Beyond Kafala: Employer roles in growing vulnerabilities of women migrant domestic workers

Beyond Kafala: Employer roles in growing vulnerabilities of women migrant domestic workers
Author: Abdulrahim, Sawsan
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 4
Release: 2023-04-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Women migrant domestic workers (WMDWs) constitute 7.7 percent of migrant workers worldwide, of whom more than a quarter live and work in the Arab region. In Lebanon, as in other Arab countries, WMDWs are recruited through the sponsorship system, Kafala. Under this system, a potential migrant worker can only obtain legal residency and a work permit in the country of destination if she is sponsored by a specific employer. Once in the destination country, the worker cannot transfer to a new employer unless granted permission by the original sponsor. The system heightens the social, economic, and legal vulnerability of WMDWs and has been described as unfree or bound labor and a system of racialized servitude. Yet, Kafala is not a written policy but rather a collection of administrative procedures, customary practices, and socially acceptable norms that are maintained by various players throughout the migration process. The question then arises as to whether advocacy efforts that focus on abolishing Kafala as a legal term would mitigate employers’ exploitative practices that violate the workers’ rights and freedoms, particularly in a country like Lebanon. This policy brief is based on a study carried out under the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Work in Freedom project designed to mitigate the exploitation and forced labor of women migrating from South to West Asia to work in the domestic and garment sectors. This brief explores knowledge, awareness and attitudes to Kafala by employers in Lebanon.

Ethiopian Migrant Domestic Workers

Ethiopian Migrant Domestic Workers
Author: Bina Fernandez
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 303024055X

This book tells the stories of the Ethiopian women who migrate to work as domestic workers in the Middle East. Drawing on qualitative research in Ethiopia, Lebanon and Kuwait, the author reveals how women’s aspirations to migrate are constituted within unequal gendered structures of opportunity in Ethiopia and asks us to consider how gender, race, class and nationality intersect in the construction of migrant subjectivities and agency. By analysing the impact of migration on social reproduction both in Ethiopia and the destination countries, the book offers fresh empirical and theoretical insights into the largest stream of women’s autonomous international migration from Africa.

Organizing the Unorganized: Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon

Organizing the Unorganized: Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon
Author: Farah Kobaissy
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Total Pages: 139
Release: 2017-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1617978531

This study examines the process of unionizing domestic workers in Lebanon, highlighting the potentialities as well as the obstacles confronting it, and looks at the multiple power relations involved through axes of class, gender, race, and nationality. The author situates this struggle within the larger scene of the labor union 'movement' in the country, and discusses the contribution of women's rights organizations in rendering visible cases of abuse against migrant domestic workers. She argues that the 'death' of class politics has made women's rights organizations address migrant domestic worker issues as a separate labor category, further contributing to their production as an 'exception' under neoliberalism.

'Their House is My Prison'

'Their House is My Prison'
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 65
Release: 2019
Genre: Forced labor
ISBN:

Lebanon is home to over 250,000 migrant domestic workers, who come from African and Asian countries and work in private households. The vast majority of these workers are women. Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon are trapped in a web woven by the kafala system, an inherently abusive migration sponsorship system, which increases their risk of suffering labour exploitation, forced labour and trafficking and leaves them with little prospect of obtaining redress.

Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon

Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon
Author: Nayla Moukarbel
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9089640517

This study unravels the real dynamics at stake within the Lebanese Madame/Sri Lankan housemaid relationship. Unraveled in this book are the real dynamics at stake in the Madame/housemaid relationship. While cases of extreme physical abuse by the Lebanese women who hire housemaids - Madames - are an exception, what has become normalised are more insidious patterns of domination used to control each and every aspect of their employees' lives. For their part, Sri Lankan housemaids are not merely passive victims. Away from direct provocation and first-hand repercussions, they try to deflect what Pierre Bourdieu has called 'symbolic violence'. These attempts at 'everyday forms of resistance', as defined by James Scott, can help loosen their employers' grip. Yet, as this unprecedented study shows, the Madame/housemaid relationship and the rules that govern it remain under the managerial hold of the Madame.

Migrant Domestic Workers and Family Life

Migrant Domestic Workers and Family Life
Author: Maria Kontos
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2016-02-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137323558

This timely and innovative book delivers a comprehensive analysis of the non-recognition of the right to a family life of migrant live-in domestic and care workers in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and Ukraine.

Human Dignity and International Law

Human Dignity and International Law
Author: Andrea Gattini
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2020-12-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004435654

This book reflects on how the concept of human dignity, a central and classical concept in public international law, is used to protect the rights of particularly vulnerable sectors of contemporary society.

Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East

Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East
Author: B. Fernandez
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2014-12-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137482117

For over half a century, the Middle East has been major migration corridor for domestic workers from Asia and Africa. This book Illuminates the multidimensionality of these workers' lives as they engage in finding a balance between acting and being acted upon, struggle and accommodation, and movement and stasis.