“Loving the Foreigner as the Native-Born” - The Human Rights and Welfare of Female Foreign Domestic Workers in Asia (original) (raw)
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International Migration and the Law, 2024
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This article considers the possibilities and limitations that the employment of human rights discourse poses for organizations in Malaysia involved in migrant domestic worker issues. Because domestic employment is such an overwhelmingly feminized occupation, one logical avenue of enquiry is to analyse these organizations’ adoption of ‘rights talk’ from a critical feminist perspective. The case-study research presented in this article suggests that activist groups are keen to adopt the language of human rights and make reference to international human rights standards in their work. The questions that frame this paper, therefore, are: to what extent does the engagement with the language of human rights by the activist groups challenge mainstream discourses of human rights that tend to exclude marginalized groups of women? And, when we make migrant domestic workers the subject of human rights claims, what then are the implications for human rights practice? It is suggested that the activities of activist organizations can play a role in destabilizing universalistic notions of human rights. Specifically, I highlight the ways in which campaigns to protect the rights of migrant domestic workers contain implicit critiques of both the public/private divide upon which mainstream human rights standards have been developed and the problematic relationship between rights and citizenship.
Foreign Workers: On The Other Side of Gendered, Racial, Political and Ethical Borders
Organization, 2019
We focus in this special issue on foreign workers, as the largest and growing impetus for migration is work: of international migrants, 164 million are employed or seeking work (ILO Labour Migration Branch, 2018). We decided to use the word 'foreign' as a deliberately provocative label to conjure up the image of the 'othered' migrant worker. This led us to pose the following questions as a means of elaborating our interests. What does it mean to be a foreign worker in today's global economy? How does being foreign intersect with assumptions about gender and sexuality? What are the ethical and political ramifications of this for individuals, organisations, labour markets and the state? These questions were not intended by any means to be politically disinterested, arising as they do from a long history of the exclusion, abuse and discrimination of foreign workers, especially those who are women, working class, people of colour, and sexual minorities.
2020
Following the suspension of sending Cambodian migrant domestic workers (MDWs) to Malaysia in 2011, Cambodian and Malaysia have recently promulgated the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the Recruitment and Employment of Domestic Workers. The purpose of this study is to examine the implications of the MOU on the human rights of Cambodian MDWs and to assess the compatibility of the MOU with International Human Rights Law. Using the legal dogmatic method and comparative legal method, the study analyzed the implications of the MOU on the fundamental human rights of Cambodian MDWs, specifically the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. The MOU is believed to expose Cambodian MDWs to forced labor situations, including trafficking in persons (TIPs), and discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. Their vulnerability is further compounded by the lack of access to justice under the MOU and related Malaysian legislation. In addition, the study discovered that a majority of the MOU's provisions are incompatible with or violate International Human Rights Law Standards, which either Malaysia or Cambodia is a State Party to; are recognized as the fundamental principles and rights at work by the ILO and other human rights treaty bodies; or are invoked by national courts and tribunals of non-ratified States. The research has definitively answered questions concerning the implications of the MOU on the human rights of Cambodian MDWs and the compatibility of the MOU with International Human Rights Standards. However, further studies are needed on the aspects of child labor, freedom of association, occupational and safety health, labor inspection, social security benefits, and repatriation.
Protecting the Housekeeper: Legal Agreements Applicable to International Migrant Domestic Workers
International migration over the last forty years has been one of the fastest growing phenomena in the world. Many migrants have taken up informal work, such as work in households doing domestic chores and other work. Due to the informal nature of this work and the fact that it is located in the home rather than a large work space with many employees (such as a factory), the so-called 'employment relationship' does not always offer decent working conditions or ways to resolve disputes between workers and employers. After a number of high-profi le cases of abuse, governments have become more active in negotiating bilateral agreements or memoranda of understanding to address these issues for international migrant domestic workers. This paper will explore the issues and the legal tools used to provide a semblance of equity to the working relationships between international migrant domestic workers and their employers, as well as suggesting what should be done in the future.
Foreign Policy and the Domestic Worker: The Malaysia-Indonesia Domestic Worker Dispute
In 2009, following numerous high profile abuse cases, the Indonesian government placed a moratorium on its citizens taking up employment in Malaysia as domestic workers. From the perspective of feminist International Relations, the emergence of migrant domestic work as a foreign policy concern between these two states is significant–exposing a relationship between foreign policy and the webs of transnationalized social relations of reproduction that underpin the development prospects of middle to low income states. In this article I utilize the example of the Malaysia-Indonesia dispute in order to develop some tentative suggestions concerning the possibility of integrating an analysis of transnational social relations of reproduction into foreign policy analyses. The article initially overviews how the dispute is widely understood in relation to Indonesia’s turn to a more democratic foreign policy. The inadequacy of such a reading is explored further. The article suggests that the above-mentioned dispute should rather be understood in relation to the specific configurations of productive-reproductive relations that underpin migratory flows and the role of Indonesia and Malaysia as ‘regulatory’ states involved in the establishment of return-migration systems in which women migrants are viewed as economic commodities and policed via a range of state-sanctioned practices (including commitments to anti-trafficking).
Context Regulation of employment relationships is fraught with tension. On the one hand, the existence of an employment contract suggests that contractual principles should dominate and that regulation should proceed on the basis of assumptions of freedom of contract and equality of the parties. On the other hand, it has become clear that the assumptions of contract law do not represent the reality of many employment relationships, and that regulations need to recognize that employment relationships form a framework in which abuses occur and in which inequality is perpetrated.1 The problem for claimants is that even the more progressive regulations under employment law (such as work-related discrimination) do not entirely escape contractual assumptions. They aim still toward economic efficiency rather than, say, human rights protection. Furthermore, human rights legislation tends to be considered a separate area of law, an area of public protection that does not extend to private employment relationships. Thus the claimants fall through a loophole in employment law: employment rights do not adequately cover human rights abuses, and human rights law does not always penetrate employment relationships. International law is making the most inroads into closing that gap.