Overview

In The Politics of Care Work, Emma Amador tells the story of Puerto Rican women’s involvement in political activism for social and economic justice in Puerto Rico and the United States throughout the twentieth century. Amador focuses on the experiences and contributions of Puerto Rican social workers, care workers, and caregivers who fought for the compensation of reproductive labor in society and the establishment of social welfare programs. These activists believed conflicts over social reproduction and care work were themselves high-stakes class struggles for women, migrants, and people of color. In Puerto Rico, they organized for women’s rights, socialism, labor standards, and Puerto Rican independence. They continued this work in the United States by advocating for migrant rights, participating in the civil rights movement, and joining Puerto Rican-led social movements. Amador shows how their relentless efforts gradually shifted the field of social work toward social justice and community-centered activism. The profound and enduring impact of their efforts on Puerto Rican communities underscores the crucial role of Puerto Rican women’s caregiving labor and activism in building and sustaining migrant communities.

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9781478028598

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Reviews

“In this deeply researched, thoughtful, and wide-ranging book, Emma Amador demands that historians of Puerto Rico profoundly shift their understandings of politics, the colonial state, and its agents. By focusing on women’s organizing around social welfare, Amador challenges earlier masculinist approaches to twentieth-century Puerto Rican politics to create a refreshingly different narrative of political demands across and beyond the archipelago. The Politics of Care Work will open a new chapter in the history of social welfare and its attendant movements for citizenship rights in modern Latin America.” -- Eileen J. Findlay, author of * We Are Left without a Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico * “The Politics of Care Work connects the reproductive labor of Puerto Rican women social work professionals on the archipelago and the mainland to the women needle and domestic workers who navigated the colonial welfare state and its means-tested programs for maternal and child welfare and income support. Expanding the definitions of care and tracing the emergence of social worker community activism, Emma Amador offers a fresh history of the racialized gendered state and those who fought back.” -- Eileen Boris, coauthor of * Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State *

“In this deeply researched, thoughtful, and wide-ranging book, Emma Amador demands that historians of Puerto Rico profoundly shift their understandings of politics, the colonial state, and state agents. By focusing on women’s organizing around social welfare, Amador challenges earlier masculinist approaches to twentieth-century Puerto Rican politics to create a refreshingly different narrative of political demands across and beyond the archipelago. The Politics of Care Work will open a new chapter in the history of social welfare and its attendant movements for citizenship rights in modern Latin America.” -- Eileen J. Findlay, author of * We Are Left Without a Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico * “The Politics of Care Work connects the reproductive labor of Puerto Rican women social work professionals on the archipelago and the mainland to the women needle and domestic workers who navigated the colonial welfare state and its means-tested programs for maternal and child welfare and income support. Expanding the definitions of care and tracing the emergence of social worker community activism, Emma Amador offers a fresh history of the racialized gendered state and those who fought back.” -- Eileen Boris, coauthor of * Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State *

Author Information

Emma Amador is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.

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