Yes ma’am

by Kellynn Wee

“Yes ma’am”: the words a migrant domestic worker in Singapore repeats most -- but they can mean much more than simple subservience.

The words that a migrant domestic worker in Singapore repeats most are probably “yes ma’am.”

“Pick up the kids at 3 pm after school.” “Yes ma’am.”

“Put less salt in the chicken next time.” “Yes ma’am.”

“Eat instant noodles for breakfast and dinner every day for the next year.”

Yes, ma’am.

But while marking #InternationalMigrantsDay, we investigate the meanings of “yes ma’am”, and how domestic workers are able to re-negotiate the terms of their employment by using the “yes ma’am” script to serve their own needs.

James Scott, an anthropologist writing about village status hierarchies in Malaysia, outlines his concept of the ‘theatre of power’. In this theatre, Scott argues, ‘public transcripts’ — commonly occurring patterns of communicating such as the “yes ma’am” dialogue — reflect expected social and cultural norms. They are used where one group (in this case, the employer) has power over another (here, the worker).

The public transcript of “yes ma’am” indicates a performance of deference, obedience, and submissiveness: standing in an attitude of listening and attentive politeness; ensuring that one’s tone of voice is quiet and respectful; and endeavouring never to contradict or argue with one’s employer.

We speak to two experienced Taiwan-bound domestic workers at a training centre in Jakarta.

Public transcripts occur alongside what Scott calls "hidden transcripts”: “offstage speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what happens in the public transcript” (Scott 1990: p. 4).

These hidden transcripts develop best when they are shared amongst those who are not in power. Domestic workers teach each other hidden transcripts to deal with difficult situations. These might include insufficient food, no/few days off, late payment of salaries, overwhelming workloads, lack of sleep, and expectation from the employer that they will  work in multiple households.

Without obvious instances of physical, verbal, or sexual abuse, and the need to pay off hefty loans ranging up to SGD $3000 (USD $2123) during the first 6-8 months of her contract, a migrant domestic worker may not wish to seek help from external authorities which might cost her her job.

So they turn to each other for advice instead. Experienced domestic workers say that there are ways to effectively communicate their needs to their employers — you just have to do it right. They know very well what an employer expects — and they are able to use the expected ‘public transcript' to their advantage.

“You need to be ‘down’ when you’re taking to the employer,” explains Nuraini, an Indonesian domestic worker who has been in Singapore for 14 years. “Make sure you make eye contact, don’t look away. The voice is not hostile, not like, 'HEY MA’AM'!”

Tinah, a Filipino domestic worker who has been in Singapore for 23 years, recalls the advice she gave to a friend, who had been employed to work in two houses. This is illegal under Singaporean law, which stipulates that domestic workers are allowed to work only at the address stated on their Work Permits:

"If you‘re unhappy about this [situation], then talk directly to your employer. You can say: ‘Ma'am, this is not really a legal thing to do. I‘m so scared if I‘m going to work there, what if the Ministry of Manpower visits and they see me and they report me, then what will happen to me? I am not only jeopardising my stay here to work, but also you, because how much is the fine?’”

When Tinah relates the script that she suggests the migrant worker should use, she does not simply utter the words: she performs them. Her voice takes on a tone of uncertainty and fear, and she spreads her hands out in a conciliatory gesture. This is in keeping with the expected ‘act’ that should play out between maid and madam — a migrant domestic worker should refrain from being too forward and should be keen to put her employer first.

This is not a confrontational approach; it does not invoke a rights-based discourse — however, it subtly articulates a worker's knowledge of the legislation that has been put into place to protect her, presents her complaints in a socially acceptable way, and seeks to improve the conditions of her work.

Had she spoken to her employer in a way that deviates from the public transcript (such as with a tone of aggression or anger), she might have risked openly transgressing her ‘appropriate’ social location in relation to her employer; by couching it in a performance of subservience, she might be able to win benefits without reprisal.

