This article examines the legal construction of domestic labor as an unskilled and undervalued occupation in postrevolutionary Mexico, a milieu that was otherwise renowned for an extraordinary expansion of workers’ rights. Based on the writing of legal scholars and legal disputes between domestic workers and their employers that reached Mexico's Supreme Court, the article discusses how a discourse that framed domestic labor as an occupation confined within the protective bounds of the household became an enduring legal formula to justify and reinforce the exclusion of domestics from labor protections recognized for other workers. In so doing, it shows how Supreme Court jurisprudence ultimately redefined the criteria for delimiting this large occupational category based on what was understood as its particular spatialization (the indoor household space) and its distinctive temporalization (guided by family needs instead of production demands). Designating workers who fit these criteria as “simple domestics,” the Court erased any professional specialization among them, marginalizing this overwhelmingly female workforce from other service workers, such as doormen and private drivers, who had previously been considered “domestic.”

中文翻译：

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建立“简单的家庭：”家庭工人，最高法院和革命后墨西哥的法律

本文探讨了革命后的墨西哥家庭劳动作为一种非熟练且被低估的职业的法律建构，墨西哥是一个以极大地扩大工人权利而闻名的环境。根据法律学者的著作以及到达墨西哥最高法院的家庭佣工与雇主之间的法律纠纷，本文讨论了将家庭佣工定为家庭保护范围内的职业的话语如何成为持久的法律公式来证明并加强将家庭工人排除在其他工人认可的劳动保护范围之外。这样，它显示了最高法院的判例如何最终根据定义为这种大职业类别的标准重新定义了标准，该标准被理解为其特定的空间化（室内家庭空间）和其独特的时间化（以家庭需求而非生产需求为指导）。法院将符合这些条件的工人指定为“简单家庭佣工”，从而抹掉了其中的任何专业专业知识，使这绝大部分女性劳动力与以前被认为是“家庭”的其他门卫和私人司机相比，处于边缘地位。