Más allá de la domesticidad. Un análisis de género de los trabajos de los inmigrantes en el sector informal

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo; Emir Estrada; Hernan Ramírez

doi:10.5565/rev/papers/v96n3.263

Beyond domesticity: A Gendered Analysis of Immigrant Labour in the Informal Sector

Authors

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo Professor of Sociology. University of Southern California
Emir Estrada Professor of Sociology. University of Southern California
Hernan Ramírez Professor of Sociology. University of Southern California

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Abstract

Gender is a constitutive feature of economic and social relations, and in this paper we examine how gender is intimately bound up with the rise of informal sector occupations among new immigrants. We focus on three informal sector jobs that are widely accepted as Latino immigrant jobs in Los Angeles, California: paid domestic work; suburban garden maintenance; and street vending. Gendered analysis is commonly employed in studies of migrant women working in paid domestic work, long regarded as a paradigmatic “natural” job for women. Gender, however, is not only confined to the domestic sphere nor exclusively attached to women, but rather it is a system that affects all people, and different sectors of society. We argue that the next stage of gender and migration research will require extending gendered analysis to new arenas, including men and youths in the public sphere, and we offer an analysis of the continuities and discontinuities of gender in these diverse contexts.

Key words: informal sector; gender; immigrant workers; masculinities; youth.

Keywords

informal sector, gender, immigrant workers, masculinities, youth

Author Biographies

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Professor of Sociology. University of Southern California

Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California. Her primary research has focused on gender and migration, informal sector work, and religion and the immigrant rights social movement. Most of these studies focus on Mexican and Central American immigrant communities, but she has also researched Muslim American immigrants in the post-9/11 era. She has authored or edited eight books, and she has held research and writing fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation for the Humanities, the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, UCSD’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, and the Getty Research Institute. She was given a Mellon Excellence in Mentoring Award for her work with graduate students, and the book Domestica won seven awards, including the Max Weber and the C.Wright Mills book awards.

Emir Estrada, Professor of Sociology. University of Southern California

Emir Loy received a B.A. in Sociology with a minor in Chicano/a Studies from UCLA. Her research interests in immigration and gender are influenced in great part by her own immigration experience. She is studying immigrants from Mexico and Central America who work in the informal sector of unregulated or semi-regulated jobs. More specifically, she is researching the children of these workers, examining their role in the family’s economic survival.

Hernan Ramírez, Professor of Sociology. University of Southern California

Hernan is currently working on his dissertation, which examines socioeconomic mobility among self-employed Mexican immigrant gardeners and their U.S.-born children. He has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio, and was recently awarded a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. His research interests encompass ethnic entrepreneurship, immigration, gender and work, and the informal sector. A native Angeleno and son of a "jardinero," he welcomes questions about residential maintenance gardening, an important occupational niche for Mexican immigrant men in the Los Angeles region and throughout the U.S.