Last Updated on April 2, 2024 by Karl Thompson
Many migrant workers who do domestic work in the U.K. are exploited by their employers.
Approximately 80% of people engaged in employment in the domestic sphere are women. increasing numbers of workers in the home-care sector are also migrants.
Abuses against such workers include everything from not being paid to overt physical violence including rape.
This is according to a recent study: Abuses against Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the UK: An intersectional Approach by Joyce Jiang (2023).
This study draws on two research projects: one an ethnographic study carried out between 2009 and 2013 and another a participatory video-study carried out between 2018 and 2020.
The study takes an intersectional approach. It focuses on the intersection between these workers being both female and migrant workers.
This blog post is a summary of this research.
The global care chain
Domestic work in more wealthy households in rich countries is increasingly done by migrant workers from poorer, developing countries. We thus have a global care chain.
This is a result of the lack of state funding for domestic care in wealthier countries. It potentially creates a divide between elite women in rich countries and poor women from poor countries.
31% of domestic workers in the UK are migrants. They are mainly from Asia and Africa, from countries such as The Philippines, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria. Most migrant domestic workers in the UK are live-in workers.
They get into the UK with a domestic overseas work VISA which lasts for six months. They have to work for a particular employer in their country who will choose to bring them abroad.
The number of organisations recruiting domestic workers has grown rapidly over the last 20 years…
The exploitation of female migrant domestic workers
A survey of 500 workers found that 70% of them don’t have their own bedroom, in some cases they have to sleep in the corridor.
Paying below minimum wage and working long hours is the most common form of abuse. Some have reported having to work 90 hours a week and being required to be on-call 24 hours a day.
More extreme cases of abuse include:
- not being paid.
- being locked in the house during the day.
- racial abuse.
- Isolation, having passports locked away is common.
- A wide range of physical, psychological and emotional violence, including rape by male employers.
Why migrant workers come to the UK
The main reasons why they come to the UK are financial.
Many cannot cannot afford medical bills, or basic goods for the children. Or they are in debt.
Some return back to the UK over and over again knowing how bad their working conditions are going to be. This is because they cannot earn enough to meet their needs in their home countries.
Trades Unions are aware of the exploitation. However migrant workers are hard to reach because they are so isolated, and thus fragmented.
Signposting/ find out more
This post is a summary of a 2023 episode of Thinking Allowed podcast on Intersections which covers the above study.
This issue is most relevant to the globalisation and global development module.
This is a useful report on domestic workers by the ILO.
While this post focuses specifically on domestic workers, the issue is broader.
Recently the government added health and social care workers to the shortage list. Increasing numbers of migrants are now coming to the UK on these visas.
According to one recent International Labour Organisation estimate there are 75 million domestic workers in the world.
