Labor regimes of indenture : a global overview of migrant domestic work

Abstract

Across the globe, migrant domestic workers are unfree workers whose legal residency is contingent on their continued employment as a live-in worker with a designated sponsor. This talk examines the politics of their indenture. Providing a macro and micro perspective, it begins with a global overview of the incorporation of migrant domestic workers as indentured workers in key host countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, explains the cultural logic that undergirds their indenture, and then describes the conditions of domestic work in the ‘worst destination’ of the United Arab Emirates, where absconding is illegal and quitting one’s job requires a sponsor’s permission. This talk interrogates various theoretical frameworks for thinking about contemporary unfreedoms – slavery, human trafficking and structural violence – and proposes the alternative concept of “indentured mobility,” which sees migration as simultaneously constituting of financial mobility from a life of poverty in the sending society but at the cost of servitude vis-à-vis a sponsoring employer in the receiving society. The concept of indentured mobility foregrounds not only the severe structural constraints that limit the options of domestic workers but also their agentic negotiations for improving their work conditions and maximizing the possible gains in their state of unfreedom.