In this article, I discuss some of Nicole-Claude Mathieu's contributions based on my research with different women in Haiti and France. I analyze the articulation of social relations in the work and family life of Haitian women (peasants, servants and bosses), insisting on the impact of their material conditions on their representation of social relations. Then I look at how gender can be invisibilized or instrumentalized in the discourse of Haitian migrant workers and French bosses. In addition to these theoretical analyses in which I develop an intersectional materialist feminism, I confront some of Nicole-Claude Mathieu's epistemological and methodological contributions with my socio-clinical feminist stance, which leads me to analyze social relations based on women's individual experiences.
Understanding Haiti
Peasant women in Haiti
The Handmaids of Port-au-Prince
The bosses of Port-au-Prince
Differentiated experiences, differentiated discourses Between family and work.
Invisibilization and instrumentalization of gender: the French field
The objective of this article is to confront some theoretical contributions of Nicole-Claude Mathieu with my research on the articulation of social relations of gender, class and race in the migration and work of women in Haiti and France. Peasant women become domestic workers in Port-au-Prince, which allows their bosses to invest in non-domestic work and access international migration. In France, these in turn become domestic workers and allow their French bosses to invest in non-domestic work. To understand this chain of work, migration and substitution, I questioned five categories of women from 2009 to 2012, in Haiti (peasants, servants and bosses) and in France (Haitian migrants and French bosses).
In the first part, based on the life stories of 69 women, I analyze the strategies they adopt in the face of the division of labor, the different arrangements that help them to "deal with" social gender relations, to spare themselves or to define room for maneuver. Secondly, I address the theoretical and epistemological effects of the relationship between a "black woman, doctoral student, Haitian migrant, from a rural and modest family" and the women interviewed. I will present the results of this stance in the definition of an intersectional materialist feminism crossed with a socio-clinical approach, for the emergence of a complex discourse on social relations.
Understanding Haiti
In order to understand the socio-professional downgrading of Haitian migrant women in France in its complexity, I studied domestic service in Haiti and the internal migration that feeds it. I analysed the situation of female servants in Port-au-Prince, that of their bosses, as well as the particular lives of peasant women who are likely to become domestic workers in the city.
Peasant women in Haiti
Work in the field, maintenance of the vegetable garden, processing and storage of agricultural products. In this still weakly mechanized environment.
Peasant women in Haiti work in agriculture1, animal husbandry, petty trade, associative work, domestic work and one of its main aspects: child care. These multiple activities corroborate the importance emphasized by N.-C. Mathieu of the most widespread material constraints that weigh on women to the benefit of men: over-fatigue, continuous monopolization of body and mind by work and children, non-leisure, under-reconstitution of energy. My informants also report the low and differentiated access to tools/means of production2 including agricultural work collectives; the combination of difficult and incompatible tasks (cooking and caring for children in particular). They denounce the arduousness of their work, which is dispersed in a series of cumulative and often uninterrupted tasks, an effort that is nevertheless underestimated, devalued, or even cancelled. In an interview, a peasant woman tells the story of a husband who wanted to swap places with his wife:
They swapped places. The lady went to work. So far, so good. He stays at home. They had children to send to school. He then has to manage to prepare the children's canteen and send them to school. After they leave, he already has to make the fire, clean the house, go to the market, buy what he doesn't have at home. Then he has to go to the kitchen. And when a child cries, he has to rock him. When it's dirty, he has to clean it. He also has to bathe her, he has to dress her, he has to take care of the house, he has to do this and that. And at the end of the school day, he has to run to pick up the kids. And when they come back in the afternoon, he has to make them eat, study, do a lot of other things. And often in the evening, when everyone falls asleep, that's when they have to start ironing. And he tries to do that for about three days. Then he said, "Woman, take your place again. I can't take it anymore! »
On the question of Creoles/Bossales, see, among others, Barthélemy (1989).
