13

INTERLINKING TRAJECTORIES
Migration and domestic work in India
Parvati Raghuram

The role played by domestic work1 in the process of migration is well-documented

(Bunster and Chaney 1985; Hojman 1989; Hill 1994). It has been viewed as a
bridging occupation, providing both geographical and occupational mobility
(Broom and Smith 1963; Jelin 1977). Domestic work is particularly suitable for
new migrants as it requires minimal inputs in terms of capital, linguistic or
professional skills. Owing to the ease with which migrants can enter the
occupation, and the gendered nature of domestic work, migrant women working
as domestic workers are often the first members of migrant households to penetrate
the labour market, providing the initial financial security needed. Both migration
and entry to domestic work for these women are assisted through the use of social
networks.
Recent literature on migration theory has recognised the significance of social
networks in facilitating migration2 (Harriss 1997; Boyd 1989). Such networks
assist migration by providing capital, information about the place of destination,
first residence and access to jobs (see also Chapter 7 of this book). Social networks
have also been used as conceptual tools in understanding migratory processes,
with social-network theory being used to overcome some of the problems of
existing theories of migration. These range from behavioralist theories that
privilege individual decision-making in the context of push-pull, to structuralist
theories which contextualise the decision to migrate in terms of the political
economy of the areas of departure and destination. Social-network theory helps
to overcome the dualism between agency and structure implicit within this
framework, by adopting a Giddensian structuration perspective. It focuses on the
ways in which the routes of migration are negotiated by migrants (for a full
discussion, see Goss and Lindquist 1995).
While the usefulness of social-network theory is increasingly being realised, its
interrelations with gender have hardly been addressed (Tacoli 1995), and there
has as yet been little attempt to see how women access and mobilise social
networks during the migration process. In this chapter, I use the situation of
domestic workers to explore the manner in which social networks facilitate
migration. Domestic work provides an interesting case study of these processes
as the gendering of domestic labour has led to female-centred social networking,
both during migration and in the entry to work.

210

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

Domestic work
Domestic work has become the focus of much academic attention in the last decade
and a half (Huang and Yeoh 1996; England and Steill 1997; Cumaranatunga 1990).
This literature focuses largely on the experiences of live-in domestic workers who
have migrated alone, usually across international boundaries (Anderson 1993;
Chin 1997; Macklin 1994; Romero 1992; Shah et al. 1991).3 S tudies of domestic
work and internal migration have also focused on the experiences of single
migrants who live in the employing households while undertaking paid domestic
work (Radcliffe 1986; Robinson 1991). This chapter examines the migratory and
work trajectories of internal migrants who have moved from a rural to an urban
area, and who have entered part-time, live-out domestic work. This form of parttime work, where domestic workers do not live in with their employers, is the
most common form of paid domestic labour in urban India today, but it is also
becoming increasingly common in other parts of the world (see chapter 7). Romero
(1988), for instance, cites the increasing significance of job work among
Chicanas in the United States (see also Chapter 4). Job workers specialise in a
small range of tasks, and are paid for each task that they perform with the same
tasks being performed in a number of households. In India, this pattern is replicated
daily, but in the US the domestic worker returns to the same household once or
twice a week (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994).
Part-time, live-out domestic work has become increasingly popular in India, as
domestic work has become dominated by women who have the responsibility of
overseeing the performance of reproductive tasks in their own households, and
thus prefer part-time employment.4 They perform specific tasks in multiple
households, and then return home to their own housework. Increasingly,
employers also prefer part-time domestic help. Competition for urban space has
meant that employers now have smaller houses, so that it is no longer easy to
accommodate resident domestic workers. High rates of inflation have also reduced
the number of households capable of meeting the increasing cost of maintaining
a live-in domestic worker. Thus, a significant proportion of the domestic labour
force in urban India is now drawn from the migrant population of slums and
shantytowns, often located at the urban periphery.
Changes in the gender-balance of the migratory stream have also influenced
the nature of domestic work. For instance, rural-urban migration in India was
dominated by men in the post-Independence periods, and domestic work in urban
areas was largely a male job (Mehta 1960). With the migration of larger kinship
units, women in migrant families enter domestic work, while men take up other
forms of employment.5 There has therefore been a change both in the sex ratio of
domestic workers in urban India, and in the nature of the domestic work being
performed. Not only has there been an increase in the proportion of women
employed in domestic work, but the demographic profile of the domestic
workforce has also changed. A few decades ago, most domestics were female
heads of household, in particular, widowed, deserted and older women (Banerjee

