scholarly journals A Qualitative Study of Female Migrant Domestic Workers’ Experiences of and Responses to Work-Based Sexual Violence in Cyprus

Sexes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-330
Author(s):  
Christiana Kouta ◽  
Christalla Pithara ◽  
Zoe Apostolidou ◽  
Anna Zobnina ◽  
Josie Christodoulou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Increase Risk ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Analyse Data ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Republic Of Cyprus ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Domestic workers face increased risk for sexual harassment and assault in the workplace but are often reluctant to disclose abuse or seek retribution. We report on a study looking at migrant domestic workers’ responses to sexual violence, reasons behind their responses, and factors enhancing or diminishing vulnerability to abuse. We carried out qualitative, in-depth, individual and group interviews with 15 female domestic workers from the Philippines and Sri Lanka working in the Republic of Cyprus. Descriptive thematic analysis was used to analyse data using QSR NVivo 10.0. Sexual violence against migrant domestic workers was reported to be rampant, particularly among women living with their employer. Perpetrators took advantage of women’s precarious legal, social, and economic circumstances to coerce women into a sexual relationship. All participants reported taking action to stop attacks despite the significant barriers they faced: racism and discrimination, social isolation, and hostile legal, labour, and immigration systems. Fear of losing their job, being deported, and facing racism and discrimination from the police were the biggest barriers to seeking retribution. Access to informational, e.g., legal, practical, and emotional support, facilitated positive outcomes following abuse, such as finding a new employer. Systemic racism, hostile labour and immigration systems, and lack of support increase risk of sexual violence and place barriers against accessing safe working spaces, protection, and justice. Women need to be informed of the risks involved in domestic work and empowered to identify abuse and access help and support when needed.

State-Sanctioned Structural Violence: Women Migrant Domestic Workers in the Philippines and Sri Lanka

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (12-13) ◽  
pp. 1598-1615
Author(s):  
Sophie Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Adopting a structural violence approach, this article examines how the failure to implement protective rights-based migration policies by the governments in the Philippines and Sri Lanka creates the conditions for the systematic exploitation of women migrant domestic workers by recruitment agencies and employers. Fieldwork conducted in 2018 with advocacy groups, government agencies, and international organizations in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Hong Kong illustrates how both countries are prioritizing the promotion of overseas employment and commodification of labor above the protection of the rights of their women domestic workers under domestic and international law.

scholarly journals Abuse and Violence Against Foreign Domestic Workers. A Case from Hong Kong

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akm Ahsan Ullah
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Psychological Abuse ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Foreign Domestic Workers ◽  
Decision To Stay ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Abstract This paper explores various abuses Foreign Domestic Helpers (FDHs) or migrant domestic workers (MDW) in Hong Kong suffer and the strategies they take up to cope with this abuse. Data were collected from 215 domestic helpers (135 from the Philippines, 30 from Thailand, 41 from Indonesia, and 9 from Sri Lanka) all of whom had been in residence for at least six months. Selected by snow-balling technique, respondents were interviewed with structured and non-structured questionnaires. Research shows that sexual abuse is the most common form of abuse against MDWs followed by psychological and physical abuses. Female employers are the main perpetuators of psychological abuse while the male employers are culpable for sexual abuses. Coping strategies varied widely among the MDWs. Many of them endure the violence to keep the job; some quit the job and others struggle with the decision to stay or quit.

The legal protection of women migrant domestic workers from the Philippines and Sri Lanka: an intersectional rights-based approach

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Domestic Work ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Women Migrants ◽  
Economic Class ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Women migrants’ position in the global labour market is constrained by gender and racial divisions of labour, and the work they are offered is often insecure, low-paid and concentrated in feminised sectors of the economy, such as domestic work. It is not only women who predominantly perform domestic work, but also women of a certain race, ethnicity, socio-economic class and nationality. This article adopts an intersectional rights-based lens to examine how selected policies and regulations in the Philippines and Sri Lanka are discriminating against, and creating conditions for the systematic exploitation of, women migrant domestic workers positioned at the intersection of multiple converging identities.

The limits of sending-state power: The Philippines, Sri Lanka, and female migrant domestic workers

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick R Ireland
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equity ◽  
Similar Case ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
Sri Lankan ◽  
Case Comparison ◽  
Research Interviews ◽  
Female Migrant ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Sending states have taken various measures to protect their female nationals serving abroad as domestics. A most-similar case comparison is constructed between the Sri Lankan and Philippine states’ defenses of ‘their’ female migrant domestic workers (FMDWs), employing process tracing and relying on data from archival research, interviews, policies, and official statements. Existing explanations for sending-state actions stress dependence on remittances, receiving-country conditions, and the democratic incorporation of emigrants. Here, however, a stock of FMDWs with more highly valued human capital attributes, combined with a stronger civil society and greater gender equity, is shown to compel and enable the Philippine state to adopt a more assertive approach than its Sri Lankan counterpart in defending those migrants.‘

Thinking Policy Through Migrant Domestic Workers’ Itineraries

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (6) ◽  
pp. 859-877 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Silvey ◽  
Rhacel Parreñas
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Social World ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

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.

Serial Labor Migration: Precarity and Itinerancy among Filipino and Indonesian Domestic Workers

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1230-1258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas ◽  
Rachel Silvey ◽  
Maria Cecilia Hwang ◽  
Carolyn Areum Choi
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Migration Patterns ◽  
Temporary Labor ◽  
Skilled Migrant ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

This article examines the mobility patterns of migrant domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates. It identifies and explains the emergence of serial labor migration, which we define as the multi-country, itinerant labor migration patterns of temporary low-skilled migrant workers. It argues that policy contexts shaping temporary labor migration, as they impose precarious and prohibitive conditions of settlement in both countries of origin and destination, produce the itinerancy of low-skilled migrant workers. We offer a holistic analysis of the migration process of temporary labor migrants, shifting away from a singular focus on the process of emigration, integration, or return and toward an examination of each stage as a co-constitutive step in the migration cycle. Our analytic approach enables us to illustrate the state of precarity and itinerancy that follows low-wage migrant workers across the various stages of the migration cycle and produces serial migration patterns among migrant domestic workers from the Philippines and Indonesia.

Bordering domesticity: Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong’s contemporary art

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junting Huang
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Migratory Experience ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Since the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of migrant domestic workers from the Philippines have moved to Hong Kong. As they filled the city’s growing demand for care work, they also altered the city’s art practice and cultural landscape. In this article, I propose to consider a double meaning of ‘domesticity’ – in both the language of motherhood and motherland – as a productive framework to investigate the migratory experience of Filipina domestic workers. Focusing on Cedric Maridet’s Filipina Heterotopia and Xyza Cruz Bacani’s We Are Like Air, I examine how ‘domesticity’ has become particularly pertinent to understanding the ‘border’ through the movement of bodies and the global transferral of care labour.

Toward healthy migration: An exploratory study on the resilience of migrant domestic workers from the Philippines

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alida Joanna van der Ham ◽  
Maria Theresa Ujano-Batangan ◽  
Raquel Ignacio ◽  
Ivan Wolffers
Keyword(s):  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers
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