3071-The political economy of new slavery

110 Migrant Domestic Workers and Slavery
We need to accommodate the raising of children, the distribution and
preparation of food, basic cleanliness and hygiene, in order to survive
individually and as a species. But domestic work is also concerned with
the reproduction of lifestyle and, crucially, of status: nobody has to have
stripped pine floorboards, hand-wash only silk shirts or dust-gathering
ornaments. These all create domestic work, yet they affirm the status of
the household, its class, its access to resources of finance and personnel
(Anderson, 2001).
Experiences of MDWs in the UK
Here I want to explain a bit about Kalayaan’s work and the experiences
of the MDWs who visit our centre. Kalayaan was set up for a specific
purpose, namely to campaign for a change in the UK law. One main
difficulty for migrant domestic workers in the UK was that of immigration
status. Workers were dependent on the employer they entered with
for their immigration status; they could not change employers legally,
and if forced to run away (often without their passport) they could not
work for anyone else. Moreover, once their original visa expired they
would lose all right to be in the UK. This meant that, having escaped
from one abusive situation, workers were very vulnerable to exploitation
by secondary employers (usually British), who could take advantage of
their immigration status with poor working conditions, low pay and
always the threat of reporting the worker to the police should they not
do what they were told.
Kalayaan lobbied the British government to get the status of MDWs
regularized. In July 1998 the UK government finally announced publicly
that they were going to give visas to future migrant domestic
workers accompanying their employer which would allow them to
change their employer. They would also regularize all those migrant
domestic workers who had been living and working clandestinely
(Anderson, 2000a).
Since the change in the law our work has not stopped! We still
work to support and campaign for rights for migrant domestic workers.
Immigration status is one issue of importance for migrant domestic
workers, as it severely affects their rights, but there are many other
issues which need to be focused on (employment rights, statutory
rights and so on). Kalayaan keeps monthly figures detailing the kinds of
difficulties faced by the workers we interview. These are more or less
constant year to year.