Nuraini suggests that workers ‘set the stage’ in the theatre of power by ensuring that conditions are ideal for employers to be receptive to workers’ requests. Surroundings should be tidy; employers are best approached after a well-cooked meal and some rest. Respectful addresses like ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’ should be frequently employed.

“Say 'please' and 'thank you', always, ‘yes ma'am'; explain nicely. Don‘t make your body language hostile. Stay professional. Don't back down, keep your hands down, don't gesture too much […] Talk to them when they’re in a good mood, not during their meal. Say, 'ma'am, can I speak to you about my salary, how come you haven't paid me, it's due already... the rule is after seven days, it is the deadline...' […] 'Hi ma'am, can I take an off day, just from 9-6'; if your employer would like to deduct from the salary, then that‘s fine... It‘s a negotiation.”

Leaders from the Filipino Family Network conduct a briefing. The domestic worker run organisation conducts classes and organises social gatherings helping newcomers to Singapore develop networks.

Nuraini suggests that workers adopt a posture of professional politeness (such as maintaining steady eye contact and not appearing overly uncertain), while keeping to expectations of the public transcript — explicitly acknowledging the superiority of the employer, building an overall impression of humility, taking the initiative to circumscribe the boundaries of ‘privileges’ (such as a day off) in order to indicate a willingness to compromise. Like Tinah, she suggests that the worker display her knowledge of protective legislation, such as deadlines for salary payments.

Scott says that a mastery of the “theatre of power” may “become an actual political resource of subordinates […] what may look from above like the extraction of a required performance can easily look from below like the artful manipulation of deference and flattery to achieve its own ends” (Scott 1990: p. 35).

Migrant workers independently undertake a range of strategies to improve their working conditions within the countries in which they work. This may range from protests, creating unions, participating in campaigns – to giving each other pragmatic advice about delicately navigating through tensions at work.

While these ‘transcripts’, taught by experienced workers to fresher faces, may not fundamentally transform the state of migrants’ rights, they are a concrete and practical tool to secure advances in what a worker eats, when a worker sleeps, and where a worker goes — items of negotiation fundamental to day-to-day life.

Migrant workers are not always passive victims of abuse or sacrificial heroes, as they are often presented in the media; they, too, are employees like many others — caught within structural forms of disempowerment, but able to strategise their way through with mutual help and support.

ARI and the Migrating out of Poverty team wish all migrants a happy International Migrants’ Day!

Kellynn Wee is Research and Communications Officer at the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. This blog post is a slightly amended version of the text originally published on ARI's blog at: https://arimoop.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/yes-maam/ on 19 December 2015. It draws on Kellynn's personal research, conducted in 2014 for her undergraduate thesis:‘Work Permitted: Foreign Domestic Workers‘ Collective Strategies of Negotiation in Singapore’. With many thanks to the Indonesian Family Network, the Filipino Family Network and Transient Workers Count Too for their help in facilitating the fieldwork.

References

Scott, J. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance: hidden transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Migration in southern Africa – a visit to the City of Migrants

by Eva-Maria Egger

I spent three weeks in July and August this year in South Africa visiting researchers at the University of Cape Town and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg as part of an exchange program funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It gave me the opportunity to work with the data from the Migrating out of Poverty household survey collected in Zimbabwe earlier this year, while I was in the region which many of the migrants in the survey chose as their destination. But around this academic experience I also had the chance to see the two largest cities of the country and meet people who live and chose to live in them.

When you go to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg you can see historical documents illustrating the history and presence of immigration to Johannesburg and South Africa from all over the world. Johannesburg, the City of Gold, is also the City of Migrants. In the past the discovery of gold attracted many people from within and outside the country’s borders to come to Johannesburg and build a new life. Today vast economic opportunities attract the migrants. Not only can you see the factories and office buildings of various international companies in the city, but also a wide range of African shops run by people from all over the continent. This international mix, in combination with high unemployment among South Africans, was the backdrop to the violent xenophobic outbreaks after the World Cup in 2010. However, the City of Johannesburg and many academic and civil society actors are determined to change these attitudes.

