Becoming ambivalent subjects of labour rights: subaltern mobilisations, the law and the state

This article engages with feminist debates on the possibilities and limitations of a politics of rights through a study of domestic workers' mobilisations in Brazil. Although rights are always ambivalent or limited, they are nonetheless necessary to subaltern groups and represent one of their main repertoires of contention. More specifically, I propose to look empirically at what rights do once they are won, and how a legislative victory affects the movement that was demanding those rights. I show that the law 150/2015 that extends basic labour rights to domestic workers in Brazil has had ambivalent effects: while it maintains a differentiated legal status for domestic workers and was adopted amidst a hostile political context that prevents its good implementation, the law has enabled, nonetheless, the strengthening of a rights-based idea of citizenship and opened new mobilisational opportunities for domestic workers. I argue that rights contribute to the formation of active political subjects, and can be analysed as a powerful resource for subaltern mobilisations.