Never again a Mexico without us. The voice of domestic workers in their struggle for the ratification of ILO’s convention 189

Abstract

This article explores the discursive dimension of human rights in the struggle of organized domestic workers in Mexico. In particular, the cases of the Center for Support and Training for Home Employees (CACEH, by its spanish acronym) and the National Union of Men and Women Home Workers (Sinactraho, by its spanish acronym) will be addressed.

To understand the importance of making a new use of words in the field of politics, I appeal to exposing the relationship between word and institution, and then advance over the emergence of home workers as a new political and collective subject defined from a strategic essentialism.

From here, I propose a path over international and national legal frameworks to understand how the vocabulary of home workers has been placed in the language of human rights. Subsequently, I make an analysis of various testimonies and documents of organized home workers, based on their struggle for the ratification of Convention 189 Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers of the International Labor Organization.