INTERLINKING TRAJECTORIES 211

1982). As family migration has increased, younger women have become more
numerous in domestic work (Banerjee 1992). Changing migration patterns have
thus altered both the demography and the structure of domestic work.
The context of the study
In this chapter, I have focused on the experiences of 127 domestic workers living
in M.S. Flats, Delhi. The data presented here were collected between July and
November 1989 as a part of a larger study on female domestic workers in Delhi6
Domestic workers were defined as those people performing household cleaning
tasks for a wage.7 The views presented here are informed by long periods of
residence in M.S. Flats, frequent and ongoing interactions with the interviewees,
and a process of analysis that continues to the present day.
M.S. Flats, situated a few kilometres from the centre of the city, consists of
official housing rented out to high-ranking officials working for the Government
of India. Attached to the 207 apartments (9 high-rise blocks of 23 units each) are
an equal number of domestic workers quarters.8 The domestic workers quarters
are allocated to the officials along with their own residence, the use of the former
being left to the officials discretion. In most cases the quarters were given to
domestic workers in return for performaning a minimum of three tasks, usually
cleaning the floor, washing dishes and doing laundry. The practice of allocating
residences to domestic staff was institutionalised during the period of British
administration, and was continued by the government of independent India.
Domestic work has, in this case, retained much of its essentially feudal nature,
with the primary and often only mode of payment for domestic work being
accommodation for the workers family.
Domestic workers quarters are essentially of two types. The first type are
located behind the service chute on the same floor as the employer s residences.
They consist of a single room opening into a corridor, with the room normally
being fitted with a bell that is used to call the domestic worker. There are three
such quarters on each floor sharing a toilet and a bathroom. The second type of
distinctive residential area for domestic workers is located in four apartment
blocks, set at some distance from M.S. Flats. These blocks are all four storeys,
high and the quarters consist of a room and partitioned cooking area with water
supply, as well as a washing-up area.
The average age of domestic workers in the area was 32 although actual ages
ranged from 14 to 70. Almost half the domestic workers were below 30 years of
age. Most of those living in M.S. Flats are first-generation (79 percent) or secondgeneration (14 percent) migrants. The residents of M.S. Flats come from all over
the Indian subcontinentIndia, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, the
two largest groups are those from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and
those from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, just to the east of Delhi.
M.S. Flats is located at some distance from major industrial and commercial
districts, and thus alternative employment opportunities are limited. Trade, or

