Abstract
In recent years there has been significant improvement in terms of the quantity and quality of empirical studies on Latin American urban labour markets.1The relative degree of ignorance concerning the market for domestic service is therefore particularly notorious. Some important gaps in the current state of our knowledge are the determinants of long-term trends and of short and medium-term fluctuations in this market, the relationship between domestic service and female rural–urban migration, and that between domestic service and the aggregate labour market.