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The Dual Discourse About Peruvian Domestic Workers in Santiago de Chile: Class, Race, and a Nationalist Project

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Silke Staab  and
Kristen Hill Maher
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Abstract

This article examines the functions of the “dual discourse” about Peruvian migrant domestic workers in contemporary Santiago. A 2002 field study found that middle-class employers of Peruvian workers simultaneously praised them as superior workers and denigrated them as uneducated and uncivilized. While this response is not unique to Santiago, this study argues that it fulfilled particular ideological functions in this context. The praise served to discipline the Chilean working class, who middle-class employers claimed no longer knew their place. The epithets served as a foil for Chilean national identity. Stories about Peruvians serve as tools in ongoing ideological contestations over class, race, and nation in Chile and, at the same time, shape the working conditions and integration of the migrants themselves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , Spring 2006 , pp. 87 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2006

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