Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on ways Latin American women migrants in London experience a variety of personal dislocations when working in the care work economy, deriving from everyday challenges faced as illegal migrants and intimate labourers, their downward status mobility, and uncertainties they feel towards the future.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the ways in which Latin American women migrants in London experience a variety of personal dislocations when working in the care work economy in London. These temporal and personal estrangements derive from the everyday challenges they face as illegal migrants and intimate labourers, their downward status mobility, and the uncertainties they feel towards the future. This paper focuses on the everyday experiences of women who were required to deal with an uncomfortable intimacy with strangers. I will argue that women, employers, and clients dealt with this - sometimes - hazardous intimacy through the exchange of gifts. Gifts function as a way to cope with the precarious dependency that subsists within care work; to deal with the uncomfortable intimacies of labour. Gift exchanges, as I will show, do not always dissipate the tensions, but exacerbate the already problematic labour relations.