Keeping Up Appearances: The British Public Policy Response to the Trafficking of Domestic Workers in a Changing Regime of Social Protection

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe UK domestic work industry is expanding. Private arrangements with domestic workers are growing in a setting where the cost of social care is progressively passed on from the state to the family. Yet domestic workers are increasingly unprotected despite the legislative and policy apparatus that British governments developed over the last decade to tackle human trafficking. Drawing on case law and empirical data, this article indicates how the welfare, migration, and labor market regime regulating social protection in the UK structures an environment of labor exploitation, which prevents authorities from tackling phenomena of exploitation and trafficking.