A critical engagement between Asian feminist theology and liberation theology: The impossibility of doing academic theology from the margins

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 22 Volume 22 Issue 4 2015 REPORT ❐ LEBANON The kafala is a ‘system of control’ through which the governments delegate responsibility for migrants to private citizens or companies to organise domestic workers was compelled and supported by the ILO Bureau of Workers’ Activities (ACTRAV) in Beirut and in cooperation with other local NGOs. FENASOL’s involvement in assisting the organising of domestic workers involves standard trade-union concerns, such as collective bargaining to ensure the domestic workers’ rights for a day off, formal recognition of domestic work under the labour law, minimum wage, and ending the kafala system. These are concerns that emanate from the socio-economic injustices that the migrant domestic worker faces. The kafala The kafala, which is not limited to migrant domestic workers, but include all migrant workers, is a ‘system of control’, according to Motaparthy, through which the governments delegate responsibility for migrants to private citizens or companies. The system gives sponsors a set of legal abilities to control workers. ‘Workers whose employers cancel their residency visas often have to leave the country through deportation proceedings , and many have to spend time behind bars’ (Motaparthy, 2015). In addition to the precariousness created by the kafala system, the labour law explicitly excludes domestic workers from its protection and denies migrant workers the right to establish a trade union. The fragile conditions of migrant domestic workers are further exacerbated with the discrimination they face as poor migrant women who work in a profession that lacks social and formal recognition. The union organisational process focused on livelihood and common experiences of exploitation , lack of social and formal recognition of the value of domestic work, and its exemption from legislation regulating workers in the formal sectors , which revealed a form of labour politics that seeks to forge an understanding of shared working experiences of domestic work. These concerns acted as a gravitational pull necessary to bring the domestic workers together from different nationalities. However, prior to the union, Asian and African workers in Lebanon used to organise by forming migrant communities. These communities sought to forge solidarity among community members and to forge new modes of sociality and social interactions and being in a community. These community spaces were the first instances of politicisation for many migrant domestic workers who became later union militants. These communities also created, and continue, new avenues of access and mobilisation and definitely provide the ground for new political subjects to emerge. A lmost a year ago, on the occasion of International Workers’ Day, hundreds of domestic workers, predominantly migrants, and their allies in Lebanon, took to the streets that their union be formally recognised by the Lebanese government. The union has been denounced by the Labour Minister as ‘illegal’, arguing that it will only ‘generate problems’ instead of solving them. The Minister suggested that the ‘protection’ for domestic workers is best guaranteed through ‘new laws’, not through union organising. In other words, rights are unequivocally the ‘governor’s grant’, not to be claimed for or bargained. He added: ‘protection takes place through procedures, not through the introduction of the domestic workers into political and class games’. The Minister’s last statement blatantly expresses the state of fear from workers organising, migrants in particular, who through their attempt are putting a foot out of the ‘zone of exception’ into the political and the social space of the nation. Since the 1990, with the end of the civil war and the beginning of the so called ‘reconstruction era’, Lebanon has increasingly become a receiving country of both Arab and non- Arab migration . Palestinian refugees and migrants from different ethnic belongings from Syria and Iraq came to Lebanon long before 1990 and have settled in the country. Furthermore, there are large numbers of migrant workers from Asia and Africa employed as domestic workers. A 2011 World Bank report states that migrant workers represent 760 thousand of a total workforce in Lebanon of 1.2 million (for a population of around 4.2 million ) who are predominantly condensed in the informal sector. That means that migrants constitute almost half of the workforce and 17.8 percent of the population. These figures preceded the large...

