Book launch – Gendered Labour, Everyday Security and Migration: An Examination of Domestic Work and Domestic Workers’ Experiences

Gendered Labour, Everyday Security and Migration: An Examination of Domestic Work and Domestic Workers’ Experiences (Routledge), by Dr Shih Joo Tan.

Drawing on original empirical research from Singapore and Hong Kong, Gendered Labour, Everyday Security and Migration interrogates women migrant domestic workers’ experiences of work and workplace exploitation. It examines the ways in which these women negotiate everyday security and safe work against the backdrop of affective employment relations and institutional structures of labour and migration law. It challenges the current emphasis on the language of exploitation and legal approaches to identifying, understanding and rectifying poor employment conditions for women migrant domestic workers.

Characterised by high rates of informal employment, inadequate labour protections, and racialised and gendered expectations, it is well- established that women migrant domestic workers are overwhelmingly subjected to poor working conditions. This book examines how these women negotiate their everyday security and safe work against the backdrop of affective employment relations and institutional structures of labour and migration laws.

Using the book as a beginning point, the launch invites panellists to explore and consider issues around the working and living conditions of women migrant domestic workers across the globe, finishing with an open Q&A with the audience.

Speakers

Dr Shih Joo Tan

Siru is a post-doctoral research fellow with the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, and a researcher with the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. Her work is interdisciplinary and focuses on gendered labour, migration, regulation, human security, exploitation and criminalisation. In interrogating these intersections and the impacts that labour and immigration structures can have on sustaining exploitation and everyday insecurity for women migrants, her goal is to help create awareness about the need for effective policies that can offer genuine safety and security for marginalised women. Siru’s current research is focused on the experiences of migrant and refugee women in Australia, specifically around workplace sexual harassment and service responses to forced marriage.

Prof Bridget Anderson

Bridget Anderson is Professor of Mobilities, Migration and Citizenship at the University of Bristol and Director of its Specialist Research Institute Migration Mobilities Bristol. Before that she was the research director at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford. She is a sociologist by training and has written extensively on citizenship, racism and methodological nationalism. She has an honorary doctorate at the University of Malmö and was the City of Malmö Visiting Professor of Migration Studies.

Dr Natalie Sedacca

Natalie is an Assistant Professor in Employment Law at Durham Law School, having previously been a Lecturer in Law (Education and Research) at the University of Exeter and a Teaching Fellow at University College London (UCL) and at Queen Mary University of London. Natalie’s research focuses on human rights and labour law, with a particular interest in domestic workers and other marginalised workers, and in issues of gender and migration. Her ongoing research projects include: the human rights implications of the ‘hostile environment’ for migrant women; the rights of domestic workers in the ‘gig economy;’ and a collaborative project funded by the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre on the risks of exploitation for migrant agricultural and care workers.

Please register for the event here.