Introduction to the Special Issue: Men in a Woman’s Job, Male Domestic Workers, International Migration and the Globalization of Care

Very little scholarship exists, which investigates male domestic workers. Yet they constitute a highly interesting vantage point from which to analyze the gendered and racialized division of labor as well as the social constructions of masculinity in both contemporary societies and in the past. In several countries nowadays a large number of domestic workers are migrants. By focusing on men employed as domestic workers in different societies, in both the global North and the global South (Italy, France, United Kingdom, India, Ivory Coast, and Congo), the articles presented in this special issue investigate the gendered dimensions of globalization and international migration, while avoiding the essentialist association of ‘‘gender’’ with ‘‘women.’’ They cover a wide range of disciplines (sociology, anthropology, and history) and methodologies (both qualitative and quantitative). Despite this variety of themes and approaches, all identify domestic service as a site where ‘‘hegemonic’’ and ‘‘subaltern’’ masculinities are produced and negotiated at the interplay of multiple social relations. Therefore, they contribute to filling a gap in the recent scholarship about migrant domestic and care labor. Investigating male domestic workers’ practices and the social construction of masculinity within domestic service from the late nineteenth century to the current day, this special issue illustrates not only geographical but also historical variations.