Decolonising Labour, Reclaiming Subaltern Epistemologies: Brazilian Domestic Workers and the International Struggle for Labour Rights

Descolonizando o Trabalho, Recuperando Epistemologias Subalternas: As Trabalhadoras Domésticas Brasileiras e a Luta Internacional por Direitos Trabalhistas

Abstract

This study explores the labour rights discourse produced by Brazilian domestic workers. It shows that the 2015 Brazilian legislation which extended labour rights to domestic workers was not simply a ‘boomerang effect’ of ILO Convention 189 on decent work for domestic workers, or a case of the ‘vernacularisation’ of global rights. Indeed, domestic workers have agitated for equal labour rights since 1936, and articulated the specific rights contained in the new legislation decades before their institutional recognition. Therefore, rather than being an instance of the translation of pre-existing global frameworks at the local level, the case of domestic workers demonstrates the ability of subaltern groups to transnationalise their demands, suggesting that the global South should not be conceived only as a place of rights reception, but also as a place of rights production. In this context, I trace the genealogy of the labour rights discourse as imagined and mobilised by domestic workers in Brazil, and examine the ways in which they have travelled between their subaltern location, the Brazilian state and the international agenda about ‘decent work.’

Keywords
domestic work; subaltern knowledge; saber subalterno; Brazil; transnational movements