212

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

working for government departments in charge of the maintenance of

neighbouring government accommodation and the foreign embassies, are the
major sources of employment in this neighbourhood, although these jobs are
usually only open to men. Women in M.S. Flats have few opportunities to earn
wages within or near their neighbourhood. However, by engaging in domestic
work, and thus acquiring accommodation, they subsidise the households
existence.
Migration and entry to domestic work
About 85 percent of migrants interviewed in M.S. Flats had come to Delhi directly
from their place of origin.9 They moved from their villages to the capital without
making any intermediate moves to regional towns. Since the wage rates of
domestic workers in cities like Madras are about a third of those in Delhi, migrants
who plan to enter the domestic labour market see the long-distance move as more
economically advantageous (Rani and Kaul 1986). Once the pattern of migration
is established, the existence of a network of kin in the city serves to encourage
future migrants, and to reinforce the pattern. In 1977, Majumdar estimated that
there were 20,000 people from Tamil Nadu living in the Delhi slums, and that this
was a result of the importance of social networks in migration.
The primary unit of migration is often the household.10 Most of the women
were accompanied when they first moved to Delhi. More than one-third of
respondents had come with their husbands and/or children, and about a fifth came
with parents and siblings. Less than one-third of the migrant women in M.S. Flats
migrated alone, and most of the women in this group were marriage migrants,
moving to join husbands. Thus, migration usually occurred in the context of the
household, either as the unit of migration or as the rationale for migration. The
experiences of migrant domestic workers in M.S. Flats, thus differs from the
experiences of domestic workers noted elsewhere (see Radcliffe in Chapter 5 of
this book).
Support provided by social networks plays a vital role during the process of
migration. Much of the support provided by extended kin is rendered within the
context of migration, as shown in Table 13.1. This has resulted in the pheno menon
of chain migration.
This aid is channeled through the networks and generally includes the
following: information about the area; travel costs; board and lodging on arrival
in the city; help in finding jobs and loans to cover initial expenditure. Assistance
provided by extended family ties is especially significant for women, as there is
a strong reluctance among them to form close friendships with those who are not
related by ties of kinship or marriage (Singh 1977:247). Singhs study of four
unauthorised squatter settlements in Delhi showed that womens ties with their
kin are maintained and extended beyond what might normally be expected to
occur in the village (ibid.). The persistence of such extended kin networks in
urban and industrial areas, has been documented in other regions as well.

INTERLINKING TRAJECTORIES 213

Table 13.1 Aid from Chettiar networks during migration

Source: Field Survey, 1989

In some cases, the support provided to migrant families extended beyond the
provision of a first residence. Almost half of those who could remember how long
they had spent with their first hosts, said they had spent over a year with them.
Thus, the assistance given by the host family continues for some time, until the
migrants feel adapted to their new environment. Many of these migrants still
maintained close relations with their initial hosts.
In spite of the overriding ideology that defines relationships primarily through
the male, in M.S.Flats, affinal relations appeared to form a very important source
of support for migrants to the city. For example, uncles and aunts of the domestic
worker were often cited as having provided first residence in the city: much of
this help was extended by female relatives. This was especially important for
female-headed household units migrating to the city, as, for example, in the case
of Divya. Divya is forty years old and comes from the Mainpuri district of Uttar
Pradesh. She was married to a boy from Agra in western Uttar Pradesh at the age
of fourteen,11 and together they moved to Calcutta shortly after the marriage. Ten
years ago, however, she separated from her husband and returned to her motherin-laws house in Agra, where she lived until her mother-in-law died a year ago.
She then moved to Delhi, as she was assured of help from her daughter and niece.
She stayed with her daughter for the first ten days after arriving in Delhi, and then
moved to live with her niece for the next twenty-five days. Her niece then helped
her to find accommodation in the same squatter settlement, and got her a job as a
domestic worker. Thus, all her moves have been made possible through the
assistance provided by female kin. In many households, other female kin,

214

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

especially the husbands sisters, also play an important part in the migrants
adjustment to the city.
Because of the propensity for parents and offspring in M.S.Flats to stay in close
proximity, a number of domestic workers also had siblings in the area. Twentytwo women had brothers, and nineteen had sisters, residing in M.S. Flats, while
eleven had brothers-in-law, and twelve had sisters-in-law living there. This is
particularly prevalent among the domestic workers in M.S.Flats, where living
quarters are obtained through the womens labour. Hence, female-centred social
networking has also lead to patterns of coresidentiality among female kin. This
pattern is specific to migrants, especially migrant domestic workers, as the
prevailing ideology tends to be patrilocal. Matrilocality becomes, then, an
expression of the significance of female social networks in facilitating migration.
In M.S.Flats, accommodation, as well as employment in domestic work, was
largely found through female networks (Table 13.1). Only ten respondents said
that they had received no help in securing their first job. Frequently, the hosts
themselves were engaged in domestic service and introduced the migrant women
to prospective employers. This was especially true in the Tamil community. Such
an introduction is vital when the migrants do not speak Hindi, the language most
commonly used by the employers in Delhi. Personal contacts are the preferred
method of locating domestic workers,12 as such introductions serve as references,
helping the employer to assess the domestic worker as a person. Second, as
domestic workers were living out it was important for the employers to be able to
get in touch with them through such contacts. Finally, these contacts were often
also asked to fill in for the absence of the people they introduced. This provided
flexibility in work conditions for the employers.
Over 80 percent of the domestic workers who had received assistance, had got
their first job with the help of female friends and relatives. This is, in part, a
reflection of the existing sexual division of labour in part-time domestic service
in Delhi. Since women were more likely to be employed in such jobs, they had
more contacts in the employers neighbourhood. In some cases, the employers
themselves solicited the services of the domestic worker. Casual acquaintances
and neighbours also reported vacancies to migrants on the look out for
employment. It was interesting that none of the domestic workers reported that
their husbands had helped them to get their first job.
Once settled in the city, many of these migrants themselves channel and support
other migrants from their home community. In M.S.Flats, 11 percent of the
respondents reported having directly supported friends or relatives coming to the
city. In the next section, I explore two kin networks, and the ways in which these
networks have actually facilitated migration and entry to domestic work.
The Devendras and the Chettiars
The most important single migrant group in M.S.Flats was the Devanga Chettiars13
of Chinalampatty, Madurai district, Tamil Nadu. Devanga Chettiars are a caste of