5It is important here to contrast the centrality of the sexual division of labour in the denunciations of these women with its invisibilization in political, scientific or activist discourse. Research on the rural environment generally denounces class, race, coloniality, the North/South relationship and specifically what I call the urban/rural confrontation analysed in the Creole/Bossal dichotomy3. Some titles, such as Paul Moral's The Haitian Peasant (1978) or Rémy Bastien's The Haitian Peasant and His Family (1951), suggest that while peasant women can be the subject of a page or a chapter, they "arouse" a secondary interest in these studies for the benefit of those who would be the most exploited: Haitian peasants. However, their women are even more exploited. All of this corresponds to what N.-C. Mathieu criticizes the invisibilization of women in the analysis of the main causes of inequality. This is due to the androcentrism of these studies, a bias that I will return to later. It was not until Madeleine Sylvain Bouchereau (1957) that the situation of Haitian women was integrated into research imbued with a genderless intersectionality. In 1986, a materialist analysis of Haitian women's work was conducted by Mireille Neptune Anglade (1986), including the specific situation of peasant women. This author has highlighted the migration of these women to the cities, a specific exodus that I call to be considered in the analysis of the urban/rural relationship where it is necessary to take into account not only the extortion of peasants' labour power in agriculture for the benefit of the cities, but also the classic exploitation of peasant women's labour power for domestic service in the city.
The Handmaids of Port-au-Prince
The Haitian Labor Code - which is otherwise very little respected - proposes that domestic workers (...)
In their migration, peasant women often become domestic workers in the city, sometimes from an early age when they are placed in the service of a family. Servants take care of all household needs, both domestic and care. They are temporally overinvested in this materially and symbolically devalued work. They earn very little, face abuse and humiliation in the employment relationship, and are poorly protected by legislation4. It will be seen that they are more willing to focus their criticism on domestic service than on the sexual division of labour. They are less analyzable than peasant women about the absence of men in domestic responsibilities, they give in to this reality, which is considered unjust but unchangeable, and they expect only economic help from men. The invisibilization of these working women in Haiti's discourse is in addition to the invisibilization of work in general.
The bosses of Port-au-Prince
The work of the maids allows other women in Port-au-Prince to integrate either informal work or formal work where men are still privileged. Compared to France, the greater access to outsourcing in Haiti, the lesser nuclearization of families, the proximity of neighborly relations, mean that motherhood does not appear to be an obstacle to work. The bosses don't talk much about their work, hiding the social relations of gender that mark the use of outsourcing. They sometimes address the division of labor in the family but rather emphasize the relationship with the servants.
Restavèk comes from the contraction of the two words "stay" and "with", and refers to children placed by their (...)
It is necessary to emphasize the diversity of the economic situations of the bosses, those who are "rich", those of the well-to-do middle classes, those of working-class origin, those who are so poor that they resort to the free labour power of children in domestic service, the restavèk. The non-domestic work of these women bosses varies according to their class, which also marks their relationship to the family and the couple. Hence the emergence of differentiated discourses on labour relations, social relations, the division of labour and women's strategies.
Differentiated experiences, differentiated discourses
All these women denounce the absence of men in the face of family and domestic responsibilities. But their relationship with the couple depends on their economic situation. The most independent do without men or, on the contrary, tolerate their irresponsibility by resorting to outsourcing. For the poorest, some are too dependent on their economic contribution, while others refuse the risk of impoverishment that the couple can represent. Women look at social relationships in terms of the social relationships they face on a regular basis. As a result, the place of gender in their discourse paradoxically depends on their daily relationships with women (their bosses), and therefore on their social class. Labour relations remain fundamental here. Peasant women, who are confronted mainly with men at work, are more critical of gender than servants who are more likely to be confronted with female bosses. And among the latter, the discourse is more focused on the servants than on their non-domestic work.
10In addition, it is important to emphasize the differentiated place of gender and class in the discourse, even though these two social relations are articulated. The servants do not question the social relations of sex either to understand their investment in domestic service, or to look at the absence of male bosses, who are preferred to female bosses. As N.-C. Mathieu on the Gusii women, "it is women who know that stones can be thrown, not men" (1991: 179). Gender is more used by peasant women to explain their work or family life with these men whom everyone pities but who exploit them. The maids look only at class in the analysis of their exploitation in the domestic service.
However, while their situation at work seems to determine their discourse on gender, it is mainly to analyze the couple that women invoke social gender relations. The couple then appears to be a source of impoverishment, because of cheap fatherhood in particular. However, these poor women need to mobilize these relationships to improve their economic situation. This ambivalence of the relationship with men is intertwined with an ambivalence of the relationship with children. Children are the only wealth of poor women, while motherhood is at the centre of their impoverishment.