Migrating out of Poverty partner the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) is partaking in ‘myth busting’ projects. All around the city you can hear stories about buses full of pregnant Zimbabwean women arriving daily in Johannesburg to give birth and stay in South Africa. There is little truth to such tales, but belief in them is strong, and politicians do not shy away from feeding into anti-immigrant attitudes similar to those we read daily in European news about ‘benefit tourists’. On one day I witnessed these attitudes first hand. I had visited a social project for children and youth in a township of Pretoria with a social worker from Rwanda. She has built this project together with a friend of mine. She and her family have lived in South Africa for more than 10 years now. We took a minibus back to the city and the driver started speaking in Afrikaans to me until we explained that I was just visiting and did not speak Afrikaans. His reaction was rather cold when asking me where I was from and what I was doing in South Africa, but still polite. Then, however, he turned to my Rwandan companion and asked her with a very suspicious undertone, where she was from and what she was doing in South Africa. I could feel the tension in the air, she felt threatened. So she replied with a lie, saying that she, too, was just visiting with me.

On the other hand, the City of Johannesburg is actively seeking to improve the situation of immigrants, be it international or internal, unskilled or skilled. The Business Union of South Africa is actively involved in anti-xenophobia campaigns, because businesses are looking for workers with skills which often they cannot find among South African workers. Many foreign business people I talked to told me that they were eager to hire South Africans, but in the end hired someone from Zimbabwe or other countries, because they were just better equipped with the skills the employer needed. Thus, the city recognizes that the integration efforts have to aim equally at internal migrants from rural parts of the country as well as at international immigrants to give them access to services and legal working opportunities.

Around 85% of migrants entering South Africa come from the Southern African Development Community. Most taxi drivers in Johannesburg I talked to came from different parts of the country or the continent. This puts the European media news stories on the ‘masses’ of immigrants from Africa with their suggestion that Europe is the dream destination for migrants from the African continent, into perspective. To me it seems that South Africa is the number one destination for many African migrants and the city of Johannesburg alone welcomes thousands of immigrants from within and outside the country every month. As the Mayor says, “This is not merely a challenge, but also an opportunity”.

And many people see and take this opportunity. Numerous artists, designers, musicians choose Jozi as their place of inspiration. Long ignored and run-down areas of the city are re-discovered and re-populated by businesses. Kids and youth speak at least three languages because they grow up surrounded by people from different parts of the country or the continent. Students at the famous University of Witwatersrand come from all over the country and the world. Many also hope to return to their origins and make a difference there, using the skills they learned and building on the networks they established in the City of Migrants.

Johannesburg, City of Migrants

Sources:

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-11-07-on-the-move-south-africa-and-migration/#.Vf7wUN9VhBc

https://www.enca.com/south-africa/migration-joburg-should-be-opportunity-mayor

http://www.joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6826:migration-under-the-spotlight&catid=88&Itemid=266

http://www.joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5686:migration-discussed&catid=88&Itemid=340

Eva Maria Egger is a doctoral candidate in Economics at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium. Findings from the household survey that Eva-Maria worked on are published in the new working paper, Migrating out of Poverty in Zimbabwe, by Vupenyu Dzingirai, Eva-Maria Egger, Loren Landau, Julie Litchfield, Patience Mutopo and Kefasi Nyikahadzoi, which is available on the Migrating out of Poverty website.

After the Migrant Leaves Home

By Kudakwashe Vanyoro

“I came here with the hope of a better future, nothing more than that. I couldn’t study because of poverty”. These are the exact words of Ram, a young male Nepalese migrant working in Japan, in the short film ‘After Ram Left Home’, which was screened at Migrating out of poverty’s gender conference in Singapore, 30 June – 2 July.