INTERLINKING TRAJECTORIES 215

Kannada and Telugu weavers now resident in Tamil Nadu.14 The Chettiars in this
area are Kannada-speakers from Madurai district in Tamil Nadu. Traditionally
they were weavers of silk saris, but the displacement of workers in the cottage and
handloom industries, through mechanisation and industrialisation, has led to mass
migrations. These workers have moved into cities, and into manual occupations
such as domestic work, resulting in the de-skilling of an entire population group
(Devi 1985). It is common to see women squeezed out of independent marketoriented production and forced into casual labour and domestic work (Shamin
1988). The scale of migration can be judged from the figures for decadal
population growth rates in Chinalampatty Nagar Panchayat (an administrative unit
in Dindigul taluk). These fell from 35.93 percent between 1961 and 1971, to 0.02
percent between 1971 and 1981 (Village and Town DirectoryMadurai district
1981), during the peak periods of migration.
Another predominant migrant group in M.S.Flats, is that of the Devendras.
Devendra is an endogamous sub-caste of Pallars (an agricultural serf caste of Tamil
Nadu), which is proficient in wet cultivation. Most of the Devendras belong to an
extended kin network and come from Salem district in Tamil Nadu. Many of them
were small farmers in the village, but frequent droughts in the area had made
agriculture no longer viable for small farmers, resulting in mass migration to Delhi.
Most of them initially squatted in Karol Bagh in West Delhi, providing domestic
service to the large number of South Indian households in the area. Others squatted
in the area around M.S.Flats, which was scrubland at that time. Between 1975 and
1977, the slums were razed to the ground under the Slum Clearance and
Improvement Scheme (1958), and their inhabitants were relocated to settlements
on the periphery of the city. They were given 25square-yard plots in the
settlements on the floodplain of the river Yamuna. Here, they could build their
own houses. However, since these settlements were far away from their places of
work, some of them moved into the domestic workers residential quarters in
M.S.Flats. Roughly ten households in M.S.Flats belonged to this group: most of
them are members of an extended kin group, with members living in other, outer
parts of East Delhi.
A number of factors have led to the concentration of Chettiar and Devendra
women in domestic work. Lack of education and skills act as stumbling blocks
for entry to other occupations. At the same time, the nature of recruitment through
informal networks acts as a pathway to continuance within that occupation. Glenn
(1981) describes these as the structural and dynamic elements in the process of
occupational ghettoisation in domestic work.
Most of the assistance provided by the network of kin occurs within the context
of migration. For instance, the stream of Chettiar migrants from Madurai district
has been made possible by the support provided by the kin group. Priya was the
first migrant in her family, though her own migration to Delhi was facilitated by
her brother-in-law. Since then, she has helped her brother and her niece, Raji, to
come to Delhi (Table 13.2). She also found jobs for all her daughters-in-law soon
after their marriages. Raji helped her sister-in-law to come to Delhi, and