Between family and work
In his analysis of reproductive work, N.-C. Mathieu refers to Paola Tabet to identify the effects of women's physical and mental overinvestment in childcare. Compared to domestic work, this care work is either over-visibilized or invisibilized in research. N.-C. Mathieu's critique of the naturalness of the sexual division of labor allowed me to analyze the narrators' discourse on the care of children.
She presents the child as a "limiting intermediary in the mothers' relationship with herself" (ibid.: 165) and their care as a physical and mental handicap, an alienating mental work. Winnicott (1995) already reported on the mental impact of these activities on mothers, emphasizing the influence of socialization in the construction of the mother who is good enough. This socialization takes up the values of care and self-sacrifice analyzed in their alienating effects by Gianini Belotti (2016).
However, this aspect of Haitian women's work only comes up in the discussion after many questions. It is obscured in the descriptions of peasant women, servants or patronesses (except for the wealthiest). It is almost not considered as a cause of outsourcing or reduction of non-domestic work time, whereas it is mentioned in France as the primary cause of these phenomena. This insignificance of care or indifference to care in discourse, however, contrasts with the centrality of motherhood in women's lives.
C. Mathieu criticizes the usual shift between capacity and procreation. However, in Haiti, among working-class women with poor reproductive control, these two phenomena are hardly dissociated. They are subjected to what P. Tabet presents as a maximum exposure to the risk of pregnancy and which Patricia Hill Collins (2015) criticizes in the specific situation of young black women. The belly of these Haitian women is overused as a work tool. However, N.-C. Mathieu reminds us that, as Mies reproaches Marx and Engels, this part of the body is not considered in the analysis of exploitation.
In Manno Charlemagne (1988). Ògnizasyon mondyal, DaliReel productions, USA.
Children are the "products" (ibid.: 116) of this work, according to Tabet. But this somewhat misnomer should not make us forget that these unwanted pregnancies do not necessarily lead women to disinvest in these children. Paradoxically, they may even overinvest in them in response to fathers' abandonment. We should look at the mental effects of these unwanted pregnancies on these women who show themselves to be dignified and courageous. N.-C. Mathieu criticizes these two values and reminds us, by analyzing precisely the relationship of women to unpaid family pensions, that dignity here consolidates the irresponsibility of men. And she distinguishes two meanings of courage: "to refuse and to endure" (ibid.: 194). Faced with the irresponsibility of a man-husband-father, a Haitian woman is told: ou gen fyèl! (You know how to deal with pain). This "Marianism/dolorism" (Lucchini, 2002) is rather praised among Haitian women, which Manno Charlemagne criticizes in the song Poukisa w pa pale manman?6 (Why don't you speak/defend yourself, Mom?), with a lack of understanding about the "non-reaction" of mothers. To give in is not to consent, N.-C. would reply. Mathieu.
Men remain the beneficiaries of women's reproductive work, according to Tabet. R. Bastien and P. Moral describe a period when Haitian peasants were waiting for women and children, and their hands to make the land bear fruit. Today, men are not necessarily looking for this benefit. Interviewees criticize those who demand a child(ren) in return for the economic assistance provided to a woman. But in other cases, men don't necessarily want children. They are aware of the effects of the lack of control over procreation, even if they remain under-responsible for the consequences of sexual intercourse, especially abandoning pregnant women. It is cheap fatherhood that creates a serial polyandry/motherhood among women, since the abandoned woman is forced to look for another man to take care of the child economically, thus exposing herself to new pregnancies. These phenomena can be seen in the family trees drawn by these interviewees.
It is fundamental to look at the effects of this serial polyandry/motherhood on women's investment in work, including long-term confinement in domestic service or dismissal. For poor women, poor access to outsourcing means that motherhood determines work. For example, a young peasant mother complained of her impoverishment caused by being reduced to a single activity: jere pitit (managing children). One motherhood calls for another in a decline in sentimental/love/family capital from the first pregnancy. As the saying goes, Apre pὸte, vach pa chè (from the first layer, the cow is no longer worth much). Serial motherhood complicates the meaning of the term "forced reproduction" (Tabet, 1998), and seems to determine women's productive work.
