Disposable Domestics : Immigrant Women Workers in the Global Economy
ISBN: 9781608465293
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Haymarket Books
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Business/ Management; Economics;

The book that "has helped to make transnational analyses of reproductive labor central to our understanding of race and gender in the twenty-first century" (Angela Y. Davis, author of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle ).

Illegal. Unamerican. Disposable. In a nation with an unprecedented history of immigration, the prevailing image of those who cross our borders in search of equal opportunity is that of a drain. Grace Chang's vital account of immigrant women--who work as nannies, domestic workers, janitors, nursing aides, and homecare workers--proves just the opposite: the women who perform our least desirable jobs are the most crucial to our economy and society. Disposable Domestics highlights the unrewarded work immigrant women perform as caregivers, cleaners, and servers and shows how these women are actively resisting the exploitation they face.

"As timely and relevant now as it was when it was first written . . . reveals a long history of collusion between the U.S. government, the IMF and World Bank, corporations, and private employers to create and maintain a super-exploited, low-wage, female labor force of caregivers and cleaners." -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Hammer and Hoe

"Grace Chang's nuanced analysis of our immigration policy and the devastating consequences of global capitalism captures the experiences of poor immigrant women of color. Disposable Domestics reveals how these women, servicing the economy as domestics, nannies, maids, and janitors, are vilified by politicians and the media." -- Mary Romero, author of The Maid's Daughter

"Refusing to segregate people, places, or processes, Disposable Domestics reorganizes our capacity to think powerfully about the world in which the struggle for social justice is too often imperiled by certain kinds of partiality." --Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Change Everything


Grace Chang is a writer and activist, joining in struggles for the rights of migrant women and women of color in the United States. She teaches about social science research methods and ethics; women resisting and surviving violence in all forms; and grassroots, transnational, feminist social justice movements. She is founding director of WORD (Women Of color Revolutionary Dialogues), a support group for women and queer and trans people of color building community through spoken word, political theater, music, dance and film.

Foreword by Alicia Garza writer and Oakland-based activist. Garza is one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, an organization founded in 2013 after the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.


Afterword by Ai-jen Poo is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the codirector of the Caring Across Generations campaign. She is a 2014 MacArthur fellow and was named one of Time 100's world's most influential people in 2012. She is the author of The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. Follow her on Twitter @aijenpoo
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