Domestic Work and International Migration
Many countries import domestic workers from abroad, usually poorer countries, through recruitment agencies and brokers because their own nationals are no longer obliged or inclined to do domestic work. This includes most Middle Eastern countries, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. For most of these countries, the number of domestic workers run into the hundreds of thousands. There are at least one million domestic workers in Saudi Arabia under the kafala system.
Major sources of domestic workers include Thailand, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia. Taiwan also imports domestic workers from Vietnam and Mongolia. Organizations such as Kalayaan support the growing number of these migrant domestic workers.
Read more about this topic: Domestic Workers
Famous quotes containing the words domestic work, domestic and/or work:
“Mighty few young black women are doin’ domestic work. And I’m glad. That’s why I want my kids to go to school. This one lady told me, “All you people are gettin’ like that.” I said, “I’m glad.” There’s no more gettin’ on their knees.”
—Maggie Holmes, African American domestic worker. As quoted in Working, book 3, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten in England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the original green life is revealed. He was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as modern men do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“How dare I read Washington’s campaigns, when I have not answered the letters of my own correspondents? Is not that a just objection to much of our reading? It is a pusillanimous desertion of our work to gaze after our neighbours. It is peeping.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)