Becoming Working Class: Domestic Workers and the Claim to Localness in Mumbai

Abstract

In India, many women from former untouchable caste groups (Dalits) are domestic workers. Despite attempts at seeking formal, legal recognition, they continue to be seen by the state as part of a broad, ambiguous category of “informal workers” whose work is stigmatized and not legislated for. In this essay, I suggest that the discourses and practices of a neighborhood-level Dalit domestic workers’ union in Mumbai reconceptualize domestic work as “formal” work. The workers assert themselves as formal workers (kamgaar) owing to their long histories of work in specific neighborhoods, relationships of trust with employers, and their ability to negotiate long-standing employment with them. Though domestic work does not align with the state’s definition of formal work (for example, through the presence of written contracts), for the workers, it was their own qualities, origins, social positions, and relationships that defined the formality of work rather than the other way around. Centering respect and dignity in their own work, their union also facilitated the articulation of the caste and gender-based prejudices that have not only kept domestic workers outside the ambit of formal recognition but also have brought about routine encounters with violence and harassment for Dalit women in the local neighborhood.