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Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between law and class formation through the case of migrant care and domestic work, and puts sociological class theory into conversation with critical migration research. It contributes to class theory by analysing how law helps produce class relations in the Finnish context. The Finnish state channels migrants into cleaning and domestic work through policy measures, and migration law ties them to the reproductive sector, making law a central social relation that defines migrants’ relation to production. The analysis draws on interviews with migrant care and domestic workers (N = 30) holding temporary work permits and examines their structural and affective descriptions of a position restricted by law. The article argues that the way migrant domestic work is formalised in the legislation produces a class relation for migrants, in which they lack full ownership over their labour power. The findings demonstrate how migrant domestic workers express gratitude for their employment despite experiencing it as devalued, indicating labour as repayment of the ‘gift’ of the residence permit.

Keywords

affect class formalisation gratitude labour law migration policy political economy social reproduction work

Introduction

This article analyses the formation of class from the situated perspective of migrant care and domestic workers. The foundations of sociological class theory were mainly developed in the period before the First World War, when mobility in the Global North was relatively unrestrained (Torpey, 2018). Accordingly, the sociology of class has traditionally assumed that people are constructed as ‘free’ sellers of their labour power under capitalism (e.g. Anttila et al., 2016; Breen and Rottman, 1995; Skeggs, 2002; Weininger, 2005; Wright, 2005). However, the proliferation of migration regulations in contemporary societies complicates this assumption and produces a need for social theory that accounts for the role of migration law and regulations in constructing class relations.

Domestic employment is increasingly being performed by migrant women in a variety of contractual relations in affluent countries of the Global North. Current empirical research has placed considerable emphasis on the compounded precarity and vulnerability faced by undocumented migrant domestic workers due to their lack of legal status and standard work contracts, and analysed the production of a racialised and gendered labour force (Anderson, 2000; Gavanas, 2010; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; Isaksen, 2010; Lutz, 2011; Parreñas, 2015). However, not all migrants employed in care and domestic work are undocumented or lack legal work contracts. For instance, many migrant domestic workers from non-European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) countries working in the Finnish context are formally employed and hold temporary residence permits. At the same time, the Finnish state channels migrants into the social reproductive sector via a set of policy measures in connection to a growing demand for this type of work. Migrant care and domestic workers are thus key actors in the altering relations of class and social reproduction.

The article examines how class relations are formed as migrants are structurally directed into the social reproductive sector, while also being tied to this sector via legal requirements. As such, this article emphasises the link between the formation of class and migration regulation. It asks, how do migrant domestic workers experience a position restricted by law, and what affective valences are produced in this context? Empirically, the analysis draws on in-depth thematic interviews with migrant nannies and domestic workers in Finland employed by both private employers and companies. The article argues that the way in which migrant domestic work is formalised in the legislation produces a specific class relation for migrants in which they lack full ownership over their labour power. The analysis connects the constrained class relation with migrant domestic workers’ subjective expressions of gratitude for an employment status they simultaneously describe as devalued.

The analysis is guided by an understanding of social class as relational: different power relations regulate people’s access to resources, which shapes their location in the social relations of production and reproduction (Munck, 2013: 752; Wright, 2005). Following Marxist theory, the analysis interprets the unequal distribution of people’s rights and powers over resources deployed in production as class relations (Wright, 2005: 10). Migrant workers face legally restricted access to their labour power, which constructs migration law as one of the relations that define migrants’ relationship to production and capital. In addition, the article links the political economic level to the subjective dimensions of class by drawing on Skeggs’ (2002: 7) Bourdieusian definition of class as ‘part of a struggle over access to resources and ways of being’. Skeggs’ (2002: 12) focus on the formation of class examines what meanings movement or restrictions to access and resources hold for subjective constructions. A theoretical combination of a Marxist and Bourdieusian approach makes it possible to grasp the effects of a constrained access to resources on both structural and subjective levels.

