being, because it’s too much work (Ramona).
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According to the vice-president and gender appointee of the association for Ecuadorian migrants “Asociación Rumiñahui”, the psychological effects many household workers suffer are low self-esteem and self-respect. Tears of interviewees confronted with talking, thinking and feeling about migration experiences, about what they had left behind, unrealized dreams and what relocation to Spain made them experience, as well as recounts upon psychological and psychiatric treatment, often due to depressions, confirm anguish and pain. Especially but not exclusively interviewed woman cried, whose embodied experiences of precarity left sore imprints on self-perceptions and perceptions of personal success or failure. In this sense,
6 “En esa casa nada, entraba quién sea, ni siquiera me saludaban, por último, ni me miraban. Yo a veces le quería saludar “hola ¿qué tal?”, no ir a besarle ni nada simplemente decirle “hola ¿qué tal?”, pero ella se ponía a hablar, era como si no existiera. Solo existía para que me dijera “Ramona recoge esto de aquí que allá”. Entonces dije “oh
Dios, odio España, yo me quiero ir de aquí”. Y luego mi jefa [anterior] me llamaba llorando porque me vine y luego las chicas le han hecho un montón de problemas. No una vez me llamaba llorando, ufff, varias veces, a veces estaba trabajando y me decía “yo quiero que te vengas, te vamos a ir a traer en abril, el 15 estamos yendo de vacaciones a Ibiza pero vamos a pasar por Madrid a verte y ahí vamos a hablar bien, pero vamos a venir en avión” me dijo “y no en coche, luego, si llegamos a un acuerdo te mandamos un coche a Bilbao donde te hemos dejado y de ahí otra vez te vienes a Holanda”. Ese era el plan, porque me dice que me han hecho esto, que me han hecho lo otro, nadie hace como tú, que hacen lo que quieren y se ha enterado un montón de problemas que yo ya se los había advertido pero ella no me quería creer, porque era gente que trabajaba tres años en esa casa y ella le confiaba todo. Luego al final se dio cuenta que yo tenía razón por eso me llamaba también llorando “yo te creía todo, eras mi ángel””(Ramona).
7 “Los jefes lo único que esperan es que cumplas con tu trabajo tal como te piden ellos. Si no ven que has cumplido con tu trabajo se sienten disconforme. Eso es lo más importante. A ellos no les importa... a algunos si como que te trata bien, que se puede preocupar que te duele. Yo creo que nos ven más como a personas… a veces pienso ¿será que se dan cuenta que tenemos corazón, que tenemos sentimientos, será que piensan en eso ellos, que tenemos una familia detrás? No digo que me pregunten de mi familia ni nada sino que simplemente digan que esta chica se cansa porque es un ser humano que es demasiado trabajo” (Ramona).
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migration and precarious labour are very discomforting experiences: expectations of better lifeconditions when coming to Madrid remained often unmet, while they might add to hurt feelings through racist and xenophobic insults by employers, protégéd or in the streets. Intimate affectedness, though, can function on much more subtile levels: As Alina recounts, even though as live-in she spend a lot of time in close proximity with employers, with regard to social interaction, she preferred to eat alone to evade uncomfortabilities of being integrated as subaltern depersonalized intrusor into a family. Feelings of inferiority were also triggered by some employers restricting her use of certain kitchen items. Alina recounts how she had to refortifie against awkward feelings and disagreeableness when the employers presence her eating instead of working:
Alone. Before I preferred [eating] alone because you feel you’re displaced. Because if they’re having a meal they start talking about their day and so on, and what can you possibly talk about? I mean, sometimes they do integrate you in their conversations, if they’re people who don’t have too much prejudice. But me what conversation, what should I tell you? You don’t feel comfortable, it’s not your family, it doesn’t fit.
There are people who will tell you, sit down, it’s ok. But no, it’s not ok, for you it’s not ok! So you prefer to stay outside. Now I don’t care if I’m eating with them or alone, it’s the same. But it also depends on the level of trust they confer to you. Some people tell you: “you have your own dishes, your own food.”
