Featured Grad Student - Maria Ibarra
by Bonnie Yoshida
Maria Ibarra, a doctoral candidate in sociocultural anthropology, will soon leave our department for a tenure-track faculty appointment at San Diego State University. She will join SDSUÕs Chicano Studies department where she will teach and continue her research on Mexicana women and the domestic labor process.
Maria's dissertation fieldwork focused on documented and undocumented Mexicana household workers in Santa Barbara. Although Chicana and Mexicana women had frequently worked as housecleaners in the past, it was not until the 1970's that they became increasingly employed as live-in childcare and elder-care providers as well. As middle class women went to work in record numbers, Mexicanas were hired to perform those tasks once undertaken by wives and mothers. While MariaÕs general focus was on the labor process and the power relations embedded within it, she was particularly concerned about the actual labor performed by Mexicana household workers. By collecting life histories of these women, she obtained detailed information about the nature of their daily routines, relationships with their employers, and the meaning of household work in their lives.
Studying the undocumented, a statistically invisible, shadow population, is a difficult undertaking. However Maria, a longtime Santa Barbara resident, had worked extensively with community and social service organizations, and these organizations helped her find some of her informants. In order to shield them from potential legal action, Maria had to take extra measures to insure absolute anonymity of her informants.
These interviews provided information about characteristics of household work rarely considered in academic studies. Rather than viewing housework as a one-dimensional activity, informants were very aware of differences within the labor process. Maria identified six distinct categories depending on the type of work and the living arrangements involved with each. These included housecleaning contractors, all purpose workers, and child or elder care providers who either live in or out. There was also considerable diversity in the hiring process, ranging from the conventional (newspaper and radio ads and contracting firms) to the surprising (recruitment of women in Mexico by American tourists on vacation).
Maria was also concerned with the emotional component of domestic labor. She pointed to the irony of Mexicana women performing such deeply personal work as caring for the employerÕs loved ones, yet being treated in a de-personalized fashion. She also stressed that the actual work must be differentiated from the working conditions. Informants repeatedly stated that the actual physical labor was not the most difficult part of their jobs. Much more troubling were the isolation, lack of separation between work and personal life, and the power dynamic between employer and worker, inherent to the job.
At San Diego State, Maria will continue to focus on the domestic labor process. She intends next to interview employers of domestics, as well as older women who performed domestic labor prior to the 1970Õs. She is looking forward to conducting fieldwork in San Diego communities, and she hopes to soon involve her students in fieldwork projects. Maria currently has a paper in a volume edited by June Nash in publication, and eventually aims to publish her dissertation in book form.
Maria was recently featured on the front page of the Santa Barbara News Press on October 20, 1996, in an article highlighting her research. Below is a list of Maria's recent achievements.
Papers Published
"Creen que no Tenemos Vidas": Mexicana Household Workers in Santa Barbara, California. In Beyond Class: Looking at Powre in U.S. Workplaces.Papers Presented
Mexicana Child and Elderly Care Providers in Santa Barbara, California. American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings. 1996."Con Mis Propias Manos": Mexicana Household Workers in Santa Barbara, California. Latinos in California Conference, Riverside, Ca. 1995.
Fellowships/Award
Back to AGSA volume 3(1) index
Back to index of all AGSA volumes
Back to main UCSB Anthropology page