“Uno se resigna a que el transporte es así”: trabajadoras domésticas sindicalizadas atravesando Medellín

There are more than 700.000 paid domestic workers in Colombia. Since the 80’s, with the massive urbanization process in Latin America, most of them went from being “in-house” to “external” workers, commuting daily from their homes to their work sites located in their employers’ houses. This shift exponentially augmented their commuting times, without transportation planners adjusting the situation. The history of UTRASD (the Afro-Colombian domestic workers’ union created in Medellín) evidences how, despite its success in the recognition of labor rights in the national arena, in the local space they are far from exercising their right to mobility.