Collective Complaint: Immigrant Women Caregivers’ Community, Performance, and the Limits of Labor Law in New York City

Abstract

Abstract In 2010 New York passed the first legal protections for in‐home care workers in the United States. Amid these legal changes, care workers deploy collective complaint as a community‐building strategy, allowing immigrant women who are domestic workers—often isolated in private homes—to commiserate with one another through shared criticisms of their, mostly women, employers. Based on fieldwork among activist nannies in New York between 2010 and 2012, I argue that collective complaint is a critical source of solidarity and community for childcare providers while caregivers’ rhetorical and affective strategies offer insight about the potential limitations of rights‐based legislation in this and other informal sectors.

Topics & Concepts