The article offers a two-fold contribution to sociological theory. First, it contributes to a view on sociological class analysis that tends to take citizenship rights for granted and analyses the structural locations of persons legally considered ‘free’, assuming an unrestricted access to labour power. This article places sociological class theory (Skeggs, 2002; Wright, 2005) in conversation with critical migration research (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013; Rigo, 2009) and demonstrates how migration law contributes to organising the social relations of migrant care and domestic work. Second, the findings extend the current literature on migrant care and domestic work, which focuses less on the relational construction of class, and instead predominantly attends to gender, motherhood, racialised affects and personalism (Akalin, 2015; Anderson, 2000; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014; Hochschild, 2001; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; Parreñas, 2015). The analysis highlights the participants’ articulations of an ambiguous sense of gratitude for a job they simultaneously depict as devalued. Both labour and the right to reside in a country are constructed as intertwined resources to which migrants have only conditional and restrained access. Migration law positions these resources in a reciprocal structure resembling that of gift-giving (Mauss, 1999). The pattern of being grateful for a position devalued within society produces new meanings for labour as compensation for the ‘gift’ of the residence permit that is exchanged between the employee, the employer and the nation-state. The analysis interprets this as a form of indebted labour that draws on social obligations rather than monetary debt. The enlisting of gratitude for access to resources demonstrates the need to examine how class relations are formed between capital, labour and the nation-state regime, all of which involve hierarchies between the Global North and the majority world.

In what follows, the article discusses research on class and migration, after which it introduces the specificities of the Finnish context. It then presents the methodology and the study’s findings on the formation of class in migrant care and domestic work, followed by concluding remarks.

The Role of Law in Class Formation

Classical sociological theory often takes full citizenship rights for granted when analysing people’s structural class relations. For Marx (1990[1876]), class formation takes place through one’s relationship to the means of production. Weber paid attention to the increasing differentiation among individuals’ positions and status in capitalist labour markets and the related unequal distribution of life opportunities (Breen, 2005; Weber, 1978[1922]). Bourdieu expanded the predominantly materialist class analysis to also encompass cultural, social and symbolic capital in addition to the economic dimension and held that a person’s habitus expresses the internalisation of status hierarchies necessary for the reproduction of class and capitalism (Bourdieu, 1986; Weininger, 2005). This shift has inspired studies on social class that have focused on subjectivity (e.g. Skeggs, 2002).

One of the principal initial assumptions regarding the sociology of class is therefore the construction of formally free individuals selling their commodified labour power under capitalism. Marx (1990[1876]: 272–273) famously noted that workers under capitalism are free in an ambiguous double sense: free to sell their labour-capacity, while simultaneously being free of the means of production needed for its realisation. The main force constraining these formally free individuals is economic compulsion. Therefore, citizen workers and migrant workers alike are positioned as ‘free’ sellers of their labour power who lack access to capital, land and other necessary resources deployed in production. Contemporary class analysis has identified variations and complexity among and within classes, emphasising the mediating role of educational attainment, cultural capital and social divisions within labour markets (Breen and Goldthorpe, 2001; Breen and Rottman, 1995; Käyhkö, 2006; Savage and Egerton, 1997; Skeggs, 2002).

However, research on class has placed less emphasis on the role of law and on the ways in which law may construct class relations in contemporary societies. This is particularly the case for migrant workers, whose labour mobility in capitalist markets is disrupted and constrained by migration legislation. While the state has been interpreted as a central institution that administers rights over resources (Wright, 2005: 19), this has often been theorised in relation to private property and less in articulation with labour. Hence, theories on class tend to operate within an implicit nation-state context and methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Schiller, 2003). One notable exception is the conceptualisation of the precariat, a supposedly new class marked by insecurity and temporariness, which encompasses both citizens and migrants (Standing, 2011). However, this concept emphasises the growth in labour insecurity (Standing, 2011: 10).

By comparison, research on migration and labour market transformations in the EU has brought attention to the differential inclusion of migrants, or how the border regime stratifies the labour force in terms of migrant status, nationality and racialisation (Anderson, 2010; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013; Rigo, 2009). The border is a political and legal institution that manages migrants’ mobilities, constructing hierarchically differentiated positions between citizens and migrants (Könönen, 2019; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013; Rigo, 2009; Tervonen and Enache, 2017), which are often expressed as migrants as the performers of precarious work (Anderson, 2010; Könönen, 2012; Maury, 2019).

Migration policies direct migrants into specific sectors that experience labour shortages (Anderson, 2010). In the UK, migration policies tie migrants to their sponsoring employer, which produces a form of tied labour (McDowell, 2009: 32). Relatedly, overlapping regimes of migration, gender and care shape and encourage migrant employment in the care and domestic sector (Bettio et al., 2006; Lutz, 2011; Wrede and Näre, 2013). In addition, institutional actors and labour activation policies often channel young migrants and racialised populations into precarious low-wage occupations (Haikkola, 2021; Krivonos, 2019). These research strands point to the same developments from different perspectives: various legal and political processes structure labour markets (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013) and stratify them based on intersectional power relations built around racialisation, migrant status, nationality and gender (Williams, 2012).

