From the home in the courtroom: When migrant domestic workers mobilize rights

The project examines the unlikely moments when (migrant) domestic workers mobilize rights. By examining how current legal mobilizers in different regional contexts argue their cases, what knowledge they access and what discourses they connect with this knowledge, I want to find out when and how it is possible to mobilize law in precarious conditions. I wonder when domestic workers, firstly, connect with others and ally as a group and secondly, when they use the law as a tool to foster change. Both steps require the development of problem awareness and actor awareness (subjectification). In addition, there are conditions that can hinder or promote collective and/or legal mobilization, i.e. windows of opportunity, resources and support from existing groups. Individual interests that the law can balance in the form of processes between two parties - such as the remuneration of on-call services or compliance with free time and notice periods - often coincide with the interests of collectively organized groups. But sometimes group strategies and individual tactics can differ. The decision to ‘call’ the law or to use the legal form is therefore always accompanied by considerations of what a successful labor struggle can look like, which topics can be integrated into the legal sphere and which cannot. This brings into focus moments of translation from political to legal mobilization (and vice versa) as well as the processing of social demands in the legal sphere. I work qualitatively, empirically and comparatively. I apply theories from social movement research and industrial relations, concepts of legal consciousness and access to law as well as Marxist legal critique.