Slavery in The 21st Century

Language and discourse represent another component in advocacy efforts for migrant
domestic workers. Certain organizations and institutions, have, for example, taken the
approach of promoting social and economic benefits of domestic work by migrants to
private household and society at large. Groups have also employed women’s rights,
workers’ rights and human rights language in their discourse. Moreover, groups
addressing migrant domestic groups have tied abuse against migrant domestic workers
at the national level to campaigns against abuse at the global level, to wider issues of
abuse against women more generally, to human trafficking and domestic slavery, and to
neoliberal globalization. Migrant domestic groups have also created coalitions with other
organizations such as feminist groups, labor groups, groups for immigrant rights,
religious, human rights organizations, and trade unions. In fact, given these domestic
workers come from abroad, there were a number of “cross-border alliances” created.
While women’s rights has been alluded to in some advocacy initiatives and that “crossborder
exchanges strengthened the momentum in the development of transnational
advocacy of worker rights as a gender-based concern,” the intersection between
migrant domestic work and gender in advocacy has not been consistent. Some
organizations may consider themselves “feminist” or emphasize the gender dimension
of their work, while others may not wish to associate migrant domestic workers’ with
feminist issues.
Given that the nature of domestic work poses challenges in mobilizing large groups of
migrant workers, other tactics have been used to cater to and improve the situation of
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