Views on paid domestic work: workers and employers in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

This article analyzes the life histories of paid domestic workers and patron saints in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. Its objective is to give an account of the body control techniques used in the field of paid domestic work. towards the construction of labor and socio-cultural relations between workers and employers, through which disciplinary control devices (surveillance and control) are implanted that classify them and place them in unequal and racial hierarchies constructed socially and historically. For such an analysis it was important to take into account the role played by sensory models (sight, smell, touch) in this field as generators and receivers of disciplinary control devices. It is argued that the workers are subjected to a fourfold oppression: for being poor, for being women, for being indigenous and for being domestic workers, strengthening the exercise and invisibility of violence in different social spaces.