216

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

subsequently helped both her sister-in-law and a daughter-in-law to find jobs as

domestic workers.
These migrants also exhibit a propensity to live close together, and to maintain
a high level of interaction with each other. The Chettiars, for instance, have formed
an extensive network in M.S.Flats.15 Diya, a 25year-old Chettiar woman has 6
brothers, all living in M.S.Flats. Her husband also has sisters and brothers living
in this area. Diya helped her sisters-in-law (her bhabhi [brothers wife], her nanad
[husbands sister] and her devarani [husbands younger brothers wife]) to get
jobs and accommodation in this area.
Thus, even in the urban environment of Delhi, kinship continues to provide the
most critical basis for interaction among individuals. For most of the domestic
workers of M.S.Flats, visiting is restricted to the homes of near relations. Since
leave is limited and travel is expensive, these women must prioritise their outings.
Most women will attend celebrations in the home of close kin, helping their hosts
Table 13.2 Kin aid for Devendras during migration

Source: Field Survey, 1989

with housework and childcare. For example, Rajamma spent a couple of days
helping to cook and feed the guests who came to see Ushas new daughter-in-law.
The marriage was conducted in Mangole Puri, a resettlement area where a large
group of Chettiars resides. Most of the Chettiars from M.S.Flats stayed overnight
in the area to participate in the festivities. Those who stayed behind in M.S.Flats
provided domestic labour to the employers of relatives who had gone away.
Such support is very important for domestic workers in M.S. Flats. Leave is not
normally sanctioned, and absence is punished by opprobrium and threat of
dismissal from work, and hence homelessness. It is therefore important to have
cover for absence, and the domestic workers social networks provide this cover.
While such cover prevents conflict between domestic worker and employer, it
also delays/prevents renegotiation of the domestic workers workload and helps
to perpetuate the practice of not sanctioning leave.

INTERLINKING TRAJECTORIES 217

The cooperation and support provided by domestic workers to each other is,
however, also marked by some serious conflicts. The cooperative element in kin
relations should not be emphasised at the expense of the stress that often
accompanies it (Banck 1980; Kalpagam 1994). For instance, Veeramma maintains
close relations with her own family living in Mangole Puri, and has little to do
with any of the Chettiars in M.S.Flats. She is comparatively well-off and the other
relatives felt that the prospect of having to share her wealth with her poorer kin
may be one reason for her isolation.
Such dissensions are frequently caused by inequalities between households in
their access to resources. Among the poorest people, the need for survival dictates
that the resource-pooling unit limits contributions to others if it affects its own
viability. Thus, households may be reluctant to help others who are still poorer
and have little to offer in return. They may be viewed as a drain on the limited
resources, so that no long-term commitment to assist such people is likely to be
made. Support may be made available to meet the moral code of kinship during
the process of migration, but may subsequently be withdrawn. Where members
of a household unit had achieved some financial stability, they did not want to
jeopardise this fragile equilibrium by stretching their resources among poorer kin
for extended periods.
Equitable financial status underlies the close kin network among the Devendras
of Salem. They are a smaller group but are tightly knit together through the pattern
of cross-cousin marriages. Kinship forms the basis for residential proximity among
this group. All of them live in the four-storied buildings, many of them residing
in the same building and on the same floor. As a result, the range of interaction
among the Devendras is greater even than that among the Chettiars. Many of the
men have secured permanent employment in the offices of the Central
Government, so that these households have considerable financial security and
comparable incomes and standards of living. The social content of such
relationships often overrode any material benefits that may accrue to the actors.
The relationships are value-laden, but value is defined not only in terms of its
economic contribution but also by its ideological or emotional content.
This type of interaction between the Devendras is very high. They sometimes
substitute for each other at work, spend a lot of their leisure time together, make
joint trips to relatives living in other areas of Delhi (Shakarpur Basti etc.) and help
each other during times of crisis. For example, when Selvi had to vacate her living
quarters, she and her family lived and ate with Sarda until she found alternative
accommodation. The support provided by this kin network thus acts as a form of
security in times of stress.
Conclusion
This chapter has illustrated the extent to which social networks facilitate migration
and entry to domestic work in M.S.Flats, Delhi. Such assistance is also gendered,
reflecting the nature of domestic work. Two case studies of kin networks are used

