migrant domestic workers essay

Highlighting the experience of migrant domestic workers in the Arab Gulf region

For years leading up to last fall’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar, human and labor rights organizations pointed to what they described as the systemic abuse of migrant workers who traveled to the small country on the Arab Gulf to build the stadiums and infrastructure that allowed the global sporting event to take place.

But a new paper by Stanford political science professor Lisa Blaydes draws attention to a lesser-known migrant population in the Arab Gulf region that is perhaps even more vulnerable to exploitation: women who cook, clean, and care for families as domestic workers in private homes. The paper, “ Assessing the Labor Conditions of Migrant Domestic Workers in the Arab Gulf States ,” was published in January 2023 as part of a special ILR Review issue on labor transformation and regime transition in the Middle East and North Africa.

“There’s so much more attention paid to construction workers,” says Blaydes, one of the core faculty members of the Stanford King Center on Global Development ’s research initiative on gender-based violence in the developing world . “When you go to the Gulf, you see them walking around in their orange jumpsuits. Domestic workers are an invisible population. These women work in homes and may not even have the ability to leave those homes very often.”

In Blaydes’ original survey of several hundred Filipino and Indonesian migrant domestic workers who had previously worked in Arab Gulf states but since returned to their home countries, more than 50 percent of respondents indicated they had been subject to at least one type of abusive situation, with the most common abuses being economic in nature, such as excessive working hours, late payment, and denial of days off. Smaller percentages of women reported having limited access to food (12 percent), forced confinement (7 percent), non-payment of salary (7 percent), denial of medical treatment (6 percent), physical abuse (4 percent), and sexual attacks (2 percent).

According to estimates compiled by the International Labour Organization in 2019, there are millions of migrant domestic workers in Arab Gulf countries—Saudi Arabia alone has more than 3 million—so these percentages represent huge numbers of women (the vast majority of domestic workers are women).  

“This affects so many people,” Blaydes says. “The globalization of care work is really common. If we want to understand the work experiences of lots of women around the world, domestic work is a big part of that.”

Blaydes, who spent time as a child in Saudi Arabia, is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and director of the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University.

Blaydes’ research focuses on social, economic, and political issues in the Middle East. Recently, she has turned her attention to Arab Gulf states, where a majority of workers are migrants and where women most often shoulder the burden of maintaining homes and caring for family. As Gulf states prioritize economic development, including by encouraging women to work outside the home , Blaydes decided to study the experiences of people who would be picking up the slack in the households Arab women leave behind: migrant women.

Arab women’s ability to accept and remain in jobs is “almost conditional” on the presence of migrant women working within their home, Blaydes says.

“There’s a tendency to not think about domestic labor as labor,” she says. But, “to understand issues related to gender and labor and the economy, it wouldn’t make sense to exclude this population.”

For her research, Blaydes designed an original online survey of women in Indonesia and the Philippines—two countries that send large numbers of women to work as domestic workers in Arab Gulf states. Ultimately, 656 women completed the survey, after answering screening questions to determine if they had worked in the Arab Gulf region as domestic workers. Relative to other Arab Gulf countries, Qatar had the fewest reports of abuse per household; Bahrain had the highest.

For her analysis, Blaydes organized the households the women worked for into three groups:

• Class 1, characterized by relatively low overall likelihood of abuse;
• Class 2, characterized by a high probability of economic abuse;
• and Class 3, characterized by the presence of economic abuse and some form of physical abuse.

The vast majority of households—71 percent—were categorized as Class 1; about a quarter of households were characterized as Class 2; and 5 percent of households rose to the level of Class 3. Blaydes found that the likelihood of abuse increases in families with higher numbers of children or where the husband is supporting a second household either because of a divorce or because he has a second wife.

The information from this analysis can be helpful, she says, as governments and policymakers try to address the issue of migrant domestic worker abuse, which is made worse by the kafala system of sponsorship used in most Arab Gulf states. Under the kafala system, workers can only work for their employer sponsor for the length of their contract, usually two years. If the employer breaks the contract, the worker’s visa is cancelled, and they are immediately repatriated. This gives employers an incredible amount of power over workers, who may not report abuse for fear of retaliation.

Some efforts at reform are already underway. Blaydes points to the example of the United Arab Emirates, which in 2011 began to allow migrant workers to accept new jobs without approval from their previous employers; according to the International Labour Organization , Qatar enacted a similar reform in 2020 and, specific to domestic workers, has disseminated Know Your Rights materials and hosted panel discussions with workers about potential reforms. Migrant domestic workers also often receive pre-departure training in their home countries about their rights.

Blaydes says her study can ensure that future interventions to prevent abuse of migrant domestic workers—including trainings, discussions, and even direct assistance from the governments of destination countries—are designed for maximum effect. For instance, she says, migrant women should be told in their trainings that the majority of households do not engage in abusive behavior.

“This kind of information could tell you, actually most households are ok,” she explains. “So, if you’re in a bad household, it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s important to know.”

Blaydes says expanding the scope of gender-based violence to include not just family members but domestic workers whose labor takes place inside private homes is crucial to understanding economic and global development.

“People don’t always think of gender-based violence as a topic related to economic development,” she says. “But it’s part of human thriving to not be subject to violence.”

Blaydes says the King Center’s support was integral to her project: It allowed her to conduct a survey large enough to identify women who had worked in Arab Gulf states as migrant domestic workers.

“It’s a unique sample—women who have had this very particular experience,” she says. “I essentially had to screen the entire online sample of women from the Philippines and Indonesia. Without the King Center’s support, I wouldn’t have even been able to run the initial screen to find them.”

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Migrant domestic workers: debating transnationalism, identity politics, and family relations. a review essay.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2003

If in the 1970s modernization theorists predicted the demise of paid domestic work, developments during the last two decades have proven them wrong. Both in the North and in the South the number of those engaged in paid domestic work has grown rapidly. In some cases, like China and India, intra-state migration is predominant. Elsewhere, in the United States, Canada, and Western-Europe, as well as in growth areas such as the Gulf States, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, the presence of large numbers of migrant domestic workers from abroad has been particularly striking. In fact, in a number of cases the growth of domestic labor as a field of employment has led to the feminization of outmigration. By the late 1990s, there were between 1.3 and 1.5 million Asian women working in the Middle East. Whereas in the 1970s women formed about 15 percent of the migrant labor force, in the mid-1990s almost 60 percent of the Filipino migrant labor force was female, and women constituted approximately 80 percent of the Sri Lankan and the Indonesian migrant labor force (Gamburd 2000:35).

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• Volume 45, Issue 2
• Annelies Moors (a1)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417503000185

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Domestic and Migrant Workers

Millions of people around the world are on the move, trying to adapt to life in countries not their own. In some cases this movement is voluntary, as people search for better life opportunities, education, or work. In many more cases, however, the migration is forced, as people flee poverty, civil unrest, and war, or as they search for employment that will simply allow them to survive.

A migrant worker is a person engaged in a remunerated activity in a country of which he or she is not a national. A domestic worker is defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as “a wage-earner working in a private household, under whatever method and period of remuneration, who may be employed by one or by several employers who receive no pecuniary gain from this work.” Domestic workers are usually occupied as housekeepers, nannies, cooks, drivers, gardeners, and other personal servants. Some domestic and migrant workers labor under slave-like conditions.

In the last decade there has been an increase in a form of modern-day slavery that is practiced in the “developed” or “first” world: the exploitation of foreign migrant domestic workers. Domestic workers who are taken to other countries by diplomats and corporate executives are among the most abused and vulnerable migrant workers. Although not bought as slaves, fundamental human rights of migrants are frequently violated or ignored. The exploitation can range from wage and hour violations to physical and sexual abuse. In many cases employers have withheld legal documents of migrant workers, thereby restricting their mobility. Domestic workers such as these are not covered by labor protection legislation; that fact combined with language and cultural barriers makes them easy targets for exploitation. The Break the Chain Campaign (formerly the Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers Rights), an organization that publicizes the plight of these workers in the United States, reports that most domestic workers are poor women from developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who enter the United States on temporary visas. Once paperwork is filed for their visas, international institutions and embassies take a “hands-off” approach to the plight of these domestic workers.

