Migrant Domestic Workers in the Middle East

For over half a century, the Middle East - and the Arabian Peninsula in particular - has been major migration corridor for domestic workers from Asia and Africa. Migrant domestic workers comprise a significant proportion of the migrant labour force in these countries, in some cases, nearly fifty per cent. This volume goes beyond a discussion of the working conditions of migrant domestic workers to show the multidimensionality of their lives in the Middle East. The chapters illustrate these women's varied processes of "making a home in the world," the existential transformations they undergo, and the multiple ways in which they are able to exert agency, despite the constrained choices they are often forced to make. Contributors show how the spaces these women occupy disrupt and challenge given notions of the public-private divide, re-working them as spaces of encounter and of relationships of belonging, spiritual connection, friendship, conviviality, and sociality. This volume presents a vibrant portrait of migrant domestic workers in the Middle East as more than passive victims of abuse and exploitation, showing how they (like people everywhere) are actively engaged in finding a balance between acting and being acted upon, between struggle and accommodation, closure and openness, and movement and stasis.