So that you can’t touch anything that is theirs, which is humiliating, because it’s not that I had any kind of contagious disease. You go to a restaurant and use the same dish another 100 people have used and you don’t complain, and 100 people you don’t even know, so this is more of a classist issue that some people have. But now, if I have already finished doing my things I eat with them, if not, I eat later. But you eat, and if they are in the kitchen, they’re sitting there, you go there and sit down with them because there’s only one kitchen, and you won’t eat standing, but now you already realise that you also… with time and experience you change a lot: in the beginning, when I started, I recall I only ate after they finished. Only when they didn’t ask you anything else you sat down to eat, and if they entered the kitchen you stopped eating, because you felt disturbed, because your duty was to be serving them, so after they finished they went to the kitchen to sit, have a coffee and talk, sometimes it could get to 6 p.m. and lunch had been at 2 p.m., and you hadn’t eaten, because they’d be there. Now you realise and say: no, I’m also a person, I also have to eat. If they stay here it’s their own problem, I’ll eat here too. But now, not then.
They made you feel uncomfortable, you’re out of place, actually you’re the one building this barrier. But now I don’t care. We eat together, and then I go down to rest, them too (Alina, Mexico, 26).
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8 “Sola. Antes yo prefería [comer] sola porque te sientes fuera de lugar. Porque ellos en una comida con tu familia te pones a hablar de como te fué, de no sé cuantas, y tú ¿de qué hablas? O sea, si que suelen a veces integrarte en la pláctica cuando te toca gente que no tengan tanto prejuicio. ¿Pero yo qué pláctica, yo qué te cuento? No te sientes comoda, no es tu familia, es como un tema que no. Hay gente que si te diga, siéntate, no pasa nada. ¡pero si que pasa, para ti si que pasa! Y prefieres mantenerte fuera. Ahora me da igual si como con ellos o si como sola, es lo mismo. Pero también depende de la confianza que ellos te den. Hay gente que te dicen “tienes tu propio plato, tienes tu propia comida”. O sea como para que no puedas tocar nada de ellos, lo cual ya es como humillante, porque tampoco tengo una enfermedad que te pueda contagiar. Tu vas a un restaurante y utilizas el mismo plato que han utilizado 100 personas y no dices nada, y 100 personas que ni siquiera conoces, entonces ya como que es un tema más clasista que tienen algunos. Pero no, ahora, si yo ya termino mis cosas, como con ellos, y sino como
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Her rich recounts and detailed observations show, how empowerment in a context of depersonalisation through household labour also has to do with a way of re-respecting oneself as a person who has own corporeal necessities. A person who eats. This very necessary way of redressing dignity and respectability includes the necessity to develop and maintain a very personal emotional and affective attitude of self-worth. Taking in subaltern positionalities within social relations to an extent that she no longer feels she has even the right to be eating, the development of an auto-appreciative attitude is a personal interiorized combat that the worker has to lead within a hierarchised place in which she is gendered, ethnicised and classed.
Alina provides another example of how she managed to dignify her labour through vitalizing potential when confronted with invisibilisation. Alina had started to work as household worker in Mexico and her employers brought her to Madrid. When they left she stayed and with the help of friends found employment, again as live-in. Her employers asked her for her passport, supposedly to register her at the municipality, but when 3 years were over and documentation can be acquired, she had to notice that the municipality had never received any registry of her.
