Double Time-Bind in Paid Domestic Work: (Migrant) Workers and Their Employers in Italy and Poland

This paper puts forward a two-sided approach to late capitalist time regimes in paid household work by comparing the experience of time of domestic workers and domestic employers. Their time-related strategies are confronted with the aim of revealing common underlying patterns as well as possible divergences. First, migrant domestic workers’ strategies to cope with the (time) particularities of domestic work (e.g. asynchronies, free time deficit, long working hours, boredom) are analysed. Second, the experience of time of professionally active domestic employers, who in turn are pressured in their professional lives and employ domestic workers to meet these demands, is examined. The authors argue that domestic employers’ and workers’ time regimes interact and reinforce one another, creating a double time-bind. The data are drawn from Cojocaru’s research project on migrant domestic workers in Italy and Rosińska’s research on employers as well as local and migrant workers in Poland.

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PERLINDUNGAN HUKUM PEKERJA MIGRAN PENATA LAKSANA RUMAH TANGGA (PLRT) DI LUAR NEGERI OLEH NEGARA DITINJAU DARI KONSEP TANGGUNG JAWAB NEGARA

Yustisia Jurnal Hukum ◽

10.20961/yustisia.v4i2.8642 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Koesrianti

Keyword(s):

Migrant Workers ◽

Domestic Work ◽

Legal Protection ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

State Responsibility ◽

Vulnerable Group ◽

Unfair Treatment ◽

National Jurisdiction ◽

The Government ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

AbstractThis research discusses the legal protection of migrant workers, especially, women migrant domestic workers. Due to the nature and characteristic of domestic work, the migrant domestic workers are subject to violence, abuses, discrimination and unfair treatment when they are in destination countries. The most vulnerable group among migrant workers is women migrant domestic workers because they are women. Accordingly, the government and the stakeholders should give protection to the women migrant domestic workers regardless their status (legal or illegal) as they are stay beyond national jurisdiction of sending state.Keywords: legal protection, Migrant workers, domestic, state responsibility.AbstrakPenelitian ini mengkaji bentuk-bentuk perlindungan hukum yang diberikan kepada pekerja migran PLRT di luar negeri. Pekerja migran PLRT karena karakteristiknya merupakan kelompok yang sangat rentan terhadap perlakuan abuse, diskriminatif, dan ketidak-adilan ketika bekerja di luar negeri. Kelompok paling rentan diantara pekerja migrant adalah TKW PLRT karena keperempuannya. Konsep tanggung jawab Negara mengharuskan pemerintah memberikan perlindungan kepada TKI terlepas dari status mereka, baik legal atau illegal karena mereka berada diluar yurisdiksi Negara pengirimKata Kunci: Perlindungan hukum, TKI, PLRT, Tanggung Jawab Negara.

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PERLINDUNGAN HUKUM PEKERJA MIGRAN PENATA LAKSANA RUMAH TANGGA (PLRT) DI LUAR NEGERI OLEH NEGARA DITINJAU DARI KONSEP TANGGUNG JAWAB NEGARA

Yustisia Jurnal Hukum ◽

10.20961/yustisia.v92i0.3808 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 92 ◽

Author(s):

Koesrianti ,

Keyword(s):

Migrant Workers ◽

Domestic Work ◽

Legal Protection ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

State Responsibility ◽

Vulnerable Group ◽

Unfair Treatment ◽

National Jurisdiction ◽

The Government ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

<h4>Abstract</h4> This research discusses the legal protection of migrant workers, especially, women migrant domestic workers. Due to the nature and characteristic of domestic work, the migrant domestic workers are subject to violence, abuses, discrimination and unfair treatment when they are in destination countries. The most vulnerable group among migrant workers is women migrant domestic workers because they are women. Accordingly, the government and the stakeholders should give protection to the women migrant domestic workers regardless their status (legal or illegal) as they are stay beyond national jurisdiction of sending state. Keywords: legal protection, Migrant workers, domestic, state responsibility. <h3>Abstrak</h3> Penelitian ini mengkaji bentuk-bentuk perlindungan hukum yang diberikan kepada pekerja migran PLRT di luar negeri. Pekerja migran PLRT karena karakteristiknya merupakan kelompok yang sangat rentan terhadap perlakuan abuse, diskriminatif, dan ketidak-adilan ketika bekerja di luar negeri. Kelompok paling rentan diantara pekerja migrant adalah TKW PLRT karena keperempuannya. Konsep tanggung jawab Negara mengharuskan pemerintah memberikan perlindungan kepada TKI terlepas dari status mereka, baik legal atau illegal karena mereka berada diluar yurisdiksi Negara pengirim Kata Kunci: Perlindungan hukum, TKI, PLRT, Tanggung Jawab Negara.

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THE ENDURING VULNERABILITY OF MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS IN EUROPE

International and Comparative Law Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0020589313000195 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 62 (3) ◽

pp. 599-627 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

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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Facebook, Polymedia, Social Capital, and a Digital Family of Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers: A Case Study of The Voice of Singapore’s Invisible Hands

Migration Mobility & Displacement ◽

10.18357/mmd41201918971 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 65-83

Author(s):

Adriana Rahajeng Mintarsih

Keyword(s):

Social Capital ◽

Migrant Workers ◽

Data Gathering ◽

Transnational Migration ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Literary Work ◽

