chapters for upgrade:

1) method matters

‘take leave for a time of the noisy sphere of the market, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow the possessor of money and the possessor of labour power into the hidden abodes of production’ marx capital vol .1 p.176

Preliminary Notes on Reproducing the Global Factory: the neo-liberal home
This research will explore the complex and powerful intersections of gender, race and class that are present in the contemporary conditions of human reproduction by developing a post-colonial feminist framework to understand how neo-liberal globalisation has transformed reproductive labour and how this continues to reconfigure the political economy of the home, in light of the fact that in the last forty years major economic and political changes have occurred inside and outside the home in the both the global north and south.

The focus of this research is labour, specifically reproductive labour in the home, which is a form of labour that remains despite its centrality to human existence, an under-studied and under-theorised site of work and human activity. By unpacking the extent to which the home is changing as it increasingly becomes a place of low paid work, this research will try and make sense of the changes that are currently occurring and to contribute to both improving the conditions of work in the home and creating the possibilities for transforming not only reproductive labour but also the home.

It is not my intention to either romanticise the home as a space that is inherently ‘good’ or ‘naturalised’ or to moralise about the commodification of reproductive work. Rather the aim is to investigate (waged) domestic, care and sex work and (unwaged) reproductive labour together, to read across these sites of labour, so as to examine not only what is new and old but also what is different and what is similar to the labour processes involved and the subjects who perform the work. The inclusion of sex work within this analysis of reproductive labour follows from an analysis of sex as gendered labour as developed by various feminist theorists, while recognising that the work site of sex work is (usually) outside of the home.

2) the argument

section one: home & nation
(i) locating the home, where is the home, who is there, what are they doing?
– home as site of consumption, production, workplace and resistance

Historically, reproductive labour has been largely unpaid, performed by women and involved the raising and education of children; care of the elderly and the sick; household cleaning, paying the bills; shopping and preparing food; sex; and offering emotional support like listening. It would be an oversimplification to conclude that women’s increasing employment in paid work outside the home has been the only contributing factor to changes in the home. Other factors such as an ageing population, increased labour mobility and migration, lack of public services and the erosion of the welfare state must also be considered in any analysis of the shift to paid work in the domestic domain.

(ii) what does reproductive labour tell us about gender, race & class? Summary of arguments set out below – labour as value producing, the intersection of race and post colonial struggles and shifting the debate from essentialised notions of gender to a gender in common perspective
(iii) historical location of debates
productive / non productive definition of labour in relation to reproductive labour
wages for housework, 2nd wave (western) feminism,
(iv) citizenship, migration, low wages, global cities, neo-liberalism and post colonial capitalism

section two: invisible hands of the market
(i) doing the work that makes all other work possible
(ii) what is the labour? affective labour, intimate labour producing value / producing humans
(iii) gendered racialised bodies /waged and unwaged / constant work
(iv) workers struggles over conditions and wages

section three: reproducing the human is a migrant women’s job
intersection of race with gender and labour and the commodification of reproductive labour
migration from Global South – immigration laws, borders make cheap labour
slavery, colonialism, and post colonial subjects

section four: common ground
workers demands / feminist demands
gains at what cost, on whose back are we better off?
materialism feminism: beyond victims and victim-hood
what possibilities exist for an alliance on the basis of gender

section five: conclusion