Frustrated with her situation she followed advice by friends and turned to the Ecuadorian migrant organization “Asociación Rumiñahui” where she began to learn about her rights. This empowered her to negotiate, claim and enact her rights, knowing there were alternatives to keeping quiet no matter how uncomfortable a situation is. Within her trajectory as household worker, Alina had experienced food rationing and sexual assaults by employers. But foremostly, she describes household labour as a very lonesome activity within social and bodily isolation, affecting her personal liberty and emotional well-being. As already shown in the last chapter, for Alina, a feeling of confinement results from being bound to somebody other’s private home day and night, without option to occasional everyday happenings, as could be interacting with someone unknown on the street, or seemingly banal self-determined decisions, like leaving a dirty cup until the next day. Beyond spatio-corporal isolation, multiple inequalities (raced/ethnicised, gendered, classed, legal, material, etc.) define the work relationship that also encompass the level of affects and impacts on senses, feelings and emotions. As worker, Alina is the one obliged to adapt her way of showing affects and después. Pero comes después, y si ellos están en la cocina, ellos están sentados, tú vas y te sientas porque es la
única cocina que hay, porque no vas a comer de pie, pero porque ahora ya te das cuenta, que tú también…, el tiempo, la experiencia, ya te va forjando muchísimo: Antes, yo me acuerdo de que al principio cuando había llegado, ellos terminaban de comer, ya comias tú. Cuando ya no te pedían nada, ya te sentabas a comer tú, y entraban a la cocina y tú ya no comías, porque ya te sentías incomoda, porque tú deber era estar sirviendo, entonces ellos terminaban e iban a la cocina, se sentaban a tomarse el café y ponerse a placticar, te podían dar ya las 6 de la tarde si la comida había sido a las 2, y tú estar sin comer, porque estuvieran allí. Ahora tú ya te das cuenta, que dices: no, también soy persona y yo también tengo que comer y ya. Si ellos se quedan su problema, tú allí también comes. Pero ahora, antes no. Te incomodaban, estás fuera de lugar, eres tú misma la que pone como esa barrera.
Pero ahora ya me da igual. Comemos juntos, después ya me bajo a descansar, ellos también (Alina, Mexico, 26).
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affectedness, to handle unattentiveness to her own feelings and determine how to react and be attentive to employers’ and protégéd:
You don’t have the right to show feelings, although they don’t tell you that but in the end it is like a rule we all follow. You can’t wake up in a bad mood because if one day she says good morning to you and you don’t answer you have a problem. But if you say good morning to her and she doesn’t respond nothing happens, you have to endure (Alina, Mexico, 26).
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For most household and construction workers interviewed the most important thing in work was social interaction with the people they work with. This, as imaginable, obtains utmost importance within a situation of spatial confinement in a house and a reduction of social contacts to work relationships, employers.
What is important to me. To feel good on an emotional level, to feel at ease with the people I work with.
(…) I believe to be well on an emotional level is what helps you to function, because, of course, there are many factors, their attitude, the pay, in which moment you are. And to see that they treat you as what you are, as a person, and to see that they treat you with respect (Alina).
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In another moment of the interview Alina shows her disappointment due to lack of social recognition for and invisibilisation of herself and her work.
All [the friends of your boss] tell her how nice it were, how tasty, while they themselves are aware that the one who did it was you, its just, they make you feel so invisible, because that would be the word, you are so invisible that they come and say the soup is delicious, but to your chef, while it was you who made it (Alina).
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Then she demonstrates how she could regain self-esteem and defy marginalization:
And I remember perfectly that one of them says to her: “And what did you put?” in order to get the recepee. And she says, “oh, I should have it written somewhere”, and she says to me, “Alina, do you remember what we put?”, and she says “we put”, I love that part, when she didn’t put anything. So, now,
- before you stayed quiet or you said directly, yes, we put… and you went with her game, pretending she had cooked. But not any longer. Being experienced when she says to me, “Alina what did we put?” I said
“I don’t know, you did it, don’t you remember?” Let’s see what you make up, if I don’t do anything
(Alina).
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9 “Tú no tienes derecho a demostrar sentimientos, a pesar de que no te lo dicen como tal pero al final es como una regla que todos seguimos. Tú no puedes despertar enojada, porque si un día ella te dice buenos dias y tú no le contestas allí tienes tus problemas. Pero si tú le dices a ella buenos dias y ella no te contesta, no pasa nada, te tienes que aguantar” (Alina, Mexico, 26).
