ABOUT DOMESTIC WORKERS  >  Migrant and Trafficked Domestic Workers

  Who are Migrant Domestic Workers?

Many women migrate from their villages to work as domestic workers. This migration takes two forms:

• rural to urban, and

• from India to a labour-receiving foreign country.

Whether the domestic worker remains in India or travels to the Middle East or Southeast Asia, she finds herself in a foreign environment, away from her family and adjusting to new languages, food, and cultures. Migrants are typically live-in domestic workers and are thus most vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse, excessively long working hours, and deprivation. Many of them are from tribal regions and the traditional discrimination they face as women and as live in domestic workers is compounded by their ethnicity.

Despite these problems, poor women continue to migrate to cities and foreign countries as a way to supplement their families' meagre incomes.
 

  Reasons for Migration within India

Migration from rural areas to big cities typically occurs due to debt bondage, poverty, sudden death in the family, rural and male unemployment. The glamour of city life acts as a further "pull" factor inducing young girls and women to migrate. Working in cities is seen as a solution to poverty and villagers are unaware of the difficult working conditions and poor remuneration of domestic workers. Additionally, a large number of domestic workers come from areas, which have been subjected to natural disasters and man-made crisis situations (such as insurgency) and as such are from displaced communities.

 

Trafficked Domestic Workers and Trafficking Agencies Increasingly, “trafficking agencies” have become a very significant factor in encouraging internal migration. In the arena of domestic work, organised trafficking is taking place as villagers living in the cities are returning to their native places to bring more women, girls and children into this labour sector. In Delhi alone there over and above hundreds of agencies which sell domestic workers. This points to the well-organised nature of the entire racket. Once the girls arrive in the cities, their wages are typically locked or they go unpaid in order to pay the traffickers a fee for securing employment. If the girls decide to migrate on their own, they are still in danger of falling into the clutches of agents. In Delhi, scores of recruiting agents wait at the train stations for the girls to arrive from the villages. They either employ the girls directly or they hand them to local agents for a commission. The girls are often locked in a dark room without ventilation until a job is found. These agents then take commissions from the girls and the employers. The girls find themselves in a situation of bonded labour. Some agents arrange with the employers that the girls' salaries be paid to the agents. The money is then held for a year and deposited in the agents' bank accounts, depriving the girl of her money and the opportunity to earn interest. They are forced to work under the recruiting agent, who does not follow up on the girls' situations once jobs are secured.

Trafficking in Human Beings "Trafficking in human beings is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of force or the threat of force. It may also involve abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or the giving and receiving of payments for the purposes of sexual exploitation, forced labour, slavery-like practices, servitude or the removal of organs." United Nations (www.undcp.org)

  Migration Outside of India

Richer industrialising countries are increasingly demanding cheap, menial and domestic labour from poorer, less developed countries such as India. Because the job of a domestic worker does not require experience, thousands of Indian women travel to countries in the Middle East, South East Asia, and sometimes Europe and North America in search of jobs paying higher wages. However, these women earn the lowest salary for a foreign worker, despite the fact that they may be earning more than they would in India for the same job.

Many women travel abroad to send money back home in an effort to improve their quality of life in India. However, in travelling abroad, they become vulnerable to corrupt recruitment practices, lack of work contracts, withheld salaries, physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the workplace and the inability to return home.

In India, the procedure for migrating abroad for work is very unregulated. Unlike countries, such as Sri Lanka, the Indian government has not implemented a pre-migration program aimed at educating migrants of their rights. In order to travel abroad, migrants are forced to borrow large sums of money, often with exorbitant interest rates, to pay fees to brokers.

Many times, the migrants, who are often illiterate and naïve to the potential risks of entrusting large sums of money with strangers, are the victims of scams of the fly-by-night brokers. These con artists do not secure the promised job abroad, give them false tickets, or do not secure the appropriate paperwork so that the women can legally work as domestic workers. Thus, many women find themselves in a foreign country without the necessary papers. They are especially vulnerable to not being paid the promised salary and being held in conditions of slavery without the ability to complain to the police. In many cases, the employer holds on to the domestic worker's passport, preventing her from leaving or contacting the Indian embassy to file complaints.
 

  Working Conditions of Foreign Migrant Domestic Workers

Once they migrate, the domestic workers have little or no contact with their families at home. They cannot write letters as they are typically illiterate and they are not allowed access to the telephone. Since they are not typically given leave, migrant domestic workers do not have the opportunity to travel to their villages and visit their family. Because these migrants live with their employers, their free time is severely restricted. Often, they are unable to meet with friends and relatives from their village who are also working in the same city.

They often need to learn a new language in order to communicate with their employers, so they are more prone than other domestic workers to misunderstanding instructions and consequently making mistakes. Many of these girls have very limited skills. They are unable to use appliances and many have limited cooking skills. They are vulnerable to harsh reprisals, beatings and other forms of punishment, for breaking household items or making mistakes.

In countries like Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen, there is a dearth of protective laws for domestic workers. Migrant domestic workers are frequently subjected to harsh verbal and physical abuse. Some are sexually harassed. They face racial discrimination in the country where they work and when they return home. They are discriminated against because other migrants in the area had been sexually abused and/or impregnated. Particularly in the Middle East, migrant workers are forced to very restrictive cultural norms such as the purdah system, preventing them from leaving the house.
 

  Migrant and Trafficked Domestic Workers with the National Domestic Workers’ Movement (NDWM)

In order to curb trafficking from the tribal belt, NDWM takes the following actions:

• Awareness programs are conducted, including meetings allowing those returning from cities to share their experiences with prospective migrants.

• Registries are maintained that contain the names of boys and girls who have migrated in order to keep contact with them.

• Inquiries need to be constantly conducted to maintain those who are going to work in the cities.

• Set-up vocational and skill training programmes for young girls to enable them to build a better future for themselves.

• Capacity building sessions for all stakeholders.

• Agents and brokers are identified. Officials are being warned and requested to be especially alert during the Christmas, Easter, other festivals and the summer seasons, as this is when agents and brokers come to villages. This is essential to protect the target group from the clutches of exploitation.

• Active lobbying for improvement of the educational system is carried out. Non-formal education programs and bridge schools are run to help children to be placed into the mainstream education.

• Funds are created to assist dropouts in the payments for the board exams

• Migrants have been intercepted at railroad stations at both source and destination areas.

• Network with other non-government organisations, government organisations, policy makers and police in source and destination areas in order to facilitate rescue, rehabilitation and repatriation.

In order to curb international migration, similar steps are taken:

• Pre-departure manuals have been disseminated to increase awareness of the risks and challenges of migration.

• The plight of migrant domestic workers abroad have been documented.

• Active advocacy and lobbying is carried out.

• Crisis interventions are carried out to victimised individuals.

• Networks are established with other NGOs that work on international migration.