Migrant domestic workers rarely take part in — let alone organize — public protests in the countries where they work. Public protests are virtually unheard of among migrant domestic workers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and especially in the Middle East and the Gulf States. Over the past decade and a half, however, migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong — mostly Filipinas and Indonesian women — have become highly active, organizing and participating in political protests. Hong Kong's migrant domestic workers protest in a place where they are guest workers and temporary migrants, denied the opportunity of becoming legal citizens or permanent residents. Increasingly, these workers, their grassroots activist organizations, and the nongovernmental organizations with which they are affiliated frame their concerns in terms of global, transnational, and human rights, not merely local migrant worker rights. This article takes the “Consulate Hopping Protest and Hall of Shame Awards” event — part of the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Hong Kong in 2005 — as an ethnographic example of domestic worker protest and as an entrée through which to ask what it is about Hong Kong and about the position of women migrant workers — whose mobility and voice is both a product and a symptom of globalization — that literally permits public protests and shapes their form and content. The article illustrates how migrant workers’ protests and activism have been shaped by domestic worker subjectivities, by the dynamics of inter-ethnic worker affiliations, and by the sociohistorical context of Hong Kong as a post-colonial “global city” and a “neoliberal space of exception.”

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the work-life (WL) experiences of live-in women migrant domestic workers (MDWs), who represent a significant proportion of migrant workers globally. MDWs play a key role in enabling the work-life balance (WLB) of others, namely the middle-class households that employ them. Yet, their experiences have largely been invisible in mainstream WL literature. The authors draw on an intersectional approach to frame the WL experiences of this marginalized group of women at the intersection of being secondary labour segment workers, with significant legal and employment restrictions as migrant workers, who work and live in the same place as their employers. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 women MDWs from Indonesia and the Philippines working in Malaysia. The women talked about the meaning of work as MDWs, how they maintain familial connections whilst working abroad, and how they negotiate their WLB as live-in workers. Thematic analysis of the interviews focused on the intersection of the women’s multiple dimensions of disadvantage, including gender, class and temporary migrant-foreigner status, in shaping their accounts of the WL interface. Findings Three thematic narratives highlight that any semblance of WLB in the MDWs’ lived experience has given way to the needs of their employers and to the imperative to earn an income for their families back home. The themes are: working as MDWs enables the women and their families back home to have a life; the co-existence of WL boundary segmentation and integration in relation to “real” and “temporary” families; and the notion of WLB being centred around the women’s ability to fulfil their multiple duties as MDWs and absent mothers/sisters/daughters. Research limitations/implications The study is based on a small sample of live-in women MDWs in Malaysia, intended to promote typically excluded voices and not to provide generalizable findings. Accessing potential participants was a considerable challenge, given the vulnerable positions of women MDWs and the invisible nature of their work. Practical implications Future research should adopt a multi-stakeholder approach to studying the WL experiences of women MDWs. In particular, links with non-governmental organizations who work directly with women MDWs should be established as a way of improving future participant access. Social implications The study underscores the existence of policies and regulations that tolerate and uphold social inequalities that benefit primary labour segment workers to the detriment of secondary labour segment workers, including women MDWs. Originality/value Extant WL literature is dominated by the experiences of “the ideal work-life balancers”, who tend to be white middle-class women, engaged in professional work. This study offers original contribution by giving voice to a taken-for-granted group of women migrant workers who make other people’s WLB possible. Moreover, the study challenges WL research by underscoring the power inequities that shape the participants’ marginal and disadvantaged lived experience of work, life, family and WLB.

Research documenting the re-configurations of ‘public–private’ boundaries encountered by migrant domestic workers has observed how they often create a sense of ‘home’ in public spaces in destination countries. Migrant workers’ occupation of, and interactions in, public spaces such as parks, malls, restaurants, and churches in effect create ‘private spheres’ where they can relax and be themselves with friends and sometimes partners. Yet migrant women also often face a double exclusion from the public sphere as political subjects, first as women and second as migrants. Their physical presence in the public sphere may be highly regulated by gender norms, and their participation in the public sphere is limited due to their exclusion from citizenship or even labour entitlements. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s concept of subaltern counterpublics, this paper argues that migrant domestic workers’ experiences of re-configuring public and private spaces within Lebanon contribute to the creation of ‘migrant counterpublics’ that challenges the methodological-nationalist limitations of conceptualisations of citizenship and participation in the public sphere. I make these reflections through an auto-ethnographic account of my experiences while researching the working lives and conditions of Ethiopian migrant domestic workers in Lebanon. Central to these reflections on our navigation of public spaces is the consideration of our embodied experiences as racialised women, which intersected with our differential class, sexuality, and migrant status positioning.

