Abstract

The Personalisation of Domination in Labour Relations : women workers in maquilas and women in domestic service in Latin America The continent of South America is characterised by a huge diversity in the forms of employment and labour relations prevalent there. The comparison between two situations which would appear to be unrelated, that of workers in the maquiladoras of Central America and domestic employment in the continent’s southern cone, enables us to highlight the centrality of hierarchical labour relations and the personalisation of domination, a dimension too often neglected in studies of domination linked to work. The article begins with a presentation of these two work environments. It then goes on to address the personalisation of domination relations, examining the hypothesis that, far from being a characteristic of certain “archaic” forms of work and employment, paternalism is in fact a dimension deeply rooted in the most contemporary and dynamic modes of labour relations, both in the “North” and in the “South”