Affective and Immaterial Labour in Latin(x) American Culture
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bristol
Department Name: School of Modern Languages
Abstract
This transnational study explores histories and representations of wet-nurses, migrant domestic workers and sex workers in Latin(x) American photography, film, literature and digital culture from the late nineteenth century to the present day. It explores the similarities and differences between these kinds of work by analysing them as forms of immaterial labour, which is work that creates immaterial products, including social relationships, emotional responses and bodily feelings -- also termed 'affects'. This project is the first to ask: what does an analysis of Latin(x) and Latin American cultural productions featuring these workers contribute to our understanding of the links between these forms of labour, and to a public appreciation of these kinds of work, which are often marginalised or denigrated. To answer this question, it responds to the following four interdisciplinary research questions:
1) Which creative techniques do artists use to explore the challenges faced by Latin American and Latinx migrant workers employed in these forms of affective and immaterial labour?
2) How does an analysis of these creative works enable us to compare and contrast between different forms of affective and immaterial labour, such as wet-nursing, sex work and domestic work?
3) How can artistic depictions of affective and immaterial labour raise awareness of exploitative employment practices and contribute to a public understanding of the economic, social and cultural value of care work?
4) How can artists, academics and activists collaborate effectively and ethically with individuals involved in forms of affective and immaterial labour?
It is the first study to trace the historical, geographical and thematic continuities (and differences) between artistic representations of archetypal forms of immaterial labour in Latin(x) American culture including wet-nursing, domestic work, migrant labour and sex work. The research comprises four strands, which analyse: (1) photographs and paintings of Afro-descendant and indigenous wet-nurses produced in Latin America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; (2) documentaries and a literary testimony that record the experiences of Latin American women working as live-in nannies and domestic workers in modern-day Europe; (3) several films, documentaries and a novel that portray the experiences of female sex workers from across Latin America from the 1940s until the present day; and (4) a film, documentary and digital artworks that explore the invisibility and immateriality experienced by Mexican and Central American migrant workers in the US.
These research questions will be answered by the following six outputs:
1. An open-access book that addresses the four research strands identified above and draws on my own analysis of the chosen primary texts, as well as on interviews with the artists who produced them.
2. A peer-reviewed journal article - authored by the PDRA - that analyses a series of photographs of Afro-descendant and indigenous wet-nurses taken between 1879 and 1913, which were found at an archive in Lima.
3. A video essay - made in collaboration with an experienced video artist - that explores and illustrates the connections between visual representations of Latin American wet-nurses, nannies and domestic workers from the late nineteenth century until the present day. This output will be submitted to a peer-reviewed open-access video essay journal.
4. A policy advisory document that serves as a blueprint for effective, ethical forms of collaboration between academics, artists and activists and paid domestic and sex workers. This will represent the key output of an online workshop that unites these stakeholders.
5. A series of public film screenings and expert Q&As on the theme of 'Labour in Latin American Film' held at Watershed cinema, Bristol (subject to Covid-19 regulations).
6. An online platform featuring blogs, photographs and the video essay.
1) Which creative techniques do artists use to explore the challenges faced by Latin American and Latinx migrant workers employed in these forms of affective and immaterial labour?
2) How does an analysis of these creative works enable us to compare and contrast between different forms of affective and immaterial labour, such as wet-nursing, sex work and domestic work?
3) How can artistic depictions of affective and immaterial labour raise awareness of exploitative employment practices and contribute to a public understanding of the economic, social and cultural value of care work?
4) How can artists, academics and activists collaborate effectively and ethically with individuals involved in forms of affective and immaterial labour?
It is the first study to trace the historical, geographical and thematic continuities (and differences) between artistic representations of archetypal forms of immaterial labour in Latin(x) American culture including wet-nursing, domestic work, migrant labour and sex work. The research comprises four strands, which analyse: (1) photographs and paintings of Afro-descendant and indigenous wet-nurses produced in Latin America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; (2) documentaries and a literary testimony that record the experiences of Latin American women working as live-in nannies and domestic workers in modern-day Europe; (3) several films, documentaries and a novel that portray the experiences of female sex workers from across Latin America from the 1940s until the present day; and (4) a film, documentary and digital artworks that explore the invisibility and immateriality experienced by Mexican and Central American migrant workers in the US.
These research questions will be answered by the following six outputs:
1. An open-access book that addresses the four research strands identified above and draws on my own analysis of the chosen primary texts, as well as on interviews with the artists who produced them.