218

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

to illustrate the ways in which such networks lead to coresidence and continuing
support for the domestic workers households. This support often tends to be
female-centred, in spite of the overriding patriarchal ideology that leads to
patrilocality and a focus on filial relations. However, although support is offered
during the migratory process, it may be withdrawn if it appears that the newlyarrived migrants will unsettle the financial equilibrium of the hosts household.
The nature of the migrant unit is influenced by the causes of migration and the
social and cultural norms of the rural area from which the migrant originates.16
For instance, the Chettiars and the Devendras migrating from Tamil Nadu were
more likely to be part of larger chains of migration. Such moves were induced by
push factors in their areas of origin, but the migration process was strategised
by the active negotiation of social networks to establish route of migration, first
place of stay, and first entry to work. One impact of this networking was the extent
to which women from these groups dominate the domestic labour market in some
parts of Delhi.
The use of network theory helps to understand the role of agency and aspects
of the social which condition agency, during the migration process. The use of
social networks as a way of understanding migration and career entry, helps to
overcome some of the weaknesses of other theories of migration. It partially erases
the unhelpful distinction between agency and structure by focusing on the channels
of migration.
Such channels also operate to secure entry to domestic work. The significance
of social networks among domestic workers is increasingly being realised. Such
networks may become formalised as in Campanis (1991) study of Filipina
domestic workers in Italy. In M.S.Flats, formalisation did not occur, because the
networks were themselves inscribed with power differentials between those who
had achieved some stability and upward mobility after migration, and those who
had not. Thus, social networks may be used both to exploit (Hondagneu-Sotelo
1994) as well as to support (Dasgupta 1991; Robinson 1991) other migrants.
Finally, the existence of supportive networks may prevent or delay the
renegotiation of gendered household work (both waged work for employers and
unwaged work within domestic workers own households), due to an increasing
feminisation of domestic work,17 as well as a decrease in live-in domestic work.
Notes
1 In this chapter, I have distinguished between domestic work, which involves
performing domestic labour in an employers house in return for wages, and
housework, which involves doing the same tasks in your own home. While the tasks
performed are often the same, the social relations regulating the performance of these
tasks vary between the two.
2 The significance of social networks has also been alluded to in the now considerable
literature on diasporas.

INTERLINKING TRAJECTORIES 219

3 Giles (1994) in her study of Portuguese Chambermaids in London hotels, suggests

that even domestic workers employed in the more formalised sectors of domestic
work are likely to live-in.
4 A 1979 survey of eight Indian regions reveals a predominance of women in domestic
work: 77.56 percent of the interviewees were female (Roshni Nilaya n.d.).
5 However, in private households in India, the more remunerative full-time, live-in
domestic work is more likely to be done by men. They are more likely to get paid
holidays and other benefits. Males also dominate the more secure, higher-paid sector
of this occupation offered by the government (e.g. sweeping and performing
domestic work in the houses of high-ranking defense officers). The tasks involved
in all domestic work are similar, but as the working conditions improve, the same
jobs are often defined as male.
6 The data were collected through semi-structured interviews, each lasting between 1
and 4 hours. 127 women were interviewed. The interviews were usually held in the
respondents homes, often in the presence of other women. Questions were asked
in Hindi and responses were given in Hindi, or occasionally in one of the other
regional languages with which I am familiar. Most questions were open-ended,
exploring the attitudes and perceptions of the interviewee and their relationships
with others. Many of the respondents were interviewed a second time; the length of
these interviews ranged from short visits to long interviews lasting for several hours.
These visits helped me to pick up and correct inconsistencies, and to confirm or
revise opinions. Husbands of 27 of the women were also interviewed.
7 Cooks, child-minders and other categories of household workers were excluded from
this study, as the context within which these tasks were performed were all different
from each other. Similar definitional issues have also been addressed by other
researchers writing on domestic work (Gregson and Lowe 1994).
8 Of the 207 domestic workers quarters in the area, 66 were sublet, or occupied by
relatives or lying vacant. I could not interview four households because we did not
speak a common language, and ten people refused to participate in the study. The
primary reason for non-response was because they did not want to let anyone know
that they were domestic workers.
9 These patterns are also noted in other parts of the world. For example, in a study
conducted in the Dominican Republican (Duarte 1989), 82 percent of domestic
workers migrated to Santo Domingo directly from their place of birth.
10 The migration of households may mask conflict of interest between different
members of the household, so that the decision to migrate results from complex
bargaining between them. Although such negotiations fall outside the scope of the
paper, it is important to note that such negotiations (in the case of the migration of
domestic workers) occur within the context of favourable labour market
opportunities for women.
11 The ethnographic present is 1989.
12 In a study conducted in Buenos Aires (Gogna 1989), 81 percent of the interviewed
migrants had obtained their jobs through particularistic relations, 30 percent of whom
were already employed in domestic work.
13 They are also called Senniars or Sedars.
14 Caste distinctions were not very important in the perception of most domestic
workers of M.S. Flats. This can be attributed to the lack of residential segregation
by caste, disparity between the caste structure of the different areas from which the