Prohibitions

International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Adopted by General Assembly resolution 45/158 of 18 December 1990.

Related Sites

• International Resource Centre on the Human Rights of Migrants (CIDEHUM)  
• The Global Campaign for Ratification of the Convention on Rights of Migrants
• International Labour Organization
• End Slavery Now

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Content in Arabic by Raja El Habti Research Assistant, FSE

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The hostile environment has failed. We need a new deal for migrant domestic workers

Successive Tory governments have failed to learn the lessons about their failures to reduce numbers by reducing migrant workers’ rights

The hostile environment it is a set of policies introduced in 2012 by then-home secretary Theresa May, with the aim of making life unbearably difficult in the UK for immigrants. Image: 10 Downing Street / Flickr

Labour is looking increasingly likely to form the next government, and one of the major complaints is that there was little detail in their manifesto and their plans for the country aren’t clear. That’s certainly the case on reforming the immigration system, which they say they will do but give no further detail on.

But workers’ rights are one area where there is a bit more information. Labour’s  New Deal for Workers  includes a lot of positive changes, and some parts of it, if applied without discrimination to all migrant workers, could make a huge positive difference for migrants who do essential jobs. But if we continue to let the most vulnerable migrant workers fall through the gaps, our unequal labour market will continue to produce poor conditions and low pay.

• I was abused, bullied and left in limbo as a migrant domestic worker. I’m proud of myself for surviving
• Reports of forced labour, sex trafficking and domestic servitude at record high in Britain

Migrant domestic workers are often invisible in the conversation about workers’ rights, but they have been at the sharpest end of a 12-year failed Tory agenda to cut migrant numbers by cutting migrants’ rights. The next government has a huge opportunity to reassess this record of failure, that has fuelled a massive rise in crime and exploitation and to build a fair, safe and equal working environment for all of us. In a  new report published last week , migrant domestic worker charity Kalayaan sets out how.

In 2012, in pursuit of David Cameron’s “tens of thousands of migrants” pledge , domestic workers lost the right to freely change employer, renew their visa, be accompanied by their spouse and children to the UK, and to eventually apply for settlement and put down roots in this country. Given the overwhelming majority of migrant domestic workers are women, these changes were particularly harsh on mothers working to provide for their families. Instead of living in the UK as workers like any others, they are treated as the ultimate disposable labour. Their work is undervalued and their humanity totally disregarded by this new, incredibly restrictive visa regime.

Conservative governments since Cameron have maintained yet repeatedly failed to meet their commitment to reduce migrant numbers, and rejected calls to reinstate the rights of migrant workers. But the need for their labour never disappeared, and the government has continued to grant around 20,000 domestic workers’ visas per year despite these changes. The difference is in the risk of exploitation those who come are subjected to, and that’s where a Labour government will be able to make a change .

The government has failed to gather data on the experiences of exploitation of migrant domestic workers. Because their work takes place mainly within private homes, there is no monitoring of conditions and no labour inspections carried out to ensure compliance with minimum standards. Since visas can no longer be renewed, there is no point of contact with the Home Office to ensure ongoing employment in decent legal conditions. The Conservatives have used their own failure to collect information about the experiences of workers as a smokescreen allowing them to refuse to address the growing problems the visa restrictions have caused.

However, Kalayaan has been collecting that data. Through the support they offer to domestic workers, since well before the visa changes were introduced, they have been able to measure the increase in rates of exploitation and abuse. The next government will now have access to this rich and hard-hitting data when assessing the impact of the last 12 years of hostility, and deciding on its approach to migrant worker visas.

The evidence Kalayaan has collected really is some of the starkest indictment of the ‘ hostile environment ‘ for migrant workers available. By comparing the percentage of domestic workers they support who experience a range of indicators of exploitation and abuse over time, they are able to demonstrate the impact of the changes in the visa regime. There has been an exponential increase in rates of a wide range of forms of exploitation since the restrictions introduced in 2012. From wage theft and not having a single day off in the week, to irregular access to food, being trapped inside their employer’s home, and physical and psychological abuse, there has been a very significant rise across the board.

We need to be clear that this represents a significant rise in criminality enabled by government policy. By so drastically cutting the rights of an already relatively invisibilisedpart of the labour force, the government has created an environment for criminal exploitation to thrive. There is relatively no risk for employers who seek to abuse this largely female workforce because their time in the country is so short, their links to family cut off, and their right to change employer in practice curtailed so far as to be impossible to access.

And this doesn’t end with domestic workers. Many of the same restrictions that were introduced in 2012 have since been rolled out on other visa pathways, too. Seasonal farm workers now have similarly short periods of leave and experience difficulties changing employer. More recently care workers have been targeted with restrictions to prevent them from bringing spouses and children with them to the UK. The government has failed to learn the lessons about its failure to reduce numbers by reducing migrant workers’ rights, and the culture of exploitation it drives.

Labour must take a holistic approach to visa reform, one that includes all workers – as domestic workers have, in many ways, been treated as a test-group for some of the most vicious anti-migrant and anti-worker policies that have been introduced by successive Conservative administrations. This erosion of rights can only be achieved when different groups of workers are siloed and their rights reduced in isolation, as separate groups of migrants, rather than as workers – it’s a deliberate ploy to impact the power of solidarity that protects rights when all workers stand together.

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BUY THIS BOOK

2015 --> 2015 256 pages. from $25.00

Hardcover ISBN: 9780804791519 Paperback ISBN: 9780804796149 Ebook ISBN: 9780804796187

Servants of Globalization offers a groundbreaking study of migrant Filipino domestic workers who leave their own families behind to do the caretaking work of the global economy. Since its initial publication, the book has informed countless students and scholars and set the research agenda on labor migration and transnational families.

With this second edition, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas returns to Rome and Los Angeles to consider how the migrant communities have changed. Children have now joined their parents. Male domestic workers are present in significantly greater numbers. And, perhaps most troubling, the population has aged, presenting new challenges for the increasingly elderly domestic workers. New chapters discuss these three increasingly important constituencies. The entire book has been revised and updated, and a new introduction offers a global, comparative overview of the citizenship status of migrant domestic workers. Servants of Globalization remains the defining work on the international division of reproductive labor.

About the author

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo (Stanford, 2011) and Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes (Stanford, 2005).

—Mary Romero, Arizona State University, and author of The Maid's Daughter: Living Inside and Outside the American Dream

—Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, author of Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy

—Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara

—Ai-jen Poo, Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance

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Migrant Workers’ Rights and Women’s Rights – Women Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon: A Gender Perspective

Gender equality cannot be achieved in Lebanon without dismantling the kafala system and creating legal protections for domestic workers. Women make up an estimated 76 per cent of all migrant workers and 99 per cent of migrant domestic workers who come to Lebanon for employment. Despite coming to the country as workers, they are exempted from labour protections according to article 7 of the labour law. This paper illuminates the gender dimensions of women migrant domestic workers’ lived experiences in Lebanon, and demonstrates why attention must be increased to issues of sexual and reproductive health rights and access, sexual and gender-based violence, racialized and gendered economic inequality, maternal rights and child custody issues, and gender discrimination in legislative and administrative procedures governing migrant women’s lives. It is hoped that this deepened gendered understanding will contribute to efforts to dismantle Lebanon’s kafala system. It is also hoped that this paper will improve the approaches taken to address migrant workers’ rights in Lebanon and will advance the inclusion of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon’s women’s rights and feminist movement.