When analysing migrant domestic work, previous research has accentuated the emotional ambiguities in the close personal relations that develop between employers, workers and their wards (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; Lutz, 2011; Näre, 2011). Scholars have noted that employers may sponsor migrant domestic workers’ visas, which affects their relationship (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; Näre, 2011; Parreñas, 2015), but the implications of conditional legal residence are overshadowed by the attention paid to interpersonal relations. When taking into account the role of migration law, scholars have emphasised that EU migration policies produce an undocumented and racialised labour force of migrant women who face precarity and vulnerability (Anderson, 2000; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014; Lutz, 2011; Parreñas, 2015). Relatedly, previous studies that specifically examine migrant domestic workers’ relationship to employment have emphasised critical accounts and the construction of racialised affects (Anderson, 2000; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014; Lutz, 2011). Feelings of shame, bitterness and disgust articulate migrants’ unregulated status and the performance of domestic work (Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014; Lutz, 2011; Parreñas, 2015).

More ‘positive’ affects may have been excluded from previous analyses. For example, Anderson (2000: 128) noted that several informants emphasised happiness with their work, but the study then proceeded to analyse the experiences of those informants who were outspokenly critical of the work situation. The previous emphasis on negative affects contrasts with the empirical findings of this study, in which participants expressed an ambiguous sense of gratitude for devalued work. To understand the subjective experiences of formally employed migrant workers, this article applies affect analysis to examine how the conditional access to reside mediates migrants’ relationship with their labour. Affects are approached as social and political practices that reflect the construction of subjectivities, express power relations and are intertwined with histories of oppression (Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014).

Even though scholars have often mentioned that migrant care and domestic work intersect with race, gender and class, previous analysis has seldom attended to class formation, thereby obscuring a critical link with capitalism. Previous research on migrant care and domestic work that has focused on class has examined one’s ability to distance oneself from work constructed as low status and dirty (Anderson, 2000; Ray and Qayum, 2009). Migrant domestic workers experience a subject position of contradictory class mobility, related to a raised salary combined with a decline in occupational and social status (Cederberg, 2017; Parreñas, 2015: 117–118). However, as Luxton (2006: 34) has noted, such understandings of class do not include an analysis of just what types of relations define the social organisation of labour. This article contributes to this gap by examining how migrant workers’ constrained legal statuses intertwine with class formation.

A Marxist class analysis recognises that societies include a variety of different class relations that coexist and interlink in diverse ways, and one of the primary objectives is to identify how variation and complexity are generated in concrete and specific societies (Wright, 2005: 12, 16). In the Finnish case, non-EU/EEA migrant workers on temporary residence permits are legally tied to a specific occupation. They then stand in a different relation to capital than citizen-workers; citizens are able to move between occupations while migrants face a legally constrained job mobility, and share access to ownership over their labour power with the nation-state/employer dyad. As this article approaches class, ‘race’ and gender as relational categories generated in connection with labour (Brodkin, 2000; Glenn, 1992), this specific context points to how class relations are also racialised and gendered. Migration policies, then, produce differentiated exploitative relationships within capital (Hall, 2021: 322) in a way that articulates a racialised logic (Erel et al., 2016; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014).

This practice bears a resemblance to the historic systems of compulsory service. In the case of the Swedish Kingdom (to which the territory of Finland belonged at the time), compulsory service existed from the 15th to the 19th century as a form of vagrancy law directed at people without private property and who were unable to pay taxes to the state. It stipulated a legal requirement to work, which for women often signified domestic service (Pylkkänen, 2006). Compulsory service was performed for one year at a time, after which the workers could change their employer. The system criminalised the mobility of poor people (Miettinen, 2015) and constructed a system in which they owed their labour to the propertied classes. Similarly, migrant workers owe their labour to employers for a certain number of years, as compensation for the legal right to residence that is exchanged between workers, employers and the nation-state (Rigo, 2009). Therefore, migrants’ rights to their own labour power – the only resource ‘free’ workers supposedly have access to – is constrained and restricted by migration law. This article understands law as one of the relations that migrants enter into as they reproduce their lives ‘that are indispensable and independent of their will’ (Marx, 1904: 11). In the article, migration law is referred to as the foundation encompassing a variety of practices for migration governance, with an emphasis on administrative practices and the temporary work-based residence permit system. Marx (1990[1876]: 719) noted how ‘in former times, capital resorted to legislation, whenever it seemed necessary, in order to enforce its proprietary rights over the free worker’. As the following section discusses, the legal constraints on labour are very much the case in contemporary societies, in particular for migrant workers.

