The heuristic potential of emotions: power and inequality in migrant women’s care work
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2025.814.2988Keywords:
Emotions, Domestic work, Migrant women, Heuristic potentialAbstract
This study analyses the emotionality embedded in the caregiving work performed by migrant domestic workers in Spain, highlighting the heuristic potential of emotions as a tool to understand the labour and social dynamics these workers face. The main objective of the research is to explore how emotions can provide a more complex and detailed understanding of caregiving experiences, making visible the gender, class, and racial inequalities that characterise domestic employment. The study employed constructivist grounded theory as its methodology. Interviews and focus group discussions were conducted with 48 women in Granada, Madrid, and Oviedo, and the analysis focused on three key emotions: affection, resilient resignation, and sadness. The findings reveal that affection can humanise labour relations but also reinforces dependency and exploitation; resilient resignation enables workers to endure adverse conditions, thereby naturalising precariousness; and sadness and loneliness expose structural barriers that hinder social integration. The study concludes that analysing the heuristic potential of emotions constitutes an epistemic tool that shows emotions are not merely individual responses but are shaped by power structures that perpetuate subordination. This perspective makes visible and questions the structural inequalities affecting care work within domestic employment.
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