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Mobility Humanities

VOL.5, NO.1, January 2026

Special Issue

Interview

Fractured Lives: Domestic Workers’ Mobility Challenges to Provide Care

DOI.
10.23090/MH.2024.01.3.1.007
Special Issue
By.
Friederike Fleischer
Pages.
95 - 114
Date.
31. Jan. 2024

Abstract

In countries of the Global South, large numbers of uneducated women work in the service sector. As nannies and domestic workers, they provide vital care to wealthier population groups. For lack of resources, the women live in peripheral communities and rely on public transportation to travel to work. Mobility infrastructure, however, is seldomly planned for the disadvantaged’s needs. Thus, service sector workers face daily logistical and time challenges that impede on their lives and wellbeing. Presenting ethnographic data from a 5-year research project on domestic workers’ daily commutes in Bogotá, Colombia, in this article I illustrate women’s mobility challenges. Public transportation is over-crowded and delayed; petty crime and sexual harassment are wide-spread; and fringe areas of the city remain underserved. Women’s experiences highlight how gender intersects with local labour regimes and infrastructure to “fracture” domestic workers’ lives; they are caught between time poverty, physical exhaustion, and multiple care demands. Urban stratification is importantly (re)produced in and through mobility. The article illuminates the spatial, social, and economic interconnection limiting women’s lives and possibilities. Spatial justice for impoverished and disadvantaged populations, I argue, must address gender, local labour regimes, transportation, and care infrastructures as inherently interdependent and unequal regimes of power.
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