CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Paid domestic work is one of the oldest forms of work. Although it has long been characterized by servility ?even slavery?, domestic work became progressively an employment relation. Because of its specific characteristics, its history throughout the twentiethcentury appears as a slow march toward the formalization of employment and recognition of labour and social rights. Over the past decades, the improvement of working conditions of domestic workers seems to depend on three possible scenarios. The first involves the recognition of beneficiaries? responsibility as employers. When domestic workers are considered employees, they acquirelabour and social rights associated with this status. This is the scenario promoted by ILO. The second one, which is observed in certain European countries (Belgium and France in particular), is the "modernization" of the employment relationship using an intermediate structure. This means the creation of employment agencies for domestic service. In this case, domestic workers are employees of the agency, and beneficiaries are its clients. In the third scenario, the employment relationship disappears because it becomes a commercial one. Domestic workers lose its employee status to became self-employed workers or "auto-entrepreneurs". It is this last scenario which we will studyin this paper by analising two national cases: the case of Argentina and France. The interest of this comparison is based on the fact that the same trendis observed towards the developmentof self-employment, especially in the case of low-skilled workers. Despite the differences in labour regulation and the structure of labour market, domestic workers are drivento engage its activity as self-employed workers in both countries. The finding of a similar trend to self-employment in these two national cases necessarilypose questions. What is explained by the use of this strategy in both cases? What objectives pursued policies promoting self-employment in France and Argentina? How to understand this strategy? What are the mechanisms put in place to encourage domestic workers to became self-employed workers? What are the consequences of this policies? In this paper, we will try to answer these questions by analyzing labour regulations, as well as the implementation and results of different policies promoting self-employment in both countries.