"Everything is therefore a work" (Joseph, 2015: 92), I concluded by listing the different activities of peasant women, including sexual relations. It's a job because the risk of pregnancy forbids pleasure, explains a servant of peasant origin who says:
The urge to have sex doesn't count. It's the misery you put in your body.
On the other hand, coitus - considered by N.-C. Mathieu as the sole involvement of men in reproduction - is presented in women's discourse as a weapon. On the one hand, there is the sexual violence that inspires the expression of the Haitian feminist activist, Magalie Marcelin: Zozo pa zam (Zizi is not a weapon). On the other hand, women criticize an ordinary form of sexual intercourse made up of suffering, which some men use to assert their dominance. In a sociodrama, the interviewees enact an argument between a man who undervalues domestic work and his wife who questions the idea of greater arduousness of work in the field. The indignant man retorts that he will make her pay for her boldness through sex. N.-C. Mathieu is right to include in his analysis this quotation from LeVine (1959: 969): "The conception of coitus as an act by which a man triumphs over a woman's resistance and makes her suffer is not limited to the wedding night; it remains important in conjugal relations" (in Matthew, ibid.: 178).
If work is the issue of social relations (kergoat, 1992), my field confirms that, in this context of maximization of the risks of serial polyandry/motherhood, family/sexual life determines work. The analysis of the sexual division of labour must take into account several factors such as class, family specificities linked to genealogical structures and couple regimes. Among the contradictions that women have to face, we must remember their obligation to invest the family (men and children) both as a hindrance and a lifeline. The family is also a place of work, the couple a space for "economic-sexual exchange"7 (love work), the children an insurance in the face of old age (work for the future). But the term work, which is at the center of various feminist thoughts, can be limited in the face of these complexities.
Invisibilization and instrumentalization of gender: the French field
Depending on their situation at work and in the family, women feel the effects of a particular social relationship to a greater or lesser extent. The case of Haitian migrant women in France is a good illustration of analyses of the confinement of poor and racialized migrant women in the Global South (Joseph, 2012). The collective work Le sexe de la mondialisation (Falquet et al., 2010) delves deeper into this phenomenon, which takes on a particular aspect in the context of neoliberal globalization. In the analysis of the employment relationship, these migrant women insist on the racism suffered at the hands of other women, the French bosses. Several works by black feminists (Rollins, 1990; Carnéiro, 2005) denounce this specific relationship of domestic service made up of confrontations between women, one exploited by the other. These authors recognize the centrality of social relations of race in this type of work, which makes it possible to understand the fixation of Haitian migrant women on these relations. Without making the class invisible, it is mainly through racism - as well as North/South confrontations and coloniality - that they explain their confinement in domestic service. There is then an invisibilization of gender that can be explained by a fixation on direct confrontation at work, a relationship caused (also) by the sexual division of labor in the bosses' families.
However, these migrant women use gender to criticize domestic work in their homes, not domestic service in the homes of female employers. Here again, we can refer to the analysis of N.-C. Mathieu on the quarrels between women that make us forget that the power of so-called dominant women only expresses the absence of power of women. We will come back to this idea to question it. In the meantime, let us add that, as with the servants in Haiti, migrant women only criticize gender and the sexual division of labor in the analysis of their family life. They think their boyfriend is worse than their boss (a middle-class white French man). Hence the instrumentalization of gender as the main cause of a situation that is nevertheless also informed by class relations, race, North/South, etc.
French bosses say little about non-domestic work, about the link between their exploitation in this work and their confinement in domestic work. The three interviewees invisibilize the sexual division in their work or in their family life, which they present as normal. The one with whom I discussed the most explained the constraints to professional investment by insisting on women's choice: the choice to work part-time, to take parental leave, to have several children... With this recurring phrase, "It's my choice", this boss presents herself as an actor, even subject, of a situation that she is largely subjected to. This case is a good illustration of N.-C. Mathieu on this idea of women's power that hides their oppression. At the same time, these women explain their husbands' overinvestment in non-domestic work by the demands of the company: "He has no choice." The first beneficiaries of the labour and migration chain are exonerated. The less impoverished white men of the North are excused by their wives and idealized by female migrant workers. Outsourcing, analysed by Glenn (2009) and Kergoat (2005), in its anesthetizing effects on employers' resistance to domestic work, also has effects on workers' resistance to domestic service. But the invisibilization or instrumentalization of gender serves women bosses more than workers. To return to the analysis of N.-C. Mathieu on the power of exploitative women, if these women do not have power in social relations of sex, they have power in other relations. It is therefore not the sexual division of labour that explains outsourcing or the quarrel between women, but rather an articulation of different divisions of labour (social, ethnic, international, national, etc.).
