Employing Migrant Domestic Workers in Urban Yemen: A New Form of Social Distinction

Hawwa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina de Regt
Keyword(s):  
Social Stratification ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Horn Of Africa ◽  
Social Distinction ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
New Form ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour ◽  
Middle Class Families ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

AbstractThis article argues that employing migrant domestic workers has become a new form of social distinction in urban Yemen. The rapid social, economic and political changes of the past forty years have altered Yemen's system of social stratification. Formerly, one's racial descent and economic background determined the work they performed. Manual and service professions had a very low status and were only performed by the lowest social status groups. Nowadays other forms of social distinction have emerged. Although the economic situation in Yemen has deteriorated since the 1990s, the demand for paid domestic labour has increased. Yemeni women are reluctant to take up paid work as domestics, and middle and upper middle class families in urban areas employ migrant and refugee women, in particular from the Horn of Africa.

Too Close for Comfort? ‘Race'and the Management of Proximity, Guilt and Other Anxieties in Paid Domestic Labour

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 152-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Bott
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Initial Phase ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour ◽  
Ongoing Project ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

This paper examines relations between migrant domestic workers and their employers in London, and how employers use ideas about ‘race’ and racial difference to manage the difficulties and tensions involved in sharing their houses with employees. Using findings from preliminary interviews with employers (the initial phase of data gathering in a wider ongoing project), it looks at how employers might structure proximity/distance relations; levels of intimacy; social hierarchy and guilt management around a conceptual framework that hinges on notions of ‘difference’ and Otherness.

From ‘Plantation Workers’ to Naukrānī

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Supurna Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Skill Acquisition ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Alternative Employment ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Tea Plantations ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
The One ◽  
North And South

The tea plantations of Dooars in West Bengal are founded on a gendered division of labour. The recent economic crisis faced by the tea plantations brought long-established labour practices into question. Mounting expenses and closures led to rising migration of plantation workers to distant urban areas in North and South India, in search of alternative employment. Many of these women found employment as domestic workers and care workers in Delhi and Gurgaon. Drawing on the in-depth narratives of these migrant domestic workers, this article explores self-perceptions and representations of work and brings to the forefront the ongoing process of skill acquisition on the one hand and its constant invisibilization on the other. This reproduces paid domestic and care work not only as women’s natural labour but as low skilled and low status work that is particularly suitable for migrant women. The women’s own perceptions help problematize and nuance otherwise monolithic understandings of labour in general and domestic labour in particular.

Macro-Level Determinants of Paid Domestic Labour Prevalence: A Cross-National Analysis of Seventy-Four Countries

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merita Jokela
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Labour Markets ◽  
Female Employment ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Ageing Population ◽  
Domestic Labour ◽  
National Analysis ◽  
Paid Domestic Labour

The growing demand for domestic workers has been linked to several global developments, such as an ageing population, income inequality, the growth of women entering labour markets, migration and changes in the provision of care. However, empirical quantitative evidence for these associations is still scarce. This study examines how macro-level factors related to care needs (female employment rates and proportion of aged population), labour markets (proportion of migrants and vulnerable employment) and economic characteristics (gross domestic product, income inequality and level of urbanisation) are associated with the prevalence of paid domestic labour across seventy-four countries. Data are derived from the statistics compiled by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Results show that a higher prevalence of paid domestic workers is particularly associated with greater income inequality, but also with a higher proportion of migrants. The association with income inequality remained unchanged after controlling for six other variables related to the demand and supply of domestic services. These findings suggest that income inequality is a crucial factor in determining the proportion of domestic workers in the labour force.

Triangulations of “Motherly Love”: Negotiated Intimacies among Migrant Domestic Workers, Mothers, and Children

2021 ◽  
pp. 0192513X2199385
Author(s):  
Iris Hoiting
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Mothers And Children ◽  
Care Relationships ◽  
Relational Contexts ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Persistent economic inequality between men and women, combined with differences in gender expectations and growing inequalities among women globally, has resulted in families “outsourcing” childcare by employing migrant domestic workers (MDWs). While studies have addressed the intimacy and complexity of “mothering” in such contexts, the agentic position of child-recipients of such care have seldom been explored. This article increases our understanding of care-relationships by examining their triangularity among children, MDWs, and mothers in Hong Kong. Drawing on in-depth interviews with young people who grew up with MDWs, alongside interviews with MDWs themselves, this article describes processes through which care work transforms into what Lynch describes as “love labor” in these relational contexts. In these contexts, commodified care from MDWs can develop, through a process of mutual trilateral negotiations, into intimate love-laboring relationships that, in turn, reflect larger dynamics of familial transformation that are endemic to “global cities.”

