Socioeconomic inequalities between the rural and urban during the fascist regime in Portugal led to the mass migration of rural young women to the capital for employment as live-in domestic workers. Although the overturn of the fascist regime in 1974 allowed for major sociocultural and political shifts, the impact of these improvements on domestic workers themselves was complicated by the ambiguous relationships between these workers and their employing families. I suggest this ambiguity stems from the intimacy of the home as an architectural space and its implication in the formation and experience of the family unit. This article explores the simultaneous sense of dependency and exclusion between these live-in workers and their employers, using the materiality and symbolism of the maid’s room as a lens. Bringing together theoretical perspectives on gender, migration, and the built environment, as well as first-hand accounts from individuals who experienced close relations with domestic workers, I argue that the domestic space allows for a particular set of rules of socialisation that normalise the marginalisation of the figure of the domestic worker.
Read MoreHome Possessions: Part and Parcel of the Anthropocene
In Ted Chiang’s Nebula Award winning short story, ‘The Tower of Babylon’ (1990), Chiang adapts the Tower of Babel origin myth in Genesis 11:1–9 to tell the story of miners climbing up the Tower of Babylon (a ‘four month’ journey from base to summit) to dig through the vault of heaven (‘Chambers in Heavens’ – Figure 1). Eventually, the main protagonist, Hillalum, reaches the vault, a liminal zone that is neither sky nor land.[1]
One day, Hillalum hears a deafening roar and discovers they have cracked through the reservoirs above the vault. The tunnels fill with water, and Hillalum begins to drown. As he surrenders to his fate, Hillalum finds himself re-emerged on land. ‘He had climbed the reservoirs of heaven, and arrived back at the earth. […] Somehow, the vault of heaven lay beneath the earth. It was as if they lay against each other, though they were separated by many leagues. How could such distant places touch?’ (pp. 33-34).
Read MoreVernacular politics and neighbourhood nationalism in London’s drill scene
Drill is a sub-genre of rap, originating in Chicago, that has since flourished in the same London council estates that produced grime, with artists often in their teens. This article uses drill lyrics, videos, and musicality to provide a rich, ethnographic window into and a sonic reflection of the experience of the built environment. For a group that lacks representation within formal politics – young, working-class, black men – and has been continually demonized within mainstream media, drill is a form of ‘vernacular politics’ where socially excluded young people can amplify their voices, express their experiences of citizenship, and amplify a counternarrative to the criminalisation of drill. Ultimately, I find that the violent territorialism and hyperlocalism featured in drill music reflects an increasingly claustrophobic experience of the built environment as a result of neoliberal housing policy.
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