Escrevivências sobre trabalho infantil doméstico : a experiência de mulheres negras de comunidades tradicionais de Sergipe

Abstract

The present study seeks to build a new collective memory about the domestic child labour done by black girls in Brazil, from the combination of silenced memories with official memories (Pollak, 1989) about the national and international engagement to fight this kind of labour. Trying to subvert the research methods and the dominant object of International Relations, an ethnographically based research that values active listening, followed by the escrevivência about underground memories is a way to show how it’s possible to deeply understand how big states’ initiatives reach its society, based on local experiences. It’s argued here that child domestic work can adultescer childhood and take away from black girls the experience of playing and of being children. In Brazil, these historically violated and sexualized girls become women who are also made vulnerable and are frequent victims of gendered racism (Kilomba, 2019), which makes black people’s lives, of the feminine gender, a cycle full of violence. Considering that this research is being done based on an outsider’s perspective of the child domestic work - but from an insider’s perspective of black womanhood -, the aim is to appreciate and to hear the voice of black women who have gone through this situation and who live in traditional communities from Sergipe. This is being done to make it possible to confront different perceptions and to observe how their distinct temporalities were affected by the Brazil’s ongoing national and international commitment to eradicate child labour, and, in what ways the way this kind of labour is discussed converges with the perceptions of people who’ve gone through it.