Recognition and Social Justice: What Critical Theory Can Learn From Paid Domestic Laborers in the United States.

Working in private homes, often isolated from the community and denied the legal rights and protections that most other workers enjoy, paid domestic laborers make up some of the most socially marginalized, vulnerable, and exploited workers in the United States today. This article explores the theoretical possibilities for an account of justice, based on the concept of recognition, to critique their work experiences, legal exclusion, and social status. To do so, it draws on the contrasting accounts of recognition advanced by Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser, which focus on the psychological and the socio-structural dimensions of recognition respectively. While both theories generate compelling critiques of the conditions of domestic laborers, it is shown that neither one alone can capture the full range of injustices experienced, and that each can in fact complement the other. The article thus sketches an account of justice based on both the psychological and socio-structural dimensions of recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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