220

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

residents migrated, and the breakdown of caste-based occupational segregation,

among other reasons.
15 It must be recognised that the extent of cross-cousin marriages has also influenced
the networking among this group. Certain bonds are strengthened, but dissension
within the group can also be amplified by the density of the networks.
16 On the whole, there has been a shift from male migration to family migration, as
noted in this paper and elsewhere (Raju and Bagchi 1993), but there are regional
variations in the constitution of the migrant unit. Single-male migration is still
important in North India, but less so for migrants from the South (de Haan 1997).
17 This reflects a universal pattern (Hansen 1989; Kuznesof 1989).

References
Anderson, B. (1993) Britains Secret Slaves, London: Anti-Slavery International.
Banck, G. (1980) Survival Strategies of Low Income Urban Households in Brazil, Urban
Anthropology 9, 2:22742.
Bannerjee, N. (1982) Unorganized Women Workers: The Calcutta Experience, Calcutta:
Centre for Studies in Social Sciences.
Bannerjee, N. (1992) Poverty, Work and Gender in Urban India, Calcutta: Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences.
Boyd, M. (1989) Family and personal networks in international migration: recent
developments and new agendas, International Migration Review, 23, 3:63870.
Broom L. and Smith, J.H. (1963) Bridging occupations, British Journal of Sociology, 14:
32134.
Bunster, X. and Chaney, E. (1985) Sellers and Servants: Working Women in Lima, Peru,
New York: Praeger.
Campani, G. (1991) Labour markets and family networks: Filipino women, in H.Rudolph
and M. Morokvasic (eds), Italy in Bridging States and Markets: International
Migration in the Early 1990s, Berlin: Sigma.
Chin, C. (1997) Walls of silence and late twentieth century representations of the foreign
female domestic worker: the case of Filipina and Indonesian female servants in
Malaysia, International Migration Review 31, 2:35385.
Cumaranatunga, L. (1990) Coping with the unknown: Sri Lankan domestic aides in West
Asia, in V.Samarasinghe and S.Kiribamuni (eds), Women at the Crossroads: A Sri
Lankan Perspective, New Delhi: Vikas.
de Haan, A. (1997) Rural-urban migration and poverty: the case of India, IDS Bulletin
28,2.
Dasgupta, A. (1991) Poverty, the family and economic condition: A study of domestic
workers, in C. Kalbagh (ed.), Women and Development, New Delhi: Discovery.
Devi, U. (1985) Effect of migration on women and the householda theoretical
framework for data collection, paper presented at the Asian Regional Conference on
Women and the Household, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, January 2731.
Duarte, I. (1989) Household workers in the Dominican Republic: a question for the
feminist movement, in E.Chaney and M.Garcia Castro (eds), Muchachas No More:
Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.