The film managed to capture some of the most powerful dynamics at play in the process of the migration of young males in Asia. These included the sacrifice of borrowing money - up to US$20,000 - to pay recruitment fees required to secure work in a restaurant; the tribulations of the left-behind wife and parents; and the promising yet lonely and uncertain life of the migrant seeking a better life elsewhere. The migration of Ram was undoubtedly informed by gender roles and expectations based on what I perceived to be the instinct to provide for his family and himself in order to make the statement “I am a man”. In many ways, Ram’s migration symbolised a rite of passage, of a sort.

Yet that social statement was underpinned by certain presumptions about how Ram was behaving in his host country, particularly on the part of his wife. She was very suspicious and convinced that he may be cheating on her with a more beautiful and younger girl (because that is ‘how man roll’). In as much as Ram felt that his manhood could be qualified and asserted through economic prowess, the migration that this entailed produced certain household challenges that were not easy to deal with.

Ram’s dad, on the other hand, felt that if only he had been a better man financially, his son would not have had to go through the process of migration that brings with it insurmountable debt and uncertainty. He must have thought that his son’s migration was a challenge to his own gender ascribed role: providing for his own kin and maintaining his nuclear family intact. In the film, he lamented over this and his sentiments, which  many sons growing up in nuclear families would also get from their dads, resonate with me. Ram’s wife, besides being continuously insecure about her husband’s degree of faithfulness, also had to grapple with adjusting to her new role of heading the house and supporting her in-laws which was not an easy task as it had previously been Ram’s role.

In as much as migration yields benefits as seen in Ram remitting money here and there, it is clear that it challenges the concept of family life as we are raised to understand it. Migration questions norms, brings us out of our comfort zones, and presents us with potentially newer ways of understanding and negotiating gender roles and the family. This is not limited to male migration as in Ram’s case. It is also a similar challenge in female migration.

In Zimbabwe for example, female domestic and cross-border labour migration were traditionally associated with prostitution. I’m certain that this is not unique to that context alone. Predominantly, women on the move are seen as deviant and are often ostracised and labelled as incorrect. However, I have seen many instances where female ‘cross-border’ migrants lift families from poverty and increase the family’s upward social mobility. During Zimbabwe’s economic crisis from 2000 to 2008, it was the women that dared to pick themselves up, challenging the status quo by migrating to sell baskets in South Africa. Leaving their children behind in the care of their grannies and fathers, through their agency these female migrants both challenged societal, cultural and economic structures, and facilitated household subsistence and development. Nonetheless, this migration presented challenges to the nuclear family as some men ended up taking up female-ascribed roles of caregiving and cooking.  

Evidently, both male and female migration is equally problematic. So the end question is; given the challenges that migration presents to the domestic setup is migration necessarily a bad thing? I don’t think so.

Through migration, individuals are able to shape their own lives beyond the scope of the conventional. We begin to understand gender and family in nuanced ways, if we allow ourselves to, that is. Poverty is one of the greatest challenges facing mankind today. It incapacitates families to an extent where there is ultimately no gender or family to talk about. So if migration can help with this, what should take precedence: the order of things or livelihood? I would argue that livelihood should come first. I think that the evidence speaks for itself.

So, what are the key lessons from all this? Migration is not without its challenges. But what does it challenge predominantly? It challenges how we do things, what we tell ourselves is the domestic order of things. But interestingly, it questions our gender ascriptions about who should be cooking and caregiving against who should be working outside the home; who should be making decisions in the household and who (if anyone) should be subservient. More importantly however, by challenging the status quo, it illuminates. It does so by showing us that daddy is actually a good cook after he cooks the food that mummy sent from her income using the cross-border bus (and that that food still tastes the same). It shows us that women are equally good decision makers in the family when daddy is working in another country. Most of all, migration is key to development in contexts where there is not enough on the table. If we adequately harness it and allow ourselves to see the family beyond traditional gender roles, norms and expectations, there are more victories in store for us in the fight against poverty.  

 

*Acknowledgements: ‘After Ram Left Home’ by Dipesh Karel (University of Tokyo) was screened at the Gendered Dimensions of Migration Conference held at the Asia Research Institute at National University of Singapore as part of his presentation to the conference.

