According recent studies, after a long history of decline, domestic work would be now growing up again in many countries, particularly in Western World, where it reaches quite the same levels of the past century. The «resurgence of domestic work» would be also a return of the pre-modern form of live-in service, as happens in the countries of southern Europe, as Italy, where this form would be widespread. This literature explains this growth with the increase of the rate of female participation to the labor market and with the expansion of elderly people and of the life-expectancy. The consequence is the transfer of labor-force from countries with a large supply to countries with a large demand of labor. So a large part, eventually the majority, of the domestic workers would be immigrants from third countries. However, evidence of these phenomena is lesser than satisfactory. The article analyzes the Italian situation with data bases never used before for this scope. The results are rather unexpected. First, the growth of the use of waged domestic labor is quite recent and the level of this use are overestimated and far from the beginning of the XX century. Second, the live-in form of domestic service is negligible even in Italy, where the expected levels should be higher, and it is nothing more than a bridging occupation for the immigrants immediately after the arrive in the new country. Third, and more surprisingly, certainly there are more domestics among the immigrants than among the Italians, but the majority of domestics are still Italian.
Il mito del lavoro domestico: struttura e cambiamenti in Italia (1970-2003)
COLOMBO, ASHER DANIEL
2005
Abstract
According recent studies, after a long history of decline, domestic work would be now growing up again in many countries, particularly in Western World, where it reaches quite the same levels of the past century. The «resurgence of domestic work» would be also a return of the pre-modern form of live-in service, as happens in the countries of southern Europe, as Italy, where this form would be widespread. This literature explains this growth with the increase of the rate of female participation to the labor market and with the expansion of elderly people and of the life-expectancy. The consequence is the transfer of labor-force from countries with a large supply to countries with a large demand of labor. So a large part, eventually the majority, of the domestic workers would be immigrants from third countries. However, evidence of these phenomena is lesser than satisfactory. The article analyzes the Italian situation with data bases never used before for this scope. The results are rather unexpected. First, the growth of the use of waged domestic labor is quite recent and the level of this use are overestimated and far from the beginning of the XX century. Second, the live-in form of domestic service is negligible even in Italy, where the expected levels should be higher, and it is nothing more than a bridging occupation for the immigrants immediately after the arrive in the new country. Third, and more surprisingly, certainly there are more domestics among the immigrants than among the Italians, but the majority of domestics are still Italian.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