10 “Que es lo que me importa. Estar bien en un tema emocional, sentirme a gusto con la gente con la que trabajo.
(…) yo creo el estar bien en lo emocional es lo que te ayuda a que tu funciones bien, pero claro, los factores tienen que ser muchos, la actitud de ellos, el sueldo, en que momento te encuentres tú, y ver que te traten como lo que eres, como una persona, y que tú veas que ellos te tratan con respeto” (Alina).
11 “Todas [las amigas] les dicen a tu jefa, que bonito te quedó, que sabroso, cuando ellas mismas son conscientes que la que lo hizo fuiste tú, o sea te hacen sentir tan invisible, porque esa sería la palabra, eres tan invisible, que llegan, te dicen, te quedó bonísima la sopa, pero a tu jefa, cuando la que hizo la fuiste tú” (Alina).
12 “Y me acuerdo perfectamente que una de ellas le dice: “Y que le pusiste [a la comida]?” No, como para dejar la receta. Y dice, “hay la debo tener apuntada”. Y me dice, “Alina, tu te acuerdas que le pusimos?”. Y dice “le pusimos”, eso me encanta, “le pusimos”, cuando ellas no pusieron nada. Entonces ya de alguna manera ya ahora, antes te quedabas callada, o directamente decías sí, le puso eso, y ya tú mismo le seguías el juego a decir que era
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Here, cooking as an activity Alina likes and she estimates her capacities and herself for functioned as trigger that activated her resistance, withstanding a subtile way of being bereaved of agency by denying to further pretend her labour was others’ and therewith vitalizing potential for eventful change. Her anger produced an intense irruption of her depersonalization that reconfigured the situation and revealed her agency. Indeed, in the moment she refused to further downplay herself, her work, her worth she became a black feminist killjoy who refused to follow the socially ordered production of agreeability and, that precisely, visibilised her stake in the production of a tasty, agreeable and enjoyable food and evening. As an example of good practices, Alina remembers appreciative treatment through another employer that made her not only feel but indeed also be less invisible as she was no longer ignorable, as her qualities were valued.
Always if somebody came to her and said, “hey, the rice was very fine”, although I wasn’t there, suddenly you heard, no, you are in the kitchen and they in the dining room and you hear, “I didn’t do it, Alina cooked it”. Then, obliged, they said to you, “that was great”. If they wanted a recipe, she went and said to you, “Alina, how did you do that or that?”, because she said directly, “no, I don’t know: Alina!” That is, she was really conscient of when it was your work and when it was hers (Alina).
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Alina is very conscient of how important the affective dimension is to her self-esteem and how being appreciated increases her work satisfaction. As she knows that the way she is treated by others affects her, she also learned where her own limit of being ignored or overburdened lies and that the way she responds to her own affective exhaustion and necessities is relevant. In the isolation of the private household implementing citizenship requires empowerment of self in order to overcome emotionally straining conditions and enable a more self-defined life in which, in disregard of (the shortcomings of) legal rights, space has to be made by the worker for her right and respectability.
Bodies of construction workers are physically strained through hard work, they ache and are tired, they are dirty and sweat, they are exposed to the weather, extreme heat in Madrids’ summers, rain and cold in winter, while, too, conflicts with or discriminations by colleagues or supervisors activate strong affects as for instance anger, being hurt, disturbed or shocked through discriminations, which they also have to manage and handle in the midst of doing physically demanding work, which has the potential to increase anger. Rafael describes ella quien había cocinado. Ahora ya no. Ya con experiencia, de repente me dice, “Alina que le pusimos?” Dije “no sé, Usted lo hizo, no se acuerda?” A ver que te inventas, si yo no hago nada” (Alina).
