Postcolonial Legacies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 February 2026
The book concludes with a summary of the domestic and moral labors of the ayah from the mid 1700s to the mid 1900s. The Conclusion explores the transformation of the ayah’s role from a child’s nurse and ladies’ maid in the colonial era to elder-care and patient-care responsibilities in contemporary India. More broadly, the Conclusion traces the nonregulation of domestic labor from colonial capitalism to today’s neoliberal capitalism and its impact on the lives of India’s care workers and domestic workers, who form the largest section of the informal female workforce. Finally, the Conclusion discusses how the increasing gig-ification of domestic labor, the rise of digital platforms and placement agencies, and increased mobility of domestic workers serving elite urban and transnational Indian families, has increased the precarity of South Asian care workers and domestic workers in recent years.
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