This thesis is about women migrants from different countries of Latin America who earn a living as domestic and sex workers in London. Fleeing their respective economic and social crises, these women, middle-class in their home countries, experience a variety of personal dislocations when working in London’s care service sector market that make them feel as though they have been transformed into “different people”. These temporal and personal estrangements derive from the everyday challenges they face as intimate labourers, their undocumented status and the inevitable experience of illegality, the downward status mobility they experience, and the uncertainties they feel towards the future. Exploring migrants’ narratives of their journeys to the UK, the thesis exposes both the personal predicaments and structural problems that “pushed” them to migrate, as well as recounting and analysing their everyday lives as intimate labourers, the complexities that emerge from the commodification of intimacy and the tactics they use to negotiate the conflicts (both personal and work related) that emerge from such occupations. Following their working lives, the thesis analyses their ways of recuperating the social status they think they have lost, and of constructing spaces of temporary “normality”. These choices allow them to “reconstruct their persons” while also reflecting on the limited options they have as intimate migrant labourers in London.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:644386 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Gutierrez-Garza, Ana |
| Publisher | London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/1067/ |
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