Paid domestic work – the work of caring for others’ households for remuneration – continues to be a fundamental part of social reproduction, despite past predictions of its imminent overcoming in the ‘modern’ world. It is estimated to involve around 67 million workers globally (women in most cases), 27 per cent of whom are in Latin America and the Caribbean (p. 2). In the last 15 years, attention to domestic work as an issue of global governance has emerged, and mobilisations for the rights and dignity of domestic workers have proliferated at the local and global levels (see Sabrina Marchetti, Daniela Cherubini and Giulia Garofalo Geymonat, Global Domestic Workers: Intersecting Inequalities and Struggles for Rights (Bristol University Press, 2021)). Research on paid domestic work in the Global South (and Latin America in this case) is particularly relevant in this scenario, due to (i) the volume of workers and families involved in the sector; (ii) the history, strength and global impact of the domestic workers’ rights movements in these contexts; and (iii) the inherent characteristics of this activity in most Southern countries, including the prevalence of informal work and of national workers over international migrants. As the author explains, this latter feature is often overlooked in English-language research focusing on international migrant workers; the ‘global care chains’ (see Arlie Russell Hochschild, ‘Love and Gold’, in Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.), Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (Holt, 2002), pp. 15−30); and the ‘international division of reproductive labour’ (see Rachel S. Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work (Stanford University Press, 2001)).

In this framework, Erynn Masi de Casanova offers a detailed study of the experiences, working conditions and collective struggles of domestic workers in Guayaquil, Ecuador: a context where a workforce − largely composed of internal migrants, and working-class, impoverished and (often) racialised women − performs its labour under informal arrangements most of the time. Her in-depth analysis of this case raises key theoretical and political questions, whose relevance goes far beyond the local context. Among them, there is the impact of globalisation on the organisation of care and social reproduction within the Global South, rather than only in relation to the South−North ‘care drain’. Also, the strong relationship between exploitation (‘how workers are used and abused’ in the economic system (p. 107)) and domination (based on ‘the naturalisation or unquestioning acceptance of categories of inferiority and superiority based on race, gender and occupation’ (p. 107)) in remunerated domestic work, even in contexts where most workers are native-born citizens with full formal rights. Last but not least, the difficult path towards the formalisation of domestic employment, and the extent to which formalisation really constitutes a way out from what makes domestic work ‘such a bad job’ (p. 19) in the eyes of the workers involved in the study: its exploitative and often humiliating working conditions, its socio-cultural devaluation and stigma, and the persistence of highly hierarchical relationships between workers and employers, reflecting what Aníbal Quijano called the ‘coloniality of power’ (p. 107). (See Quijano, ‘Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social’, Journal of World-Systems Research, 11: 2 (2000), pp. 342−86.)

The book is the result of several years of field research, carried out through qualitative and quantitative methods, among which a survey on the working lives of domestic workers in the city stands out for being developed collaboratively with the main organisation of domestic workers in the country (Asociación de Trabajadoras Remuneradas del Hogar (Association of Paid Household Workers, ATRH)), using participatory-action research methodology. The analysis encompasses compelling topics, such as the employers’ representations of the ‘ideal’ worker; the role of bodies and embodiment in this job; the workers’ crucial experience of embodied inequalities (‘as gendered, classed and sometimes racialized bodies’ (p. 39)); the working conditions and labour trajectories inside and outside domestic employment; the aspirations for social and labour mobility throughout life courses and generations; and the workers’ resistance and strategies of collective organising. The theoretical lines through which the author explores these topics pertain to the feminist debates on social reproduction, the analysis of urban informal economy, and the entanglement of social class with gender, race and colonial legacy. Social reproduction is regarded ‘as the crux of domestic workers’ exploitation and potential resistance’ (p. 16), while domestic work in the local structural context is seen as ‘a modified version of precapitalist forms of work, rooted in colonialism, which continues under a capitalist mode of production’ (p. 17).

The timeframe covered by the study (2010–18) strategically coincides with a special historical and political juncture, characterised by intense state intervention aimed at expanding rights and granting public recognition to domestic workers – as part and symbol of Rafael Correa's political action towards the working class. The author shows how such action – soon replaced by a decline in government interest and a lacking implementation of legal improvements – impacted more ‘on domestic workers’ sense of dignity and pride in the job they do, and on public awareness of their legal rights’ (p. 106), than on the emergence from the informal economy and the actual improvement of working conditions. These latter issues seem remarkably similar to those experienced by domestic workers in neighbouring countries with neoliberal conservative governments (e.g., Colombia, Peru). The book also shows how the early support of the left-wing government ended up in a process of co-opting workers’ social struggles, rather than in real support for the collective organising of these workers. A picture emerges of a sector that, despite fundamental changes at the legislative level and slower but nevertheless appreciable cultural changes, basically ‘resists changes’ for what concerns the workers’ material living conditions.

Masi de Casanova's insightful study is rendered in accessible and clear writing, which makes the reading of each chapter engaging. The book brings valuable insights into the Ecuadorean context, useful for those who are dealing today with the new challenges that have emerged in that context since the end of the fieldwork and the publication of the book, including immigration from Venezuela and, most notably, the dramatic crisis linked to the pandemic. Overall, the book achieves its declared goals, by making space for the experiences and voices of domestic workers in research on the topic, showing ‘how collaboration between researchers and activists can contribute to knowledge and produce rigorous social research’ (p. 127) and, finally, making the insights of the rich scholarship on domestic work produced in Latin America accessible to English-speaking scholars outside the region, with the hope of increasing knowledge exchanges and questioning the dominance of English-language academic publications from the Global North.