Digital Margins: Digital Technology Use, Social Change, and the Empowering Strategies of Domestic Workers of Color in Brooklyn, NY

Today, digital technologies are reshaping well-established norms of sociality; they are changing the way we think about space and time and, in turn, problematizing our understanding of mobility. Overlooked in much of the growing body of work exploring this emergent phenomenon is a deeper understanding of how marginalized communities with less visibility are making use of technology in their day-to-day lives. The women at the center of this current research occupy a unique space in the social and political fabric of the United States. Their status as women of color, immigrants (including many undocumented immigrants), and mainly low wage workers, functioned to create intersectional experiences of disempowerment, and historically, limited social mobility This research seeks to understand this complex reshaping in the context of domestic labor in the USA. Ultimately, this study is looking at the interplay of identity, empowerment and community for domestic workers. Combining interviews and participant observation, this ethnographic study examines the use of digital technology among a community of domestic workers from various parts of the African diaspora living and working in Brooklyn, New York City. Data was collected in Brooklyn, NY over a 14-month period beginning in May 2013 and ending in July 2014, with the majority of the data collection and observation taking place over a six-month period, in which I shadowed and worked alongside a group of 29 key informants. This work examines the ways that domestic workers have used digital technology to overcome daily barriers traditionally associated with their status as domestics, exploring the strategies they create for themselves. It asks how these strategies are articulated through digital technology use, how domestic workers make sense of their actions, and in so doing, what is the potential of digital technology for both individual and collective empowerment? Furthermore, it interrogates how domestic workers see themselves within the rights movement, that is, whether narratives of domestic workers rights and wider social justice discourse circulating online and in the media are being adopted in the day-to-day interactions and social relations of workers themselves. It argues that, while domestic workers have been designated to be in a marginal position within American society, they have begun to use digital technologies in culturally and socially enhancing ways. Collectively, their practices offer new insights into the potential everyday digital technology use presents for positive social change at the local and interpersonal level.