Outsourcing responsibility. Towards a transformative politicsof domestic work

摘要

I n this doctoral thesis, I start from the body of feminist scholarship on “out- sourcing” domestic and care work in the global North. I maintain that this debate has importantly highlighted the interactions of gender with class, race, and ethnicity. In its almost exclusive focus on differently situ- ated women, however, the debate tends to reproduce the organization and performance of reproductive work as a “woman’s issue,” simultaneously shrouding men’s positions therein. Via an in-depth empirical study, I conducted with five domestic work outsourc- ing, opposite-sex couples in Vienna, Austria, I seek to bring to the fore the affective rela- tions and corporeal practices of responsive- ness and non-responsiveness between the outsourcing partners, and their positioning vis-à-vis migrant domestic workers. Using a relational concept of responsibility, I argue that responsiveness to human interconnect- edness is required for responsible practices to emerge. I critique the notion of the sup- posedly “self-sufficient” autonomous indi- vidual, and draw on feminist care ethics, to highlight the existing relationality and interdependence among the various actors. I position my project against the positivist paradigm and bring empirical and theoreti- cal material into a conversation at eye level. First, I trace the reproduction and mainte- nance of unjust structures within the field of outsourcing in concrete, everyday, social interaction in order to emphasize their social nature and changeability. I strive for a sys- temic portrayal of non-responsive practices as shaped by an epistemology of ignorance, rather than accidental “failures,” and thus critique asymmetrical structures, not indi- vidual “character flaws.” Second, I want to identify existing potentials for transforma- tion in regards to the structurally vulnerable position of migrant domestic workers. I high- light potentials for transformation towards social justice that are there and should be amplified. These consist of feelings of guilt, which I here read as affective “spill-over” that cannot be contained within the narrative of autonomous, independent individuals on the one hand; and on the other hand, prac- tices of responsiveness, and the potential for creative embodied, (affective and relational) performances.