Until the last decade or so, African-American and working-class white women cleaned the houses of the well-off in the American South. There has been a striking changeover in recent years. Thanks to the massive influx of Latin American migrants into North Carolina, Latinas have taken over much of the housecleaning business. The same thing has happened in other parts of the United States.

The Housecleaner Project focuses on the experience of Durham’s Latina housecleaners. These women work mostly in the shadows, and there has been surprisingly little research about them. The project brings together faculty, students, and the women themselves to explore the politics of immigration, gender, and labor. It will generate a traveling exhibit featuring the housecleaners’ stories. There is an activist dimension, as well, in the form of panels, op-eds and other outreach aimed at calling attention to the challenges housecleaners face: language barriers, poor wages and lack of benefits, and isolating work conditions, among others.