2. A peer-reviewed journal article - authored by the PDRA - that analyses a series of photographs of Afro-descendant and indigenous wet-nurses taken between 1879 and 1913, which were found at an archive in Lima.
3. A video essay - made in collaboration with an experienced video artist - that explores and illustrates the connections between visual representations of Latin American wet-nurses, nannies and domestic workers from the late nineteenth century until the present day. This output will be submitted to a peer-reviewed open-access video essay journal.
4. A policy advisory document that serves as a blueprint for effective, ethical forms of collaboration between academics, artists and activists and paid domestic and sex workers. This will represent the key output of an online workshop that unites these stakeholders.
5. A series of public film screenings and expert Q&As on the theme of 'Labour in Latin American Film' held at Watershed cinema, Bristol (subject to Covid-19 regulations).
6. An online platform featuring blogs, photographs and the video essay.
| Title | Caring with/about the wet nurse: the zine |
| Description | This collaborative zine is the output of a workshop that we ran for PGRs and ECRs in Bristol in May 2023. The workshop was designed to enable participants both to explore creative visual methodologies, including zine making, and to examine and intervene in reproductions of a series of nineteenth century photographs of Afro- and indigenous-descendant wet nurses and babies now stored at the Courret Archive (Lima, Peru). The zine is bilingual, with all text available in both Spanish and English. The digital version of the zine is available online (via the link below) and the zine has also been printed using risography (with different accent colours). The physical version is being distributed in strategic locations in Lima and among those who organised and participate in the workshop. Each workshop participant created one page of the zine using the materials we made available (reproductions of photographs, printed quotations, coloured and reflective paper etc.). The pages are united by themes including: care, agency, (in)visibility, solidarity, community, gender, race and class. Many of the pages self-reflexively foreground the limits of the participants' understanding. Some pages also acknowledge the limitations of indexical materials and archival practices in providing historical insight, especially into the experiences of women involved in wet nursing in Lima in the nineteenth century. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | On the feedback forms, several participants stated that they found the introduction to an alternative visual methodology (zine making, collage) very useful and that they are now thinking about how they can use these practices in their own research and teaching or for engaging with different kinds of participants. Many of the participants also mentioned how the focus on a specific set of photographs, and the pre-workshop readings and presentations at the workshop, and introduced them to a historical context and practice (wet nursing) with which they had previously been unfamiliar. Designing this workshop enabled us to develop an application to run a similar event at the University of Cambridge for which we were subsequently awarded funding from the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). |
| URL | https://online.visual-paradigm.com/share/book/zine-digital-version-aug-2023-1i6313wkgs |
| Title | Invisible (Valentina Montoya Robledo, Daniel Gómez Restrepo, Andrés González Robledo, 2024) |
| Description | This documentary short was created in collaboration with the Invisible Commutes team (Valentina Montoya Robledo, Daniel Gómez Retrepo and Andrés González Robledo). It explores the multiple challenges that domestic workers in Colombia face when commuting long distances from the areas where they live to their employers' homes by public transport. The documentary is now being submitted to Film Festivals, but it will eventually be made freely available to view online on the Invisible Commutes website (link below). In 2023, Valentina and I applied to Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) at the University of Bristol for additional funding to finish filming, editing and producing the documentary short, which has been in development since 2019. We were awarded this funding and some additional money to design and run a workshop for members of the Afro-Colombian Domestic Workers Union in Medellín, Colombia. I co-designed the workshop, which enabled the participants to reflect on (the lack of) representations of domestic workers' commutes in Latin American film and to shape the way that they themselves would like to see their journeys represented on screen. Footage filmed at the workshop, and the ideas the participants shared, played an important role in developing the final version of the documentary. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | The film has now been screened in Bogotá (including for some of the domestic workers who appear in it), as well as at the University of Oxford and at the University of Bristol. We are also in the process of arranging a screening at Queen Mary University of London in May 2024. Feedback from attendees of the Bristol screening stated that the documentary provides a 'fascinating perspective' on a crucial mobilities-related social justice issue that is, nonetheless, not yet widely discussed, and that it shows how domestic workers can 'be agents in creating change' vis-a-vis public transport systems in their areas. |
| URL | https://www.invisiblecommutes.com/ |
| Title | Labour and Leisure Video Esay |
| Description | Labour and Leisure is a preparatory video essay that I created with the support and training provided by Prof Catherine Grant, the Video Essayist-Scholar who is working on this AHRC Fellowship. Making this video essay allowed me to learn how to use the film editing software Final Cut Pro (purchased through the project budget) and has equipped me with the skills to incorporate the creation of video essays into my research methodology as a film studies scholar. The thematic focus of the video essay is aligned with that of the Fellowship as a whole because it explores the representation of domestic work in the Brazilian film The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, 2015). |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | The skills and techniques I have acquired by making this video essay will enable me to create the two main video essays that will form key outputs of this Fellowship later this year. |
