Everyday Dirty Work

Centers Latin American immigrant janitors' lived experiences to analyze their workplace communication in the face of linguistic, cultural, and perceptual barriers.

A groundbreaking, urgent report from the front lines of "dirty work"—the work that society considers essential but morally compromised. Drone pilots who carry out targeted assassinations. Undocumented immigrants who man the “kill floors” of industrial slaughterhouses. Guards who patrol the wards of the United States’ most violent and abusive prisons. In Dirty Work, Eyal Press offers a paradigm-shifting view of the moral landscape of contemporary America through the stories of people who perform society’s most ethically troubling jobs. As Press shows, we are increasingly shielded and distanced from an array of morally questionable activities that other, less privileged people perform in our name. The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn unprecedented attention to essential workers, and to the health and safety risks to which workers in prisons and slaughterhouses are exposed. But Dirty Work examines a less familiar set of occupational hazards: psychological and emotional hardships such as stigma, shame, PTSD, and moral injury. These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income workers, undocumented immigrants, women, and people of color. Illuminating the moving, sometimes harrowing stories of the people doing society’s dirty work, and incisively examining the structures of power and complicity that shape their lives, Press reveals fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work and the hidden costs of inequality in America.

Profiling a number of occupations that society deems tainted (prison guards, forensic pathologists, AIDS caregivers, and others), "Dirty Work" offers vivid, ethnographic reports that focus on the communication that helps workers manage the moral, social, and physical stains that derive from engaging in such occupations.

There has been a tendency amongst feminists to see domestic work as the great leveller, a common burden imposed on all women equally by patriarchy. This unique study of migrant domestic workers in the North uncovers some uncomfortable facts about the race and class aspects of domestic oppression. Based on original research, it looks at the racialisation of paid domestic labour in the North - a phenomenon which challenges feminsim and political theory at a fundamental level. The book opens with an exploration of the public/private divide and an overview of the debates on women and power. The author goes on to provide a map of employment patterns of migrant women in domestic work in the North; she describes the work they perform, their living and working conditions and their employment relations. A chapter on the US explores the connections between slavery and contemporary domestic service while a section on commodification examines the extent to which migrant domestic workers are not selling their labour but their whole personhood. The book also looks at the role of the Other in managing dirt, death and pollution and the effects of the feminisation of the labour market - as middle class white women have greater presence in the public sphere, they are more likely to push responsibility for domestic work onto other women. In its depiction of the treatment of women from the South by women in the North, the book asks some difficult questions about the common bond of womanhood. Packed with information on the numbers of migrant women working as domestics, the racism, immigration or employment legislation that constrains their lives, and testimonies from the workers themselves, this is the most comprehensive study of migrant domestic workers available.

This book explores understandings and experiences of 'dirty work' – tasks or occupations that are seen as disgusting and degrading. It complicates the 'clean/dirty' divide in the context of organizations and work and illustrates some of the complex ways in which dirty work identities are managed.

Thriller.

Dirty Work explores the lives and work of recent immigrants from Africa, Asia, and elsewhere to the southern Italian region of Sicily. Using extensive research, Cole and Booth focus on the experiences of foreigners employed in domestic service, prostitution, and agriculture. Investigation of these key sectors affords a revealing vantage point onto the place of Sicily in the increasingly international circuit of people, goods, practices, and capital. The book departs from the focus, common in immigration studies, on a single nationality or location by instead describing the experiences of foreigners of diverse origins in rural and urban areas. The Sicilian case epitomizes what is one of the most significant developments in contemporary Europe: the recent transformation of the South from labor exporter to immigrant destination. Probing the material foundations of the contemporary world,Dirty Work's clear and compelling presentation of timely themes should make it of interest to a broad readership, including students, scholars, and the interested public.