A maid in servitude: Filipino domestic workers in the Middle East

Abstract

This paper presents Filipino economic history as a way to provide a brief background to the events that precipitated one Filipino woman’s migration to the Middle East. Her story is not rare but shares in common patterns with the stories of many other female contract workers, especially domestic workers. It chronicles government policies and business practices that profit from their remittances. It is being retold here so that the invisible world of female contract workers and, more often than not, the poor conditions under which they live and labour, might be better understood.