Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East : The Home and the World

or nearly half a century, the Middle East and, in particular, the Arabian Peninsula has become a major migration corridor for domestic workers from Asia and Africa. The large-scale employment of migrant domestic workers began following the oil boom in 1973. As a result of rapidly growing oil revenues, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states financed development projects in infrastructure, industry, and agriculture, which attracted migrants from neighboring Arab countries and other parts of the world. Initially, the majority of migrants were single men, with women migrating for family reunification. The increasing demand for paid domestic labor led to an increase in the number of autonomous women migrants (Castles and Miller, 2003; Moukarbel, 2009). Domestic workers came predominantly from South and Southeast Asia (e.g., the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Indonesia), yet in the past decade, an increasing number of African women have also migrated to the Middle East. Most of them come from Ethiopia and Eritrea, but there are also women from Nigeria, Cameroon, Madagascar, Benin, and other African countries who work as domestics. In addition, while the majority of migrant domestic workers can be found on the Arabian Peninsula, they are also present in Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Syria (before the civil war), and Yemen (e.g. For over half a century, the Middle East has been major migration corridor for domestic workers from Asia and Africa. This book Illuminates the multidimensionality of these workers' lives as they engage in finding a balance between acting and being acted upon, struggle and accommodation, and movement and stasis. For over half a century, the Middle East - and the Arabian Peninsula in particular - has been major migration corridor for domestic workers from Asia and Africa. Migrant domestic workers comprise a significant proportion of the migrant labour force in these countries, in some cases, nearly fifty per cent. This volume goes beyond a discussion of the working conditions of migrant domestic workers to show the multidimensionality of their lives in the Middle East. The chapters illustrate these women's varied processes of "making a home in the world," the existential transformations they undergo, and the multiple ways in which they are able to exert agency, despite the constrained choices they are often forced to make. Contributors show how the spaces these women occupy disrupt and challenge given notions of the public-private divide, re-working them as spaces of encounter and of relationships of belonging, spiritual connection, friendship, conviviality, and sociality. This volume presents a vibrant portrait of migrant domestic workers in the Middle East as more than passive victims of abuse and exploitation, showing how they (like people everywhere) are actively engaged in finding a balance between acting and being acted upon, between struggle and accommodation, closure and openness, and movement and stasis "This edited volume, based on ethnographic fieldwork, provides important new insights in the everyday lives of migrant domestic workers in the Middle East. With the home turned into a workplace and privacy to be found in the public, it unsettles conventional notions about the public and the private. Employing agency and mobility as key terms, the case studies go beyond the employer-domestic worker relation, and convincingly show how foreign domestics forge new socialities through support networks and activism, through developing new religious ties and communities, and through marriage and childbearing." - Annelies Moors, professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands "This collection of essays is a significant addition to the growing literature and concern about migrant domestic workers around the world. Acknowledging but transcending human rights discourse of restriction and abuse, these scholarly elaborations reveal the equally important nuances of agency of Asian and African women and how they cope as individuals and as communities in the Middle East." - Ray Jureidini, professor of Ethics and Migration, Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics, Hamad Bin Khalifa University Front Matter....Pages i-viii Making a Home in the World....Pages 1-26 Forging Intimate and Work Ties....Pages 27-49 Degrees of (Un)Freedom....Pages 51-74 Immobilized Migrancy....Pages 75-93 The “Mama Mary” of the White City’s Underside....Pages 95-115 Creating a “New Home” Away from Home....Pages 117-139 Caring for the Future in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia....Pages 141-164 “Shall We Leave or Not?”....Pages 165-185 Back Matter....Pages 187-199