Hermeneutical injustice and outsourced domestic work

This paper argues that conceiving of paid domestic labour as ordinary work constitutes a form of hermeneutical injustice against domestic workers, whose work differs from other occupations in morally significant ways. Amongst other distinctive properties, outsourced domestic work inevitably rests on gendered and racialised asymmetries of wealth and social status, consists of affective labour which is not remunerable, and occurs in a necessarily private realm which cannot easily be regulated. The obfuscation of these features by discourses which cast domestic work as ordinary work obstructs attempts to form and respond to justice claims relating to domestic work, and prevents domestic workers from recognising the innate challenges of their work. The inadequacy of this discourse seems to counsel towards condemning the practice of outsourcing domestic work, rather than attempting to recuperate it.