For the 2011 – 2012 school year, I engaged in a year-long research project on Chinese sex workers in the “Wild West” during the Antebellum period. Typically brought to the United States under false pretences by members of Chinese tongs, Chinese sex workers were kept in homes and brothels starting from a very young age. Missionary groups attempted to "free” Chinese sex workers from these brothels, educate them and raise awareness of their plight. Historical accounts of these activities come exclusively from the perspective of the missionaries themselves, rather than the perspective of Chinese sex workers, which results in a biased account of Chinese sex workers as helpless girls. However, the research that I did indicates that there may have been examples of agency amongst Chinese sex workers. In order to share my research on agency amongst Chinese sex workers during the Antebellum period, I opted to write a historical fiction (a short story which was eventually published in the Queen’s Undergraduate Review). It is the process of translating historical research into historical fiction which I will focus on presenting. I rewrote the story and plot a number of times in order to maintain a balance of historical fact and creative license, and I struggled with the ethics of portraying historical characters and events for creative purposes. I learned what’s valuable for writing a successful historical fiction: exhaustive research, the understanding that realism is more impactful than sensationalism, and constant awareness of personal agenda or bias.

While 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.

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.

Lebanon has many migrant domestic workers, most of whom are women. While migrant domestic workers’ contracts prohibit pregnancy and childbearing, a substantial number of women give birth in Lebanon, and their children are at risk of statelessness. Through our examination of nationality laws and birth registration regulations, and their implementation in both Lebanon and migrants’ origin countries, this article offers an intersectional, gender analysis of conditions contributing to the risks of statelessness for such children. It seeks to contribute new insights into a seemingly intractable problem in Lebanon. Our investigation of laws and regulations is situated within a discussion of Lebanon's kafala system of migrant sponsorship that structures conditions under which migrant workers live. We triangulate our analysis by drawing on 13 semistructured interviews with key informants in Lebanon. We demonstrate that the risk of statelessness for children born to migrant domestic workers in Lebanon is enmeshed in a complex gendered and racialized conjunction of controls exercised over migrant domestic workers’ reproductive capacity, mobility, migration status, and right to pass on their nationality to their children. Based on this analysis, we identify potential strategies to secure citizenship for migrant domestic workers’ children at risk of statelessness. Our article makes analytical and empirical contributions to an emergent body of scholarship focusing on the growing phenomenon of childhood statelessness in “irregularized” migration contexts.

In this paper I extend the literature on ‘illegal’ migrant workers by connecting the macro-level discussion on policies to the lived experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Lebanon. I analyse two seemingly contrasting categories of ‘illegal’ migrant workers. First, the MDWs working illegally and desperate to return home, who are unable to return because of the system of migration in Lebanon. Second, MDWs banned by their state from migrating to Lebanon but who choose devious ways to make the journey. I argue that despite their apparently disparate subject positions, both sets of migrant workers are ‘illegal’ because of an underlying paternalism in the policies of nation-states towards MDWs – the gendered construction of MDWs as workers who need both protection and surveillance. This paternalism, in turn, produces a class of ‘global exiles’ who are working and living in prolonged separation from their home. They are abandoned by their home countries but trapped without any rights as either workers or citizens in the host country.

