Periodic Reporting for period 1 - KnowingDOM (Law, Economy and Seeing Woman’s Work: Knowledge Production and the ILO’s Domestic Workers Convention in Global Migration Governance)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-10-01 al 2024-09-30
This project will investigate how knowledge production takes place within the context of an international organization (IO) – the International Labour Organization (ILO). Specifically, it will look into how what we know about domestic work has developed in the context of the establishment of the ILO’s Convention on Domestic Work (C189). The latter is a landmark global treaty that seeks to set employment standards and norms, for domestic workers. To date, C189 has only been ratified by 36 countries. The low ratification rate belies the demand for domestic work worldwide. This demand is an indicator of what scholars have called a global ‘care deficit’ and ‘crisis of social reproduction’. This demand will not only increase in volume (absolute numbers) but also scope (number of national territories) as the global population continues to age and as long as states do not adequately invest in social reproduction – activities that reproduce and maintain people. The ILO’s tripartite architecture makes it possible for a variety of actors to converge – origin and destination country governments, international trade unions, employer and industry associations, academics, and other entities in the UN system. A combination of human rights, women's rights and labour rights movements and efforts at the local and transnational levels instantiate C189 as an example of the emergence of a 'global agenda' in which various social forces mobilized knowledge claims to influence an outcome.
This project therefore investigates how various actors engage with an international organization in making knowledge claims about domestic work. It will seek to primarily illustrate the contingency of these claims, to show that the process by which knowledge about domestic work is created is highly contentious - as actors compete over definition of terms, scope, jurisdiction, etc. By investigating how ‘science’, or the authoritative production of knowledge claims, informs politics and vice versa. More broadly, this project draws from the sociality of knowledge production in feminist interventions in science and technology studies that attend to different sources of epistemic authority, including voices ‘from below’.
The project has four major objectives:
1. Investigate the discourses which justified the need for standard-setting treaty (C189) and reasons given for or against ratification
2. Investigate the calls for action and activities related to the ratification or rejection of C189
3. Identify what instruments, tools and data techniques the ILO created to understand the phenomenon of domestic work at a large scale
4. Examine how know-how diffuses to and from the ILO and regional actors (notably in the European Union)
This project therefore investigates how various actors engage with an international organization in making knowledge claims about domestic work. It will seek to primarily illustrate the contingency of these claims, to show that the process by which knowledge about domestic work is created is highly contentious - as actors compete over definition of terms, scope, jurisdiction, etc. By investigating how ‘science’, or the authoritative production of knowledge claims, informs politics and vice versa. More broadly, this project draws from the sociality of knowledge production in feminist interventions in science and technology studies that attend to different sources of epistemic authority, including voices ‘from below’.
The project has four major objectives:
1. Investigate the discourses which justified the need for standard-setting treaty (C189) and reasons given for or against ratification
2. Investigate the calls for action and activities related to the ratification or rejection of C189
3. Identify what instruments, tools and data techniques the ILO created to understand the phenomenon of domestic work at a large scale
4. Examine how know-how diffuses to and from the ILO and regional actors (notably in the European Union)
The Researcher identified, collated, and analysed over three hundred relevant documents from the ILO’s digital and physical archives, two other archives in Amsterdam, and documents published by civil society organisations online. Twenty-eight in-person and online interviews and focus group discussions were conducted. The Researcher was on a three-month fieldwork in Geneva, and went on two field visits in Brussels.
One journal article has so far been published and two other articles are currently under review. A book manuscript has also been submitted for publishing under IMISCOE-Springer. The manuscript is being revised after reviews were received in November 2024. Other deliverables include a podcast, a roundtable discussion and a policy brief. The Researcher has also engaged in numerous communication and dissemination activities.
The feminist science studies approach taken up by KnowingDOM opens up new avenues of inquiry into the understanding of domestic work by centring how the push for its recognition as “work” in the context of labour standard-setting created demand for knowledge production in development studies, feminist political economy and labour statistics, to name a few. At the same time, this approach has been sensitive to the omissions and exclusions of the sector throughout the history of the ILO’s standard-setting. As such, this concrete case demonstrates how knowledge production, even as it unfolds in the procedural, and highly technical setting of the ILO, is nonetheless imbued by the normative commitment to valorise the sector and those who perform domestic tasks.
One journal article has so far been published and two other articles are currently under review. A book manuscript has also been submitted for publishing under IMISCOE-Springer. The manuscript is being revised after reviews were received in November 2024. Other deliverables include a podcast, a roundtable discussion and a policy brief. The Researcher has also engaged in numerous communication and dissemination activities.
The feminist science studies approach taken up by KnowingDOM opens up new avenues of inquiry into the understanding of domestic work by centring how the push for its recognition as “work” in the context of labour standard-setting created demand for knowledge production in development studies, feminist political economy and labour statistics, to name a few. At the same time, this approach has been sensitive to the omissions and exclusions of the sector throughout the history of the ILO’s standard-setting. As such, this concrete case demonstrates how knowledge production, even as it unfolds in the procedural, and highly technical setting of the ILO, is nonetheless imbued by the normative commitment to valorise the sector and those who perform domestic tasks.
The data analysis shows that the topic of domestic workers have been included in ILO discussions, even from the organisation’s very inception. The way their working and living conditions were described from the earliest publications until today has essentially not changed. Domestic work is understood to be vital and necessary and at the same time difficult. The work is considered low-status and has been perennially excluded from legal and social protections. Throughout the years, conceptual and theoretical innovations elaborated on the problem of domestic work, as well as the solutions offered.
Increasingly the explanation that there was something about its “nature” that made it incompatible with standard employment relationships became untenable. The conceptual solution, which later became a practical rallying cry for advocates in the run-up to the International Labour Convention in 2010 and 2011, was that it is work that is “work like any other, and work like no other”. This insisted on the compatibility of domestic work and standard employment norms as well as the need for specific regulation given its specificity – the household as place of employment.
Given the organisational design and dynamics of the ILO, this project sees it as a boundary organisation. A boundary organisation is a space in which “science and nonscience” can interact, that is, experts and laypersons, producing practical know-how. The demand for conceptual innovations and knowledge products comes from the ILO’s constituencies in the context of standard-setting.
Increasingly the explanation that there was something about its “nature” that made it incompatible with standard employment relationships became untenable. The conceptual solution, which later became a practical rallying cry for advocates in the run-up to the International Labour Convention in 2010 and 2011, was that it is work that is “work like any other, and work like no other”. This insisted on the compatibility of domestic work and standard employment norms as well as the need for specific regulation given its specificity – the household as place of employment.
Given the organisational design and dynamics of the ILO, this project sees it as a boundary organisation. A boundary organisation is a space in which “science and nonscience” can interact, that is, experts and laypersons, producing practical know-how. The demand for conceptual innovations and knowledge products comes from the ILO’s constituencies in the context of standard-setting.