Space-time geography of female live-in child domestic workers in Dhaka,Bangladesh |
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Authors: | Kari B Jensen |
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Institution: | Department of Global Studies and Geography, Hofstra University, 209C Roosevelt Hall, 130 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11549, USA |
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Abstract: | Live-in child domestic workers in Bangladesh often experience the surveilling power of their employer's gaze as a Foucauldian panopticon, which both disciplines and engages children in forms of self-discipline. I argue that female child domestic workers in particular have a form of ‘thin’ agency whereby they are severely restricted in their abilities to make independent decisions or to act to their own benefit. I ethnographically unpack the concept of thin agency by analyzing material, cultural, spatial and discursive constraints that both employers and female child domestic workers engage in their daily lives. |
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Keywords: | child domestic work disciplining thin agency relational space liminal space geographies of home |
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