INTERLINKING TRAJECTORIES 221

England, K. and Steill, B. (1997) They think youre as stupid as your English is:
constructing foreign domestic workers in Toronto, Environment and Planning A 29:
195 215.
Giles, W. (1994) Its the foreigners who do the laundry: the work of Portuguese
chambermaids in London hotels, in W.Giles and S.Arat-Ko (eds) Maid in the Market,
Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Glenn, E. (1981) Occupational ghettoisation: Japanese-American women and domestic
service 190570, Ethnicity 8:35286.
Gogna, M. (1989) Domestic workers in Buenos Aires, in E.Chaney and M.Garcia Castro
(eds), Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean,
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Goss, J. and Lindquist, B. (1995) Conceptualising international labour migration: a
structuration perspective, International Migration Review 29, 2:31751.
Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (1994) Servicing the Middle Classes: Class, Gender and
Domestic Labour in Contemporary Britain, London: Routledge.
Hansen, K. (1989) Distant Companions: Servants and Employers in Zambia, 190085,
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Harriss, N. (1997) The New Untouchables, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Hill, B. (1994) Rural-urban migration of women and their employment in towns, Rural
History 5, 2:18594.
Hojman, D.E. (1989) Land reform, female migration and the market for domestic service
in Chile, Journal of Latin American Studies 23:10522.
Huang, S. and Yeoh, B. (1996) Ties that bind: state policy and migrant female domestic
helpers in Singapore, Geoforum 27, 4:47993.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (1994) Regulating the unregulated? domestic workers social
networks, Social Problems 41, 1:5064.
Jelin, E. (1977) Migration and labour force participation of Latin American women: the
domestic servants in the cities, Signs 3:12941.
Kalpagam, U. (1994) Labour and Gender: Survival in Urban India, New Delhi: Sage.
Kuznesof, E. (1989) A history of domestic service in Spanish America, 14921980, in
E. Chaney and M. Garcia Castro (eds), Muchachas No More: Household Workers in
Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Macklin, A. (1994) On the outside looking in: foreign domestic workers in Canada, in
W. Giles and S. Arat-Ko (eds), Maid in the Market, Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
Majumdar, T.K. (1977) The urban poor and social change: study of squatter settlements
in Delhi, Social Action, 27, 3:21646.
Mehta, A. (1960) The Domestic Servant Class, Bombay: Popular Book Depot.
Radcliffe, S. (1986) Gender relations, peasant livelihood strategies and migration: a case
study from Cuzco, Peru, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 15, 2:2947.
Raju, S. and Bagchi, D. (1993) In sum and looking forward, in S.Raju and D.Bagchi (eds),
Women and Work in South Asia: Regional Patterns and Perspectives, London:
Routledge.
Rani, P. and Kaul, P. (1986) For two meals a daya report on Tamil domestic maids,
Manushi, 35:214.
Robinson, K. (1991) Housemaids: The effects of gender and culture on the internal and
international labour migration of Indonesian women, in G.Bottomley, M.de
Lapervenche and J.Martin (eds), Intersexions: Gender/Class/Culture/Ethnicity,
Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

222

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

Romero, M. (1988) Chicanas modernise domestic service, Qualitative Sociology, 11: 319
34.
Romero, M. (1992) Maid in the U.S.A., London: Routledge.
Roshni Nilaya. (n.d.) A National Socio-Economic Survey of Domestic Workers, Madras:
CBCI.
Shah, N., Al-Qudsi, S. and Shah, M. (1991) Asian women workers in Kuwait,
International Migration Review, 25:46486.
Shamin, I. (1988) Migrant rural women and the informal sector: case studies of survival
strategies, paper presented at the fourth National Conference on Womens Studies,
Andhra University, December 2831.
Singh, A.M. (1977) Women and the family: coping with poverty in the Bastis of Delhi,
Social Action, 27, 3:24165.
Tacoli, C. (1995) Gender and international survival strategies, Third World Planning
Review, 17, 2:199212.
Village and Town Directory. (1981) Series 20. T.N.Madurai District Part XII A, A.P.
Muthuswami of I.A.S., Director of Census Operations, Tamil Nadu.