Natalie Sedacca - Durham University (original) (raw)

Papers by Natalie Sedacca

Matchmakers: placement agencies and digital platforms in the UK childcare market

Work in the Global Economy , 2024

Households seeking childcare often turn to labour market intermediaries such as placement agencie... more Households seeking childcare often turn to labour market intermediaries such as placement agencies and digital platforms to facilitate their search. This article draws on a qualitative research project to examine the respective roles played by agencies and platforms, comparing the structural power dynamics they engender between workers, clients, and intermediaries. First, it argues that digital platforms stand in an ambiguous position in relation to the formalisation of childcare. While they have contributed to reducing transaction costs and standardising processes, this has often been through the creation of more flexible and insecure forms of work compared with agencies. Second, in contrast with literature emphasising the disciplinary effects of platforms, we claim that they institute new forms of ‘constrained flexibility’, which have increased workers’ access to jobs, control over their schedule and communication with clients, while simultaneously subjecting them to increased market pressures and requiring higher levels of digital and entrepreneurial skills.

Authors: James Muldoon, Natalie Sedacca, and Paul Apostolidis

Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre - published on website, 2024

The report follows a collaborative project between four NGOs and five academics, funded by the Mo... more The report follows a collaborative project between four NGOs and five academics, funded by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre. It relates primarily to visa schemes that have been introduced in the UK since Brexit, addressing labour shortages in the care and agricultural sector. It finds that visa schemes both effectively tie workers to their employer, making it almost impossible to switch jobs without jeopardising their right to stay in the UK. These risks are heightened by ‘Hostile Environment’ immigration policies and by a lack of effective labour enforcement. Workers in both sectors revealed issues of debt, illegal recruitment fees, poor working conditions, and inadequate accommodation. The report makes detailed recommendations to improve rights, including amending visa schemes to allow for extensions and facilitate changes of employer in practice, creating pathways for secure reporting to labour inspectorates, and addressing illegal / excessive fees.

The authors are: Dr Inga Thiemann, University of Leicester; Prof Konstantinos Alexandris Polomarkakis, Royal Holloway, University of London; Dr Natalie Sedacca, Durham University; Dr Manoj Dias-Abey, University of Bristol; Dr Joyce Jiang, University of York; Caitlin Boswell, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants; Oliver Fisher, Focus on Labour Exploitation; Susan Cueva and Patty Miranda, Kanlungan Filipino Consortium; Nova Francisca Silitonga, Mariko Hayashi and Endang Priyatna, Southeast and East Asian Centre

Migrant Work, Gender and the Hostile Environment: A Human Rights Analysis

Industrial Law Journal, 2024

This article addresses work-related and gendered harms of the ‘hostile environment’, a set of mea... more This article addresses work-related and gendered harms of the ‘hostile environment’, a set of measures implemented through the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016, which aims to make life in the UK impossible for irregular migrants. The hostile environment criminalises work without legal status, facilitates data sharing between public bodies and immigration enforcement, and restricts access services and benefits. The article examines factors that can make women susceptible to irregularity and exposure to hostile environment measures, and distinctive forms of gendered harm such as workplace sexual harassment. It argues that the detrimental impacts of the hostile environment contravene international and regional human rights obligations. Barring certain migrants from access to the labour market may violate the socio-economic right to work and/ or the right to private and family life, while a lack of access to legal remedy or labour inspection fuelled can violate migrants’ right to decent work and undermine protections against forced labour. The UK’s recent ratification of the Council of Europe’s ‘Istanbul Convention’ and ILO Convention 190 on violence and harassment at work signifies a renewed commitment to safeguarding women regardless of migration status, but the universalistic potential of these instruments is undermined by the hostile environment’s continued operation.

VeraPavlou, Migrant Domestic Workers in Europe: Law and the Construction of Vulnerability, Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2021, 166pp, hb £76.50

The Modern Law Review

Reflecting on Crisis Ethics of Dis/Engagement in Migration Research - co-authored with Ioanna Manoussaki-Adamopoulou, Rachel Benchekroun, Andrew Knight, and Andrea Cortés Saavedra

Migration and Society, 2022

This article offers a collective “gaze from within” the process of migration research, on the eff... more This article offers a collective “gaze from within” the process of migration research, on the effects the pandemic has had on our interlocutors, our research fields, and our positionalities as researchers. Drawing from our experiences of researching a field in increasing crisis, and following the methodological reflections of the article written by our colleagues in this issue, we discuss a number of dilemmas and repositionings stemming from—and extending beyond—the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on issues of positionality, ethics of (dis)engaging from the research field, and the underlying extractivist nature of Global North academia, we propose our own vision of more egalitarian and engaged research ethics and qualitative methodologies in the post-pandemic world.

