Between intimacy and alienage: The legal construction of domestic and carework in the welfare state

This article depicts the role played by legal regulation of domestic work in Israel. The article commences with a short description of how care work has developed in Israel. Following this historic exposition, we present three legal "stories" that demonstrate the dual role of law (reflective and constitutive), its fractured nature and internal disorder, and, at the same time, its assembly into a systemic expressive and practical order. The stories show how the legal system has drawn on the terms intimacy and alienage to craft a very particular position for care and care-workers in Israel. The first episode, which deals with aspects of employment law, situates the worker in the private sphere on the basis of intimacy. The second episode, which deals with immigration and social rights, situates the worker in the public sphere on the basis of alienage. In both cases these regulative approaches have been crafted to the detriment of workers. Although the terms used in both episodes seem to be conflicting, they come together when viewed as part of the economic order of a broader system, as discussed in the third episode.