Dominant Negative ◽

Learning Space ◽

The Voice ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

Rarely do female migrant domestic workers (MDWs) get a chance to narrate their own migration experience. Voice of Singapore’s Invisible Hands (or The Voice), which started as a literary community on Facebook, aims to reshape the dominant—negative—discourse on migrant workers, especially Indonesian MDWs, by providing access to their literary work. In a transnational migration setting, Facebook has been used as a tool to maintain people’s relations with their families and friends back home, as well as for making new friends. Connections gained between individuals become a form of social capital where people build social networks and establish norms of reciprocity and a sense of trustworthiness. In the early establishment of The Voice, Facebook helped its initiator gain social capital. Ultimately, this social capital benefts the community and its members. Over the course of The Voice’s development, other social media platforms, namely WhatsApp, Skype, and email, have been used in addition to Facebook because they offer a different set of features and affordances of privacy and frequency. This practice of switching from one media to another is an illustration of polymedia, in which all media operate as an integrated structure and each is defned in relation to other media. This study, which focused on the relation of Facebook, polymedia, and social capital in the context of The Voice, used integrated online and offine qualitative data-gathering methodologies. The study found that Facebook initially helped both the community, which began as a learning space for Indonesian MDWs who wanted to narrate their stories about their home and family, and its members in their efforts to reshape the negative dominant discourse on migrant workers. It was the affordances of polymedia, however, that paved the way for the formation later on of a digital family in which the members provide emotional support for each other, similar to what family and close friends do.

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11. Justice for Migrant Workers? The Case of Migrant Domestic Workers in East Asia

Beyond Liberal Democracy ◽

10.1515/9781400827466-013 ◽

2006 ◽

pp. 281-322 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Keyword(s):

East Asia ◽

Migrant Workers ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

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Book Review: Human Rights and Migrant Domestic Work: A Comparative Analysis of the Sociolegal Status of Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers in Canada and Hong Kong

Asian and Pacific Migration Journal ◽

10.1177/011719680601500109 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 175-176

Author(s):

Deirdre McKay

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Hong Kong ◽

Comparative Analysis ◽

Domestic Work ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

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Intimate Counter‐Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon1

International Migration Review ◽

10.1111/imre.12325 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 52 (3) ◽

pp. 780-808 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Amrita Pande

Keyword(s):

Migrant Workers ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Gender And Sexuality ◽

Paradoxical Effects ◽

Private And Public ◽

Politics Of Resistance ◽

And Gender ◽

State Restrictions ◽

Female Migrant ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

This article examines new nodes of migrants' desire to disrupt the heteronormative focus on married mothers in the literature on migration and gender and the reification of normative notions of both gender and sexuality. It demonstrates that in the presence of intense raced and gendered surveillance of both private and public spaces in Lebanon, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) use public “counter‐spaces” to forge intimate and sexual ties. It offers the frame of intimate counter‐spaces to understand the wider politics of resistance mobilized by MDWs in their everyday lives. Intimate counter‐spaces complicate debates around public/private, sacred/sexual, and confront state restrictions on migrant workers' sexuality. Despite their subversive power, such spaces can also reinforce the hypersexualization of the female migrant and highlight the paradoxical effects of everyday subversive practices used by migrant workers, not just in Middle East and Asia, but also across the world.

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The Entrapment of Migrant Workers in Servile Labour: The Case of Live-in Domestic Workers from Ukraine in Greece

Social Cohesion and Development ◽

10.12681/scad.10853 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 31 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Nikos Xypolitas

Keyword(s):

Labour Market ◽

Working Conditions ◽

Migrant Workers ◽

Domestic Work ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Migrant Women ◽

Structural Barriers ◽

Employment Relationships ◽

Subjective Element ◽

Emotional Demands

The article presents an effort to analyze the entrapment of migrant domestic workers in their low-status jobs. This will be done by looking at the consequences of live-in domestic work on migrant women from Ukraine working as servants in Athens. The study utilizes a Marxo-Weberian framework that focuses on both working conditions and perceptions of migrant workers. It is argued that the emotional demands of domestic work result in migrants perceiving their tasks as an extension of familial relationships and obligations. These employment relationships are defined as ‘pseudo-familial’ and form the basis of deference in domestic work. Combined with the structural barriers in the labour market, deference represents the subjective element of the entrapment of migrants in their job.

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Translating People and Policy: The Role of Maid Agents in Brokering between Employers and Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore’s Migration Industry

International Migration Review ◽

10.1177/0197918319897570 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 54 (4) ◽

pp. 992-1015

Author(s):

Kellynn Wee ◽

Charmian Goh ◽

Brenda S.A. Yeoh

Keyword(s):

Migrant Workers ◽

Migrant Worker ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Labor Migrants ◽

Labor Market Intermediaries ◽

International Labor ◽

Language Brokers ◽

Working And Living Conditions ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

There has been a surge of recent interest in the migration industries that facilitate the movement of migrants, particularly that of low-waged laborers engaged in temporary contracts abroad. This article extends this research to include migration brokers working in destination contexts, thus drawing analytical attention to the arrival infrastructures that incorporate migrants into host societies. Based on ethnographic research involving the employment agents who recruit women migrating from Indonesia to work as migrant domestic workers in Singapore, we use the concept of “translation” as a broad theoretical metaphor to understand how brokers actively fashion knowledge between various actors, scales, interfaces, and entities. First, we argue that through the interpretation of language, brokers continually modulate meaning in the encounters between potential employers and employees at the agency shopfront, reproducing particular dynamics of power between employers and workers while coperforming the hirability of the migrant worker. Second, we show how brokers operate within the discretionary space between multiple sets of regulations in order to selectively inscribe the text of policy into migrant workers’ lives. By interrogating the process of translation and clarifying the latitude migration brokers have in shaping the working and living conditions of international labor migrants, the article contributes to the growing conceptual literature on how labor-market intermediaries contour migration markets.

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

International Journal of Care and Caring ◽

10.1332/239788220x15976836167721 ◽

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.

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