To Serve in a (Post)Colonial City
Based on case study, in a postcolonial perspective – the emergency of domesticity between mountaineers from the Morocco High Atlas who are attached to the city in Morocco –, this paper investigates the question of modern domestic slavery considering its recomposition during the colonisation as well as the postcolonial relations that frame work and mobility. It shows how deep the influence of the socio-history of bondages in repressive contexts characterized by inequalities between territories and women can be. Based on written sources, observations and interviews, this paper offers an analysis of bondages « from the bottom » and from (former) employees and their relatives’ point of view. These persons use the scarce opportunities locally known to have means into a modern, migratory and salaried record – « as the city-dwellers », as they said. This record imposes them domesticity, which they discover during the colonisation but that they always redefine considering violence and new escapements.