Home Away from Home: Immigrant Narratives, Domesticity, and Coloniality in Contemporary Spanish Culture by N. Michelle Murray (review)

Headlines, debates and tensions surrounding worldwide immigration abound in most major European presses and political spheres. Spain is no different as evidenced in growing concern over the xenophobic political posturing of conservative party VOX and, at the same time, the plethora of images of overcrowded pateras filled with people seeking refuge on the shores of southern Europe. N. Michelle Murray takes all of this into account in her study of immigrant female domestic workers in Spain, Home Away from Home. She uses statistical information on immigration trends and recent labor laws as a backdrop to her detailed analyses of contemporary literature and film, assuring her reader that art provides unique insight through individual voices.

The introduction details the differences between domestic work and other forms of immigrant labor. Domestic workers are unique in that they are not considered "stealing" jobs from nationals, but rather they permeate the very heart of state and social identity formation. Murray defines "domestic labor not as mere work but as a special relationship guided by an ethic of care and a singular affective relationship between employers and employee that distinguishes it from other forms of labor" (14). She looks specifically at how literature can inform politics of inequality through "emotional positionalities entrenched in discourses of power" (17). The idea of difference as well as postcolonial hegemonies serve to further marginalize the domestic worker within the complex matrix of the immigrant work force in Spain. Murray comments on a variety of popular theories on aspects of postcolonial (Fanon) and postcolonial feminist studies (Mohanty Talpade) in order to articulate the layered and nuanced positionality and experience of immigrant women domestic workers in Spain. She moves effortlessly through these theories and others, including Freud and the uncanny, constructing a convincing framework in which she analyzes the texts at hand. Murray also includes sections of certain laws and official state bulletins as examples of the seemingly progressive nature of democratic Spanish legalese, but it is through her careful, illuminating analyses of the literary and filmic texts that she reveals how individual experience undermines the appearance of equality. It is through critical analyses that we can (try to) make sense of the inherent contradictions of social, racial, class, and gender hierarchies.

In Chapter 1, Murray explores the precarious situation of Filipina domestic workers in Juan Madrid's short story "Metro Tirso de Molina" (1987) and José Ángel Mañas's Historias del Kronen (1994). The female subject from a previously colonialized territory is represented in the body of the domestic worker that is defined and defiled by the white patriarchy. The home is constructed as a temporary haven that promises economic stability but is ultimately a source of oppression and rejection for the immigrant worker.

Chapter 2 reveals how both oppression and opportunity define the experience of the domestic sphere in Ángeles Caso's Contra el viento (2009) and José Ovejero's Nunca pasa nada (2007). The home in these cases becomes both a retreat from society and a site of solidarity among women (91). A highlight of this chapter, and the entire study, is Murray's lucid, well-informed discussion of transnational feminism in relation to third wave feminism's shortfalls and postcolonial sites of engagement between migrant and national women.

Murray turns to film in Chapter 3 with her analysis of Amador directed by Fernando León de Aranoa (2010) and Sebastián Cordero's Rabia (2009). She reconsiders the Kristevian notion of the abject in Amador, where the maternal body becomes a site of progress and assimilation instead of the rejected abject horrific mother/other. Murray deftly analyzes the home as a site of death and decay of a patriarchal, xenophobic tradition that at the same time harbors hope through the character of the pregnant immigrant caregiver. The antithesis of the abject maternal body, the pregnant young women in these films bring the...