Thinking Policy Through Migrant Domestic Workers’ Itineraries

Abstract

This article summarizes key findings from our research on Indonesian and Filipino migrant domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates to reflect on their implications for policy. To illustrate the patterns we have observed, the article traces the migration biographies of two women, one from West Java and one from the Philippines, and it then asks what their experiences reveal about the policy landscape. We find, in concert with a large body of literature on social policy for migrants, that in many cases the policies that currently exist—and the gaps in these policies—are themselves central to producing the problems that migrant domestic workers face. Thus, we focus not on what states or international organizations can do in terms of policy improvements per se, but more generally on how the policy context is part and parcel of the broader social world that affects migrant workers’ welfare over the course of their migration biographies.

Work-Related Aggression in Home-Based Working Environment: Experiences of Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

“…Female migrants accounted for 73.4% of this growing population of domestic workers. Such patterns contribute to the feminization of labor migration (Herrera, 2013), a growing global trend as many women from rural areas and the developing world respond to labor shortages in caregiving industries in advanced economies, especially the increasing demand for caregivers in family homes (Hochschild, 2000; Sassen, 1984; Silvey & Parreñas, 2020).…”

Geographies of migration I: Platform migration

“…'Multinational migration' is a more recent observation (Paul, 2017) and is taken to refer to 'the varied movements of international migrants across more than one overseas destination with significant time spent in each overseas country' (Paul and Yeoh, 2020: 2). This pattern has been observed among migrant domestic workers in particular (Francisco-Menchavez, 2020;Paul, 2017;Silvey and Parreñas, 2020), although it is also identified among working migrants in other globalised sectors such as nursing (Walton-Roberts, 2020), agriculture (Collins and Bayliss, 2020) and sex work (Hwang, 2017). Multinational migrations are particularly apparent in Asia (Paul and Yeoh, 2020) and Europe (Ahrens et al, 2016), reflecting the establishment of socially sustained channels of migration (Findlay and Li, 1998), migration industries (Cranston et al, 2018) and broader infrastructures connecting migrants to opportunities to move at multiple points on migration trajectories (Lin et al, 2017).…”

Filipino and Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong: Their Life Courses in Migration

“…For example, efforts should be made to protect the work environment–/condition–related rights of those migrant helpers who were first-time migrants later than age 40. More generally and more important, the policy context is integral of the larger society (Silvey & Parreñas, 2020), together with the larger society, policies can significantly affect migrant workers’ welfare over their life courses.…”