Maria Georgouli Loupi
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Maria's PhD research project
Who (re)produces the middle classes? Domestic workers in 20th century Greece
My thesis employs a Social Reproduction Feminist (SRF) framework to examine the use of paid domestic labour, provided by migrant women, to (re)produce the middle classes in Greece, a country of the (semi)periphery, during the transformative decades of the 1960s and later the 1990s. Employing a historical materialist methodology and methods like oral history interviews, archival research and cultural analysis, this project delves into the interplay of socioeconomic factors, cultural production, and class structures that underpin the demand for and supply of paid domestic labour.
In the 1960s, Greek women predominantly migrating from rural areas into urban centres like Athens and Thessaloniki, became domestic servants for the rising middle classes, under informal or formal arrangements. Some were semi-adopted (so called ψυχοκόρες/psychokores) in order to provide services, often at a very young age; others were deemed professional servants, yet not recognised as workers by relevant trade unions or state policy. Similarly, the influx of migrants after the collapse of the Soviet Union, mostly from Albania, Ukraine and Bulgaria, provided a supply of domestic labourers who worked for low pay - as they were often irregular migrants.