| URL | https://vimeo.com/794514205 |
| Description | This research project has shown that innovative, critical and problematic links are constantly being made between different forms of gendered affective and immaterial labour in cultural texts that are being produced within Latin America and about the experiences of Latin American migrant workers. Specific examples of these kinds of labour include wet nursing, childcare, domestic work, cleaning and sex work. The links that are being made between these forms of work will be explored in the monograph I am currently writing and in a series of articles that will be published in a special issue of Hispanic Research Journal in 2025. This project has provided the opportunity to experiment with creative and collaborative visual methodologies including collage, zine-making, videographic criticism (or the creation of video essays) and participatory filmmaking. Engaging in these kinds of methodologies encourages researchers to analyse cultural texts in different ways. These methods are also particularly fruitful for exploring the thematic links mentioned above; critiquing the limitations of these cultural representations (and our own interpretations of them); and engaging different kinds of audiences. This has been demonstrated, for example, by the zine workshops that we ran as part of the project for PGRs and ECRs across the south-west of England and for researchers in the east and south-east of England as well. These workshops enabled participants to experiment with zine-making and the creation of a collaborative, alternative and critical archive using reproductions of photographs of wet nurses and babies taken in nineteenth-century Lima (Peru). Participatory, creative methods can also engage and enfranchise individuals involved directly in the forms of work that this project has been exploring, so long as these methods are consistently combined with critical and ethical reflection on the part of the research team. We have run a workshop for members of the Afro-Colombian Union of Domestic Workers in Medellín, Colombia, which has shaped the creation of a documentary short, called Invisible (2024), that addresses the many challenges these employees face when travelling long distances on public transport to their employers' homes. Both the documentary short Invisible, and the public screenings of other Latin American films about forms of domestic and cleaning work that have taken place at Genesis Cinema (London), have also shown the tremendous potential that film in particular has for engaging diverse audiences in discussions of the topics that this project addresses. These discussions, in turn, have the potential to inform audiences and to shape their understanding of issues and contexts with which they were previously unfamiliar, as demonstrated by the feedback received from spectators at these screenings. |
| Exploitation Route | The proposals of domestic workers themselves for improving public transport systems in Colombia can be used to inform urban planning in Medellín and Colombia; they can be very useful to policymakers and urban planners in the region. The creative, collaborative and participatory visual methods that the project has been exploring can be used by researchers in a variety of disciplines and for multiple different purposes, including arts-based research projects, public engagement and teaching. |
| Sectors | Culture Heritage Museums and Collections Transport |
| URL | https://affectivelabour.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/ |
| Description | My research into the representation of domestic and cleaning workers in Latin American film has helped to shape the views of different audiences. In March 2024, the public film screenings and discussions that I organised for International Women's Day at Genesis Cinema received extremely positive feedback from attendees. The films shown were from Brazil and Colombia; they explore paid domestic and cleaning work and the ways in which these forms of employment impact on the protagonists' involvement in other types of (unpaid) reproductive labour, such as childcare. The feedback forms that spectators completed made it clear that these screenings, and the discussions and Q&As following them, provided an insight into national contexts with which various members of the audience were unfamiliar. Audience members also stated that these kinds of events help to shape people's perceptions of important and difficult issues related to gendered expectations and to care work. The collaborative research that I have undertaken as part of this project has also had a tangible impact on a group of domestic workers in Medellín, Colombia, all of whom are members of the Afro-Colombian Union of Domestic Workers (UTRASD). I co-designed a workshop for the group, which took place in July 2023, and which enabled them to reflect on (the lack of) portrayals of domestic employees' commutes to work on Latin American screens. The views that the participants shared at the workshop fed into the creation of a short documentary about the challenges that domestic workers face when travelling long distances to their employers' homes on public transport. Formal feedback on the workshop and informal feedback on the documentary itself have both demonstrated the positive impact these activities had on that group. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2023 |
| Sector | Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
| Description | CRASSH Event Funding |
| Amount | £885 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Cambridge |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 04/2023 |
| End | 12/2024 |
| Description | Migration Mobilities Bristol Strategic Research Initiative (SRIF) Seed Corn Funding |
| Amount | £5,489 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Bristol |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2023 |