Kudakwashe Vanyoro is a Research Assistant at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He was an intern under the Migrating out of Poverty RPC Research Internship Scheme from April to November 2014. His internship involved supporting all ACMS communications work, preparing and packaging policy briefs, research data capturing, undertaking desktop research and blogging on contemporary issues related to migration and poverty in Southern Africa.

Reflections on the Gendered Dimensions of Migration: Material and Social Outcomes of South-South Migration Conference

By Alex Ma

Held in conjunction with the Migrating out of Poverty (MOOP) consortium in July 2015, academics and researchers crammed into ARI’s seminar rooms for the exciting three-day conference Gendered Dimensions of Migration: Material and Social Outcomes of South-South Migration, that drew international attendance from MOOP partners and beyond. With over 20 presentations by academics from the UK, Singapore, South Africa, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India, Ghana, Kenya, and Australia, the conference proved fruitful in bringing together ideas from diverse, interdisciplinary projects that allowed for peer review, networking, and reflections on the latest work being conducted in the field of migration.

In general, presentations were listed under four main themes: Labour and Mobility Regimes; Images of Gender, Migration, and Development; Gender Dynamics in the Labour Market; and Expectations and Moralities Surrounding Remittances. Though the conference was pitched mainly at an academic crowd, the Gender Dynamics and Remittances themes were also elaborated upon during two policy roundtable sessions attended by representatives from the World Bank, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Asia Development Bank (ADB), and others.

A complaint that was echoed by attendees was the lack of communication and uptake of research findings by policymakers as well as the lack of policymaker attendance to such conferences. The roundtable provided an invaluable interface between the research being carried out and how findings may be put into practice.

The tone of the conference was set by Trond Waage of the University of Tromsø, Norway on the first day during his keynote speech. Presenting his film, ‘Les Mairuuwas’, Trond’s visual ethnography detailed the tumultuous lives of Central African Republic (CAR) refugees trying to forge a life for themselves as water transporters in Ngaoundéré, Cameroon. Though their journeys were often underwritten by struggle and hardship, their migratory journeys were also punctuated by a sense of solidarity and camaraderie.

In many ways Trond’s film echoed the theme of the second keynote speech by Deidre McKay of Keele University, UK. Deidre’s multi-sited, ethnographic work detailing the lives of Filipino domestic workers shared the common theme of aspiration. Though the migrants in the two cases presented are divided by different roots and backstories, they share a common desire for ‘progress’ and a better future. McKay revealed the extent of the role of migration in the development of whole towns and villages. From vanity building projects symbolic of migrant success to the more mundane balikbayan box of gifts and everyday goods sent from overseas migrants, her presentation showed how migration is a profoundly human phenomenon.

An interesting theme that emerged from the policy roundtable discussion was the recurring issue of migration cost. Dilip Ratha of the World Bank spoke about his ‘$100 billion idea’: to eradicate, or dramatically reduce, the cost for workers to migrate. This chimes well with findings within the MOOP consortium that unskilled labourers often finance their migration through debt, which exposes them to a greater potential for exploitation. This resonated with Katharine Jones’ (Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK) mapping of the sprawling networks of profit-making stakeholders in the migration process. Dilip elaborated how migration could contribute to economic development and how its potential could be unlocked by lowering the barriers to entry into international labour markets.

The conference greatly benefitted from the interdisciplinary nature of the papers as well as the accessible way in which they were presented. With inputs from across the social sciences, the conference proved to be an engaging, challenging, and valuable platform through which migration – one of the most powerful forces of contemporary social change – was discussed and understood.

