Re-conceptualizing rights and labor union politics at the intersection of race, class and gender through domestic work in Brazil

The historical formation of organized domestic workers stems from the way in which Brazilian democracy is constituted against and how the state relates to society. The cities are not only the backdrops against which the unions form, but also the site of how the interrelationships among the state, labor and various forms of inequality emerge. My case studies of domestic workers' organizing in Brasilia, Sao Paulo, and Salvador show a particular silence in the way in which inclusive policies for representation and accountability have emerged in Brazil over the course of its democratic development and the subsequent myths around race, class and labor arise. During major political events in late 19th and 20th century Brazil including the abolition of slavery, lapsed democracy during periods of authoritarian rule, the Comprehensive Labor Code of 1942, labor reforms of the 1970s and the 1988 democratic constitution, domestic workers were formally excluded from the rights of other workers. My dissertation is rooted in the following question: how is it that marginalized groups sustain a consciousness of political rights when the state has historically been unwilling to provide them? Unlike singular issues of labor, racial discrimination, or gendered exclusion, of which there is substantial literature on each category, but none of which that treats all of them simultaneously, the lengthy silence on domestic workers makes clear the difficulties of the state and academics to confront multi-layered questions of race, gender and labor in Brazilian democratic politics.