Precarious mobilities on the axis of changing labour and mobility dynamics: the case of female domestic workers in Istanbul during the COVID-19 pandemic

In this paper, we examine the overlapping challenges that arose from domestic work, gender, and class in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, with implications that extend beyond this timeframe. We explore how these factors intersect with reproductive labour and contribute to the precarious lifestyles and livelihoods of female domestic workers (FDWs) and their related mobility spheres. Our analysis draws insights from feminist, labour, and transport geographies to illustrate the complex challenges FDWs faced during this time. We investigate an emergent mobility strategy (i.e. the servis minibus-shuttle) initiated and organized by FDWs who live in a low-income peripheral community and commute to high-income gated communities in Istanbul. To do this, we employed various ethnographic methods, including participative observations, informal discussions with FDWs and the drivers of the servis, and in-depth mobile interviews with three of its users. We discuss that servis helps FDWs overcome precarity in their daily mobilities to some extent by making them agents of this mobility sphere. However, it also emerges as an instrument of further entrapment, deepening their ‘precarious mobilities’. Our analysis of the interplay between multi-faceted spheres of domestic work deepens our understanding of labour reproduction and the precarity of FDWs in everyday mobilities.