Aux Pays-Bas, les travailleuses domestiques migrantes font actuellement campagne sur plusieurs fronts pour avoir davantage de droits, pour que leurs droits soient mieux protégés en tant que travailleurs, pour réclamer l'aide sociale, et pour le droit de résider et de travailler aux Pays-Bas. Depuis 2006, elles reçoivent l'appui des syndicats néerlandais. Bien que les soins à domicile et les services ménagers aux Pays-Bas suivent traditionnellement la ligne de faille fondée sur le sexe et qui démarque la main-d'œuvre payée et non payée, on accorde davantage de place aux autres lignes de faille qui distinguent les citoyens des étrangers, et le groupe ethnique dominant des minorités ethniques. Pour assurer le succès d'une campagne menée en collaboration avec les travailleuses domestiques migrantes sans papier et les syndicats néerlandais, il faudra réconcilier les besoins et les désirs d'un groupe de plus en plus divers de travailleuses. Dans le présent article, l'auteure décrit les intérêts divergents, les possibilités de collaboration et les contraintes politiques qui marquent la situation actuelle des travailleuses domestiques aux Pays-Bas, qu'elles soient migrantes ou de souche. Les propositions actuelles pour revoir la loi sur l'immigration aux Pays-Bas peuvent non seulement inspirer une campagne concertée visant à améliorer la situation de toutes ces travailleuses, mais aussi soulever de nouveaux défis. Pour arriver à donner du travail décent à toutes les travailleuses domestiques, il faudra éventuellement chercher au-delà de l'horizon national, en tentant à distribuer plus équitablement les soins, de protéger la main-d'œuvre et d'assurer des avantages sociaux à toutes les travailleuses à l'échelle mondiale.
This article discusses the changing role that work performed in private homes has played, and continues to play, in migration law in the Netherlands and at the EU level. It explores to what degree work performed in the home is defined as (exploitative) contractual labour or as inherent to family life, and what this means for claims to residence rights as a precursor to citizenship. It does this by reviewing case law of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) and of the European Court of Human Rights (EctHR) against the background of the Dutch case. It reveals tension between how citizenship is constructed and reproduced at the national level and how it is constructed and reproduced at the EU level. Following Adam McKeown, this article concludes that different perspectives on (reproductive) labour as a qualification for citizenship may reflect different perspectives on (reproductive) labour and the quality of citizenship.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS• Third Country Nationals must be allowed to reside in the EU with their EU children, to ensure the latter's effective enjoyment of fundamental rights.• Policies to combat trafficking of domestic workers must respect family life.• Family migration policies must allow individual family members enough scope to resist exploitation within families.• Policies concerning labour protection, social protection and migration should no longer take the breadwinner-citizen as point of departure, but the current reality of flexible labour relations in which the distinctions between home and work, and between employment and self-employment, are no longer sharply defined.
Feminist and post-colonial theorists challenge the supposed neutrality of international human rights law which, in their view, should be seen as a product of asymmetrical power relations. On the basis of this premise, it seems unlikely that single and divorced migrant mothers from outside of the EU will be able to mobilize international human rights law to their advantage. And yet, after twenty years of litigation, single and divorced migrant mothers in the Netherlands are now fi nally able to claim their right to respect for family life and reunite with children left behind in their countries of origin. Th is chapter seeks to explain how this increase in human rights protection could come about. While some litigants are less powerful than others, they do not always stand alone. Increasing the scope of analyses makes it possible to include case law produced by more powerful actors. Th eir gains can off er strategic opportunities to those less powerful.
Keywordsadmission of children als family migrants; family migration policy; gender and immigration law; respect for family law
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