| How has immigration influenced the employment patterns and economic strategies of American families over the past three decades? This question is addressed through a comparison of ethnographic interviews with domestic workers and middle-class mothers in New York, a high-immigration city, and Philadelphia, a low-immigration city. In addition, statistical analyses of U.S. Census data examine the changing relationship between immigration, income inequality, female employment and the use of domestic services across U.S. cities from 1960 to the present. I conclude that the socially-embedded processes of immigration and job acquisition generate crowding in the domestic service sector, reducing wages, generating income inequality, and ultimately rendering domestic services affordable to middle-class, American families in high-immigration areas. Greater affordability combines with racial-ethnic preferences for immigrant domestic workers over native minorities to encourage the normative utilization of private household employees in New York. However, because private employees are more costly than commercial services, findings suggest that the employment of mothers in New York may be suppressed rather than encouraged by these trends. |
