Centering Interdependence: Bringing a Disability Justice Framework to Organizing Employers of Domestic Workers

Background and Purpose: Organizing has historically focused on building the collective power of those who are most impacted to address injustices. Existing research on the domestic work movement and the care economy has focused primarily on domestic workers. Little research has examined the role of employers, who are often responsible for setting employment practices within households - particularly elders and disabled people depending on care workers - and their efforts to transform the domestic work industry. Examining the employer organizing model within the context of the broader domestic workers’ movement offers a unique case to investigate these diverse power relationships, struggles, and best practices to inform ongoing organizing efforts. Drawing upon transformative and disability justice (DJ) organizing frameworks, this paper examines how recipients of care, specifically people with disabilities and elders, are organizing to support equitable and dignified work conditions while also receiving affordable and dignified care at home.

Methods: Data from this paper were collected during a case study of Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network, with a focus on their affiliate the New York Caring Majority. The research team and questions evolved out of a collaboration of community activists, organizers, leaders, and academics. Using a critical participatory action research lens , data were drawn from 4 sources: participant observation; 25 semi-structured interviews with 23 member leaders, staff, and partners; reports and internal documents; and feedback from study participants. An a priori thematic coding scheme was developed based on the research aims and was bolstered by in vivo coding using the constant comparative method. Diagrams were created and member checking was used throughout.

Results: Findings reveal how the organizing model of domestic worker employers evolved from a solidarity-based model to a model rooted in interdependence as a core organizing principle. Incorporating DJ into the organizing model expanded how interdependence was used within the movement that brought workers and employers together around a shared care system. This evolution was visible across three dimensions: how campaign strategies and goals were framed, how internal organizing processes and methods were restructured, and how interdependence extended into community and mutual aid. Together, DJ pushed interdependence from a galvanizing political idea into a lived, practiced commitment that changed the movement from within.

Conclusions and Implications: By centering the DJ principle of interdependence, employer organizers advanced a framework that simultaneously challenged ableism, addressed power differentials, and built coalitions capable of reimagining and making the care economy more just. This case study demonstrates that it is not only possible, but necessary, to build organizing models that are relational, reflexive, and rooted in a shared commitment to dignity, justice, and collective liberation. If we are to build movements capable of addressing the complexity of the world we live in and the various positions of power we hold, we must build relationships, structures, and strategies that reflect our mutual reliance and shared stake in liberation. Interdependence is not an endpoint–it is an ongoing practice of organizing ourselves and each other toward a more just, caring, and connected world.