Reading and writing between different worlds: Learning, literacy and power in the lives of two migrant domestic workers

Over the last decades, studies exploring women's literacy have highlighted the way in which literacy practices are embedded within social norms and structures of power. This article draws on research with a group of female migrant domestic workers from Nepal who attended literacy support sessions at the Migrant Resource Centre in London. It explores the way in which their engagement with literacy and learning interacts with the gendered relations of power they experience as they move between different transnational spaces and social fields. It suggests that a consideration of the opportunities and constraints that they experience as migrant domestic workers is critical for understanding their engagement with literacy, and for thinking about possibilities for greater gender justice in the lives of migrant domestic workers like them.

► The article discusses the literacy practices of two migrant domestic workers in London.
► It reveals how these interact with gendered power relations in different transnational spaces.
► Being able to adopt a literate identity in their interactions with family and friends is empowering to them.
► However the impact of their emerging literacy skills on their low status within the households within which they work is limited.