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Overseas Filipino Workers: The Modern-Day Heroes of the Philippines

Bayani is the Tagalog term for “hero.” In the Philippines, a bayani is someone who is courageous, humble, and selfless. They pursue causes that are greater than themselves, such as those impacting a community, a nation, or the environment. Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) is a term referring to Filipino migrant workers, individuals who have left their homes to work abroad and provide comfortable lives for their families. Referring to these workers, former President Corazon Aquino coined the phrase ‘Bagong-Bayani’ in 1988. OFWs are the country’s modern-day heroes because they not only boost the Philippines’ economy through remittances but are figures of resilience. OFWs endure homesickness, personal sacrifices, and horrible working conditions in order to support their families back home.

By the Numbers

The Philippine Statistic Authority estimates that about 1.83 million OFWs worked abroad from April to September 2021. The same data reveal that about “four in every ten” OFWs work low-status or ‘ elementary ’ jobs, such as street vendors, construction and factory workers, cleaners, domestic helpers, and agriculture laborers. A majority of OFWs work in Asia, specifically Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Singapore, and Qatar.

Because of their major contribution to the growth and development of the Philippine economy, OFWs are revered as the nation's economic heroes. According to data released by the Central Bank of the Philippines, remittances from OFWs reached a record high in December of last year: from the previous all-time high of US$34.88 billion, it rose by 3.6 percent to a record high US$36.14 billion in 2022.

“OFW remittances, at new record highs on a monthly basis, are a bright spot for the Philippine economy in terms of spurring consumer spending, which accounts for at least 75 percent of the economy, and in turn, support faster economic growth,” Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. Chief economist Michael Ricafort said .

Furthermore, most OFWs are Filipina women. The numbers clearly show that women dominate the workforce, accounting for approximately 60 percent of OFWs. According to data from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, at least 18,002, or 75.05 percent of the 23,986 cases of abuse and other incidents involving workers in the Gulf Cooperation Council that were reported last year included female OFWs. On the other hand, male OFWs were involved in only 5,984 cases, or 24.95 percent of all cases.

These women are disproportionately more likely to suffer from terrible working conditions, as they are often subjected to abuse, excessive work, little pay, rape, or worse, being killed by their foreign employers. The International Labour Office published a working paper titled Philippines: Good Practices for the Protection of Filipino Women Migrant Workers in Vulnerable Jobs explaining that “Gender-based discrimination intersects with discrimination based on other forms of  ‘otherness’ – such as non-national status, race, ethnicity, religion, economic status – placing women migrants in situations of double, triple or even fourfold discrimination, disadvantage or vulnerability to exploitation and abuse.”

In 2020, there were 23,714 documented cases of contract violations involving the maltreatment of OFWs, according to data provided by the Philippine Overseas Labor Offices, and approximately 5,000 of these cases were reported from Middle Eastern countries. According to the Philippine Information Agency, Filipina women who work in the Middle East are subjected to the “ kafala ” system, which ties foreign workers to their employers. Under this framework, employers could easily lock domestic workers inside their houses and seize their phones, passports, and visas until the expiration of their contracts.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a comprehensive report titled “ ‘I Already Bought You’ Abuse and Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates,” which explains real-world examples of how the UAE’s kafala system of visa sponsorship binds migrant employees to their employers and how the exclusion of domestic workers from labor law protections exposes them to abuse.

The report included interviews with 99 female domestic workers in the UAE between November and December 2013. 22 of the 99 domestic helpers questioned by HRW claimed to have experienced physical abuse at the hands of their sponsors.

“They slap me in the face and kick me. They have a stick for you. If I make a small mistake they would hit parts of my body—back legs, back, and head. Sir would slap or punch me in the face. If they come back from the mall and I am not finished they would beat me,” Shelly A., a 30-year-old Filipina worker said. “They would say, ‘If you had done work then we won’t hit you.’ ”

Injustices in Kuwait

Currently, there are over 268,000 OFWs who live and work in Kuwait with 88 percent of them working as domestic helpers and 73 percent of them being female. According to the Philippine Department of Migrant Workers (DMW), there were over 24,000 cases of abuse and violation against OFWs in 2022—a significant rise from 6,500 in 2016.

It is a significant sacrifice to work abroad. Being physically and emotionally thousands of miles away from one’s family for an indefinite period is challenging, isolating, and suffocating. Rowena, a 54-year-old Filipina worker in Bahrain found herself feeling “trapped” due to canceled flights to the Philippines because of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as being underpaid by her employer. “I don’t want to make trouble. I want to go home,” Rowena said .

Beyond this, many OFWs also work abroad without knowledge of the future or the dangers they may encounter in a foreign country. Even worse, a harsh truth of working abroad is that a number of OFWs return home as dead bodies.

In January of 2023, Jullebee Ranara , a Filipina domestic helper living in Kuwait, confided in her family over the phone that she was terrified of her employer's 17-year-old son. The 35-year-old appeared to have vanished by the next day, which prompted her friends in the Gulf state to share their worries about her disappearance on social media.

Less than 24 hours later, on Jan. 21, 2023, her body was found dead, with burnt remains and a smashed skull found beside a desert near Al-Salmi Road.

Ranara was discovered to be pregnant after an autopsy, and DNA samples taken from the unborn child were confirmed to match the accused, who is the 17-year-old son of Ranara’s boss. After being apprehended, the 17-year-old perpetrator confessed to his crime.

Since 2018, there have been at least four murders of OFWs in Kuwait that have garnered national attention, including the case of 29-year-old Joanna Demafelis , whose body was kept secret in a freezer in an abandoned apartment for nearly two years. Her employers, a Syrian and a Lebanese couple, received death sentences for the murder of the victim.

In 2019, 47-year-old Constancia Lago Dayag was discovered dead after being sexually abused and beaten to death by her boss. The same year, 26-year-old Jeanelyn Villavende passed away from serious injuries inflicted by her boss, who was ultimately given a death sentence for the murder.

“These are only the high-profile ones,” Migrante International chairperson Joanna Concepcion told VICE World News. “There are other cases that are not visible. The public is not made aware of the real gravity of the rampant abuses faced by Filipino domestic helpers in Kuwait.”

Actions taken by the Philippine Government

A week after the discovery of Jullebee’s body, her remains were returned to her grieving family in Las Piñas, Philippines. Without delay, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. attended Jullebee’s wake and promised to provide the deceased’s family with all aid possible.

“I just wanted to offer my sympathies to the family and to assure them that all the assistance that they might need for the family and for whatever else, that is my promise to them,” Marcos Jr. remarked . “Their child made that sacrifice to work abroad because she has dreams for her family here.”

Recently, the DMW issued a deployment ban on new and aspiring OFWs in Kuwait, following the increasing reports of work mistreatment, including the horrific murder of Ranara.

“In order to strengthen the protection of the rights of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Kuwait, particularly workers who are most vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, action on the applications of first-time agency-hire domestic workers bound for Kuwait is temporarily deferred effective immediately,” the DMWs said in a statement on Feb. 8, 2023.

Senator and Committee on Migrant Workers Chairperson Raffy Tulfo proposed a total deployment ban in Kuwait. “We can enter into bilateral agreements but our terms should be clear and unequivocal. If there are violators to such agreements, we have to prioritize the welfare of our overseas Filipino workers and act at the soonest possible time. Make these violators accountable and liable without concession and pursuant to our laws and international conventions,” Tulfo said in a senate inquiry.

The DMW was also tasked with working with the Department of Foreign Affairs to communicate to the Kuwaiti government the "sentiments and concerns" of the Filipino people regarding all recurrent incidents of physical and financial abuse, failure to pay monetary benefits, as well as murder committed against OFWs after the deployment ban went into effect.

The deployment ban was not well received by migrant advocacy groups, who claimed it would not provide a permanent solution to the issues surrounding labor migration. They claimed that placing bans for an extended period of time would encourage OFWs to turn to illicit means and consequently put themselves at risk for human trafficking in their desperation to find jobs abroad.