The Finnish Legal and Political Economic Context

Cleaning and domestic work have traditionally been constructed as occupations for working-class women in Finland (Käyhkö, 2006). This hierarchy is currently changing, since cleaning and domestic work now stand out as sectors experiencing the highest growth in migrant workers in Finland (Saukkonen, 2022). Migrant workers comprise nearly a third (27%) of the current labour force in the cleaning and domestic work sectors nationwide, and more than half (63%) in the metropolitan area (Saukkonen, 2022: 60). Most of the people performing cleaning and domestic work have moved to Finland from the former Soviet Union, Estonia, the Philippines, Thailand, Somalia, Nigeria and Nepal (Statistics Finland, 2022). While migrant women work with domestic cleaning, migrant men are more often employed to clean in private and semi-public buildings, pointing to gendered variations among the constrained class relation.

A new ethnic/migrant division of labour has thus emerged in the Finnish context (e.g. Forsander, 2002; Näre, 2013; Wrede and Nordberg, 2010), in which migrants with irregular legal statuses perform precarious work (e.g. Könönen, 2019; Maury, 2019). The formation of class for migrant workers has been less examined, although studies have highlighted that the re-organisation of the cleaning sector into outsourced work particularly affects migrant workers (Könönen, 2012; Ollus, 2016).

The Finnish welfare state has represented a mode of societal organisation that, by means of social policies, regulates, and evens out class differences (Piirainen and Saari, 2002). Since the 1980s, the welfare state has undergone a process of neoliberal re-structuring, including the flexibilisation of the labour market (Julkunen, 2001). Income differences have significantly increased since the 1990s, and the division of people into social classes has been reinforced (Ojajärvi et al., 2016). Simultaneously, the demand for outsourcing social reproduction has grown, particularly among the working upper middle class (Wide and Näre, 2023). The state supports the demand for such labour through tax deductions (Näre and Wide, 2019).

Since the demand for low-wage labour in the cleaning and domestic sector is growing, the Finnish state channels migrants into these sectors via administrative practices. In contrast to many other European countries, where domestic work is often performed by undocumented migrants (Cyrus, 2008), the extent of irregular migration to Finland has thus far been limited (Könönen, 2019). Instead, migrants who move to Finland to work often obtain conditional and temporary residence permits based on work (Helander et al., 2016). These permits require an official employment contract and are tied to a specific job sector, meaning recipients can only be employed within a defined sector (Finnish Immigration Service, 2023). Therefore, someone who obtains a work permit for private domestic work can only apply for other jobs as a domestic worker under that permit. Changing the job sector requires a new permit application process.

Work-based permit applications are normally subjected to labour market testing, with permits given only after employers have unsuccessfully sought to hire national workers, EU citizens or third-country nationals already residing in the country. However, public authorities dealing with employment and the economy (Centres for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment (ELY Centres)) have since 2015 in Uusimaa, the most populated region in southern Finland, which includes the metropolitan area, excluded both cleaning and private care and domestic work¹ from labour market testing since finding local workers for those sectors has become increasingly difficult.² This policy is based on yearly regional assessments of labour supply and estimates by the employment offices on short-term outlooks for key occupations and workforce availability. The purpose of the regional policies is to support the labour supply by considering the specific needs and shortages prevalent in each labour market area (ELY Centre, 2022, 2023). Migrants are therefore given a strong incentive to apply for a work permit in cleaning or domestic work since, being exempt from labour market testing, they can be obtained more easily.

The first work permit is initially issued for one year. When applying for an extension, the applicant must attach a salary certificate, which they receive from their employer, for each month of their previous permit period (Finnish Immigration Service, 2023). If an applicant neglects to send the certificates, the immigration office may assume the applicant has not adhered to the requirements and decline the renewal. When a permit is renewed, the applicant receives either another one-year permit, or a four-year permit, given that the employment will continue. After four years of living in Finland on a continuous work-based permit applicants can apply for a permanent residence permit,³ but only if the employment is still ongoing.

If migrants do not comply with the requirements, they risk losing their permit and potentially being deported. Hence, migration legislation places migrant workers in a separate structural position, excluded from the full rights and protections of citizens but required to work. The way the Finnish state formalises migrant work can, following Morel (2015: 188), be interpreted as part of a new political economy of the welfare state that reinforces the socio-economic inequalities between migrants and non-migrants.

