Questions of labor and immigration are intertwined. We know that immigrants “built America,” but who cooked, cleaned, and took care of the children in families that needed or wanted extra help? In the past as in the present, the answer was often immigrants. Andrew Urban’s recent book, Brokering Servitude, seeks to break down the dichotomy between free and unfree labor in the nineteenth century United States, illuminating the variety of not-quite-free situations in which domestic workers found themselves. In addition, he sheds new light on the people who helped create the market for domestic labor, a varied collection of “brokers” that included philanthropists, immigration officials, and employment agents.
Urban makes creative use of cartoons and short stories to illustrate the assumptions about race, gender, and suitability for servitude that structured the domestic labor market. When teaching the history of immigration, we often focus on high profile legislation. However, Brokering...