“What about the already-deployed Filipinos? Are there any steps being taken to protect them and make sure they do not suffer the same fate as Julleebee and the others?” Concepcion said to Maritime Fairtrade News. “These problems cannot be resolved with a deployment ban. The Philippine government has imposed bans many times before, but lifted them soon after when the particular cases of abuse or murder had been resolved by the courts and the perpetrators punished by death penalty or long-term imprisonment. When the deployment restarts, the abuses also start all over again.”

Much Needed Reform

OFWs often serve as the backbone of their families back home. Based on the results of a survey published by the Social Weather Stations , they found that 7 percent of Filipino households have an OFW who helps support the family. In addition, seventy-five percent of households frequently receive money from their OFW family members.

It would be difficult and inconsiderate to discourage or ban OFWs from going abroad for work. To promote a better quality of life for OFWs, the Philippine government must enact concrete policies aimed at protecting the welfare of Filipino workers. Advocacy groups, such as Migrante International are urging for reforms, including the abolition of the kafala system, which has resulted in complete employer control over domestic workers and OFWs.

For Concepcion, the country’s over-reliance on OFWs remittances is equivalent to the perpetuation of the violation and murder of Filipino workers. She believes that a viable solution to this issue involves ending the government’s labor export program and creating decent jobs domestically through meaningful land reform and national industrialization.

“The government’s determination to continue its labor export policy is totally misguided. What it should do is implement immediate measures to protect our domestic workers and OFWs abroad and long-term measures to generate decent jobs in the Philippines,” Concepcion said . “We need to end the government’s Labor Export Program and instead ensure that more jobs are created at home. Filipinos won’t have to leave the country and their families to risk their lives abroad if they have gainful and secure employment here.”

It is clear that OFWs live up to the definition of a bayani and are now considered heroes of the Philippines. However, under the shiny title of ‘bagong bayani’ lies a dark and unfortunate reality. Numerous Filipino workers suffer from various injustices including being overworked, underpaid, abused, raped, and even worse, murdered. The only way OFWs can truly be safeguarded is if the Philippine government enforces concrete and actionable policies. With this, OFWs could avoid the potential death sentence of working abroad and have the chance to be treated as they deserve to be: as modern-day heroes.

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Peer support and mental health of migrant domestic workers: a scoping review.

1. Introduction

2.1. study design, 2.2. identifying the research questions, 2.3. identifying relevant information, 2.4. study selection, 2.5. charting the data, 2.6. collating, summarizing, and reporting the results, 3.1. characteristics of included studies, 3.2. what types of peer support are available to mdws, 3.2.1. mutual aids, 3.2.2. para-professional trained peer support, 3.3. what are the functions/outcomes of peer support for mdws, 3.3.1. mutual aids, 3.3.2. para-professional trained peer support, 3.4. what are the barriers and facilitators for mdws to provide/receive peer support, 3.4.1. facilitators, mutual aids, para-professional trained peer support, 3.4.2. barriers, 4. discussion, 4.1. limitations, 4.2. implications for research and practice, 5. conclusions, supplementary materials, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Ho, K.H.M.; Yang, C.; Leung, A.K.Y.; Bressington, D.; Chien, W.T.; Cheng, Q.; Cheung, D.S.K. Peer Support and Mental Health of Migrant Domestic Workers: A Scoping Review. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022 , 19 , 7617. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137617

Ho KHM, Yang C, Leung AKY, Bressington D, Chien WT, Cheng Q, Cheung DSK. Peer Support and Mental Health of Migrant Domestic Workers: A Scoping Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health . 2022; 19(13):7617. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137617

Ho, Ken Hok Man, Chen Yang, Alex Kwun Yat Leung, Daniel Bressington, Wai Tong Chien, Qijin Cheng, and Daphne Sze Ki Cheung. 2022. "Peer Support and Mental Health of Migrant Domestic Workers: A Scoping Review" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 13: 7617. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137617

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The Human Rights of Migrant Domestic Workers in the UK

20 Pages Posted: 13 Feb 2020

Dáire McCormack-George

Law Society of Ireland

Date Written: January 20, 2020

Migrant domestic workers in the UK are distinctively vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and human rights' violation. This paper observes that migrant domestic workers are likely to have their rights to non-discrimination, freedom from forced labour and work violated. It attempts to provide a remedy to such actual or potential violations through an analysis of the human right to work.

Keywords: European Human Rights Law, Labour Law, Immigration Law, Domestic Work, Free Movement of Workers

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Dáire McCormack-George (Contact Author)

Law society of ireland ( email ).

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First-person perspectives on the world of work

I empower migrant domestic workers by sharing my experiences.

21 Jun 2024 7 min read

As a migrant domestic worker, I was abused by my employers. Now, I raise awareness so that other Indonesian women have the knowledge to protect themselves from exploitation. No woman should have to endure violence at the hands of their employers, like I did.

My name is Win Faidah and I am from East Lampung in Indonesia. I am 40 years old, and I am married and have two children. Since graduating from middle school, I have been a domestic worker.

After I got married, my husband's relative suggested that I should go abroad as a migrant worker. He told me that I could earn a lot of money and have a good life. At the time my mother strongly disapproved and prohibited me from going.

However, when I was pregnant with my first child, the relative came back to our house, encouraging me to work overseas. This time I accepted so I could provide for our family's needs.

After three months training in Jakarta I was flown to an Asian country to work. When I left Indonesia, my baby was nine months old.

I still cannot stop the tears when I relive the devastating memory of my experience as a migrant domestic worker. (2024)

On arriving abroad we were given documents about how to treat employers, clean the house and other tasks. It felt like I was taking a school exam. A week later we discovered that none of us had passed the test, so we would return to Indonesia.

Back in Indonesia we stayed in a remote house in the woods. We weren't allowed out and we couldn't contact our families.

I pleaded with the agent to send me home. But he refused. He told me that we would be taken to another Asian country to work. He said: "If you want to go home you need to pay the company IDR20 million (US$1200).” I had no choice but to work.

I regularly share my experience as a migrant worker and advocate in the village and even in areas like Malang in East Java. I want to inspire other Indonesian women. (2024)

In the new country I was taken to a three-story house to work. My main duties included taking care of the house and my employer’s elderly mother.

For the first two months the working conditions were tolerable. But they soon got worse. I was rarely given food and the employer's mother started beating me.

One day, I learnt that the neighbour’s domestic worker was from the same province of Indonesia as me. She warned me to be careful and told me that the previous domestic worker had run away.

She said: "I will help you to escape. I will find you a good employer. Otherwise, you could die here."

No day passed without torture. My eyes were blindfolded, my back and chest were burnt with an iron.... I thought I was going to die, and I was ready to die.

Win Faidah Former migrant domestic worker

Three months later I escaped from the house. I vividly remember that night. I packed my belongings and around midnight I climbed over the back gate to where my neighbour’s domestic worker was waiting to take me to my new employer.

My new employer was a stay-at-home mother with four children. Her husband was a contractor. They lived in a three-bedroom flat. I didn't have my own room but I didn't mind as they treated me well.

However, after a few months, my employer's husband began flirting. I felt uncomfortable and scared. I told my employer that I missed my daughter and wanted to go home, but she refused.

Then one night, while I slept in the kitchen, I felt hands touching my body. I woke up and saw my employer's husband. The next day, I told my employer about the incident. But her husband denied the allegation and instead accused me of flirting with him.

From then on my days became a nightmare.

When my employers abused me I could not contact anyone as I did not have a mobile phone. I tried to heal by myself. My employers never took me to a doctor. (2024)

After that no day passed without torture.

My eyes were blindfolded, my back and chest were burnt with an iron. My head was hit by a hammer and my hair was shaved. My fingernails were cut with pliers, and I was splashed with boiled water. I was beaten and punched.

During this time my employer's husband sexually assaulted me four times. I thought I was going to die, and I was ready to die. 

I tried to tend to my wounds alone with products such as toothpaste. But when my body began to deteriorate and the wounds started to smell, my employers wrapped me in a blanket and threw me in an isolated area near a palm oil plantation.

