« Mi Have to Work »
The tens of thousands of workers who entered the domestic service sector in twentieth century Jamaica included young persons, most of whom were female and some of whom were « children ». While some were recruited as paid servants, others were placed (sometimes through informal « adoptions ») into households where they performed domestic labour in exchange for the necessities of life and, they hoped, access to an education. As pervasive as these circumstances were, not a great deal is known about the working lives of these « child » servants. This paper seeks to contribute to discussions about child domestic workers, gendered domestic labour, informal adoptions, constructions of childhood as well as potentially exploitative, and possibly servile, « child » labour. It argues that a long-extant culture of work, widely varying conditions of labour, gendered, racialized and classed definitions of childhood and the intersections of international and local laws, created a complex sub-sector of workers whose experiences destabilized the categorisations of domestic service, servitude, family and childhood.