the domestic workers’ strike: migrant women, social reproduction and contentious labour organising

In recent decades, there have been major changes in the organisation of social reproduction. As middle-class women have entered the workforce in large numbers, and state provision of childcare and other welfare services has been scaled back under neo-liberalism, there has been an unprecedented outsourcing of household labour to the market. The resulting commodification of social reproduction has not liberated women from the demands of housework but has largely shifted this work away from women in the Global North towards migrant women workers from poor and heavily indebted countries of the Global South. At the same time, there has also been a huge increase in internal migration within Global South countries, as newly wealthy middle classes in the cities are being serviced by poor rural women. Commodified domestic labour relies on the existence of gendered and racialised migrant workers. This article examines the domestic workers’ strike as an effective and urgent mode of political action given the massive and growing concentration of migrant women in domestic work. This requires a reassessment of earlier feminist strategies based on a nuclear family model and current advocacy strategies that, influenced by foundations, have rejected the strike tactic in favour of limited legal strategies. This article draws on my empirical research on domestic workers’ movements in the USA and India in order to highlight emerging strategies of labour movements.

The Santa Monica prison and illegal cocaine: a mutual relationship

This paper will demonstrate how women's labor in the transnational cocaine commodity chain (TCCC) links together the Santa Monica women's prison in Lima, Peru and the illicit cocaine market. Peru is one the fastest-growing economies in Latin America largely due to a neoliberal free market approach to economic development. It has encouraged foreign investment and also has a growing middle class. But a significant portion of the country's population has not benefitted. This has resulted in some women turning to drug smuggling or selling in order to generate an income. Due to war on drug strategies, many of them are caught and sentenced on drug trafficking charges. I argue that the prison and larger criminal justice apparatus benefit financially from the growing number of drug arrests due to the systemic blackmail of incarcerated women. The cocaine sector benefits from the internment of its ex-workers. It is able to recruit new low-level employees and maintain the protection of middle managers. It is in this way that this prison and the illegal drug market are enmeshed together through the labor of subordinate female smugglers and retailers. This study is based on ethnographic dissertation fieldwork conducted in 2008-2009 in the Santa Monica prison.

Rethinking women’s post-release reintegration and ‘success’

In this article, we interrogate three assumptions related to women’s post-release reintegration and success that are prevalent within and across official, institutional and criminological discourses and practice. Our analysis is based on qualitative interviews conducted with support workers and women about experiences and perceptions of support and success in Victoria, Australia. Ultimately, we contend that the introduction of women-specific policies and support programs in Victoria has had limited impact because they are at core premised upon the same problematic success-related assumptions that have failed to adequately serve mainstream prisoner populations, i.e. men. We issue a broader challenge to criminologists to rethink dominant understandings about post-release reintegration in the interests of facilitating alternative approaches that respond to the structural injustices that define the post-release trajectories of women and men.