With the support of Yunita Rohani from the Migrant Worker Trade Union, I followed training programmes at the Migrant Worker Resource Centre (MRC) in East Lampung, under the ILO’s Safe and Fair programme. (2024)

I was rescued by a local citizen who called the police. For a month, I was treated in hospital and then I stayed in a shelter during the trial. It was long and hard, but I was relieved that my employers were sentenced to eight years in prison. The agent in Indonesia was also sentenced to three years in prison.

With the help of the Indonesian Embassy, I could finally return home. When I arrived, my mother shed tears saying that she could feel my pain. My husband welcomed me with open arms, despite the assault that I had experienced.

Unlike my family, my community treated me like an outcast. They mocked me about the assault, saying that it was my fault. I felt devastated and ashamed.

I was blessed to meet Yunita Rohani, a field officer at the Migrant Worker Resource Centre (MRC) from the Indonesia Migrant Worker Union (SBMI). With her support I joined training programmes of the MRC in East Lampung district, as part of the ILO’s Safe and Fair programme.

I learnt about gender equality, the prevention of gender-based violence for women migrant workers, women's leadership, and trade unions.

Most importantly, I learnt to voice my aspirations and make myself heard.

I used to wonder why I didn't die after all that I had endured. Now, I realize that I survived so I could tell my story and empower other women migrants.

The training helped me become stronger. I now actively share my experiences at trade union meetings and at the MRC at local and national level. I want to inspire Indonesian women to work abroad through a legal process. They must prepare themselves with adequate knowledge so that they can speak up if they face problems.

Nowadays, I help my sister by taking care of her toddler. Both of my younger sisters are migrant workers. I'm happy they have good experiences and can support their families. I hope no other women migrant workers endure what I experienced.

I used to wonder why I didn't die after all that I had endured. Now, I realize that I survived so I could tell my story and empower other women migrant workers.

I hope that the public never forgets our contribution to the national economy as migrant workers. We risk our lives to work abroad.

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• DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2023.2263886
• Corpus ID: 263722025

The Making of “Passengers”: The Pre-Departure Subjectivation of Sri Lanka’s Aspiring Migrant Domestic Workers Heading to the Arabian Gulf

• W. S. Handapangoda
• Published in Global Society 4 October 2023

One Citation

Responsible migrants: rights-claiming, risks and costs at the shelter, 47 references, a regime analysis: evidence from sri lankan migrant domestic workers’ journeys to saudi arabia, becoming a migrant at home: subjectivation processes in migrant‐sending countries prior to departure.

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Migrant Worker Rights in the United States

FPC Briefing

Thea Lee, Deputy Undersecretary for International Labor Affair

Elizabeth Peña, Advisor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs

Tuesday, June 18, 2024, 1:00 p.m. ET

Washington, D.C.

June 18, 2024

THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

MODERATOR:  Deputy Undersecretary Thea Lee.  Thank you and welcome.  

MS LEE:  Thank you so much.  Good afternoon, everybody and thank you for joining us this afternoon for this media briefing on MigrantWorker.gov.  I’m Thea Lee, deputy under secretary for International Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor.  I head the Bureau of International Labor Affairs – we call it ILAB.  

Recently, we rolled out MigrantWorker.gov in six new languages with expanded content and new resources.  Our goal is to get valuable information into the hands of migrant workers in this country about their rights and protections under U.S. law.  MigrantWorker.gov and TrabajadorMigrante.gov was originally launched in August 2023 in just two languages, English and Spanish.  Now, we have rolled out six additional languages: Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, and Arabic.  

ILAB promotes labor rights and social protection for workers globally.  This work is integral to the department’s work to ensure good jobs for workers here in the United States.  Our mandate includes protecting the rights of all workers, but particularly the most vulnerable to exploitation, who might be hesitant to come forward if their rights are violated.  ILAB also works with other governments to strengthen their capacity to protect labor rights and to ensure that people have access to good jobs to remain and thrive in their home countries.  

When workers do migrate to the United States, we want to ensure they know their rights, that those rights are protected, and that U.S. employers are engaged in an ethical and fair recruitment processes.  Last year, the United States signed on to the International Labor Organization’s Fair Recruitment Guidelines, and we are working with partner governments, the private sector, and migrant worker organizations to aid in its implementation.  We work closely with our colleagues in the Department of Labor’s domestic agencies and with foreign embassies and consulates through the Consular Partnership Program.  

MigrantWorker.gov is a critical part of those efforts.  When migrant workers cross borders for work, they also cross multiple legal, policy, and geographic jurisdictions.  Understanding who does what and where they should go for help can be confusing for anyone, but particularly for migrant workers who sometimes do not speak English, likely do not understand how these systems work, and are often afraid to come forward with questions or concerns.  This is why we created MigrantWorker.gov.  It is a central repository of information for migrant workers.  It gets them the answers to the questions they need and links them quickly to the right agency.  We’ve also created short videos, meant to reach migrant workers through social media and on their phones, based on scenarios and common questions in a plain language and worker-friendly format.  

Finally, we know we need to reach migrant workers in their own language, and that is why we are delighted to expand MigrantWorker.gov with six new languages.  The development of these materials and the choice of languages was informed by input from migrant workers and their advocates as well as our analysis of the data.  Nothing would be possible without the extensive collaboration among other Department of Labor agencies in making this possible, including the Wage and Hour Division, the Assistant Secretary for Policy, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Women’s Bureau, and the Office of Public Affairs, which have been instrumental in ensuring the effectiveness and reach of MigrantWorker.gov.  We encourage you to explore MigrantWorker.gov and hope you will help us spread awareness among migrant workers and their communities about these resources.  

I’ll pass now to my colleague Elizabeth Peña, who is going to walk you through the website and the new content.  Elizabeth. 

MS PEÑA:  Thank you so much, Deputy Under Secretary Lee.  Hi, everyone.  Good afternoon.  My name is Elizabeth Peña, and I’m the advisor for ILAB.  

In this screen, you’ll be able to see as I speak a view of what MigrantWorker.gov is and the sections that we offer.  Like Deputy Under Secretary Lee stated, the website aims to provide a platform to answer common labor questions, inform migrant workers of their rights, and direct them to the resources available to them that can help them throughout their journey, from recruitment, to working in the United States, and to safely returning home.  

The website is set up in a simple question-and-answer format, where migrant workers could go directly and get the answers to the questions that are most commonly asked.  The website currently offers resources available in English, Spanish, Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Haitian Creole, Brazilian Portuguese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.  The website language and social media videos designed – were particularly designed with a gender lens, addressing also specific challenges faced by migrant women workers but also broadly applicable in many cases to all migrant workers.  

This website aims to raise awareness about the most commonly faced problems by migrant workers, and it highlights the Department of Labor’s commitment and efforts to protect migrant worker rights in partnership with all other USG agencies and other government partners, as well from the Consular Partnership Program and civil society stakeholders.  This website aims to strengthen collaboration and links across various initiatives and jurisdictions.

So the website currently has these following sections – a section on recruitment; on migrant worker rights; wages and hours; workplace safety and health, with significant new information, including transportation safety and information about heat; organizing rights; discrimination and harassment; retaliation; trafficking; support from your home country; how to file a claim; and other resources, like Workers’ Owed Wages pilot program from the Department of Labor, information on human trafficking, information on gender-based violence and harassment.  

And we are excited that with this new launch that occurred about a month ago new videos have been created covering the following topics – transportation safety, unlawful recruitment fees, the Wage and Hours Division Workers’ Owed Wages program, a video on providing urgent maternal protections for nursing mothers or the PUMP Act, document or passport retention, mental health and wellness, deportation threats, and a video on how to file a complaint. 

The previous videos that were launched in August 2023 included topics on recruitment fees, bathroom breaks, privacy and cleanliness, owed wages, paycheck issues, workplace safety, and excessive heat.  

