“‘Mi have to work’: La domesticité des enfants en Jamaïque, 1920-1970” in Situations Contemporaines de Servitude et d’Esclavage: Anthropologie et sociétés, 41 (1), 147-177

Among the tens of thousands of workers who built the domestic employment sector in the XX ^th century in Jamaica there were young people, most of them young girls, and a few still “children.” While some were recruited as paid maids, others were placed (sometimes in the form of informal ‘adoptions’) in households where they performed domestic chores in exchange for food and shelter and in the hope of finding support. receive education. However pervasive these conditions were, little is known about how these “child” domestic workers experienced their work. This article seeks to contribute to discussions relating to child domestic labor, gender in domestic work, informal adoptions, childhood construction, as well as the potential for exploitation of these children and even bonded labor. 

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