There are some 3 million households which regularly employ cleaning personnel or domestic help in Germany. However, less than 40,000 employees are covered by social insurance. These numbers indicate that the significant level of so-called informal, highly feminized labor market has evolved in Germany. It makes use mainly of female migrants from Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia (notably the Philippines) and from some African countries. In this text, Helma Lutz tackles this topic from three perspectives (a) discusses domestic work as a potential space for illegal or rather illegalized workers; (b) uses examples of life stories of women living in Germany to demonstrate differences in coping with illegality; (c) touches upon the processes that lead to the transnationalization of the private household and create a so called global care chain.

Lutz, H. (2004). Life in the twilight zone: Migration, transnationality and gender in the private household. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 12(1), 47-55.