In today's Europe, migrant domestic workers are indispensable in supporting many households which, without their employment, would lack sufficient domestic and care labour. Black Girls collects and explores the stories of some of the first among these workers. They are the Afro-Surinamese and the Eritrean women who in the 1960s and 70s migrated to the former colonising country, the Netherlands and Italy respectively, and there became domestic and care workers. Sabrina Marchetti analyses the narratives of some of these women in order to powerfully demonstrate how the legacies of the...

Exploring the performance by immigrants of domestic and care work in European households, this book places the employer centre-stage, examining the role of the employer and his or her agents in securing the balance between work, family and welfare needs, as well as investigating both who the employers are and the nature of their relationships with migrant workers. With attention to the dynamics of inequality, as class, ethnicity and gender become intertwined in a location that is at once home and workplace, this volume is organised into sections that deal with the subjectivities of employers...