Insights into Forced Labour Among Child Domestic Workers: Evidence from Urban Nepal

2018 ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Maame Esi Woode
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Forced Labour

scholarly journals Where to Look for Change?

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
Vera Pavlou
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Significant Growth ◽  
Modern Slavery ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Migration Law ◽  
Corrective Lens ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Abstract Once an overlooked theme in legal scholarship, the legal treatment of migrant domestic workers has recently seen a significant growth of scholarly interest. In European legal scholarship, much of the focus has been on severe forms of exploitation such as slavery, forced labour and trafficking. While extreme abuses of migrant domestic workers certainly do take place in Europe, they are only part of the story. This article critiques the turn to modern slavery and trafficking as the dominant frame for analysing migrant domestic workers’ vulnerability in Europe and proposes a corrective lens. I argue that it is instead more useful, and potentially more deeply transformative, to comparatively examine the role of national labour and migration law regimes in the regulation of migrant domestic workers, as well as, the role of eu law in constructing and challenging these regimes.

scholarly journals Human Trafficking in the Context of Global Migration: Modern Manifestation of De Facto Slavery, Servitude and Forced or Compulsory Labour

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-215
Author(s):  
Manisuli Ssenyonjo
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
Work Permit ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Diplomatic Immunity

Abstract In recent years there has been a significant increase in trafficking in human beings as a global phenomenon. COVID-19 pandemic created conditions that increased the number of persons who were vulnerable to human trafficking and disrupted current and planned anti-trafficking initiatives. Human trafficking treats human beings as commodities to be bought and sold and put to forced labour often for lower or no payment. This constitutes a modern form of de facto slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. This article provides an overview of international law on human trafficking and considers response to human trafficking in Africa. It further considers whether diplomats can be held accountable for exploitation of migrant domestic workers in receiving States. It further examines whether diplomatic immunity can be used as a bar to the exercise of jurisdiction by domestic courts and tribunals of a state which hosts the diplomat (the ‘receiving state’) in cases of employment of a trafficked person by a former or serving diplomat. It ends by considering whether trafficked persons should be held to bear individual criminal responsibility for crimes they have committed (or were compelled to commit) in the course, or as a direct consequence, of having been trafficked. Such crimes may include unlawful entry into, presence or residence in another country of transit or destination, working without a work permit, sex work, and use of false identity/false passport.

Domestic workers’ lived realities of empowerment and disempowerment within the South African labour legislative context: Two sides of the same “coin”

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-83
Author(s):  
Christel Marais ◽  
Christo Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Phenomenological Research ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Employment Relationship ◽  
Employee Voice ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
Phenomenological Research Design ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Elusive Concept

South Africa is heralded as a global ambassador for the rights of domestic workers. Empowerment, however, remains an elusive concept within the sector. Fear-based disempowerment still characterises the employment relationship, resulting in an absence of an employee voice. The dire need to survive renders this sector silent. This article explores the role that legislative awareness can play in the everyday lives of domestic workers. By means of a post-positive, forwardlooking positive psychological and phenomenological research design the researchers sought to access the voiced experiences of domestic workers within their employment context. Consequently, purposive, respondent-driven selfsampling knowledgeable participants were recruited. In-depth interviewing generated the data. The distinct voice of each participant was noted during an open inductive approach to data analysis. Findings indicated that empowerment was an unknown construct for all participants. They lacked the confidence to engage their employers on employment issues. Nevertheless, domestic workers should embrace ownership and endeavour to empower themselves. This would sanction their right to assert their expectations of employment standards with confidence and use the judicial system to bring about compliant actions. The article concludes with the notion that legislative awareness could result in empowered actions though informed employee voices.

“We cannot discriminate against someone without an eye or a leg … But I do look at obesity”: Statistical discrimination and employers’ recruitment strategies at housecleaning service companies in Johannesburg

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
David Du Toit
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Domestic Work ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Recruitment Strategies ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Recruitment Process ◽  
Demographic Profile ◽  
Job Seeking ◽  
Service Companies ◽  
Personal Skills

The landscape of paid domestic work has changed considerably in recent years with the growth in the number of housecleaning service companies in South Africa and elsewhere. Housecleaning service companies transform domestic work into a service economy where trained domestic workers render a professional cleaning service to clients. In South Africa, little is known about the factors that employers at housecleaning service companies take into consideration during the selection and recruitment process. A key feature of paid domestic work is the gender, class and race constructions of domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are women, usually women of colour, from low socio-economic backgrounds. Whether we are seeing a change in the demographic profile of domestic workers with the growth of housecleaning service companies remains unclear. This paper therefore focuses on the recruitment strategies of employers at selected housecleaning service companies in Johannesburg in an attempt to shed light on the challenges that jobseeking domestic workers may face. Open-ended interviews with managers revealed that gender, race, age, long-term unemployment, and technical and personal skills of job-seeking domestic workers have a strong impact on the recruitment process, while immigration status plays a somewhat reduced role. This paper concludes that housecleaning service companies have not changed the demographic profile of domestic workers in South Africa yet, and that paid domestic work is still predominantly a black woman’s job.

Book Reviews

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-137
Author(s):  
Sabine von Mering ◽  
Luke B. Wood ◽  
J. Nicholas Ziegler ◽  
John Bendix ◽  
Marcus Colla ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Forced Labour

Dolores L. Augustine, Taking on Technocracy: Nuclear Power in Germany, 1945 to the Present (New York: Berghahn Books, 2018)Michael Meng and Adam R. Seipp, Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017)Cynthia Miller-Idriss, The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017)Constantin Goschler, ed. Compensation in Practice: The Foundation ‘Remembrance, Responsibility and Future’ and the Legacy of Forced Labour during the Third Reich (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017)Albert Earle Gurganus, Kurt Eisner: A Modern Life (Rochester: Camden House, 2018)Claudia Sternberg, Kira Gartzou-Katsouyanni, and Kalypso Nicolaïdis, The Greco-German Affair in the Euro Crisis: Mutual Recognition Lost? (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018)

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