More than a materialist feminism, it is an intersectional materialist feminism that can help us understand women's work. At this level, the flaw in N.-C. Mathieu's reside in the unthought of domestic service, work traditionally reserved for the most discriminated women (Rollins, 1990; Glenn, 2009). One could use the epistemological criticisms of N.-C. Mathieu to question his lack of analysis of domestic service. But I will simply use them to explain my approach, which articulates two approaches: feminist research and clinical sociology.
Feminist socio-clinical research
C. Mathieu looks at the material side of domination without obscuring its mental side, denounced by Césaire (2004) and Memmi (2002), which she takes up in her critique of consent. This mental aspect has also been criticized by Fanon (1971) and Guillaumin (1981). It analyzes the material and psychic determinants of consciousness, the mental effects of physical violence and constraints/limitations (concrete, material, intellectual), fear or dependence, and finally the fact of constantly putting oneself at the service of others. Women's consciousness, invaded by the omnipresent power of men over them, is constrained, mediated, limited, anesthetized, in the author's words. There is depersonalization and women cannot be considered as subjects with the same consciousness as men. In addition to being absent from themselves, they have access to only partial, fragmentary, and blurred knowledge of the social relations of sex. How can they participate in knowledge, as researchers or ethnologists?
Clinical sociology, in addition to considering social and psychic determinations together, proposes a research relationship in which both members of this intersubjectivity are considered as persons capable of understanding social problems and thinking about social change. It is the co-construction of knowledge that presupposes that researchers break with the posture of experts in order to recognize respondents as self-theorizing and self-symbolizing beings, according to Devereux's (1980) formula. Thus, while concurring with N.-C. Mathieu on the mental and intellectual effects of domination, I refused to consider the women surveyed as incapable of understanding, analyzing, or explaining their situation. This does not contradict N.-C.'s thinking. Mathieu, for example, reproaches some researchers for doubting the descriptions of women. At this level, I take up the formula of Hill Collins (2008) who, for the construction of an Afrocentric feminist thought, proposes a visibility of the point of view of black women. These two authors, who value the effects from the researchers' point of view on the knowledge produced, do not underestimate the effects of the respondents' point of view. The term androcentric double bias analysed by N.-C. Mathieu exemplifies this posture. With this concept, she criticizes the way in which researchers who are men only question men in the field. The "male bias" (Rayna Rapp Reiter, in Mathieu, ibid.: 82) thus integrates the sexism of both societies, that of the researchers and that of the respondents. My research enriches this consideration of the effects from the point of view of ethnologized women by giving a voice to five different categories of women, thus allowing a diversification of points of view on the respondents' side.
This non-exhaustive list does not define my "identity" and only concerns my place in the rap (...)
