Feminist Reflections on the Scope of Labour Law: Domestic Work, Social Reproduction and Jurisdiction

Drawing on feminist labour law and political economy literature, I argue that it is crucial to interrogate the personal and territorial scope of labour. After discussing the “commodification” of care, global care chains, and body work, I claim that the territorial scope of labour law must be expanded beyond that nation state to include transnational processes. I use the idea of social reproduction both to illustrate and to examine some of the recurring regulatory dilemmas that plague labour markets. I argue that unpaid care and domestic work performed in the household, typically by women, troubles the personal scope of labour law. I use the example of this specific type of personal service relation to illustrate my claim that the jurisdiction of labour law is historical and contingent, rather than conceptual and universal. I conclude by identifying some of the implications of redrawing the territorial and personal scope of labour law in light of feminist understandings of social reproduction

Labor regimes of indenture : a global overview of migrant domestic work

Lecture delivered at the European University Institute in Florence on 22 March 2017A video interview with the presenter was recorded on 22 March 2017Across the globe, migrant domestic workers are unfree workers whose legal residency is contingent on their continued employment as a live-in worker with a designated sponsor. This talk examines the politics of their indenture. Providing a macro and micro perspective, it begins with a global overview of the incorporation of migrant domestic workers as indentured workers in key host countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, explains the cultural logic that undergirds their indenture, and then describes the conditions of domestic work in the ‘worst destination’ of the United Arab Emirates, where absconding is illegal and quitting one’s job requires a sponsor’s permission. This talk interrogates various theoretical frameworks for thinking about contemporary unfreedoms – slavery, human trafficking and structural violence – and proposes the alternative concept of “indentured mobility,” which sees migration as simultaneously constituting of financial mobility from a life of poverty in the sending society but at the cost of servitude vis-à-vis a sponsoring employer in the receiving society. The concept of indentured mobility foregrounds not only the severe structural constraints that limit the options of domestic workers but also their agentic negotiations for improving their work conditions and maximizing the possible gains in their state of unfreedom

Trafficked? Filipino Hostesses in Tokyo\u27s Nightlife Industry

Migrant women workers from the Philippines are located around the world and represent one of the largest labor migrant groups in the world today. They are concentrated in three occupations: domestic services, nursing, and entertainment. Entertainment work refers to jobs in the nightlife industry, where women work as performers-singers and dancers-as well as hostesses. As this study will show, contrary to common assumptions, most Filipino women engaged in this kind of entertainment work are not employed as prostitutes. Of the three occupations most commonly held by migrant Filipino women, entertainers are the least studied group, perhaps because migration scholars have been deterred by the common assumption of their inaccessibility as persons purportedly enslaved by organized crime groups. The 2004 and 2005 US. Trafficking in Persons Reports (TIP Reports) released by the U.S. Department of State identified Filipino migrant entertainers in Japan as trafficked persons forced into prostitution. In response to the 2004 TIP Report, Japan tightened its borders, raised the professional standards of foreign entertainers, and prohibited the reentry of Filipino entertainers without two years of training in the performance arts outside of Japan. As a result, many Filipino entertainers found themselves ineligible to reenter Japan, and the numbers of those entering Japan annually have declined drastically, from nearly 80,000 in 2004 to approximately 8,000 in 2005

Benevolent Paternalism and MigrantWomen:The Case ofMigrant Filipina Entertainers in Japan

The article examines the migration process of entertainers from the Philippines to Japan. It establishes the conditions of trafficking that leave foreign entertainers in a position of debt bondage and indenture vis-à-vis middleman brokers. Then, it shows how laws established to protect entertainers in the process of migration in fact make prospective migrants vulnerable to trafficking. This is because such protective laws, which are espoused by the culture of benevolent paternalism that surrounds the migration of women in Asia and the rest of the world, preclude the independent migration of entertainers

ASA Election 2019: Rhacel Salazar-Parrenas

Our 2019 ASA election coverage continues with an interview of Vice Presidential candidate Rhacel Salazar-Parrenas