Critical Social Policy

In a global economy where capital moves freely, border and legal restrictions are imposed on human bodies, giving rise to illegal and undocumented migration. The so called feminisation of migration looks at females as a dominant category in migration and denotes the surge in women migration which is also subject to restriction on mobility across borders. In a global economy with high tendency for securitisation and border control, migrating women, akin to other migrant groups, are also prone to be undocumented or illegal migrants in their host countries. The highly gendered and radicalized global job market has left many migrant women working in fields that have traditionally been ought to be “female jobs”. In light of the classical invisibility of the work of women in the domestic field, the work of migrant female domestic workers, despite the benefits to the economies of their countries, is also invisiblized. However, the exploitation and abuse that many migrant domestic workers experience has put to tension their invisibility. Intrigued by the technologies in which migrant domestic workers are rendered visible– often only within the category of being victims or battered- this paper will look at Lebanon as a case. This research paper aims to critically engage with migrant domestic workers in Lebanon by probing the relationship between domestic work and governmentality. It examines the relationship between, on the one hand, the legal, social and spatial barriers related to the sector, and on the other the (in)visibility of migrant domestic workers. Moreover, the paper further examines the politics and power of representation and the production of objects of knowledge, as well as the impact of such a discourse on the (in)visibility these migrant domestic workers. The paper highlights the implications of this on eliding the resistance and agency of these migrant domestic workers as well as eliding the gendered response to globalization.

2021

Gender equality cannot be achieved in Lebanon without dismantling the kafala system and creating legal protections for domestic workers. Women make up an estimated 76 per cent of all migrant workers and 99 per cent of migrant domestic workers who come to Lebanon for employment. Despite coming to the country as workers, they are exempted from labour protections according to article 7 of the labour law. This paper illuminates the gender dimensions of women migrant domestic workers’ lived experiences in Lebanon, and demonstrates why attention must be increased to issues of sexual and reproductive health rights and access, sexual and gender-based violence, racialized and gendered economic inequality, maternal rights and child custody issues, and gender discrimination in legislative and administrative procedures governing migrant women’s lives. It is hoped that this deepened gendered understanding will contribute to efforts to dismantle Lebanon’s kafala system. It is also hoped that this paper will improve the approaches taken to address migrant workers’ rights in Lebanon and will advance the inclusion of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon’s women’s rights and feminist movement.

Over the last 15 years, the abuses suffered by Lebanon’s migrant domestic workers (MDWs) have been brought into stark relief by scholars and NGOs. Though valuable in illuminating Lebanon’s institutional legal biases, such literature has failed to situate Lebanon’s MDW industry within the local, regional and global political economy. By way of contrast, feminist political economy frameworks have identified how MDWs’ journeys are underpinned by the uneven development of capitalism, which has, in turn, shaped a racialised, gendered and class-based ‘international division of reproductive labour’. However this literature has remained firmly embedded in the experiences of workers in the Global North. This paper aims to fill the gap between the legalistic literature on Lebanon’s labour relations and the North-centric feminist political economy research, by developing a fuller understanding of the specific economic, social and political connections which structure the small Arab nation’s MDW industry. In doing so, we argue the Lebanese state has institutionalised the systematic exploitation of MDWs, in the interests of laissez-faire capitalism, although this agenda has also been thoroughly shaped by regional flows of capital and labour, as well as the global expansion of the market.

This case study on migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Lebanon has been conducted for the EU-funded project ‘Migrants in Countries in Crisis: Supporting an Evidence-Based Approach for Effective and Cooperative State Action’. Six case studies have been prepared for this project, to provide detailed information on the impacts of crises on migrants, particularly in the longer-term. For this case study on Lebanon, we have adopted a two-pronged approach. First, we examine the impact of the July-August 2006 war on MDWs in the country at the time, to analyse how domestic workers and other relevant governmental and civil society actors responded to MDWs’ needs during the crisis, and lessons learned as a result of this crisis. Nonetheless, MDWs themselves do not identify the 2006 war as a significant crisis for them, and Lebanon is currently in the midst of dealing with a humanitarian crisis due to the large number of Syrian refugees they are now hosting, some of whom have entered into domestic work. Therefore, as a second line of inquiry, we analyse the significance of ‘everyday crises’ in reference to acute humanitarian crises, where inequalities and abuse experienced by MDWs in the country can become exacerbated in a crisis situation.

Since the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of female workers from African and South Asian countries have migrated to Lebanon, to primarily serve as domestic workers in private households. These workers arrive, reside and work in the country according to the Kafala (or sponsorship) System; which has been denounced by many researchers, activists, and workers themselves to be the reason for their vulnerability and susceptibility. A large portion of these migrant domestic workers are deprived of their basic workers and human rights within the Lebanese territory and have no legal security of employment under the Lebanese labor law. This thesis addresses the relationship between the Kafala System and the abuse of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon and analyzes whether there are other reasons contributing to the abuse. By going through the literature on domestic work, tracing the origin of domestic work and the Kafala System in Arab countries, examining its current regulations in Lebanon, as well as discussing Lebanese employers' behavior towards the Kafala system and migrant domestic workers; this thesis argues that Lebanese employers' perception of migrant domestic workers is another major factor that contributes to their abuse. Based on a number of interviews conducted with Lebanese employers as well as on policy reports and studies, this thesis seeks to determine how vital it is to recognize employers' perception of migrant domestic workers as an important factor when discussing the issue of abuse. The argument endorses addressing employers' acuity of their “maids” as an actual problem, as failing to do so, may hinder the impact of potential policy reform.

A 50-page policy document on migrant domestic work in Lebanon

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.

In this study I highlight the spatial exclusions that migrant domestic workers (MDWs) experience in Lebanon. I argue that migrant domestic workers constantly challenge such spatial exclusions by using the exact spaces that they are excluded from as the bases for a meso-level of resistances-strategic acts that cannot be classified as either private and individual or as organized collective action. I highlight three kinds of such resistive activities: the strategic dyads forged across balconies by the most restricted live-in workers, the small collectives formed outside ethnic churches by other live-in workers, and much larger worker collectives (that often cross national borders) in rental apartments occupied by illegal freelancers and runaways. By analyzing these spaces as strategic instances of workers' collectives, I question the portrayal of MDWs in the Arab world as ultimate and defeated victims of abuse. But the continuum of resistive activities undertaken by MDWs in Lebanon also challenges the dichotomies often constructed between public (overt and organized) and private (individual and symbolic) forms of organization and resistances. This meso-level of resistance becomes particularly significant in a country like Lebanon, where MDWs are forbidden from forming or joining formal unions, and becomes critical for workers from many countries in Africa and South Asia who, unlike the larger Filipina community, have little access to formal support systems like consulates and embassies.