Migrant domestic workers are (according to the International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 189 and the International Organization for Migration) any persons "moving to another country or region to better their material or social conditions and improve the prospect for themselves or their family," engaged in a work relationship performing "in or for a household or households."
Domestic work itself encompasses an array of tasks and services that vary depending on country, age, gender, ethnic background and migration status of the workers involved.
Prominent discussions on the topic include the status of workers, reasons behind the pursue in this labour, recruitment and employment practices in the field, and various measures being undertaken to change the conditions of domestic work among migrants.
Migrant domestic workers in the world The status of migrant domestic workers is unique in the field of labor, due to the site of their employment: the home. The domestic sphere, by definition, "is imagined as a place for private individuals, not political or indeed market actors." Due to their embeddedness in what can be considered the "private sphere", some analysts have gone so far as to equate domestic laborers with members of the employers’ families, a dynamic made all the more complex by these workers' status as migrants. Historically, they have not been regarded as the same form of labor as manufacturers or doctors. From the end of the Second World War until the mid-1980s, for instance, "most ILO Conventions explicitly excluded domestic workers from the protections afforded by most employment Conventions."
The lack of knowledge concerning the composition of this workforce has been attributed to this historical lack of attention and advocacy. Current estimates place the number of domestics anywhere between 53 and 100 million. The ILO, in 2010, projected the following distribution of domestic workers throughout the world: Region Domestic Workers Percentage of women Developed Countries 3 555 000 73% Eastern Europe/CIS 595 000 67% Asia/Pacific 21 467 000 81% Latin America/Caribbean 19 593 000 92% Africa 5 236 000 74% Middle East 2 107 000 63% Source: Domestic workers across the world: Global and regional statistics and the extent of legal protection, International Labour Organization. Geneva. 2013
Domestic work is a highly gendered profession. Globally, 83% of domestic workers are women, of whom a majority are women migrant workers. However, due, to "the heterogeneity, irregularity and invisibility of domestic and care work," statistics can never be comprehensive.
Relationship with international migration
The migration of domestic workers can lead to several different effects both on the countries that are sending workers abroad and countries that are receiving domestic workers from abroad. One particular relationship between countries sending workers and countries receiving workers is that the sending country can be filling gaps in labor shortages of the receiving country."Who needs migrant workers? Introduction to the analysis of staff shortages, immigration and public policy". Bridget Anderson and Martin Ruhs, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) University of Oxford Working draft: 11 May 2009
This relationship can be potentially beneficial for both countries involved because the demand for labor is being met and fulfilled by workers' demand for jobs. This relationship however can prove to be quite complicated and not always beneficial. When unemployment in a receiving country rises migrant domestic workers are not only no longer needed but their presence can be detrimental to domestic workers of that country.
When international migration began to flourish the assumed migrant worker was typically considered to be a man. What studies are now starting to show is that women are dominating large numbers of the international migration patterns by taking up large percentages of domestic workers that leave their home country in search for work as a domestic laborer in another country.WOMEN AND MIGRATION: The Social Consequences of Gender, Silvia Pedraza, Department of Sociology and Program in American Culture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Women who migrate to take up work as domestic workers are motivated by different reasons and migrate to a variety of different outcomes. While for many women, domestic work abroad is the only opportunity to find work and provide an income for their families, domestic labor is a market they are forced to enter due to blocked mobility in their homelands.INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, DOMESTIC WORK, AND CARE WORK Undocumented Latina Migrants in Israel, Rebeca Raijman, University of Haifa, Israel, SILVINA SCHAMMAH-GESSER and ADRIANA KEMP, Tel Aviv University
Additionally, migrant domestic workers often have to face the stress of leaving family members behind in their home countries while they take up work abroad. Upward mobility is particularly difficult for migrant domestic workers because their opportunities are often limited by their illegal status putting a very definite limitation on the work that is available to them as well as their power to negotiate with employers"Ways to Come, Ways to Leave: Gender, Mobility, and Il/legality among Ethiopian Domestic Workers in Yemen", Gender & Society; 2010 24: 237, Marina De Regt
Advocacy for migrant workers
Some argue that personal sacrifices of domestic workers has helped to underpin economic and social development globally. Ariel Salleh's article "Ecological Debt: Embodied Debt", defines embodied debt as "debt owed by the Global North and Global South to the 'reproductive workers' who produce and maintain the new labour force."Ariel Salleh, ed. "Ecological Debt: Embodied Debt," in Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice (Pluto Press: London, 2009) 5. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), women constitute 80% of domestic workers.
