Domestic Hierarchies: Household Workers and Middle-class Employers in Buenos Aires, 1956–1976

Abstract

In Argentina, substantial changes took place in domestic service since the beginning of the Twentieth Century, such as the decreasing number of workers per household, the gradual shift towards the coexistence of live-in and live-out arrangements, the sanction of a legal code that protected household workers´ rights, etc. These transformations gave way to new conflicts that revolved around domestic employees´ "inadequate" skills and knowledge and their "improper" use of the home. If the presence of a domestic employee guaranteed the social status of the family that employed one, "inappropriate" behavior could also call this status into question. By analyzing the employers´ responses to their former employees demands filed at the Tribunal of Domestic Work between 1956 and 1976, I explore the ways in which the work carried out by domestic employees and their presence in the employers´ home were part of the construction of social hierarchies.