13 “Siempre que alguien llegaba y le decia [a la empleadora], “ay, que te quedó muy bien el arroz”, aunque yo no estuviera delante de ella, de repente eschuchabas, no, tu estas en la cocina, y ellos en el comedor y lo eschuchas, o sea, “yo no lo hice, lo cocinó Alina”. Entonces ya ellas, obligadas te decian, “te quedó muy bien”. Si querían una receta, iba y te decían, “Alina, ¿que le pusiste a ésto, a ésto?, porque ya directamente ella decía, “no, yo no sé:
Alina!” O sea realmente si era conciente de cuando era tu trabajo o cuando era el de ella” (Alina).
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inequalities between Spanish and migrants in terms of who performs first work steps at a construction site, which include hardest labour:
Spaniards were totally unwilling to start the labour at a construction site, because they knew you had to dedicate a lot of strength. They came when we were already going there the first month. People came and said “Look, how great.” The ones who went first were the ones to do all the hard work (Rafael, Peru,
48).
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Enrique’s example of experiencing discrimination led him to affectively withdraw from his relation and communication with his supervisor, as Enrique felt, as a migrant, he was himself attacked through his supverisor’s absurd, racialised comments about other migrant colleagues.
Therefore, his relationship was reduced to a purely pragmatic social exchange:
The person in charge was also Spanish and favored his fellow countrymen. He didn’t like new people and foreigners even less. When I had to work with them it was like “Hey, what’s up?” and that’s it. He didn’t talk to me, I didn’t talk to him. We had no subjects for conversation, because he talked about things that were for me absurd and meaningless. In fact he talked about everything and everyone. When he was with me, he talked about the Romanian, that the Romanian had done this and that. So it was clear that if he said such things about others he’d also talk about me with other people. So we had no subjects for conversation, because I don’t like this. I can’t talk about foreigners, because I’m one myself. So I didn’t get along with him. I reacted coldly, I just said “hey, what’s up?” and that’s it. No, no, you do this, that’s the plan, this is what you have to do and that’s it (Enrique, Ecuador, 30).
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Victor recounts how hard it was for him to get started with working as construction labourer in
Madrid when he was 16 years and without papers and how it was the exchange with a colleague that calmed him down and convinced him to continue:
When I turned 16 they said I should study but I said no. So I looked for a job, I was taken to a construction site, for a Peruvian man’s company. I had to carry many tiles, it was really demanding, and you couldn’t even stop for a moment. It was my first job, I’d never worked before. So at noon I already felt like leaving because the guy was like: load! load! load! And you had to carry a bag of cement weighing 35 kg. Open it, cut it with a blade and start mixing it. It was exhausting! I was worn-out before noon, at around 11 a.m., after breakfast, I got tired and stopped because my waist was hurting. I stopped for a second and the guy told me “Hey”, I told him “what’s up?”, and he says “what time is it?” I tell him “11.” And he says:
“This is no time to rest, it’s time to work” and I should bend my back. A Peruvian man. He was so fat he
14 “Los españoles eran reacios a saque de iniciar una obra porque sabían que tenías que meterle fuerza. Ellos iban
[a la obra] cuando ya veníamos nosotros el primer mes. Venía la gente y contaba “oye mira que de puta madre”.
Los que iban primero se comían todo el trabajo fuerte“ (Rafael, Peru, 48).
15 “El encargado igual, también español tenía mucha de esta preferencia hacia sus paisanos, los mismos españoles.
No le gustaba gente nueva y peor extranjeros. Cuando me tocaba trabajar con ellos pues era, “Hola, ¿qué tal?” y ya está. Ni él me decía nada, ni yo decía nada. Es que no había tema de conversación, porque él tenía unos temas totalmente para mí absurdos que no tenían sentido. A lo mejor él hablaba de todo, de todos. Cuando estaba conmigo, hablaba del rumano, que si el rumano esto, el rumano esto otro, que por aquí, que por allá. Entonces claro, si hablaba esto de los otros, pues también cuando estará con el otro, hablará de mí. Entonces no teníamos tema de conversación, porque no es mi forma. Yo no puedo hablar de extranjeros, porque yo soy extranjero.
