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The Intouchables: Care Work, Homosociality and National Fantasy

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Paid Migrant Domestic Labour in a Changing Europe

Part of the book series: Citizenship, Gender and Diversity ((FEMCIT))

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Abstract

Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano’s award-winning 2011 movie The Intouchables explores the unlikely friendship between a mismatched pair, a wealthy disabled white Frenchman and his black male migrant carer. Yet the context of the film, contemporary France, with its republican model of citizenship and vexed relation to immigration, raises particular questions about the racial and gendered framing of the central employee–employer relation. This chapter argues that the film’s framing of the emerging homosocial relation between the main protagonists does not ultimately challenge the power dynamics of the assimilative model of citizenship. Instead, it sanitises both care work and immigration, and in so doing succeeds in complying with colonialism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The film is inspired by Le Second Souffle (Bayard, 2001), an autobiography by Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, which gives an account of relation with his care giver, Abdel Yasmin Sellou.

  2. 2.

    Driss confides to Philippe that his aunt and uncle, who were childless at the time, adopted him at the age of eight, when he moved from Senegal to France to live with them.

  3. 3.

    All translations from French in this article are the author’s.

  4. 4.

    Translations of the film script are the author’s, with some reference to subtitles.

  5. 5.

    This discussion is made in relation to public policy funding.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture and Department of Language and Literature, Centre for Gender Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway

    Priscilla Ringrose

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  1. Priscilla Ringrose
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Tech Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Trondheim, Norway

    Berit Gullikstad

  2. Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Tech Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Trondheim, Norway

    Guro Korsnes Kristensen

  3. Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Norwegian University of Science and Tech Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, Jakobsli, Trondheim, Norway

    Priscilla Ringrose

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Ringrose, P. (2016). The Intouchables: Care Work, Homosociality and National Fantasy. In: Gullikstad, B., Kristensen, G., Ringrose, P. (eds) Paid Migrant Domestic Labour in a Changing Europe. Citizenship, Gender and Diversity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51742-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51742-5_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-51741-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-51742-5

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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