Brokering Servitude: Migration and the Politics of Domestic Labor during the Long Nineteenth Century (Culture, Labor, History, 6)

Synopsis

From The Era Of Irish Famine Migration To The Passage Of Quota Restrictions In The 1920s, Household Domestic Service Was The Single Largest Employer Of Women In The United States, And, In California, A Pivotal Occupation For Male Chinese Immigrants. Servants Of Both Sexes Accounted For Eight Percent Of The Total Labor Force - About One Million People. In Brokering Servitude, Andrew Urban Offers A History Of These Domestic Servants, Focusing On How Irish Immigrant Women, Chinese Immigrant Men, And American-born Black Women Navigated The Domestic Labor Market In The Nineteenth Century - A Market In Which They Were Forced To Grapple With Powerful Racial And Gendered Discrimination. Through Vivid Examples Like How Post-famine Irish Immigrants Were Enlisted To Work As Servants In Exchange For Relief, This Book Examines How Race, Citizenship, And The Performance Of Domestic Labor Relate To Visions Of American Expansion. Because Household Service Was Undesirable Work Stigmatized As Unfree, Brokers Were Integral To Steering And Compelling Women, Men, And Children Into This Labor. By The End Of The Nineteenth Century, The Federal Government Became A Major Broker Of Domestic Labor Through Border Controls, And Immigration Officials Became Important Actors In Dictating Which Workers Were Available For Domestic Labor And Under What Conditions They Could Be Contracted. Drawing On A Range Of Sources - From Political Cartoons To Immigrant Case Files To Novels - Brokering Servitude Connects Asian Immigration, European Immigration, And Internal, Black Migration. A Note On Language -- Introduction -- Liberating Free Labor : Vere Foster And Assisted Irish Emigration To The United States, 1850-1865 -- Humanitarianism's Markets : Brokering The Domestic Labor Of Black Refugees, 1861-1872 -- Chinese Servants And The American Colonial Imagination : Domesticity And Opposition To Restriction, 1865-1882 -- Controlling And Protecting White Women : The State And Sentimental Forms Of Coercion, 1850-1917 -- Bonded Chinese Servants : Domestic Labor And Exclusion, 1882-1924 -- Race And Reform : Domestic Service, The Great Migration, And European Quotas, 1891-1924 -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Index -- About The Author. Andrew Urban. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.