Methodology

The analysis is based on thematic in-depth interviews (N = 30) conducted in 2016–2021 and 2023 with migrant nannies and/or domestic workers in Finland. The interviewees were between 24 and 57 years of age and included 29 women and one man. All participants were employed workers: 24 worked for private employers and six for companies. Of the six who worked for companies, five had previously worked for private employers and one had started their own company. Most of the participants had a continuous work contract, although the work was often paid by the hour. The participants worked as nannies, as both nannies and domestic workers, or solely as domestic workers. It was common that the work tasks and roles altered and were flexible depending on the needs of the employers: participants employed as nannies often performed domestic work, while those employed as domestic workers also did care work. Most of the participants had a temporary residence permit that was linked to their employment and specific job sector, and most had arrived in Finland with a work visa and the primary objective of finding work. Two participants were EU citizens, while three others had arrived in Finland from outside the EU to study and were working as nannies or domestic workers alongside their studies. The participants had moved to Finland from Southeast Asia (21), South and Central America (3), Africa (2), Western Europe (2), Eastern European regions requiring a residence permit (1) and Australia (1).

I connected with the participants through churches, language schools, social media, local organisations and mutual contacts and by applying the snowball method. The interviews were conducted at locations that were convenient for each participant, including cafes, their workplaces or my place of work. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I conducted interviews on Zoom. They were conducted in English and Spanish and lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, with an average time of one hour. The interviews were anonymised during the transcription process so that personal information and names referring to individuals or locations were removed in accordance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law. To ensure informed consent, the participants received information about the research. They were also asked to sign a written consent form and were told that they could withdraw from the study at any time.

I coded the data thematically based on the topics of constrained labour, migration law and affects and analysed it several times applying content analysis. The theoretical and empirical analysis was developed jointly rather than in different phases. The participants’ structural and affective descriptions of their position were regularly intertwined in the data. From a theoretical standpoint, the analysis focuses on class as access to resources (Skeggs, 2002; Wright, 2005) and approaches labour and the residence permit as interconnected resources. The analysis also assesses the subjective links to access by examining affective utterances related to this context. The analysis interprets affects as context-specific articulations of a system of social constraints that migrant workers must navigate. Moreover, research positionality matters for this study since the researcher represents the white Finnish population. The emphasis on gratitude can thus be interpreted as a discourse on work that is socially acceptable for migrants in the eyes of the local population. This may bring further validity to the argument regarding the constraints that migrants face.

Findings

The migrant care and domestic workers interviewed in the study expressed how their access to the work-based residence permit limits their access to their labour power on structural and affective levels. Participants described how they remained at their place of employment due to both the legal requirements associated with the residence permit and a subjectively experienced obligation to offer repayment for the permit. An apparent contradiction was identified from the data: respondents articulated an ambiguous sense of gratitude and happiness in relation to their work, while simultaneously describing their work in degrading terms, such as humbling and devalued.

Class as Constraint

Participants in this study did not use the concept of class to describe their position. Instead, they reflected on it as depending on and needing to comply with residence permit processes and employers’ demands. Respondents constructed the residence permit as a desired and valued resource that simultaneously puts them in ‘their place’ (Skeggs, 2002: 52), since the legal requirements restrict their ability to freely decide over the use of their own labour. While the visa may be constructed as an object of care (Tkach, 2021), it can also be perceived as one of the resources that shape migrants’ class relation (Wright, 2005).

Jasmine, a 28-year-old Filipina who had worked as an au pair in Denmark and Norway before moving to Finland said that she had tried to regularise her status in the other countries, but to no avail. After hearing that she would be able to apply for a renewable permit in Finland, she found a Finnish employer through personal contacts:

They processed my papers; I’ve been living in their home, and they helped me. I have the papers and I can stay here, just renew the visa. [. . .] It’s not my dream job, obviously, and I’m just staying there now for my visa.

Many interviewees similarly stressed that they continued in their field of work due to permit requirements. Several criticised the practice of linking the residence permit to a specific employment sector, noting that they were unable to accept job offers from other sectors. Arianne, a 29-year-old woman from the Philippines working as a nanny for one family, highlighted differences in job mobility:

From other European countries, they can choose and shift jobs every now and then. But for us, from Asian [and other non-EU] countries, we have restrictions.

