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AT FIRST sight, the master-servant relationship seems based on economic differences: a mutually beneficial transaction between one party with more money than time (or willingness) to perform household tasks and another in the opposite situation. And indeed many of the world’s 50m-100m domestic workers are migrants propelled across borders by gulfs in wealth as great as those between aristocratic Victorians and their maids, or colonial Portuguese in Brazil and their slaves.
But differences in financial status are not all that drives the maid trade. Bridget Anderson of Oxford University’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society has interviewed employers of domestic staff in a number of rich countries, and found that many prefer immigrants to locals because “it lets them talk about the wonderful things [the maid] is doing with her money back home”, thus portraying a dead-end job as a golden opportunity.
Inequality is part of what employers are buying. Simel Esim and Monica Smith of the International Labour Organisation studied domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates, and concluded that servants were there in part to raise their mistresses’ status by slotting into the household below them. Some Brazilians employ only black maids, says dark-skinned Alzira—“because that’s who is a maid, that’s why. Some women don’t want a maid they think could be as nice looking and well turned out as themselves, who could compete with them.”

A. 어휘
complicated 복잡한. chores 家事(가사), 잡일. mutually 상호간에.
beneficial 혜택이 되는. transaction 거래. willingness 하고 싶은 마음.
household 家事(가사), 가족. domestic workers 家內(가내) 근로자.
migrants 이주자. gulfs in wealth 재산의 隔差(격차).
aristocratic 귀족의. Victorians 영국 빅토리아여왕 시대의 사람.
maids 하녀. colonial 식민지의. financial 재정의, 금융의. status 지위.
trade 직업, 거래. Migration 移住(이주). domestic staff 家事(가사) 노동자.
prefer immigrants to locals 內國人(내국인) 보다는 외국인 이주자를 선호하다.
portray 묘사하다. dead-end 막다른 곳, 窮地(궁지).
Inequality 불평등. Emirates 土侯國(토후국). mistress 여주인.
slot 어떤 지위에 앉히다, 구멍을 내다.