PhD | Migrant Domestic Workers in Brazil and the Netherlands: Experiences, Sensibilities, and Narratives in Visual Culture

PhD-candidate | Francianne Dos Santos Velho
Institution: Leiden University, LUCAS
Supervisor: Prof Dr. Sybille Lammes, Dr. Sara Brandellero

The question my research seeks to answer is: how have the experiences, sensibilities, and narratives of migrant domestic workers been shaped nationally and transnationally in visual culture in a postcolonial globalized world? Looking at films and social media content, I will compare the discursive and aesthetic similarities in positionality and perspective in the representations of migrant domestic workers produced between the early 2000s to today in Brazil and the Netherlands. Despite their geographical, socio-cultural and -political, and historical differences, the Brazilian and the Dutch case provides a rich and complex understanding of the racialized, gendered, and migratory colonial history of labor relations, not only in developing countries. I will also explore the way the appearance and the development of different types of media, and the involvement of women and domestic laborers in production, and the dissemination of knowledge contribute to affirming themselves and their communities, identities, and subjectivities.

Image credit: Hristina Tasheva, A Better Life (2007) (http://www.hristinatasheva.com/a_better_life.htm)