Between familialism and formalization : domestic services provided informally by migrant workers in two diverging policy contexts

This PhD thesis is a study of personalization processes in domestic services(housework and elderly care giving) provided informally by migrant workers. Personalization is the opposite of (1) identity essentialization, (2) standardization (of the labour process and its output) and (3) distancing (of the service provider from beneficiaries). Consequently, the study investigates the impact of personalization on (1) workers and beneficiaries’ mutual perceptions of identity, (2) on workers’ autonomy on the job, (3) and on workers and beneficiaries’ workrelated emotions. Fieldwork among migrant providers and native beneficiaries of domestic services in Belgium and in Warsaw (Poland) confirms the high frequency of personalization in this occupation, and the absence of the distanced ‘self-entrepreneurial’ model of provision identified in other contexts (Lutz 2011; Romero 1992). Personalization enables migrant workers to counteract essentialization along national/ethnic lines and become irreplaceable. From beneficiaries’ perspective, the long-term employment relationships established through personalization counteract employer selection processes. However, these advantages come at the cost of a tabooization of the economic character of domestic service provision, precluding workers from asking for wage raises or exacting their worker rights. Personalization also negatively affects migrant domestic workers’ already meagre opportunities for professional mobility.(POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 201