From now until Labor Rights Week and Labor Day, we will be releasing more resources for migrant workers.  These will include three short know your rights comic-book-style graphics on common concerns related to housing and recruitment faced by workers in the H-2 visa program.  We’ll also be releasing videos in indigenous languages on migrant worker rights. 

We are rolling a lot of these resources through our DOL social media accounts, and we are encouraging amplification by other USG agencies, regional offices, our consular partnership program partners, embassies, consulates, and our stakeholder partners.  Links to this website have been added across USG agencies and dissemination through partnerships with foreign embassies and consulates will facilitate access to migrant workers.

So thank you very much.  

MODERATOR:   Thank you very much.  And we will now open up for questions.  For those journalists online, please raise your virtual hand and I will call on you.  And let’s start with Logan Church. 

QUESTION:   Hi there.  It is Logan Church from Television New Zealand.  Hope you can hear me.  I’m just wondering if you could perhaps explain for our audience, who are not in America, exactly what risks that migrant workers in particular face when they come to America and work in America?  Thank you.  

MS LEE:   Thank you, Logan, for the question.  I would say it’s a pretty broad question and it depends a little bit on the circumstances under which migrant workers come to the United States – if they come legally or illegally, on a visa, if they’re working in agriculture.  But we certainly have seen that even on the legal visa programs workers in agriculture sometimes can be subjected to heat stress.  Maybe migrant workers in general – and I would say this is not just in the United States but around the world – tend to be a little bit vulnerable to wage theft, to unpaid overtime hours, and issues like that.

So I think we just recognize in the United States, because we have a lot of folks who are coming who may have language challenges, who may or may not be here legally, that we want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to protect their rights.  So I think that they face a lot of challenges, maybe not even all that different from the challenges that American citizens might face, but because of some of the sectors that they’re employed in, because many of them are here temporarily and are unfamiliar with the systems, they’re unfamiliar with the laws, so they might – the laws in the United States, of course, are going to be different from the labor laws in other countries.  

So we just want to make sure that we are educating migrant workers so that they know their rights and can exercise their rights.  We also want to educate our own employers to make sure that they know how to recruit responsibility and how to comply with all applicable laws and standards. 

MODERATOR:   Thank you for that.  We’ll take our next question from Nigeria – Adaba Oyiza from Africa Related.  

QUESTION:   Yes, good afternoon.  Thank you so much for this.  My question is regarding your definitions of the difference between the migrant workers and undocumented workers, and then how you’d also react to criticism – so anybody who says that how are you able to extend this courtesy to migrant workers, possibly who are just coming in, when it is also known that the U.S. is home to a lot of workers that are not documented.  If you can just clarify these points for us, thank you.

MS LEE:  Thank you for the question.  I think for the purpose of MigrantWorker.gov and the resources that we’re providing here, we want those to be available to all workers in this country.  Some of them will be documented, some of them will be undocumented, but the truth is that American labor laws apply to workers, that people shouldn’t have to work long hours without pay, they should be able to exercise their rights, they should have a safe and healthy workplace, they should not be subject to violence or harassment.  So for this particular website, this resource that we’re providing, what we really want to reinforce is that every worker needs to be protected, and every worker should be able to be safe and healthy at work and get paid for the hours they do, get paid legally.  

So obviously there are different provisions, and workers who are undocumented tend to be more vulnerable.  They’re more precarious, they’re more fearful of coming forward, because they fear deportation and other risks.  

Elizabeth, do you want to add anything?

MS PEÑA:  Yeah.  And I think that was one of the most important things when we took upon looking at the research and talking to our stakeholders as well.  That difference, right – we did not want to make a difference between workers that were here with, like, a legal status or undocumented status.  Regardless of immigration status, they have rights as workers.  And we wanted to provide that within this website, that no matter how you are here in this country, you deserve to be treated fairly and you have all of these rights available and resources available to you.

MODERATOR:   Thank you.  We will take our next question from Patricia Caro from El Pais.  She asks:  “What does the department do for protecting workers from excessive heat?  Many states don’t have laws to protect them.”

MS LEE:  Thank you very much, Patricia, for that question.  This is something that the Labor Department is working to develop a heat standard that will be applicable, but we are in process of putting that in place.  But in the meantime, we just want to make sure that both employers and workers are aware of some of the risks of heat stress, that they are certainly provided water and rest breaks and some respite from the heat if possible.  So some of this is not at the level of law at this time, but it is at the level of, certainly, common sense and decency.  And we are working in the Department of Labor – our Occupational Safety and Health Administration is in process of developing and getting approval for and putting through the legislative system a new heat stress standard.  But in the meantime, we just want to make sure that people are taking good care and that that they’re getting protections they deserve to stay healthy, even during heat.

MODERATOR:   Thank you.  I don’t see any more hands raised, so I will do one final call for questions.  If you have a question, please raise your virtual hand and we will be happy to call on you.  And with that – oh, we do have one more question from Africa Related, Nigeria, again.  Adaba, do you want to go ahead with your question?  

And we have another question.  “What is the average time that an undocumented worker needs for his or her documents?”

MS LEE:  I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that off the top of my head, and I think it varies a lot.  Obviously the person is asking for the average time, but I’m afraid I don’t have that.  But we can – we can try to provide that to you, at least, Doris, and maybe that can be available at a later date.  

MODERATOR:   Thank you.  Thank you.  And Adaba, are you able to unmute yourself and ask your question?

QUESTION:   Yes.  Yes, thank you so much.  Again, I was just wondering what exists in other countries, if offices or agencies like yours exist within perhaps the European Union or in Britain.  I know in Greece we just heard about migrants that were thrown overboard.  There were testimonies from these individuals that experienced that.  So I was just wondering if you know of any of such offices like yours that also help to protect migrants abroad.  Thank you.

MS PEÑA:  Thank you so much for that question.  We – in ILAB we try to work with other countries as well to address these issues for migrant workers.  Cannot speak particularly to what offices may exist, but for example, we do closely – work closely with other countries – for example, Mexico – where they are able to provide kind of these resources for their migrant workers as well, and kind of give just a view of how we do things and kind of like guiding resources on how we address these issues for migrant workers.  Like we mentioned, in the consular partnership program, we partner with other countries as well.  Right now, we currently have partnerships with the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, where we provide also these resources for them.  

I don’t know, Thea, if you’d like to add anything.  

MS LEE:  Yeah.  Thank you for that question.  I mean, just in a very general sense, I would say – because I’ve been in this job a little over three years now and I’ve traveled all over the world.  And I think migrant workers in many countries face a lot of challenges around vulnerability, about exploitation, about not being able to join a union, for example, to exercise their rights to freedom of association.  And recruitment fees and debt bondage can be a particular problem, that workers come to work and the recruitment process – which happens sometimes below the radar – that it’s not aboveboard, there aren’t – there isn’t transparency and clarity in that process – that can be a real problem area.  

And that’s why we’re so pleased to partner with the International Labor Organization.  The ILO is bringing together countries so that we can share best practices, so that we can understand what some of the challenges are that workers are facing around the world, but also work together to start with the sending country, the receiving country, and everything in between so that before workers ever leave home, we want to give them some resources about what their rights are, what they can expect, what’s fair, and what isn’t fair.  

And then when they come to the United States, of course but even when they go back home again, as many do, that they also have a nice pathway towards reintegration or retraining.  Or they can take, maybe, the languages they’ve accumulated and put that to use.  So I think this is an ongoing process, and I think it’s a challenge in many parts of the world, and other countries are stepping up with different resources.  But I think this is unique and we’re proud of it, and we look forward to sharing it with other governments.

MODERATOR:   Thank you.  We are out of time for questions.  I will turn it back to our briefers for any closing remarks.

MS PEÑA:  Yes.  Thank you so much for the opportunity, for giving us the space to share MigrantWorker.gov/ TrabajadorMigrante.gov .  We are excited to be able to share it and to keep expanding this, including more resources.  If there are any questions, please, you can always let us know.  Reach out.  We’re happy to share these resources.  We’re happy to conduct interviews, more briefings about MigrantWorker.gov, and hope that they can get into the hands of migrant workers.  So thank you very much.

