A migrant domestic worker sits on a tram. She is on her way to work, behind closed doors in a residential home in a city in the Netherlands. She is nervous: she has no ticket. Due to a recent change in the city transit company’s policy, she can no longer pay her fare in cash. She hopes to go unnoticed -- no ticket means a fine she cannot afford to pay. But no tram travel means no work, and no work means more expenses she cannot afford to pay. The cycle sustains itself.
A migrant domestic worker sits on a tram. She is on her way to work, behind closed doors in a residential home in a city in the Netherlands. She is nervous: she has no ticket. Due to a recent change in the city transit company’s policy, she can no longer pay her fare in cash. She hopes to go unnoticed -- no ticket means a fine she cannot afford to pay. But no tram travel means no work, and no work means more expenses she cannot afford to pay. The cycle sustains itself.
The nervous woman notices a blue-uniformed man moving steadily towards her, scanning chipkaarts and payment cards to make sure all passengers have “earned” their ride.
When he reaches her, the nervous woman cannot provide the man with a payment card. His machine cannot make the all-important beep that means carry on with your business.
She explains that she does not have a ticket. Then, she explains that she does not have a bank account. Finally, she is forced to explain that she cannot provide any papers – because she is undocumented. This mundane moment has rapidly become a crisis, drawing on deep fears about authority, security, and the right to be exactly where she is. But something else rises up in her, too: indignation. This woman, who happens to be from Indonesia, reminds the man:
‘Your people colonized my country for three hundred years. We never asked you for papers’
Uplifted labour movements
It is stories like these that Karin Astrid Siegmann, Associate Professor of Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies, seeks to highlight. Her research is impact-driven, focusing on the ways that precarious workers act on their own behalf and challenge the systems that marginalize them. The work therefore begins from a place of listening, amplifying voices that are too-often marginalized.
In the case of migrant domestic workers, the challenge of being heard is exacerbated by the fact that they are also often unseen, as activities like cleaning homes, cooking, and the care of young children are usually undertaken in private settings. Investigating the struggles undocumented workers face in these settings is difficult. Trust between workers and researchers essential, as exposure carries with it the risk of job loss, financial precarity, and even deportation.
Through her long-standing association with members of the FNV Migrant Domestic Workers’ Union, Siegmann has been able to build trust and foster dialogues that critically examine the role of academics in supporting the long-term goals of migrant domestic workers.
We remain invisible as much as possible, in the shadows...
Joy
Filipino Migrants in Solidarity (FILMIS)
Hearing their voices
One migrant domestic worker, Joy, revealed that, while she has been interviewed by many different researchers during her years as a migrant domestic worker, she has found herself answering the same questions time and time again. Joy and Karin met in April 2013 at a conference on the criminalization of undocumented migrants. From there, their acquaintance evolved into a partnership based on common advocacy goals. Perhaps the most prominent of these is having domestic work (in addition to other forms of labour such as sex work and agricultural work) recognized as real work.
This recognition would, ideally, lead to undocumented domestic workers receiving work permits, and eventual regularization (the opportunity to legalize one’s status). Joy has, in addition to working together with Karin within the scope of research, started an organization Filipino Migrants in Solidarity (FILMIS) and continued to advocate passionately for their cause. Joy is an expert in her own right on the international landscape of obstacles facing undocumented people.
The challenges, according to Joy, are significant and structural in nature. For example, the Netherlands has yet to ratify the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which was introduced in 1990 as well as the more recent International Labour Organisation’s Domestic Workers Convention (ILO No.189). Neither does the current outlook of the new Dutch government bode well. These issues, however, are multi-faceted, even beyond the complexities of international and domestic laws and economies. Siegmann qualifies: ‘You can’t just look at class – you have to look at other hierarchies [like] racialization, gender, even generation.’
Joy echoed this sentiment in conversation, stating that the challenges domestic workers face are, for example, amplified by the gendered nature of the profession -- ‘domestic work [is not seen as] work because it is done by women inside a home.’ This cloistered existence is both a burden and a form of protection – exposure to the authorities (financial, legal, even medical) is considered a fate worse than invisibility.
'We remain invisible as much as possible, in the shadows… I wish I could live without fear. We don’t have bank accounts. Every time I go to a restaurant I have to check if it’s PIN only. It’s embarrassing actually. We don’t have BSNs, we don’t have insurance, we don’t have healthcare, and we’re not allowed to pay tax.'
Is there any respite from these daily inconveniences, any one of which threatens to spiral into a life-altering sequence of events? Where can one find safety, peace, or comfort? What does “home” mean to someone caught between worlds?
Joy, for one, defines “home” in a relational rather than spatial sense: 'It’s when I’m with my community… When we sit in the same room and lose ourselves for a while.'
Next month, we will follow up with Karin and her colleagues regarding research on another current in the wide river of labour movements: sex workers’ rights. To hear more from workers in the labour rights movement, check out this video.
- Associate professor