Respondents brought forward how their job mobility is constrained by the legal requirements associated with the residence permit, contrasting this to EU citizens and native Finnish people able to ‘transfer from one job to another’. Migrants’ class relation thus involves a ‘struggle over access to resources’ (Skeggs, 2002: 7) relating to their right to reside and their labour power, resources to which citizen-workers hold a more unrestricted access. Whereas previous research on migrant care and domestic work has focused less on how racialisation and gender as social hierarchising structures are generated relationally with class, hence through the workings of capitalism (Brodkin, 2000), the findings in this study suggest that a legally constrained position is crucial in contributing to class relations.

Previously, scholars have interpreted migration regimes and their restrictions on migrants’ labour mobility as an institutionalisation of unfree labour (Strauss and McGrath, 2017). The concept of unfreedom has somewhat less explanatory power for the Finnish migration context, in which workers are legally able to change employers within the pre-defined sector. Instead, compared with EU citizens who are legally ‘free’ to change job sectors, migrants are constructed in a differential class relation with restricted ability to move outside the legally determined low-waged job sector,⁴ something that can be interpreted as articulating a racialised logic (Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014).

Respondents connected their access to residence with employment, and described throughout the interviews their constrained access to these entangled resources. Roselle was a 30-year-old, live-in nanny and domestic worker from the Philippines who had worked as an au pair in five European countries before moving to Finland and finding employment as a nanny and domestic worker for two families. Roselle recalled her initial reluctance to demand clear working hours at her employment even though she often worked unpaid overtime, explaining that: ‘I was happy that I got the job in Finland, you know, this is an opportunity for me to stay.’ In contemplating the situation for Filipino workers in Europe, many of whom labour under irregular conditions, Roselle viewed the prospect of securing a renewable legal permit as ‘very fortunate’. These motivations were shared by many of the participants, whose lives in their countries of origin had been made untenable due to growing unemployment and job precarity combined with a (re-)privatisation of social reproduction (Bakker and Gill, 2003). Many had previous experience working in irregular settings, either as au pairs in Europe or on strictly defined time-based contracts in Asia, before moving to Finland. Their rationale for moving to Finland was the renewable residence permit, which potentially offers more stability, the chance of earning a stable salary and the possibility for family reunification. In the following, the social relationship that the work-based residence permit produces between the migrant worker, the employer and the nation-state is discussed in more detail.

Indebted Labour: Expressing Gratitude for Devalued Work

Liela, a 27-year-old Filipina woman employed by a company to clean apartments and buildings, had worked as an au pair in different European countries before moving to Finland. She discussed the employment possibilities for people who, like her, had migrated from the Global South:

This is the only thing that we can get. [. . .] But we are really grateful. Living here and trying to discover something new. It’s not for everybody. Even if we do humble jobs, we are happy with everything.

Liela continued by noting that also people who have graduated from the Philippines end up ‘doing this kind of job’, connecting humility with degraded work. Respondents often articulated similar ambiguous affects in relation to their work, and linked such utterances to the process of obtaining residence permits.

Dewi, an Indonesian woman employed as a nanny and domestic worker, described how she received word about her place of employment a week before her residence permit expired, noting that it was a ‘miracle’ since it enabled her to renew the permit. In comparison, Finnish women in the cleaning sector related to the work instrumentally, as a way of subsidising family life (Käyhkö, 2006: 215). At the same time, Dewi reflected how she did ‘not want to work as a domestic helper all (her) life’, relaying how work is simultaneously depicted as favourable and devalued.

This ambivalence is based on an interpretation of the residence permit process as a system of gift giving (Mauss, 1999) between the employer/nation-state and the employee, generated from the data. Respondents articulated ambiguous affects of gratitude and obligation in relation to this exchange, while many recognised that the transfer also involves an unequal exchange of labour and wages.

Kathleen was a 36-year-old woman who had migrated from the Philippines to work in Finland, first as a live-in domestic worker and later transitioning to a live-out domestic worker for several employers. Upon moving to Finland, Kathleen received a one-year residency permit for nanny and domestic work, which she later was able to extend to a four-year permit. She migrated from the Philippines to support her family and provide an education for her children. Kathleen described her work as something she ‘needs to love’, a pragmatic and strategic reflection of how her current job was constructed as the most favourable option for her (see also Maury, 2022).

