December 12, 2024 | News | Award

The Sociological Review Journal Article of the Year prize for Andrés Castro

An Analysis of historical low fertility among live-in domestic workers

Andrés Felipe Castro Torres was awarded with the 2023 Sociological Review Journal Article of the Year prize. © private

MPIDR affiliated scientist Andrés Felipe Castro Torres and his Co-Author Edith Yolanda Gutierrez-Vazquez were awarded with the 2023 Sociological Review Journal Article of the Year prize for his paper “Power relations and persistent low fertility among domestic workers in Latin America”. In this paper they focused on the historically low fertility rates among live-in domestic workers in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, and highlighting the socioeconomic challenges they face.

They have shown that reproductive work is stratified along lines of gender, social class, and ethnicity. Their study uses data from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico to examine the fertility and mortality patterns of live-in domestic workers and their employers. The results show that domestic workers have historically low and delayed fertility due to socioeconomic disadvantages, mobility constraints, and control by their employers. These results highlight the need to refocus demographic studies, particularly those related to family and fertility patterns, on the power relations underlying unequal living conditions across social classes and their impact on reproductive tasks. Their findings also highlight the importance of studying intersectionally defined minorities, such as domestic workers, to gain a deeper understanding of family change and socioeconomic inequalities.

The Sociological Review

Founded in 1908, The Sociological Review is the UK’s oldest sociology journal. International and interdisciplinary in focus, it showcases theoretically advanced and methodologically rigorous studies that look at issues of the social world through the lens of sociological imagination.