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)
“The appeal of the New Right is simply that it seems to promise that nothing will change in the domestic realm. People are terrified of change there, because it’s the last humanizing force left in society, and they think, correctly, that it must be retained.”
—Gerda Lerner (b. 1920)
“I long to be out in the sun with no work to be done.”
—Irving Berlin (1888–1989)