Migrant women across Asia disproportionately work in precarious, insecure, and informal employment sectors that are subject to few regulations, pay low wages, and expose women to harm, of which domestic work is among the most prevalent. This book uses the cases of the Philippines and Sri Lanka to develop a comprehensive, intersectional, rights-based approach to better protect women migrant domestic workers against exploitation. As accounts of exploitation, gender-based violence, torture, and death among migrant domestic workers increase, the recognition and defence of their human and labour rights is an urgent necessity. The Philippines and Sri Lanka are two of the leading labour-sending states of women domestic workers in Asia, and their economies have become increasingly dependent on the remittances they send back home. Drawing on extensive original research this book argues that these two sending states are guilty of structural violence by sustaining a network of institutions, policies and practices, which serve to systematically disadvantage and discriminate against women migrant domestic workers. The research covers the entire migration process, from pre-departure, through to overseas employment, followed by return and reintegration. This book’s innovative application of structural violence theory as a way to investigate the role of state institutions in labour-sending countries in the Global South will be of interest to researchers from across the fields of migration studies, gender studies, human rights law, and Asian Studies.

As two of the leading labour-sending states in Asia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka have come to increasingly rely on the foreign employment of women migrant domestic workers and the subsequent inflow of their remittances. This thesis examines whether both governments are prioritising a market-driven approach to migration above the protection of the rights of women migrant domestic workers at three distinct stages of the migration cycle: pre-departure, employment in the host country, and on return. In doing so, it assesses the extent to which their domestic legal frameworks are protecting such workers against rights violations and exploitation, on paper and in practice, by reference to standards established by three international conventions: the International Labour Organization's Decent Work for Domestic Workers Convention, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. This thesis uses a theoretical matrix comprising four different elements, which have intrinsic tensions: political economy with structural violence; and rights and gender. This matrix is employed to highlight the contradictory policy priorities evident in the overseas employment programme for women migrant domestic workers in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The need to facilitate overseas employment to compete for a greater share of the global labour market conflicts with both governments' obligations to safeguard rights and gender protections under international law. The thesis proposes that a gender-informed rights-based approach is crucial to effectively safeguard women migrant domestic workers against exploitation throughout the entire migration cycle. However, it questions whether the implementation of such an approach is achievable in the face of entrenched structural pressures that prompt sending states to promote labour export to the detriment of their commitments under international law. It identifies three transformative measures that can be used to pressure both states into taking on a more active role in protecting and defending the rights of women migrant domestic workers in an era of neoliberal globalisation.

This volume makes the case for the fair treatment of female migrant workers from the global South who are employed in wealthy liberal democracies as care workers, domestic workers, home health workers, and farm workers. An international panel of contributors provide analyses of the ethical, political, and legal harms suffered by female migrant workers, based on empirical data and case studies, along with original and sophisticated analyses of the complex of systemic, structural factors responsible for the harms experienced by women migrant workers. The book also proposes realistic and original solutions to the problem of the unjust treatment of women migrant workers, such as social security systems that are transnational and tailored to meet the particular needs of different groups of international migrant workers.

This volume makes the case for the fair treatment of female migrant workers from the global South who are employed in wealthy liberal democracies as care workers, domestic workers, home health workers, and farm workers. An international panel of contributors provide analyses of the ethical, political, and legal harms suffered by female migrant workers, based on empirical data and case studies, along with original and sophisticated analyses of the complex of systemic, structural factors responsible for the harms experienced by women migrant workers. The book also proposes realistic and original solutions to the problem of the unjust treatment of women migrant workers, such as social security systems that are transnational and tailored to meet the particular needs of different groups of international migrant workers.

Domestic workers, disproportionately foreign women, have long been accorded a place in our households, but not in our law. Nearly a century ago, the New Deal and Civil.Rights statutes excluded this female labor force from worker protections. More generally, migrant domestic workers around the world have often found themselves with little protection under national or international law. Yet a subtle shift has taken hold in recent decades, as domestic workers bring home the legal world around them.This Article uncovers how domestic workers redistribute power within private households and beyond in ways that influence international lawmaking. It focuses on the scope of diplomatic immunity in domestic workers' lawsuits; the newly vindicated rights of au pairs; and, finally, bilateral treaties between exporters and importers of domestic labor. Across these three arenas, this Article shows how domestic workers reorient conceptions of self-, household, and national sovereignty to build a new legal world of domestic work. The three forms of sovereignty provide a vocabulary to describe how domestic workers are bringing public law from far-off corners into our most private places. In doing so, they are enhancing their own self-sovereignty and challenging that of households and nations.

Millions of domestic workers experience exploitation in the privacy of their employers’ homes; also in South Africa they are to a large extent beyond the reach of legal protection. This book sums up four years of research on ways of realising their rights. It highlights their essential role, both as care-givers and in enabling their employers to work outside the home. Against the background of the Constitution and international law it examines ways of adapting the legal framework as well as alternative mechanisms, including new forms of organisation, for translating basic rights into effective regulation.