Strategies for reducing the exploitation faced by migrant workers: Special focus on Indian domestic workers in Bahrain

Abstract

215 million people (~3% of the world’s population) live outside their country of birth as migrant workersi . Reasons for migration can range from lack of sufficient job opportunities in the home country to better pay in the migrant countries. The amount of remittances, the payments sent to their home countries by migrants, can be considered as a proxy for the number of migrants in a host country. While the United States might be one of the largest employers of migrant workers, there are several other countries which have a more significant percentage of their population as migrants. Most Middle Eastern countries have a significantly larger migrant population than the native Arab population. While 3 countries – Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait – are amongst the top 5 countries globally, the other GCC countries – Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia – also have over 50% of their population as migrants. The number of migrant workers in the GCC countries has doubled or tripled compared to the 1970s and early 1980s. This is particularly attributed to the oil boom in the early 1960s. However, a trend since then is the growing feminization of the migrant work force in these countries. This increase in the numbers of women in the migrant labour force is due almost exclusively to the demand for domestic labour, a sector in which the vast majority of workers are womeniii . Like many other parts of the world, domestic workers in the Middle East are victims of abuse and exploitation. Most of these cases go unreported because these victims are often ‘invisible’, in that their abuse often goes unnoticed since these victims live in the homes of their abusers. However, there are issues specific to the Middle East, which make the situation for these migrant domestic workers worse.