Based on the analysis of the working relations between Malagasy families of different status and class and their domestics, this paper explores the variety of working conditions that domestic workers face in two urban centers of the highlands of Madagascar (Ambositra and Antananarivo). In these post slavery contexts, statutory distinctions continue to play a crucial role in framing the employer/employee relations involved in domestic labour. The employment of a domestic worker has much to do with social prestige, and domestics are often exposed to forms of labour exploitation and humiliations locally described in continuity with past forms of slavery. For many families of free or noble origin, to have a domestic is a matter of honor, particularly when they are facing harsh economic conditions, or their economic trajectory is declining. The price of these contradictions is often paid by domestic workers themselves, who face both a worsening of their labour conditions as well as several humiliations, insults, and violence. By taking into account the degree of unfreedom that characterizes domestic work, the paper interrogates what kind of strategies domestic workers activate in order to renegotiate their labour relations, and under which conditions they can build spaces of concrete freedoms and opportunities of upward mobilities for themselves and their offspring.