Kathleen had previously been employed as a domestic worker in a global city in Asia. She then found a Finnish employer who assisted her with the visa application. Kathleen said that she often worked as a nanny for the family on top of her regular employment and noted that she was grateful to the employers for processing her papers, likening it to an unpayable debt:

They are the ones who process my papers. I told them that you pay me how much you pay me. I will not ask. [. . .] I’m so grateful already for [them] bringing me here. I cannot pay them back, so the only way is if I can help them in times when they need [it].

Even though Kathleen constructed the gift as impossible to repay, she still attempted to do so by offering her labour power in exchange. Others similarly described a feeling of indebtedness towards the employer who had facilitated the obtaining of a permit, saying that they will ‘forever be indebted to them’.

Alyssa, a 30-year-old live-in nanny and domestic worker from the Philippines, described how she was ‘tired of cleaning’ and ‘bored’ by her work as a nanny. Nevertheless, after receiving a permanent residency and switching jobs, she continued to ‘help the family’, saying that:

Sometimes they ask me if I can help them [. . .] then I go there, I don’t ask them to pay me anything, because they helped me here also with my visa, I had some struggle with my permanent residence application.

In this specific context, the residence permit linked to work produces a particular social relationship between workers, their labour, the employer and the nation-state, which is saturated with gratitude and obligation. Respondents connected expressions of gratitude with an experienced obligation to offer repayment in addition to the remunerated labour they already perform for their employers. Gratitude is thus presented as taking on a more strained form of indebtedness. In interviewees’ accounts, work gains additional meaning as a repayment that is offered in exchange for the ‘gift’ of the residence permit exchanged between the worker, the employer and the nation-state. The link between gratitude/obligation and labour can be perceived as a formation of indebted labour that is less concerned with monetary debt and rather entangled with social obligations.

The conflation of gratitude with access to resources offers an added layer to previous theories on class that analyse the ‘struggle over access to resources’ (Skeggs, 2002: 7) and rights to resources (Wright, 2005: 5). While employment within capitalism is often perceived as something ‘given’ by the employer, here the employer (and the nation-state) also provides the legal right to reside in the country. This further complicates the relationship between access and resources and amplifies the seemingly gift-giving qualities of the capital–labour relation. The residence permit can be interpreted as a gift that offers access to one resource (the right to reside in and the right to broader movement within the EU), while simultaneously restricting access to another resource, labour power, the rights to which workers share with the employer and the nation-state. This limits migrants’ realistic possibilities to engage in struggles over increased access to rights.

Affective utterances of gratitude can also be seen as part of a process of global upward class mobility, one that the participants in this study had experienced, which offers another layer to working-class subjectivity (Skeggs, 2002). Interviewees noted how the residence permit offered them an unprecedented chance to ‘see the world’. As Mae, a 28-year-old domestic worker from the Philippines explained, ‘if you have a passport from a third-world country, you’re one of the few blessed ones if you can get out’. Respondents’ construction of the residence permit as desirable thus connects to the global regulatory system of migration, based on imperialist and colonial legacies between the Global North and the majority world (Sharma, 2020). Moreover, it links to class hierarchies shaping who are able to access the resources required for leaving.

Gratitude is also connected to the personalism and the moral economies often characterising migrant domestic work (Näre, 2011). However, participants often extended this relationship to include the nation-state. For example, Chloe, a 28-year-old Filipina woman working as a full-time nanny for a family, noted that she ‘will be here as long as Finland wants me to be here’, ‘I guess as long as I am capable of working.’ Similarly, the concern to emphasise gratitude can be read as a discourse on work that is socially acceptable for migrants. In receiving countries, national discourses often construct employment as paradoxically a privilege and an obligation for migrants. Gratitude may therefore reflect the societal expectation for migrants to demonstrate appreciation towards the receiving nation-state and also towards the researcher, who represents the white Finnish population. This further accentuates the construction of a racialised class relation for migrants, as the possibility for criticism in front of those located within a hierarchically more powerful position is often constrained. Throughout the interviews, respondents more often expressed pragmatism about their situation as opposed to direct criticism. Nevertheless, they also openly discussed how care and domestic work for them represents a chapter in their lives that is necessitated by the requirements of the residence permit system.

The way the Finnish state regularises migrant work in a differential relation to capital is coupled with administrative constraints that introduce avenues for employers to utilise the system to enforce compliance and increase labour extraction. One notable example is the requirement for migrant workers to send salary certificates to the immigration office for each month spent working to extend the residence permit. When Thea, a 45-year-old domestic worker from the Philippines, objected to abusive practices at work, one of her employers refused to send her the salary certificates from the previous months as a punishment for Thea’s refusal to accept exploitation. Similarly, others described how previous employers in cleaning companies threatened to remove their permits unless they work at a pace deemed ‘fast enough’. Consequently, many said they did not object to abusive practices for fear of losing their jobs.