Domestic Workers, the 'Family Worker' Exemption from Minimum Wage, and Gendered Devaluation of Women's Work

Industrial Law Journal, 2022

Domestic workers, who work in private households carrying out tasks such as cooking, cleaning, an... more Domestic workers, who work in private households carrying out tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and care for children and the elderly, are overwhelmingly women and often from migrant and/ or ethnic minority backgrounds. This article examines a stark example of domestic workers’ exclusion from labour law protection, regulation 57(3) of the National Minimum Wage Regulations, which exempts employers from paying the minimum wage where a worker lives in their employer’s family home and is treated ‘as a member of the family’ in relation to accommodation, meals, tasks and leisure activities. Drawing on feminist theory on the divisions between ‘productive’ work outside the home versus ‘reproductive’ work within it, it argues that the exemption’s application has reflected gendered devaluation of domestic labour, stemming from its conflation with work normally performed for free by women in the ‘private sphere’ of the home. Focusing on the December 2020 Employment Tribunal (ET) judgment in Puthenveettil v Alexander & ors, which held that the exemption was unlawful and indirectly discriminatory on the grounds of sex, the article provides timely and in-depth analysis of the prospects for challenging the devaluation of domestic work in light of the limitations of legal protections for domestic workers in the UK.

A submission in response to the government's consultation Human Rights Act Reform: A Modern Bill ... more A submission in response to the government's consultation Human Rights Act Reform: A Modern Bill of Rights

OUP accepted manuscript

Human Rights Law Review

This article discusses the turn to a focus on criminal prosecution and custodial sentencing in in... more This article discusses the turn to a focus on criminal prosecution and custodial sentencing in international human rights law. Although it shares the concerns of many critics of the ‘turn’, it does not reject the orientation outright, arguing instead for the role of criminal justice to be seen holistically, encompassing proper consideration of the varied aims it can pursue and be geared towards countering inherent discrimination in criminal justice systems. The analysis is situated in the context of the 2016 peace agreement in Colombia and the attitude taken by human rights groups towards its transitional justice provisions, noting that criticisms raised by one prominent human rights group converged with a campaign against the agreement centred on a right-wing politician hostile to human rights, equality and redistribution. In light of the nuanced views of local civil society actors, it questions whether anti-impunity specifically requires custodial punishment for all international ...

Abortion in Latin America in International Perspective: Limitations and Potentials of the Use of Human Rights Law to Challenge Restrictions

Against the backdrop of the Zika virus epidemic bringing into focus the harsh impacts of prohibit... more Against the backdrop of the Zika virus epidemic bringing into focus the harsh impacts of prohibitions on abortion in Latin America, this article assesses the impact of international human rights law (‘IHRL’) in challenging such restrictions. After considering the regional picture and analyzing four significant international and regional challenges brought against Peru, Mexico and El Salvador, it argues that, despite important successes and the basis for protection of abortion access being contained within established rights such as health and privacy, IHRL’s overall impact in this area has been late in coming and relatively limited, particularly with regards to adult women whose pregnancies do not arise from rape and / or pose significant health risks. Shortcomings can be explained in part by IHRL’s historically uneasy relationship with women’s rights, including a lack of emphasis on socio-economic issues and reluctance to interfere in the private sphere. Also significant, however, are, more specific controversies regarding abortion, including those related to its damaging association with the agenda of population control as well as to religious influences, and resulting divisions within the women’s movement. A lack of consensus has led to weaknesses in the structure for protection based on international conferences on population and reproductive issues, in turn affording great significance to regional factors. In Latin America such factors – and particularly the definition of the right to life within the regional human rights convention as generally commencing ‘from the moment of conception’ – tend to impede rather than assist with access. As well as exploring the religious and regional roots of views giving precedence to fetal rights, tolerance thereof within the IRHL system compared is contrasted with much more stringent attitudes towards other religious and cultural factors. It is further argued that fulfilment of socio-economic rights is essential in allowing abortion to be recognised as a genuine issue of choice rather than an excuse (whether real or perceived) for states not to provide support during and after motherhood, so that denial of abortion can be established as a clear matter of discrimination, which is unacceptable under IHRL.

Drafts by Natalie Sedacca

Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights

Domestic workers are mainly women, are disproportionately from ethnic minorities and / or interna... more Domestic workers are mainly women, are disproportionately from ethnic minorities and / or international migrants, and are vulnerable to mistreatment, often receiving inadequate protection from labour legislation. This article addresses ways in which the conditions faced by migrant domestic workers can prevent their enjoyment of the right to private and family life. It argues that the focus on this right is illuminating as it allows for the incorporation of issues that are not usually within the remit of labour law into the discussion of working rights, such as access to family reunification, as well as providing for a different perspective on the question of limits on working time – a core labour right which is often denied to domestic workers. These issues are analysed by addressing a case study each from Latin America and Europe, namely Chile and the UK. The article considers impediments to realising the right to private and family life stemming both from the literal border – the operation of immigration controls and visa conditions – and from the figurative border which exists between domestic work and other types of work, reflected in the conflation of domestic workers with family members and stemming from the public / private sphere divide.

Books by Natalie Sedacca

Mass influx of people from Ukraine: social entitlements and access to the labour market: United Kingdom

Mass influx of people from Ukraine: social entitlements and access to the labour market , 2024