| Abstract: | This article examines the dynamics of power and privilege at work in international development through the prism of domestic service for expat aid workers in developing countries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork amid aid workers and their domestic staff in Dakar, Senegal, I argue that access to affordable care work greatly enhances the lives of women who work overseas in development. The postcolonial underdevelopment and poverty that aid work addresses is paradoxically critical to the aid workers' own access to affordable care, family balance and the means to do their jobs. I put this insight into the larger scholarly conversation about domestic work and global inequality, including on the Global Care Chain. |
