The battle of the squares: When domestic workers protest

What the paper says

For a long time, sociological research on domestic service has primarily focused on the private household, with most studies examining the relationship between employers and domestic workers, particularly in terms of power dynamics, control and subordination. Consequently, much less attention has been paid to the ways domestic workers engage with one another and develop forms of professional solidarity and collective organisation. This article draws on fieldwork conducted in Paris among nannies who migrated from Côte d’Ivoire through postcolonial networks. The study aims to develop a micropolitical sociology of domestic workers beyond the confines of the employer’s home. In public squares, where these nannies gather daily to care for their employers’ children, unexpected spaces of professional sociability and mutual support emerge. These sites become informal nodes of connection and shared experience from which grassroots forms of collective organisation – including unions – can arise. To analyse this process of everyday resistance and collective action, the article introduces the concept of square unionism , which highlights how public spaces such as squares become arenas for solidarity and mobilisation among domestic workers.