Sudanese migrants to Egypt were confined to subservient domestic roles despite their integration efforts

Evidence

Yet, if the land itself seemed a frightening and foreign place, its immigrants to Egypt came across as tame. Throughout most of the century, the Sudanese in Egypt guarded houses and harems; cleaned and cooked as servants and slaves; traded camels, gum, and feathers; and drove carriages. … Their presence in the doorways and kitchens of Egyptian households made them familiar icons of the domestic scene, very much the caretakers of daily life. In most of their roles the Sudanese were in subservient positions, helping and supporting Egyptian family structures. But the majority of Egyptians do not seem to have seen the Sudanese or Nubians beyond this iconographic level, as the experiences of Nubian traders and guild members attested to in the late 1870s. Many of these men found that the Egyptian guilds discriminated against them, and they made their own appeals for independent guilds, so difficult was their integration. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 346

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reading on Nubian/Egyptian relations and how colonized or previously-colonized labor migrants face iconographic reduction in the metropolitan core.