| End | 07/2023 |
| Description | Creative Interventions in the Archive: Working with Photographs of Wet Nurses in the Courret Archive (Lima, Peru) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This workshop was run at the University of Cambridge and attracted participants from across the east and south-east of England. The first part of the workshop was dedicated to reflecting on creative visual methodologies, such as collage and zine-making, and to discussing the potential of creating alternative archives. The workshop also introduced participants to a series of nineteenth-century photographs of wet nurses and infants taken in Lima, Peru, which are now held by the Courret photographic archive. Many of the photographs feature Afro-descendant wet nurses or nannies, and our discussion of the issues they raise was framed by a talk from Ana Lucía Mosquera Rosado, an Afro-Peruvian activist and academic. The second part of the workshop provided participants with the materials they needed to make one page each of a collaborative zine by intervening creatively in reproductions of the photographs. We are currently in the process of compiling the digital version of this zine, which will be made available freely online. We also plan to print a physical version of this zine, which can be distributed both in the UK and in Peru. This workshop was supported by additional funding from the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Creative Visual Methodologies: Affective Interventions in Archival Materials |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | This workshop for PGRs and ECRs based at institutions in the south-west of England was held on 25 May 2023 at the University of Bristol. The first part of the workshop was dedicated to reflecting on creative visual methodologies, such as zine-making, and the potential of creating alternative archives. It also introduced participants to photographs of wet nurses and babies taken in Lima, Peru, in the late nineteenth century, which we are exploring as part of our project. These photographs are housed at the Courret photographic archive in Peru's National Library. The second part of the workshop provided participants with the materials they needed to make one page each of a collaborative zine by intervening creatively in reproductions of the photographs of wet nurses and babies. After the workshop, we put the pages that participants created together and published a collaborative zine dedicated to the photographs. You can see and print it for free on the zine section of our project website. We are also planning to incorporate images of the zine and recordings from the workshop into a video essay that we are developing. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://affectivelabour.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/zine/ |
| Description | Invisible Commutes: Visual Representations of Domestic Workers' Challenging Commutes in Latin America |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | This workshop was run for a group of domestic worker participants in Medellín, Colombia all of whom are members of the Afro-Colombian Union of Domestic Workers (UTRASD). The workshop had a dual objective: (1) to find out what the participants themselves think about popular representations of paid domestic work in recent Latin American films, including of depictions of domestic workers' commutes to work; and (2) to enable the participants' own views and experiences to feed into the creation of a short documentary that the workshop facilitators have recently completed, which focuses on the challenging journeys that domestic workers often need to undertake to reach their workplaces in Latin America. Once the short documentary is has been shown at Film Festivals, it will be made publicly available online. The workshop was designed and facilitated by the Invisible Commutes Team - Dr Valentina Montoya Robledo, Daniel Gómez Restrepo and Andrés González Robledo - together with Dr Rachel Randall (Project PI). It was also supported by additional Migration Mobilities Bristol Strategic Research Investment Fund (SRIF) seed corn funding. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Latin American Film Series for International Women's Day at Genesis Cinema (London) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | To mark International Women's Day 2024, the PI organised two screenings of Latin American films by women directors at Genesis Cinema on Mile End Road in London, which took place on 5 and 8 March. These screenings were followed by panel discussions and audience Q&As. Both films explore issues related to paid and unpaid reproductive labour, for example domestic work, cleaning and care work and motherhood. Consequently, the screenings and discussions were related to the topics addressed by the PI's AHRC RDE Fellowship. Both screenings attracted audiences of around 25 people -- a mixture of members of the general public, undergraduate and postgraduate students and other researchers. Feedback on the screenings was overwhelmingly positive with attendees stating that they found them enjoyable and engaging and writing that these kinds of events have the potential to 'transform' people's understanding of 'difficult' and 'important' subjects. (Twenty attendees completed the post-event feedback forms in total.) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Project Website: Affective and Immaterial Labour in Latin(x) American Culture |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The project blog has been used to promote and disseminate events, activities and research developments related to the project. It is freely accessible to the general public. The project team have used the site to publish short blog posts and to circulate a Call for Articles for a Special Journal issue related to the project themes for which we received 14 abstract submissions. The site currently hosts a collaborative zine that we have published related to the wet nurse strand of the project and we will soon publish a second of these zines on the website, as well as the two video essays that we are also developing. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://affectivelabour.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/ |