Hired Daughters (eBook)

1. This research breaks new ground in its focus on a population almost entirely overlooked in studies to date: female domestic servants in Morocco. It follows these women in their duties around the household, but also on their days off and when returning home to visit their family so that readers can have a broader understanding of their lives beyond the context of their service.

2. Author Mary Montgomery has prior experience working with the British Embassy in Amman and the British Red Cross as part of their International Family Tracing project.

3. The book has a strong potential for course adoption as the clear and compelling writing throughout the work and the focus on young women, many in their teens, makes the book accessible to undergraduate readers.

In doing so, it provides an intimate consideration of contemporary Moroccan households as economic enterprises and sites of navigation between the traditional and the global.

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Hired Daughters examines a fading tradition of domestic service in which rural girls familiar to ordinary Moroccan families were placed in their homes until marriage. In this tradition of "e;bringing up,"e; the girls are considered "e;daughters of the house,"e; and part of their role in the family is to help with the housework. Gradually, this tradition is transforming into one in which workers unfamiliar to their host families are paid a wage and may not stay long, but where the Islamic ethics of charity, religious reward, and gratitude still inform expectations on both sides. Mary Montgomery examines why Moroccans so often talk about their domestic workers as daughters, what this means for workers and employers, and how this is changing in contemporary Morocco. Prioritizing the experiences and perspectives of these women, Montgomery charts the tension that has developed between socially embedded, loyal domestic workers who operate within narratives of kinship and obligation and women who seek greater individualization, privacy, and self-empowerment. Hired Daughters offers a nuanced understanding of a world that bridges public and private, morality and money, family and outsiders. In doing so, it provides an intimate consideration of contemporary Moroccan households as economic enterprises and sites of navigation between the traditional and the global.