Title reciprocity and wage labor: Intersections of young black women in colombian domestic work

Abstract

Based on interviews with young black female domestic workers, taken from studies in Colom­ bia and other countries in the Americas, this essay argues that domestic work still has not entered wage labor logic, not even in the contract of liberal political ideology. Therefore, instead of counting on a set of legal regulations to determi­ ne schedules, functions, and pay for their work, many women depend on gift logic in order to receive compensation for their labor. Such a situation is not foreign to a global order in which the consolidation of a salaried society in some parts of the world has led to the reproduction of family work forms in others; which generates a negative effect on marginalized or «marked» groups; that is, all of the groups that differ from the parameter of the middle­class white heterosexual adult male, and tend to be assumed as «ethnics»