Le travail du récit sur les relations de care : littérature et sociologie

Abstract

From a feminist care perspective, this article analyses how literary and ethnographic approaches represent care work and the relationship between the domestic employee and the employer, thus contributing to make visible the subaltern position of the careworker. The work of literature is illustrated through the example of the novel The Door by Magda Szabò. In this novel the starting point is the will of the writer to repair her betrayal towards the domestic worker Emerenc. Writing a novel, telling Emerenc 's life story, thus making her visible, is the way for Szabò to accomplish this reparation. Does this reparation comes from heroisation? In care novels, care-givers occupy the main stage: they are heroines, not in the sense of universal male heroism, but in one that emerges from the care stories read from a gender perspective. The ethnographic approach is considered through the work of Caroline Ibos Qui gardera nos enfants? This fieldwork is an inquiry about the relationship between Ivorian nannies and woman employers in the Paris region. The book relies mainly on the way the nannies tell their lives and migration. It shows why and how the employers need to keep invisible the daily presence of the foreign care worker in order to maintain intact the symbolic order of their appartement.