Alex Ma is the 2015 Migrating out of Poverty funded intern at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. To view the storify summary of the conference please visit:  https://storify.com/MigrationRPC/gendered-dimensions-of-migration-material-and-soci

The Protection of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East and Asia Pacific

By: Endang Sugiyarto

Millions of labour migrants from developing countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka try to escape poverty and a lack of job opportunities at home by working abroad. Many end up in Middle Eastern destinations such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Others go to Asia Pacific countries including Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Brunei Darussalam and Japan. In addition to getting jobs for themselves, they send money home to help their families survive day-to-day life, to finance education and healthcare and to invest in a variety of ways. Thus they contribute to the economies of both the destination countries and their countries of origin which benefit from regular inflows of remittances. As a result, migration has become increasingly important to migrants and their families and to sending and host countries.

Many of the migrants work as domestic workers, a sector that is dominated by women due to the nature of the work and by the demands of the receiving countries. Many of them have low educational levels and insufficient skills to carry out the work expected by the employers. The lack of appropriate good quality training makes the matter worse. On top of these they face additional challenges such as different languages, cultures, laws, common practice, and other day-to-day aspects of life in the home of their employers.

The potential pitfalls of such working arrangements are obvious. It is common for a domestic worker to accidently destroy clothes while doing laundry and/or ironing due to a lack of training. The costs associated with such accidents can be high. If the atmosphere in the house is calm the consequences of mishaps can be minimal. But in a home that is hectic and full of tensions a small accident can easily flare up into an incident of abusive domestic violence. And if such incidents are repeated the situation can turn into one of habitual domestic abuse that is worsened by its location inside the home where there can be no third party and/or community scrutiny.

Moreover, the nature of the work that must be done in the employer’s property and the fact that the domestic worker has to live there too, leads to extended working hours and puts the worker in a very vulnerable situation. It is even worse when incidents happen in large secured houses or private apartments which offer no opportunities for the workers to interact with others. Reports of domestic workers being treated like slaves and suffering physical and sexual abuse sometimes conclude with them suffering permanent injuries, depression and even death.

Newspaper reports of a series of incidents involving Indonesian migrant domestic workers in the Middle East and Asia Pacific give a shocking insight into the severity of some of the abuse:

·         In 2004, Nirmala Bonat, working in Malaysia, suffered burns to her chest and back from a hot iron and was scalded after boiling water was poured over her body;

·         In 2005, Nur Miyati, working in Saudi Arabia, had to undergo the amputation of a body part due to infection caused by physical abuse;

·         In 2007, Ceryati, working in Malaysia, was forced to escape through a window of the 15th floor apartment of her employer because she could no longer tolerate the daily physical abuse she was subjected to. Almost her whole body was injured, in particular her forehead was swollen, and her neck and hands badly injured;

·         In 2009, Siti Hajar, working in Malaysia, endured abuse  in the form of beatings and by having boiling water poured on her. She had been with her employer for 34 months but was unable to seek help from others until her escape from the house;

·         Wasiah binti Toha worked in Abu Dhabi in 2009 but received no salary for 8 months. She decided to return home with neither money nor help from the recruiting agency due to the beatings she had endured from the beginning of her employment;

·         Sumiati had to be hospitalised in Saudi Arabia in November 2010 after her employer cut her top lip because she complained about her workload;

·         Erwiana worked in Hong Kong for 8 months in 2013. She had been made to work for 21 hours per day, was kept hungry, and got beaten with a wooden hanger or anything else within the reach of her employer, who eventually fired her and forced her to return home with injuries to her face, hands and legs.

The above list only highlights those cases exposed by the national and international press. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Many more incidences go hidden or unrecorded.

Many domestic workers suffer verbal and physical abuse combined with poor working conditions. More needs to be done to protect them. Many labour exporting countries have signed agreements with receiving countries to guarantee respect for the rights of the migrant workers, but the implementation details must be worked out.

Domestic workers from Indonesia seem to be particularly vulnerable. The high incidence of abuse has led the Indonesian government to declare a moratorium and there is a plan to stop sending domestic workers by 2017. As part of this plan, the government is going create more job opportunities and to educate and train migrant workers to meet the skills requirements of the jobs, as well as to give them knowledge of law and human rights.