Better a Friend Nearby Than a Brother Far Away? The Health Implications of Foreign Domestic Workers’ Family and Friendship Networks

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (6) ◽  
pp. 765-783
Author(s):  
Jing Ye ◽  
Feinian Chen
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Protective Effects ◽  
Personal Network ◽  
Potential Health ◽  
Daily Contact ◽  
Foreign Domestic Workers ◽  
Reported Health ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Migrant domestic workers provide essential services to the families they live with, but they are not considered a part of the family. As a group, they are not well-integrated into the society and often suffer from social isolation. In this article, we explore the potential health buffering effects of their personal network, in terms of family and friendship ties in both the local community and their home country. Existing literature provides inconsistent evidence on who and what matters more, with regard to the nature, strength, and geographic locations of individual personal networks. Using data from the Survey of Migrant domestic Workers in Hong Kong (2017), we find that family ties are extremely important. The presence of family members in Hong Kong as well as daily contact with family, regardless of location, are associated with better self-reported health. Only daily contact with friends in Hong Kong, not with friends in other countries, promotes better health. We also find evidence that the protective effects of family and friends networks depend on each other. Those foreign domestic workers with families in Hong Kong but also maintain daily contact with friends have the best self-reported health among all.

The Giving Up of Weekly Rest-Days by Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore: When Submission Is Both Resistance and Victimhood

Social Forces ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 1695-1718
Author(s):  
Margaret Fenerty Schumann ◽  
Anju Mary Paul
Keyword(s):  
Work Experience ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Sociology Of Law ◽  
Signaling Mechanism ◽  
Contract Renewal ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Do So ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

AbstractWhy do so few live-in migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Singapore utilize their weekly rest-day entitlement? Using data drawn from 3,886 online profiles of prospective MDWs and 40 interview sessions with MDWs, employers, and manpower agencies, we demonstrate how the industry encourages a “logic of submission” around rest-days. Through processual analysis, we unearth multiple, repeated moments of capitulation at key moments in a MDW’s work-life: (1) their interactions with a recruitment agency while still in their home country; (2) their matching with an overseas employer; (3) the duration of their two-year contract; and (4) the time of contract renewal. Submission to less frequent rest-days can secure their employability and financial mobility but also further individuates the MDW within the employer’s household and may lead to the engraining of a habitus of submissiveness towards their employers that can open the door to workers’ exploitation. We demonstrate how nationality and work experience further inflect this logic of submission to motivate non-Filipina and inexperienced MDWs to request even fewer rest-days than their counterparts. By combining feminist migration scholarship on Asian MDWs, with a sociology of law analysis, we offer up an example of how the same act of submission can simultaneously embody both resistance and victimhood depending upon the temporal and spatial scale used, and varying interpretations of the rest-day benefit as a much-needed respite, a monetizable benefit, or a signaling mechanism.

scholarly journals THE ENDURING VULNERABILITY OF MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS IN EUROPE

2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clíodhna Murphy
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Employment Law ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Labour Standards ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Migration Law ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

AbstractWhile the rights of domestic workers are expanding in international law, including through the adoption of the ILO Domestic Workers Convention in 2011, migrant domestic workers remain particularly vulnerable to employment-related abuse and exploitation. This article explores the intersection of the employment law and migration law regimes applicable to migrant domestic workers in the United Kingdom, France and Ireland. The article suggests that the precarious immigration status of many migrant domestic workers renders employment protections, such as they exist in each jurisdiction, largely illusory in practice for this group of workers. The labour standards contained in the Domestic Workers Convention, together with the recommendations of the UN Committee on Migrant Workers on the features of an appropriate immigration regime for migrant domestic workers, are identified as providing an alternative normative model for national regulatory frameworks.

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