Entonces yo no me llevaba bien. Mi realción era fría, era simplemente, “Hola, ¿qué tal?” y ya esta. No, no, tú esto, el plano, esto es lo que hay que hacer y ya” (Enrique, Ecuador, 30).
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couldn’t walk. It turned out that he worked on commission: the more you do, the more you earn. So I didn’t have papers, and he had eight guys there, like four Bolivians and about three Ecuadorians, all of us without papers. There was a Peruvian guy who did have papers and he was in charge, the two who had papers. These were new construction sites so they made their money for sure. That day when I stopped I felt like taking the shovel and hitting him with it and say to him: you can shove this work up your ass,
I’m leaving, but then I thought: I’ve worked for more than five hours, I’ll at least finish the day and get my pay. This is what I thought, that I wasn’t going to give him my work for free. So I waited. At 12 I rested. I decided to finish the day. So I started talking with the other guys, my colleagues, and one of them was really funny and said “Victor, did you like the job?” I say “no.” He said to me “well, that’s life, we should have studied.” Then he said: “Don’t worry, the first day is hard, the first week even, but then you get used, bro.” I returned the next day (Victor, Bolivia, 23).
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Victor lost this job once his employer found out about his age, as he did not want to run the double risk of employing underage people and people in administrative irregularised situations.
Due to a more variate personal environment negative affectedness can be more easily alleviated through talking and exchange with others, while the hierarchisation and the absence of colleagues in household labour restricts this option. Nontheless, many construction workers commented to have been initially shocked by the brutality of Spanish colloquial speech. Affects and affectedness also come up in contruction workers when they negotiate with bosses because of pay or contract issues but also because of working conditions.
16 “Cumplé los diesiseís y me dijeron que estudie pero yo dije que no. Entonces busqué un trabajo, me llevaban a trabajar en una obra, para una empresa de un Peruano. Tenía que cargar baldosas, muchas, y el tipo era muy exigente, no podías parar ni un momento. Era mi primer trabajo, nunca había trabajado. Entonces a medio día quería echarme porque el tipo estaba: carge! carge! Y carge! Y tenías que coger un cemento que pesaba 35 kilos.
Poner a abrir, romper a espada, y empezar a palear. Cansa! Estaba agotado y sobre más o menos las 11, después del bocadillo, pues me cansé, me paré porque me dolía la cintura. Me paré un ratito y el tipo me dijo “Eh”, le digo
“qué pasa?” y me dice “qué hora son?” Le digo “son las once”. Y me dice “Eso no son horas de descanso, son horas de trabajo” y así que agache el lomo. Un peruano. Que era gordísimo, no podía andar. Pues resulta que el trabajaba a comisión: mientras más haces, más ganas. Entonces yo no tenía papeles, él tenía allí ocho, como cuatro bolivianos y unos tres ecuatorianos, todos sin papeles. Había un peruano, que él sí que tenía papeles, y él que mandaba, los dos que tenían papeles. Eran obras nuevas y seguro que ganaban su dinero. Ese día cuando me paré tenía ganas de coger la pala y darle con eso y decirle: métete por el culo el trabajo que me marcho, pero dije: he trabajado más de cinco horas, por lo menos voy a terminar el día para cobrar. Es lo que pensé, que no le iba a regalar el trabajo. Pues entonces esperé. A medio día, descansé. Decidí terminar el día. Pues, emepezé a conversar con los que estaban allí, con compañeros de trabajo y uno de ellos era muy gracioso y decía “Victor, te gustó el trabajo?” Digo “no.” Me dijo “pues así es la vida, haber estudiado”, dice. “No te preocupes, el primer día duele, la primera semana, pero luego te acostumbras, cabrón”, dice. Volví al día siguiente“ (Victor, Bolivia, 23).
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