Through this analysis, N.C. Mathieu breaks with the myth of the omnipotence of researchers, and thus moves closer to clinical sociology, which advocates decentring (Giust-Desprairies, 2004). Doing research means listening to others, moving around, even if researchers remain involved in research. This implication needs to be analyzed. N.-C. Mathieu states: "Ethnological interpretations, especially those concerning women, must therefore be related to the position of the ethnologist in the field of sex relations in his own society, that is to say, not only the fact that he is a man or a woman, but to what his position as a man or a woman allows him to know respectively, and of the oppression exercised and the oppression suffered" (ibid: 126). Thus, the involvement of research does not only concern the mental, psychic and emotional projections of researchers on their subject, but also their social affiliation (Joseph, 2013). Stating this belonging is becoming fashionable in some countries (de Gasquet, 2015). Clinical sociology offers an analysis of involvement, regardless of the research or the researcher. As for the theoreticians of the situated point of view, they emphasize the difference in this involvement depending on whether one is dominant or dominated in social relations. I have associated these two positions by considering the articulation of social relations which means that researchers or interviewees can be both dominant in one social relationship and dominated in another. This allowed me to understand, with each of the categories of women surveyed, the effects of knowledge that being "a black woman, a doctoral student, a Haitian migrant, from a rural and modest family background"8 has. By considering the articulation of social relations and not only gender, by criticizing different forms of centrism in addition to the male bias, I could paraphrase N.-C. Mathieu and add: "It is therefore necessary to relate scientific interpretations to the position of the ethnologist in the field of the social relations of his own society, that is to say, not only the fact that he or she is dominant or dominated, but to what his or her position as dominant or dominated allows him or her to know, respectively, and of the oppression exercised and the oppression suffered."
28Socioclinical research is co-constructed in an intersubjectivity associated with an interdiscursivity between researchers (scholars) and real knowledgeable people (Broda & Roche, 1993). This reduces centrisms. And if the dominated consciousness is altered, the point of view of the dominated populations (scholarly or knowledgeable) must not be neglected. This would be tantamount to reserving science for the dominants, which is what N.-C. Mathieu, ou Guillaumin (1981) who recalls the theoretical effects of the anger of the oppressed. N.-C. Mathieu also reminds us of the limitation of the point of view of the dominants, particularly on the oppression suffered. Hill Collins (2008), on the other hand, defends a research on the dominated by the dominated.
9 Quoted in de Gaulejac V. & Roy S. (eds.), 1993: 322.
10 The term clinical means as close as possible to the experience.
29Moreover, instead of asking whether subordinates can speak (to paraphrase Spivak, 2003), it is better to ask how science can listen to them (Joseph, 2015). This raises theoretical, epistemological, as well as methodological concerns. Hence the methodological adaptations and innovations in my research to collect/welcome the point of view of the most discriminated against. Some socio-clinical tools have made me go beyond the logocentrism of the usual interviews to open the door to the symbolic, the fantastical, the emotional. In addition to considering the psychic and social, N.-C. Mathieu does not hesitate to integrate women's dreams into his materialist analysis, a call for openness as long as the risks of overinterpretation are avoided (Gianini Belotti, 2016). Here again, clinical sociology uses a key proposed by Henri Lefebvre9: avoiding "the experience without concept" (theoretical weakness that exposes it to overinterpretation) and "the concept without life" (theorizations disconnected from the reality of people). My intersectional materialist feminism is thus built on a clinic10 of social relations.
Conclusion: "He who seeks finds!"
This research with Haitian women presents the diversity of women's points of view on the sexual division of labour based on their place in social relations and their experience of couple or work relationships. It shows that gender can be invisibilized or instrumentalized, which determines the definition of strategies and alliances. Outsourcing, absent from N.-C. Mathieu, however, represents a brake on individual or collective struggles. The author analyzes how researchers who did not search for gender did not find it, and those who did find it. And my research shows that an in-depth analysis of gender leads to something else: an articulation of the different social relations. One might wonder why some people don't look for gender or why others only find gender. N.-C. Mathieu gives us a clue by leading us to the analysis of the effects of the researchers' social affiliation on what they are looking for and what they are finding. His contributions have fed into the particular stance defended in my research: to think about "subjects" (Joseph, 2010, 2015). On the one hand, this approach proposes to respond to the invisibilization of women (subject and non-object), without the naturalism/biologism to which the singular (the woman, the subject) would refer, and by privileging the plural (subjects) which recalls the heterogeneity of the class of women. On the other hand, we must think of women as both subjugated to social relations and struggling (trying to do something with what these social relations make of them). It is therefore necessary to avoid both the illusion of the social whole denying the capacities of individuals and that of the omnipotence of the subject leading to the denial of social constraints. This thought of Vincent de Gaulejac (1999) meets that of N.-C. Mathieu, who criticizes the double presentation of women either as non-human/non-animate animates or as over-subjects holding power and a so-called consent to domination. It is also to avoid these two pitfalls that I think the subjects are, by developing an intersectional materialist feminism based on a socio-clinical approach.