MODERATOR:   Thank you.  

MS LEE:  And thank you, Elizabeth.  Thank you, Doris.  Many thanks to the Foreign Press Center for hosting us today.  And we just invite you to go to the website, check it out, and then share with us any information, or whether you have any ideas or concepts for how we could improve and strengthen it because it is a work in progress.  And we are constantly putting together new resources, new videos, new languages that we hope will serve a lot of populations well.  So thank you again for joining us.  Thank you, Doris, for hosting us. (Inaudible.)

MODERATOR:   And a special thank you to our briefers today and thank you to the journalists who joined us this afternoon.  And this concludes today’s briefing.

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Migrant Workers in Kuwait: The Role of State Institutions

Attiya Ahmad

The treatment of migrant domestic workers is one of the defining stories told about the Arab Gulf states. Every year hundreds of news media and human rights reports detailing migrant domestic workers’ experiences of exploitation and abuse circulate globally. The narratives of these accounts are remarkably consistent. They often begin with the story of an impoverished woman from the global South, who, in order to improve the situation of her family, migrates to the oil-rich Gulf states in search of work and a more prosperous future. Confined to the household, she works long, arduous hours, and is subjected to the dictates and whims of her employers, who may withhold her salary, force her to work under unconscionable conditions, or abuse her physically and sexually. Explanations for this occurrence of abuse and exploitation are usually taken as self-evident — having to do with the cruel logic of asymmetrical power relations between the haves and have-nots, the rich and the poor, the master and the maid.

This essay, which is based on over two years of research in Kuwait and South Asia, focuses on the changes in how states have sought to govern migrant domestic workers — a realm often elided in these accounts. I argue that in order to effectively redress the situation of migrant domestic workers in Kuwait, and the Gulf more generally, we must account for the gendered ways in which certain migrant populations and categories of work come to be included or disregarded by state institutions, and the important role played by labor recruitment agencies as intermediaries between domestic workers, employers, and governments.

The oil boom of the mid-1970s marks the beginning of domestic workers’ large-scale migration to Kuwait. Flush with petrodollars, Kuwaitis increasingly began hiring women to cook and clean, as well as care for their children and the elderly. Having domestic workers became an expected, often taken for granted part of Kuwaitis’ everyday lives and their understanding of themselves as modern, affluent subjects. Fewer Kuwaiti women, however, were willing or found it necessary to undertake paid domestic work.

Demand for domestic workers was met through the recruitment of women from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and more recently, East Africa. Wave after wave of these women migrated to the Gulf due to the worsening economic situation of their home countries, a situation that had developed because of their countries’ spiraling trade deficits and foreign debts brought about by oil price hikes. From the mid-1970s to the late 2000s, Kuwait’s migrant domestic worker population grew from 12,000 to 500,000, and the percentage of Kuwaiti households employing domestic workers increased from 13% to 90% . [1]

Kuwaiti state institutions were initially unable — and unwilling — to manage this burgeoning population. Led by the Al Sabah family, the country’s ruling elite, state formation in Kuwait was focused on two interrelated objectives: the control and distribution of the country’s oil revenues through the development of state welfare institutions, and the production and consolidation of Kuwait’s national body through the activities of these rentier state institutions. [2] Kuwait’s private sector was carved out in contradistinction to the state, one ceded to the country’s influential merchant families and nascent entrepreneurial class. [3] Within this context, the everyday governance of migrants working in the private sector became the responsibility of their kafeel — citizens who sponsored, employed, and acted as guarantors for migrant workers. [4]

Similar to construction workers, street cleaners, sales associates, company managers, and other migrant worker populations, migrant domestic workers’ everyday activities were regulated by the kefalah system. Domestic workers, however, did not fall under the purview of Kuwait’s labor laws. Kuwait’s labor laws were passed in 1964, before the large scale influx of migrant domestic workers. Similar to labor laws throughout the world, domestic work was excluded from the provisions of Kuwait’s labor laws. A gendered understanding of “labor” underpins these laws, one in which work undertaken within the household, the work of social reproduction, is not considered “labor.”

Despite this, domestic workers who experienced problems — an estimated 10% of the total population, the bulk of which pertain to salary or contract disputes (7-8%) and the rest to incidents of physical and sexual abuse (2-3%) [5] — were not without recourse. They could file criminal charges in situations of physical or sexual abuse, and file civil legal cases related to contract disputes. Few did so, however, due to language barriers, and to the widespread perception that the courts were favorably disposed towards Kuwaiti citizens, or were unable to properly address the types of contracts disputes domestic workers had. More often than not, when disputes or conflicts arose, domestic workers would seek informal assistance from friends and family members (should they have any in Kuwait), or formal assistance from embassies, officials, or representatives from labor recruitment agencies.

Under increasing pressure from their embassies, overseas citizens, and informed domestic populations, the governments of labor-sending countries began adopting policies to redress the situation of their migrant domestic worker populations in the Gulf. [6] Formerly, labor-sending states had played a minimal role in these matters. The reasons were myriad and overlapping: governments typically focused on the policing of migrants coming into their countries rather than those leaving; they were concerned with the governance of populations within their borders; they have limited jurisdiction to assist citizens residing abroad; and the state institutions of these countries had been systematically dismantled or crippled by years of structural adjustment programs in financing their foreign debts.

The policies that these governments eventually adopted — restricting or banning the outmigration of women to the Arab Gulf states, and imposing stipulations on domestic workers’ contracts — had limited, and in many cases contradictory effects. Labor-sending states had little capacity to enforce contract stipulations, and with the exception of Pakistan, the out-migration of women from these regions continued unabated. Migrant domestic workers circumvented restrictions placed on their out-migration by traveling via third party countries. [7] Considered illegal by their home countries, their journeys to the Arab Gulf states became more hazardous, subject to the workings of grey and black markets, and the arbitrary actions of government officials at the interstices of these realms. Once in Kuwait, these migrant women could no longer, or could not easily, seek the assistance of their home country embassies.

Faced with dwindling options in the face of difficulties, domestic workers began seeking assistance from the Kuwaiti labor agencies involved in their recruitment. Initially conceiving of themselves as market intermediaries, these agencies increasingly (and in many cases reluctantly) started to take on state-like functions. They mediated and adjudicated problems between domestic workers and their employers. They developed systems to ensure domestic workers’ regular and timely pay. Some also established temporary lodging facilities (i.e., shelters), provided legal assistance, and started insurance programs for domestic workers. In Kuwait, labor agencies also developed a union responsible for coordination between and the policing of members, and for lobbying and coordinating collaborative efforts with state governments. In the late 2000s, they played an instrumental role in the passing of new laws related to migrant domestic workers — laws which included a minimum wage requirement, stipulated work hours, and rest times, and that outlined the responsibilities of both domestic workers and their employers. Labor agencies also became the intermediaries through which labor-sending states began overseeing and regulating the situation of their migrant domestic worker population in the Gulf. Labor agencies had to register with Labor and Foreign Affairs Ministries within labor-sending states, and had to receive permission from these institutions before seeking to recruit women from these countries. Labor agencies acquired these permits only by passing the evaluations conducted on an ongoing basis by embassy officials overseas.

The focus of much reporting on the situation of domestic workers in the Arab Gulf region is on their relationships with their employers. Extending labor laws and abolishing the kefalah system are often presented as means of redressing the exploitation and abuse experienced by these migrant women. In this essay, I have discussed briefly issues elided and presupposed by these reports; namely, the difficulty state legal systems have had in recognizing domestic work as “labor” due to gendered understandings of the term, the problems state legal systems have had in adjudicating this realm of work, and the willingness — and capacity — of states to reform the kefalah system and improve the everyday experiences of migrant domestic workers. In discussing these matters, this essay also has underscored the significant role played by labor recruitment agencies in the formation of Kuwait’s domestic work sector. Their activities, in turn, point to the important role played by state-like institutions in not only knitting together global processes, but in mediating and facilitating state institutions’ ability to expand their governance of their transnational citizens in a global context.

