More and more women from poor areas of the world are migrating to rich countries for domestic work. Given the increasing published research on their exploitation and slavery, much policy action has been oriented towards their protection as victims. Far from protecting the livelihood needs of these migrant workers, however, this victim-based approach has instead resulted in legitimising the protection of rich countries borders. An emerging perspective underscoring migrant womens agency is producing a counter-approach that fights for migrant workers rights: not as victims but as workers. Yet despite this important development in research and policy agendas, increasing inequality in the global economy and stringent immigration policies render a rights-based approach ineffective. From poor countries, and with very limited livelihood options, these migrant women choose overseas domestic work often at the expense of their human rights. As migrants, they are outsiders whose rights are superseded by the rights of the sovereign, receiving-state.
How is it possible then, to protect the rights of these workers? This thesis employs Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaums Capability Approach to evaluate the efficacy of these womens agency in overcoming victimisation. This evaluation gives equal consideration to the victim and rights-based perspectives. It synthesises the Capability Approach with Anthony Giddens Structuration Theory in order to reconcile the polarised theories underlying the victim and rights-based perspectives - feminist structural theory and migration agency theory, respectively. In so doing, the study is able to refine the conceptualisation of agency from the highly ambiguous rights-based approach, to a more theoretically sound and feasible capability approach. The main hypothesis is that agency requires capability to successfully mediate victimisation; agency in itself is insufficient. The study draws on the experiences of Filipina overseas domestic workers in Paris and Hong Kong to test this hypothesis, and demonstrates how it is capability that can turn the slave into the worker, and protect the worker from turning into a slave.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216380 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Briones, Leah, leahb@adam.com.au |
| Publisher | Flinders University. Centre for Development Studies |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.flinders.edu.au/disclaimer/), Copyright Leah Briones |
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