From household to household the circulation of servants and domestic workers, a crucial issue from local to global level,

Raffaella Sarti, From household to household. The circulation of servants and domestic workers, a crucial issue from local to global level The question of the gendered dimension of migrations is a topic that for some decades has involved a growing number of scholars – both historians and social scientists – in a sense, it is a theme that shows the gulf between the current approaches and the historiographical landscape where the (albeit innovative) History of Women edited by Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot was conceived, written and published. Out of the five-volume work, only the one on the 19th century, edited by Geneviève Fraisse and Michelle Perrot themselves, included a specific section on migrations and travels (written by Perrot). Since then, growing numbers of studies have focused on female mobility and migrations and their features compared to male ones in the twentieth century and today as well as in medieval and modern times. The problematic presence of massive migration flows in today’s world has indeed prompted the interest in the mobility and migrations of the past. In this context, research on the circulation of female and male domestics over both short and long distances has played a rather important role. On the one hand, entering into service in someone else’s household has turned out to be a privileged channel for mobility and migration. On the other hand, servants and domestic workers constituted and constitute a key component among people flows on short, medium and long distances. This had and has significant implications for the subjective identity of the servants and domestic workers themselves, the experience of the (more or less socially and culturally distant) families where they work(ed), cultural circulation, cultural exchanges and conflicts, the accumulation of goods, the flows of resources, marriage patterns, urbanisation, colonisation, imperialism, the development of trans-national families, etc. My article will review these studies on servants and domestic workers, focusing on the themes they deal with, the results they have achieved and future research perspectives.