The substantially high percentage of women in domestic work some argue results from this sector's association with motherhood, leading to an assumption that domestic work is by nature the work of females. In support, some argue that because domestic work occurs within the private sphere, which is seen as inherently feminine. This argument goes that the constructed link between domestic work and femininityJindy Pettman. "Migration," in Gender Matters in Global Politics ed. Laura Shepherd (Routledge, New York: 2010) 257. carries the implication that it is often referred to as 'domestic help,' and that domestic workers are referred to as 'nannies' or 'maids.' At least one author has argued that use of language compounded with the association with domestic work with femininities contributes to the exclusion of domestic work from the majority of national labour laws.Salleh, "Ecological Debt: Embodied Debt," 3.
Due to a lack of economic opportunity in the Global South, many women with families leave their countries of origin and their own families to pursue work in the Global North. When they arrive in their country of destination, their work often entails caring for another family (including children and the elderly). Domestic workers often migrate to financially support their immediate family, extended family, and even other members of their community. While enduring dangerous and demeaning working and living conditions in the North, the majority of their wages are remitted to their countries of origin.Jindy Pettman, "Migration," in Gender Matters in Global Politics ed. Laura Shepherd (Routledge, New York: 2010) 257.
An additional argument has been made that because their work takes place within the private sphere, they are often rendered invisible and employers are able to withhold their travel documents, confining them to their employers' home and inhibiting their access to legal redress. Those making this argument assert that the result of what they refer to as a power dynamic and an asserted lack of labour rights, is that domestic workers are often forbidden to contact their families and often go months, years, and even decades without seeing their families, whose lives their remittances are supporting.
Further, it has been argued that their ability to fill labour shortages and accept positions within the reproductive labour force that citizens of their host countries would reject underpins the development of the global capitalist system,Pettman, Jindy, "Migration," 257. Simultaneously, and that they are enabling the beneficiaries of their remittances in the South to ascend the social ladder. To some, these arguments lead to a conclusion that both circumstances in the North and South constitute embodied debt through the improvement of one's life at the expense of another's hardship, and that the labour of such workers is too often not seen as work, due to the association of their gendered bodies with reproductive labour.
However, on June 17, 2011, after 70 years of lobbying by civil society groups, the ILO adopted a convention with the aim of protecting and empowering domestic workers. Much of lobbying that contributed toward the ratification of ILO C189 was done by domestic workers groups, demonstrating that they are not merely victims but agents of change. That only two labour receiving countries have ratified the convention has been argued by some to demonstrates the reluctance of governments to acknowledge what such advocates see as a debt owed by society to such workers and to repay that perceived debt.
Such advocates assert that the ratification and enforcement of ILO C189 would mean that migrant domestic workers would enjoy the same labour rights as other more 'masculine' fields as well as the citizens of their destination countries. An incomplete list of basic rights guaranteed by ILO C189 under Article 7 includes: maximum working hours; fixed minimum wages; paid leave; provision of food and accommodation; and weekly rest periods. Guaranteeing these rights to migrant domestic workers would not constitute repayment the embodied debt owed to them, but they are entitled to these rights as they are both workers and human beings.
Regulations and conventions
The fact that domestic work is often relegated to the private sphere, coupled with the sometimes-illegal status of these migrants, has created a sparse regulatory environment. As cited above, for example, the ILO had purposefully excluded domestic workers from their labor regulations. However, increasing advocacy, coupled with the increasingly transnational element of domestic work prompted the drafting of Convention 189, "Domestic Workers Convention, 2011," which mandated rest hours, a minimum wage, some freedom of movement, a clearly worded working contract before migrating, and a right to live outside of their workplace.
Though this convention passed with a majority of votes, it has thus far only been ratified by Uruguay and the Philippines, both net sending countries. The ILO is not the only international organization attempting to regulate this field, however. The European Parliament drafted a resolution, submitted to the European Commission, calling for domestics’ inclusion in future labour legislation, to take into account their unique work environment, and give training, social security, and set work hours to domestic workers. This has yet to be adopted or change international regulation, though. As such, the regulation of migrant domestic labor is left to individual states, which, as will be examined, has led to abuses.
Drivers for demand and supply for migrant domestic workers
Supply