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Paper short abstract

The presentation explores care poverty in urban Ethiopian households, intertwining the care needs of migrant domestic workers and their female employers in a context marked by a severe lack of care services, mediated by local practices that combine protection with power asymmetries.

Paper long abstract

This paper offers an ethnographic reflection on care poverty based on the experiences of Ethiopian domestic workers and the urban middle-class households that employ them. On the one hand, young migrant domestic workers experience multiple forms of unmet care needs, including the absence of support networks in their villages of origin, the lack of formal legal protections in domestic work, and experiences of marginalization and mistreatment within employers’ households. On the other hand, many middle-class female employers face the difficulty of reconciling paid work outside the home with childcare, eldercare, and household management. This burden is often intensified by limited social support networks, by the frequent absence of husbands, and by a broader context marked by the scarcity and inaccessibility of care services.

Within this framework, the local practice of "adera" (አደራ)—a form of entrustment rooted in extended community networks—assigns host families a role of protection and care toward domestic workers, framed as “vulnerable village girls.” These responsibilities fall primarily on female employers, who are regarded as the “custodians” of the domestic space. This moral grammar produces ambivalent outcomes: while it may offer support and orientation, it simultaneously tends to normalize power asymmetries, dependency, and silence.

The analysis shows how solitude, interdependencies, responsibilities, and unmet care needs intertwine in the everyday experiences of domestic workers and their female employers, revealing the gendered dynamics of the household and the multiple configurations of care poverty in contexts marked by profound socio-structural care deficits.