[1] . Nasra Shah et al., “Foreign Domestic Workers in Kuwait: Who Employs How Many,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal , Vol. 11, No. 2 (2002), pp. 247-69.

[2] . Jill Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Jill Crystal, Kuwait: The Transformation of an Oil State (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992) .

[3] . Crystal, Oil and Politics in the Gulf and Kuwait: The Transformation of an Oil State .

[4] . Anh Nga Longva, Walls Built on Sand: Migration, Exclusion and Society in Kuwait (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997); and Anh Nga Longva, “Keeping Migrant Workers in Check: The Kafala System in the Gulf,” Middle East Report, No. 211, Trafficking and Transiting: New Perspectives on Labor Migration (Summer 1999), pp. 20-22.

[5] . This figure was one widely used and circulated by embassy officials, human rights activists, labor agencies, ministry officials, police officers, lawyers, and others involved in Kuwait’s domestic work sector.

[6] . Examples include: 1) migration restrictions and bans passed by the governments of Pakistan (mid and late 1970s), Bangladesh (early 1980s), India (early 1990s and late 1990s), the Philippines (late 1980s), and Nepal (late 1990s); and 2) contract stipulations passed by the governments of Pakistan (mid-1970s), India (mid-1990s and 2007), the Philippines (2006), Sri Lanka (fall 2007), and Indonesia (fall 2007).

[7] . For example, Nepali women traveled via India, and Indian women traveled via Sri Lanka.

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors’ views. For a listing of MEI donors, please click here .

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Essay On Migrant Domestic Workers

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Workplace , Human Resource Management , People , Family , Lebanon , Middle East , Families , Lebanese

Words: 1600

Published: 03/08/2023

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The article “Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon: An unjust system, how should individuals act?” by Siba Harb is in the context of Lebanon and highlights about the exploitation of the domestic workers who work for Lebanese families. There are 200,000 people who are currently employed by Lebanese families; these people belong to the poor countries like the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and they are able to stay in Lebanon on a work visa. These people are mistreated by the recruitment agents in their home countries, and once they are in Lebanon, they are again mistreated in the form of non-provision of fair work rights by their sponsors. The author presents two options to prevent this exploitation; one is to stop sponsoring these people so that no one can exploit them and second is to sponsor them and sent humane working terms. The second argument as an option is much more logical and practical because people would be able to earn a decent wage without getting mistreated. Lebanon is situated in the Middle East and is not a very prosperous country when it comes to economic and financial stability. The wealth of the nation is stagnated in a few hands, and these hands are responsible for running both the business and the government of the country. The power distance in Lebanon is on the higher side which means that the less fortunate or, the less powerful have agreed upon and have accepted that they are inferior to those who rule over them and that they will always remain the same. The rich families in the country, however, are very fortunate to be living in a country in which there is little influence of law on the wealthy.

Introduction and Background:

The article “Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon: An unjust system, how should individuals act?” by Siba Harb is based on Lebanon and details about the misuse of the poor domestic workers who work for the Lebanese people.

Difference in Rights of Workers:

The issuer of this visa is the sponsor, the family that is using the services of these domestic workers. The issuer also has the liberty to decide on the working terms with these workers as per their requirement and demand because the contract does not come under the labor law of Lebanon. Hence, the rights reserved by the workers of this sort are not the same as those reserved by a local Lebanese worker. This includes the provision of a minimum wage according to the law and provision of safe and inhabitable living environment.

Role of Lebanese Families in the Issue:

Unfortunately, the Lebanese families do not make an effort in improving the lifestyle and compensation of these domestic workers. Because most of these workers are women, they are usually afraid of getting beaten up by their masters. Furthermore, they are very under-educated and hence are unable to manage themselves on their own in the unfamiliar state where they are reliant solely on their sponsor for everything.

Opinions Presented by the Author:

Option A by the Author: Rationale Behind the Option A: She believes that the inhumane treatment that is carried out towards these migrants while they are on their way is very heartbreaking as they are treated and transported like animals who fall ill and even die on their way due to poor conveyance methods. The recruitment procedures in the home countries of these workers cannot be stopped. These procedures are very dehumanizing according to the author.

Recruitment Agents:

These workers have to go through agents who carry out the activity of supplying these workers to Lebanese families. These agents mistreat these people in their home countries by asking them for money in exchange to preferring them to be sent to Lebanon. The people of these poor countries are in such bad shape that they find slavery in Lebanon as the best source of their income. This is exploited by these agents as they make money from these people and send them to Lebanon where they are treated slightly better than slavery as per the author’s comments. According to her, if the people take the initiative and stop demanding these workers, then the inhumane activities cannot take place at the front or the backstage.

Option B by the Author:

Another option that she presents for stopping inhumane treatment of domestic workers in Lebanon that people can do on their individual levels is that they can employ these people to work in their homes but settle kind and relaxing terms with them that are at a humane level. This would mean that the pain that these people went through while in the recruitment process or that of traveling ends there.

Rationale of the Author Behind Option B:

The sponsor should set the wages and working rights of these people in a fair manner that they are the same and equal to the rights enjoyed by the local workers of Lebanon. This would enable these workers to spend a normal life that is less exploited and at a humane level. This way, at least the workers who have left their families far behind for little money can earn a decent wage to send back home and live respectfully.

Personal Argument to Resolve the Issue:

The option B presented by the author is a much more solid and very practical solution to this issue that can be done at an individual level. Although, the actions of an individual do not shift the tide of the entire society very quickly, but they do start making a difference. The people who find a need to employ a domestic worker can sponsor a worker from a poor country but settle good and fair terms with him or her so that he or she can make this opportunity worthwhile.

Why is Option B Preferable over the Alternative?

This argument is stronger as compared to the option one presented by the author because of its practicality. It can be argued that even of the demand is diminished and the people become aware and stop sponsoring these workers from overseas; the exploitation carried out against these people will only change shape. Because these people have virtually nothing to do back in their own countries, refraining from sponsoring these people would seemingly be a further increase in the problems for these people as they would lose the only source of income that they might have. One thing that has to be understood here is that the people who work in Lebanese families are neither smuggled in nor are they there by force. These are people who are willing to work as slaves in rich families’ homes so that they can earn a decent wage and send some livelihood back to their homes. Given the fact that there is such a condition of these people back home, it is almost inevitable that the agents in their countries that are already exploiting them would further keep on doing so. In fact, if the Lebanese families stop sponsoring these workers, their wages would plunge even further because they would lose their demand and bargaining power. Therefore, it is a very impractical thing to do, to stop sponsoring domestic migrant workers in Lebanon. The best practice would be to keep sponsoring them but setting fair terms of working with them. This would ensure that the migrants get paid a decent wage for their work, enough money that justifies their sacrifice that they have made in the form of staying away from their families and homes whilst working in other people’s homes as full-time employees. This is a practical thing to do for a Lebanese family that they take good care of the worker who is working in their home and that they pay them a decent wage. They can also go the extra mile and occasionally help their worker in taking care of his or her family by providing financial help to the worker for their child’s education and for medical treatments. It is not improbable that the initiative taken by a single person cannot spread wide into the society. When people notice positive behavior and treatment of a sponsor towards his or her worker from overseas, there is developed a tendency amongst the other people in the society that they can do good too. Hence, the entire society would gradually get encourage to have positive treatment towards these workers. It is on the part of every person who lives in Lebanon and demands the service of a domestic worker from overseas that they establish fair terms of working with their workers and these terms should not be exploitative towards these people so that they can benefit from their initiative of coming to work from so far away. There is nothing to lose for the Lebanese families who accommodate the workers of poor overseas countries in fact they can expect the vision of the entire society to change with the help of their initiative.

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