Will this be enough? The answer is of course not. First, there should be a bilateral agreement between the sending and receiving countries to guarantee the rights and protection of migrant workers. Second, there should be a practical framework that adopts a rights-based approach to labour migration, emphasising non-discrimination, gender equality, and equality of opportunity for migrant workers, regardless of their immigration status. Third, not only should the workers receive training to help them adapt to the employer’s culture but the employers also need a basic understanding of the culture of their workers to be able to create a common understanding.

Protection of migrant workers must be comprehensive, beginning in their home country prior to departure, continuing throughout the duration of their work in the destination country, and covering them until they return home. Governments of sending countries need to be pro-active, making regular inspections of workplaces and working conditions to ensure the welfare of their migrant workers. All migrants should be given access to their countries representatives, in particular the labour attaches. The discussion above, however, does not take into account migrants in irregular situations, of whom there is a significant number and on whom the adverse impact is even more severe. For them, a more holistic approach is needed, covering the whole migration system, push and pull factors, and the immigration system. Protection of all migrants must be ensured through formal, transparent, and managed migration.

Endang Sugiyarto is a doctoral candidate in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex, funded by the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.

The impact of migrating for domestic work: The experience of Hawa and Adiata

By Collins Yeboah

 

In the migration literature, greater attention is paid to migrant workers than to the households they leave behind. I have come to the realisation, however, that to fully comprehend the impact of migrant domestic workers, in addition to understanding the problems associated with their work, it is essential to examine the changes they bring about for their households of origin.

 

I recently conducted field work for the 'Livelihood Strategies and Wellbeing of Migrants in Low-Paid and Insecure Occupations in Urban Ghana' project, part of the Migrating out of Poverty programme in West Africa. The research team tracked the origin households of migrants engaged in domestic and construction work in Accra via an earlier quantitative survey carried out in Tamale in Ghana's Northern Region. A selection was identified for the in-depth follow up discussions of the qualitative research.

 

We carried out the fieldwork during the scorching sun, dry winds, low humidity and dust of the harmattan season, arriving later than promised one night at the home of Hawa (46) in Walewale, a small town on the road between Bolgatanga and Tamale in Ghana’s Northern Region. Hawa sat behind her sewing machine with pieces of cloth she had cut earlier. She had already finished the two school uniforms brought by her customers that morning and looked tired after the day’s work.

 

Hawa used to be opposed to female migration because of its association with a high level of unwanted pregnancies. But her husband’s death left her alone with six children, in a region with few employment opportunities, so she had to allow her primary school educated daughter Adiata (24) to go to Accra to look for work. The decision to migrate was taken by both Hawa and her daughter. As Hawa noted: “We all decided one evening that she should go to Accra and look for job so she can support the rest of us here.”

 

Studies indicate that women migrant workers often remit a greater proportion of their earnings than low skilled men migrant workers and are often more stable and consistent remitters. Since leaving Walewale Adiata has remitted at least GHc 120 ($34.85) a month to her mother. Hawa said that her daughter sometimes also sends the family clothes and foodstuffs via friends travelling to Walewale. Hawa appears to be doing better than her neighbours. She and her children live in her late husband’s house. Its three rooms are roofed with zinc while the other homes in the neighbourhood are thatched. 

 

“Look at my roof… Hawa said, proudly pointing to her house...she continued “It was thatched previously before by husband died. The little money I receive from Adiata, my daughter in Accra was used to roof it. She has helped a lot. I want to build one house over there from the money she sends before she returns” (Hawa, Walewale).

 

Adiata is one of the many domestic workers in Ghana. Estimates from Ghana’s 2010 Population and Census data indicate that about 66,570 Ghanaians between the ages of 15-64 years are employed in this sector. They work in private homes outside their places of habitual residence. Often referred to as modern day slavery, their duties include cleaning, cooking, looking after children, trimming lawns, and driving cars. They usually lack familiar or community support mechanisms and are often exposed to poor wages, delayed or non-payment of wages, very long hours of work, and no break periods or rest days.

