From Victims of Trafficking to Freedom Fighters: Rethinking Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East

Johnson, Mark. 2018. From Victims of Trafficking to Freedom Fighters: Rethinking Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East. In: Laura Brace and Julia O’Connell Davidson, eds. Revisiting Slavery and AntiSlavery: Towards A Critical Analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 179-206. ISBN 9783319906225 [Book Section]

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Abstract or Description

Throughout the Middle East migrant women are employed to work in people’s homes. While some experience good working relations with employers, others experience forms of abuse and labour coercion. This chapter evaluates critically different ways that system of unfree labour has been variously described and analysed as a form of ‘contract slavery’, ‘debt bondage’ and ‘trafficking’. It also shows how migrant women who describe themselves as ‘freelancers’ exit their original employer’s home both to escape that relation and in hopes of securing a better situation outside of the regular system of employment. Freelancing is more than simply a form of resistance. Rather, women who work as freelance migrant domestic workers challenge directly that state enforced control over their mobility and are on the vanguard of those migrants who are seeking through their own actions to effect social change.

Item Type:

Book Section

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Anthropology

Dates:

DateEvent
3 September 2018Published

Item ID:

24288

Date Deposited:

14 Sep 2018 10:51

Last Modified:

03 Sep 2020 01:26

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24288

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