Relational Work in the Shadow of Caste: The Case of Women Domestic Workers in India

While prior research has explored how marginalized caste workers cope with caste-based indignities, less is known about the interactive processes through which caste is relationally negotiated at work. Addressing this gap, I investigate how women domestic workers engage in relational work to navigate caste-based oppression and the outcomes such efforts produce. Drawing on 37 in-depth interviews in Lucknow, India, my analysis identifies three relational work tactics — establishing trustworthiness , performing deferential appeasement , and eliciting empathy , that enable workers to manage caste-inflected workplace dynamics. These tactics, however, yield ambivalent outcomes of conditional acceptance , revocable concessions , and transient compassion . To conceptualize the simultaneous negotiation and reproduction of caste structures, I advance the concept of relational ambivalence , which demonstrates the agency of marginalized workers operating within entrenched social hierarchies.