Reviewed by: Follow the Maid: Domestic Worker Migration in and from Indonesia by Olivia Killias Carol Chan (bio) Olivia Killias. Follow the Maid: Domestic Worker Migration in and from Indonesia. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2018. 246 pp., illustrated. Follow the Maid is the latest contribution to a solid and steadily growing body of scholarship by anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers on gendered labor migration in Southeast Asia. Much of this work over the past decades has focused on the conditions and experiences of migrant domestic workers in countries where they live and work, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia. To a lesser extent, scholars have also examined migration's appeal and its impact on migrants' villages of origin (e.g., in the Philippines and Indonesia). Scholars have also begun to examine men's contemporary migrations in the region and beyond, as fishermen, construction and plantation workers, and drivers. Olivia Killias's ethnography, based on fourteen months of multi-sited research, conducted mainly between 2006 and 2009, contributes a unique vantage point to the arguably extensively researched phenomenon of domestic-work migration. She "literally follow(s) the paths of migrant domestic workers from one specific village in upland Java through the process of recruitment, training, and placement with families in terraced houses in leafy middle-class Malaysian suburbs—and back" (3). This approach enables the book to illuminate and clarify the roles that various actors play in the facilitation and management of migration from Indonesia—processes that are frequently opaque. Also, by "connecting" the multiple sites that women migrants typically inhabit during the course of their journeys, the ethnographer highlights the important cultural work that intermediaries play in "manufacturing" a maid, an emic term used ubiquitously in the destination countries of Malaysia and Singapore to refer to domestic workers. Follow the Maid meticulously breaks down and denaturalizes several enduring tropes that justify and encourage the employment, management, and treatment of migrant domestic workers from Southeast Asia's poor countries. Each chapter focuses on a broad "site" or stage in the process of migration from Indonesia to Malaysia to reveal the extensive work and effort put in by state bureaucrats, intermediaries (such as brokers, trainers, and recruitment agents), non-governmental organizations, and employers to produce and maintain a central paradox of this specific migration industry. On the one hand, particular groups of Indonesian women are portrayed and marketed as suited to perform low-paid domestic work: they will be hardworking, cheap, and obedient, ostensibly due to their rural, poor, and "backward" circumstances. On the other hand, it is precisely due to their lack of education and need of "civilizing" that they are vulnerable to abuses abroad, and thus require extensive training and discipline to be prepared for domestic work and life abroad. Over and over, the book emphasizes how problems of exploitation in Indonesian women's labor migrations are rendered by various actors as "technical" problems to be resolved (52), where issues of labor and human rights are easily ignored and [End Page 161] arguably institutionalized as less relevant than contractual and "legal" agreements between states, agents, employers, and workers. Few ethnographies on this topic have closely examined the link between internal and international migration, and Killias fills this gap by examining in detail the connection, similarities, and differences between Javanese women's national and international migration as domestic workers. Contextualizing the current kinship-network-facilitated domestic worker migration from upland Java to the capital of Jakarta within similar historical arrangements known as ngenger, she shows how international migration for women is often preceded by experiences of internal migration. Contrasting experiences of both types of migration also reveals the importance of women's life cycles in their migration decisions and plans. Single and unmarried women as young as fourteen leave their village with relatives and neighbors to work in Jakarta homes, in search of adventure and experience. In contrast, Killias found that the majority of women embarked on international journeys only after marriage and the birth of their first child. While other scholars on domestic work migration have examined the moral and social ambivalence surrounding the migration of mothers,1 Killias importantly highlights that the birth of a child serves...

This chapter contributes to the emerging literature on men who do ‘women’s work’. It focuses on the ‘feminine’ occupation of domestic worker and on how male and female migrant workers balance their gender identities at the intersection of class, race, and immigration status. It addresses the related research gap in the Netherlands by focusing on the situation of migrant domestic workers from the Philippines with irregular status. From the perspective of hegemonic gender identities, male migrant domestic workers, too, are subjected to gender injustices. These injustices are rooted in the devaluation of everything coded as ‘feminine’, including their occupation. The resulting ‘male femininities’ are threatening male domestic workers’ sense of self-worth and their societal recognition. This misrecognition adds to the exploitative economic circumstances that both female and male migrant domestic workers experience and has negative repercussions on male migrants’ access to employment. Ironically, workers themselves contribute to reproducing these symbolic and material injustices and, hence, consolidate them. Redressing these injustices requires changes both in the economic structure and in society’s ordering of status. When the demands for respect for domestic workers and for their labour rights are combined, this necessity is reflected in workers’ national and international campaigns. They need to be complemented by national regulation that will protect all workers effectively, independent of the location of their work, their gender, their race, or their immigration status. Last but not least, given their crucial role in societal reproduction, domestic workers should be included in the categories of migrant workers who are welcome in European labour markets in redefined and relaxed transnational migration regimes.

ABSTRACTMigrant domestic workers are often excluded from government policies due to their lack of citizenship. Such exclusion positions migrant domestic workers at the bottom of the social and political power structure. However, research has found that, with the establishment of unions, everyday interactions among local and migrant domestic workers have strengthened; which has not only enhanced understanding between locals and migrants, but also broken the ethnic and migration status power structures. The reconstruction of power coincides with the concepts of power in everyday multiculturalism. Through exploring the involvement of Nepalese migrant domestic workers in the union movement, this paper seeks to uncover how everyday multiculturalism reconstructs power structures for local and migrant domestic workers and builds a community of interdependence among domestic workers. This discovery gives insights into the role of union and labour activists in facilitating everyday multiculturalism, which has not been previously explored.

