Globalisation, masculinities and the domestic space: Men employing migrant reproductive workers in Italy

This chapter explores male employers’ participation in the ‘transnational political economy of care’ (Williams, 2010) through the outsourcing of home-based and paid domestic/care services to (female and male) migrant workers in Italy. It focuses on how gender intersects with class, ethnicity and racialisation in the context of home-based consumption and management of migrant reproductive labour.Drawing from Howson’s (2014) emphasis on how different men aspire to the norms, practices and ideals associated with hegemonic masculinity, we explore how Italian male employers of different class backgrounds negotiate gender in the encounter with transnationally mobile men and women. In particular, we focus on how they do so through the consumption of migrant reproductive labour and through different degrees of domestic ‘command over’ and ‘distance from’ foreign workers. Here, we consider hegemonic masculinity as associated with a breadwinning role and professional work identity, as well as with the ideal of home ownership and active contribution to household wellbeing. We look at the domestic space and daily relations and practices around reproductive labour as important sites for the enactment of hegemonic masculinities. We propose the concept of domestic bounding/unbounding, referring to daily practices of spatial and relational proximity/ distance enacted by Italian male employers with respect to migrant workers. We suggest that domestic bounding/unbounding is shaped by male employers’ class status and life cycle stage, as well as by the typology of the task outsourced and the care concerns related to household wellbeing.