Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers Navigating Precarity and Possibility in Pakistan

Abstract

Rooted in feminist political economy, critical migration theory, and scholarship on intimate labour, this article explores how gendered, racialised, and class hierarchies, recruitment agencies, bilateral labour arrangements, and shifting regulatory frameworks shape migrant Filipina domestic workers’ experiences in Pakistan. Drawing on seven interviews in Islamabad and Lahore, the article asks how intersecting harms linked to labour informality, migration status, employer power, and household intimacy are negotiated through individual and collective agentic practices. It argues that migrant Filipina domestic workers’ experiences cannot be understood through victimhood or empowerment alone. Rather, their lives are shaped by the interplay between structural precarity and situated agency, expressed through migration decisions, employer changes, community networks, religious and familial negotiations, entrepreneurship, and strategies of relative upward mobility. The article concludes with policy and practice implications for labour law recognition, recruitment regulation, improved data collection, migrant women’s associations, and intersectional gender and migration policy.