When the Home Is Also the Workplace: Women migrant domestic workers’ experiences with the ‘live-in’ policy in Singapore and Hong Kong

Authors

  • Shih Joo Tan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201223205

Keywords:

live-in rule, immigration law, women migrant domestic workers, Singapore, Hong Kong, labour law

Abstract

This article examines the link between the mandatory live-in policy and the unsafe working and living conditions of women migrant domestic workers. This policy has been rationalised on the principles of the inviolability of the private home and challenges around regulating and enforcing labour protections in the home-workplace but has, in practice, increased migrant domestic workers’ precarity and exploitation. Drawing on empirical research in Singapore and Hong Kong, the article demonstrates how the live-in policy operates in tandem with inadequate labour and migration regulations to produce a situation where poor working and living conditions are an enduring part of workers’ employment and everyday lives. It contributes to research that has highlighted the gendered dynamics and exclusionary bordering practices that shape waged domestic labour, and considers the implications this may have for the well-being and security of women migrant domestic workers.

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Author Biography

Shih Joo Tan

Shih Joo Tan is a lecturer in Criminology at Monash University, and a researcher with the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre and the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. Her work is interdisciplinary and focuses on gendered labour, migration, human security, exploitation, and criminalisation.

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Published

26-04-2023

How to Cite

Joo Tan, S. (2023). When the Home Is Also the Workplace: Women migrant domestic workers’ experiences with the ‘live-in’ policy in Singapore and Hong Kong. Anti-Trafficking Review, (20), 75–91. https://doi.org/10.14197/atr.201223205