When families look to have their homes cleaned in the Boston suburbs, many turn to Brazilian immigrants, part of an exploding population of recent emigres who have been arriving here since the 1980s.But the maid service is different than most. It isn’t an ad-hoc group of workers scouring for weekly gigs; nor is it a corporate-driven franchise operation of the sort which has sprouted in other bedroom communities across the nation.
The transplanted Brazilians have promoted an unusual system for buying and selling domestic services. Central to the model are specific “routes” comprised of individual houses and cleaners that are grown and tightly managed — often by a single family. In recent years, as the demand for housecleaning work has soared, these routes or “schedules” have become particularly valuable, and are commonly traded like commodities.
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