The recognition of domestic workers' labor rights and the debate over the legacy of slavery in Brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira, Stefanie Prange de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/21971
• topic: Domestic work; Slavery; Intersectionality; Coloniality; Labor rights; PEC; Trabalho doméstico; Escravidão; Interseccionalidade; Colonidade; Direitos trabalhistas

This thesis examines the relation between Brazil's slavery past and the adoption of Constitutional Amendment Bill Nº 72, better known as "PEC das domésticas", which extended domestic workers' labor rights in Brazil. Being predominantly executed by black, poor women under precarious conditions, domestic work in Brazil is often portrayed as a continuation of relations of dominance and oppressional dynamics that have their origin in the country's colonial and slavery past. For a long time, domestic workers have been at the margins of Brazil's government policies and lacked proper legal protection and recognition, naturalizing their subaltern status as "second-class-citizen". Based on qualitative interviews with unionized domestic workers and representatives of the former government which passed the PEC in 2013, this work aims to analyze the role played by Brazil’s slavery legacy in the promotional process of the law. The thesis uses the concepts of intersectionality and the coloniality of power and gender to explore the core origin of domestic workers' enduring marginalization and discrimination. I argue that the debate about the living slavery legacy that domestic work carries played a significant double role in the PEC promotional process: on the one hand, the claim for the PEC involved the overarching objective to challenge persistent gender, class, and race asymmetries associated to the country's colonial and slavery past. On the other hand, the debate over the legacy of slavery was instrumentalized in the collective fight of domestic workers and their political allies to make their voices heard and push the law through.