The present study examines federal government programs to admit women to Canada as foreign domestic workers, their exclusion from labour standards legislation, the conditions of work and wage-rates which result from this exclusion, and attempts to organize foreign domestic workers. (The thesis maintains that foreign domestic workers represent a modern form of unfree wage labour since they are required to remain in domestic work as a condition of entry to Canada. In this sense, foreign domestic labour is unfree because of the legal restrictions on the right of workers to change employer, occupation and/or industry. The study also examines the intersection of gender, class and ethnicity in the foreign domestic labour process. The need for domestic workers is increasingly being met by women from the less economically developed areas of the world and the recruitment of these women on temporary employment visas places much of the burden of day care and domestic labour in Canada on disadvantaged women and nations. It is argued that the employment of foreign domestic workers in the homes of privileged families gives rise to differential experiences of oppression by women of different classes and ethnic origins. Data for the study are taken from the following sources: employment records to admit foreign domestic workers between January, 1980 and December 31, 1987 supplied by the Research Division of Planning and Research Directorate of the Employment and Immigration Commission, interviews with foreign domestic workers, labour lawyers, community activists, employment agencies, immigration officials and previous studies of foreign domestic workers in Canada and in other advanced industrial nations. / Graduate