Human Rights and the Protection of Domestic Workers in Labour and Migration Law

Human Rights and the Protection of Domestic Workers in Labour and Migration Law examines the legal protection of domestic workers, focusing on four case studies across distinct continents: Chile, the UK, South Africa, and India. It examines how deficits in protection arise both from gaps in formal coverage and from shortcomings in enforcement arising from the isolated nature of the work and vulnerabilities due to migration status, analysing these exclusions using the feminist framing concepts of 'lack of accountability' and 'devaluation.' The book makes a distinctive and positive case for the role of human rights in extending protection to domestic workers, based on a framework that centres positive obligations and socio-economic, civil and political rights, incorporates feminist critique of the traditional lack of scrutiny of the 'private sphere,' and holds to universalistic principles on the rights of migrants. It criticises the lack of protection offered to domestic workers based on the right to private and family life, the right to work, non-discrimination provisions, and the prohibition on forced labour.

The book combines rigorous doctrinal analysis of domestic legal frameworks and international human rights jurisprudence with detailed and innovative empirical research, including interviews with domestic workers and other experts such as trade union and NGO staff. Examining how those with first-hand knowledge of the field experience and think about the law and its impacts generates a rich picture of the often-under-protected position of domestic workers rooted in a material account of the interaction of legal regulation with their lived positions. The book uses its normative critique and empirical findings to make the case for reform of labour and migration law to provide specialist and targeted forms of protection for domestic workers. Its proposals include an extension of inspection into the domestic sphere with specified constraints, improved protection for working time based on respect for domestic workers' private and family lives, a modification of visa regimes, and a separation between employment regulation and immigration enforcement.