This chapter revisits the concept of partial citizenship for migrant domestic workers, meaning their stunted incorporation as members of host and home societies. It further qualifies the experience of partial citizenship by focusing on the dynamic engendered by their conditional membership based on employer sponsorship. Host societies often limit the citizenship of migrant domestic workers by binding them to work only for their sponsors. At the same time, the experience of sponsored migrants varies across the diaspora between domestic workers who can transition out of employer sponsorship to permanent residency and those who are perpetually bound to temporary status. Illustrating variations of partial citizenship establishes differences in citizenship for migrant domestic workers across destinations.

The plights of migrant domestic workers from historical and legal perspective appear to be internationally recognised. However, the setback lies with the lack of agreement on how best to deal with the problem. This paper examines the human rights protection for migrant domestic workers from international and national perspectives and finds that migrant domestic workers are barely protected. This group of workers continues to experience a series of human rights violation such as discrimination, criminalisation, and exploitation; with little or no means of redress. The ‘’international bill of rights’’ appear to provide some support for migrant domestic workers but its enforcement, as well as the enforcement of all other human rights instruments is problematic due to inadequate support at the national level. The adoption of the 189th Labour Convention in June 2011 has been praised as a landmark victory for domestic workers even though its effect is too soon to be called. However, considering that the United Kingdom did not support this Convention, its benefit for domestic workers in the country is currently doubtful. Further, the current changes to the United Kingdom immigration rules puts the future of migrant domestic workers (especially the new migrants) into a complete state of disarray. In addition, domestic workers in diplomatic households remain at the mercy of their employers’ immunity. This paper advocates a rethink of strategy in dealing with migrant domestic workers. It also attempts to make a case for the adoption of the ILO 189th Convention as the best way forward.

BackgroundNeoliberal globalization contributes to the out-migration of labour from sending countries in the global South. Supported by multilateral organizations including the IMF and World Bank, the migration and development nexus holds that nations and households in migrant sending countries can migrate their way out of poverty. Two countries that embrace this paradigm, the Philippines and Indonesia, are major suppliers of migrant labour including domestic workers, and Malaysia is a primary destination country.Theory and methodsWe deployed a multi-scalar and intersectional lens to highlight the impact of global forces and policies, interacting with constructions of gender and national identity, to explore the health and wellbeing of migrant domestic workers in Malaysia. In addition to documentary analysis, we conducted face-to-face interviews with 30 Indonesian and 24 Filipino migrant domestic workers, five representatives from civil society organizations, three government representatives, and four individuals engaged in labour brokerage and the health screening of migrant workers in Kuala Lumpur.ResultsMigrant domestic workers in Malaysia work long hours in private homes and are not protected by labour laws. Workers were generally satisfied with their access to health services; however, their intersectional status, which is both an outcome of, and contextualized by, the lack of opportunities in their own country, prolonged familial separation, low wages, and lack of control in the workplace, contributed to stress and related disorders—which we regard as the embodied manifestation of their migratory experiences. Migrant domestic workers eased these ill effects through self-care, spiritual practices, and the embrace of gendered values of self-sacrifice for the family as a form of solace.ConclusionsStructural inequities and the mobilization of gendered values of self-abnegation underpin the migration of domestic workers as a development strategy. While individual self-care practices were used to cope with the hardships of their work and family separation, these efforts did not remedy the harms nor redress structural inequities wrought by neoliberal globalization. Improvements in the long-term health and wellbeing of Indonesian and Filipino migrant domestic workers in Malaysia cannot focus solely on the preparation and maintenance of healthy bodies for productive labour, but must attend to workers’ attainment of adequate social determinants of health, which challenges the migration as development paradigm. Neo-liberal policy instruments such as privatization, marketisation and commercialization of migrant labour have led to both host and home countries benefitting, but at the expense of the migrant domestic workers’ well-being.