Thinking Policy Through Migrant Domestic Workers’ Itineraries

Abstract

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.