 

However, Adiata is one of the few domestic workers employed under better conditions. When she first arrived in Accra she had a difficult time and slept in a slum shack in Agbogloshi shared with four other female migrants. She became a Kayeyei - a form of manual employment carried out almost exclusively by females in Ghana involving the transportation of goods on their heads to and from markets - in Agbogloshie market. While in this role she met a woman who first became one of her regular customers, buying food stuffs from Adiata in the market. She later employed Adiata in her home as a domestic worker and Adiata now lives in her home. For Adiata, employment as a domestic worker is far better than the situation she found herself in when she first arrived in Accra.

 

Many studies portray the kind of work done by domestic workers as demeaning, dirty and exploitative. Yet as I listened to Hawa and other mothers like her, I realised that the story of Adiata, the domestic worker, provides a powerful illustration of migration as a means of moving out of poverty. Adiata has contributed to the upgrading of her family’s home and money she sends every month is used by her mother to cater for the needs of her other children. It is evident that migration has been pivotal in shaping the family’s lives. Like Adiata, most of the domestic workers from this region have become the breadwinners of their families left behind.

 

Collins Yeboah is Communications Officer at the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana

Why framing the discourse on human trafficking is important - some thoughts

By Igor Bosc

 

When media and experts talk about human trafficking, attention immediately zooms in on what happens to people when and after they leave their homes. You have heard variations of the stories in the media: it’s usually about women or children and occasionally men in sweat shops. They are tricked and trapped, sent abroad, sexually exploited or sold into slavery. These are tragic stories. But have you ever heard about the stories of those very men, women and children before they left their homes? What happened to them? Why were they willing to leave their homes often knowing about the perils ahead? That’s something we don’t hear about but does need equal attention. Here’s why:

1. A narrow focus on human trafficking can mislead policy makers and activists into believing that tackling human traffickers and protecting migrants will root out the problem. The crude reality is that as long as wages are higher in some places and lower in areas afflicted by poverty, conflict or disasters, people will migrate. The more wages differ between source and destination areas, the more migration will occur and increase incidences of human trafficking. In other words, to understand human trafficking one has to look into labour market dynamics and the social, economic and gender factors that are prompting people to go on the move.
 
2. Another reason why a holistic understanding of human trafficking is necessary is that media portrayals are almost never based on factually verifiable trends. They tend to be based on specific events. The media has its own incentives to broadcast information that grabs attention. Law enforcement have their own incentives to report the latest police raids or border patrols. And aid agencies have their accountability incentives to report on the work they do to tackle human trafficking. Unbalanced media information on human trafficking can easily mislead audiences into perceptions of the problem that are inaccurate.
 
3. The third reason why a holistic understanding of human trafficking is necessary, is that a narrow understanding of human trafficking can legitimise policies and practices that actually harm migrants. Social and gender stereotypes employed by individuals and institutions that work to combat trafficking can lead to the isolation of women and children in shelters and the abuse of migrants particularly from the poorest sections of society, including those who are women, children and discriminated minorities. 

So the next time you hear about a human trafficking story, ask yourself the questions that are usually not asked about the people in those stories. What about making ends meet when others in the family can’t? What about the miserably low income opportunities in rural areas as compared to the promise of cities? What about the patriarchal behaviour and domestic violence that pushes women out of their homes?

Answering those questions, in addition to the ones usually raised, is important. It will help identifying more effective ways of preventing human trafficking. I hope that these questions will help to stimulate further thoughts and discussions. 

 

Igor Bosc is Chief Technical Adviser at the International Labour Organization (ILO) working on the Work in Freedom Programme - a UK Aid funded partnership initiative to find effective ways of preventing trafficking of women in South Asia and the Middle East. His questions and thoughts on the framing of the human trafficking discourse are outlined here as a contribution to the  Migrating out of Poverty International Women's Day panel debate Labour trafficking? Understanding the use of brokers in women's and girls' labour migration in the global South on 6 March 2015.