To liberate themselves from such constraints, participants strove to obtain a permanent residence permit, which enables the holder to change occupations. If migrants adhere to the reciprocal conditionality on labour and the right to reside, they may gain access to this new resource, which gives them the exclusive right to decide on their labour power and therefore allows them to move beyond the tied class relation. To do this, migrants must work continuously under the constraints of the same permit in the same sector for four to five uninterrupted years, and even then, the permanent residence permit is only granted if the employment position continues indefinitely. Nevertheless, the context for migrant domestic workers casts a new valuing perspective on migrants’ labour, since it is precisely through their own labouring activities that they are able to find solace in the permanent residence permit.

Conclusion

This article has analysed migrant care and domestic workers’ structural and affective descriptions of a position constrained by law. It has extended sociological class theory, which has largely focused on analysing the class relations of people who hold full citizenship rights, linking it to critical migration research on the legal and political re-structuring of labour markets (e.g. Rigo, 2009). The article has emphasised how migration law constructs a distinctive class relation for migrant workers compared with citizen workers. This process was analysed by discussing the specificities of the Finnish political economic and legal context, in which migrants are channelled and tied to the social reproductive sector, and by analysing migrant domestic workers’ descriptions of their constrained job mobility. The social relations of migrant care and domestic work are not only structured by, for example, whether the employee works for a private individual employer or a company. Migration law also organises these relations, since migrant workers’ limited access to their labour power resource shapes their relation to production and capital.

This article has also extended research on migrant care and domestic work that has predominantly focused on the intersection of race and gender for undocumented workers and the related construction of racialised and critical affects (Anderson, 2000; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014). The analysis emphasised affective ties to labour prevalent in participants’ accounts of gratitude and a sense of obligation for work they simultaneously described as devalued. In this vein, the article examined how migrant care and domestic work is formalised, simultaneously functioning as a site for subject formation and producing a particular social relationship in which work becomes constructed as a repayment for the ‘gift’ of the residence permit exchanged between the worker, the employer and the nation-state. This is associated with a form of indebted labour, drawing on social obligations rather than monetary debt. The conflation of gratitude with access to resources introduces an additional layer to the relations of exchange between capital and labour and suggests that global colonial hierarchies implicate the construction of classed subjectivities.

In conclusion, migrant care and domestic work cannot be adequately understood without paying close attention to class. Similarly, the configuration of class cannot be understood without considering the situation of migrant workers and the ways in which their legally constrained position may place them in a distinct class relation compared with citizens. Sociological class theory currently assumes that ‘free’ workers have unrestricted legal access to their labour power. The case of migrant care and domestic work leads us to rethink the relationship between class and law; it is crucial for class theory to more carefully consider the differential rights that migrants have over their labour power resource in order to better elucidate contemporary social change. Labour historians have highlighted the various forms of coerced labour that have co-existed with ‘free’ wage work under capitalism (Steinfeld, 2001). Likewise, the legal ties to labour for migrant workers epitomise a contemporary variation on a constrained class relation in which the rights to claim ownership over one’s labour power are shared by the worker and the nation-state/employer dyad.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Lena Näre, Rachel Sherman, Johanna Kantola, Minna Seikkula, Miika Tervonen, Alicia Ng, my colleagues at the NSSR Sociology PhD seminar, the Sociology editorial board and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: this research has been funded by the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki and by the Doctoral Programme in Gender, Culture and Society at the University of Helsinki.

ORCID iD

Elisabeth Wide

Notes

Elisabeth Wide is a PhD researcher in Sociology at the University of Helsinki. Her PhD dissertation analyses migrant care and domestic work in contemporary Finland, focusing on the formation of class and the contradictions pertaining to ‘free’/unfree labour from the perspective of live-in reproductive workers. Her research interests include social reproduction, class theorisation and the sociology of work. She has previously published in NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Journal of European Social Policy and Poliittinen talous.

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The Legal Formation of Class in Migrant Care and Domestic Work

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

The Role of Law in Class Formation

The Finnish Legal and Political Economic Context

Methodology

Findings

Class as Constraint

Indebted Labour: Expressing Gratitude for Devalued Work

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Funding

ORCID iD

Notes

References