Abstract
Indian women are recruited to work as domestic workers in the Middle East in an opaque regulatory environment. Recent policy measures by the Indian government have made the legal route of mobility for women much more difficult. Legal barriers speak directly to dominant patriarchal and nationalist logics that represent control over women’s bodies as normative. Being poor and unorganized, emigrant domestic workers have little voice in public policy debates that concerns them. This chapter argues that intensification of controls in the recent past alongside tacit accommodation of irregular mobility has given impetus to clandestine recruitment practices and has served to criminalize women while providing impunity to unauthorized recruiters.
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Notes
- 1.
Emigration check is mandated for workers going to eighteen countries which include all of the Middle East. People with the requisite education are categorized as Emigration Check Not Required (ECNR). It was announced on January 13, 2018, that henceforth ECR passports would come in orange jackets and hence be more distinct.
- 2.
Emigrant domestic workers are mostly from the socially disadvantaged groups, the Scheduled Castes (SCs) who were historically oppressed and are listed in the first schedule of the Constitution, and the Other Backward Classes (OBC) who are described under the Constitution as ‘socially and educationally backward classes’. In my sample survey, domestic workers from Kerala were overwhelmingly from the OBC (Latin Catholic, Muslim and Hindu) (82%) followed by SC (10%) whereas from AP they comprised 47% each from SC and OBC.
- 3.
In the 1930s, the British imported a small number of South Asians to manage oil exploitation in the Middle East, marking the beginning of the modern era of labour migration to the region (Errichiello 2012, 399).
- 4.
This account is abstracted from interview with the early cohort of migrants from Trivandrum and East Godavari. For details, see (Kodoth 2016b). Information about the earliest emigrant domestic who went in 1955 from Trivandrum is sourced from her daughter and other family members.
- 5.
The early migrants from Trivandrum ranged from housewives from comparatively well to do fisher families (that owned their own fishing boats) to poor mostly self-employed women. For a more detailed account of the early phase of migration from the Trivandrum coast in Kerala, see Kodoth (2016b). The first generation of women emigrants from East Godavari was more heterogeneous, including school teachers from families that faced downward mobility, agricultural labourers, manufacturing workers and housewives.
- 6.
People from the coastal villages in Trivandrum and from East Godavari were employed in Bombay in lower level government jobs and in the expansive informal sector. I learnt that small entrepreneurs from East Godavari who had established pen manufacturing units in Bombay mobilized a large number of children from poor families in the villages to work in these units.
- 7.
The 1922 legislation was enacted by the British government in the face of strident criticism against indentured labour migration.
- 8.
There were protests against this apparently from Goan and Malayalee families and ‘Indian officials quietly permitted resumption of the migration’ (Weiner 2007, emphasis added).
- 9.
Within the caste order, groups at the lower end of the hierarchy are considered sexually permissive and women of the socially privileged castes are subject to rigid sexual controls.
- 10.
Interactions with officials of public sector overseas recruiting agencies in Kerala. An official of a public sector recruiting agency in undivided AP said an initiative towards training and recruiting domestic workers had run into political roadblocks. See also Walton Roberts (2012, 186).
- 11.
Conversation with the President of the AP private recruiting agents’ association in Vijayawada in December 2016. A group of travel agents in Kadapa echoed the same view in a conversation in November 2013.
- 12.
Interviews in November 2013.
- 13.
Less than five per cent of intending migrant domestics surveyed at the seven offices of the POE across India were recruited by licensed recruiting agencies and less than 10% of licensed recruiting agents surveyed from across the country said that they recruited domestic workers (Rajan et al. 2011).
- 14.
One of these agents had recruited women workers for many years but his license had been suspended after he was embroiled in a legal case which according to him was the result of professional jealousy.
- 15.
Domestic workers, who were recruited by travel agents at home, were in some instances received directly by the sponsor at the airport and in others received by agents and either made to wait at the offices of recruiting agencies till a sponsor was found for them or registered at the agency office and claimed immediately by a sponsor.
- 16.
Interviews with travel agents in Kadapa, East Godavari, Trivandrum and Malappuram.
- 17.
Interview, East Godavari, September 2013.
- 18.
Sponsors and workers could seek a change but workers rarely were able to use this because they could be prevented.
- 19.
Interview, East Godavari, December 2013. At the time, Sita was working in Oman but had worked previously in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
- 20.
For analysis of cases, see Kodoth (2016c).
- 21.
Discussion with travel agents in Kadapa, November 2013.
- 22.
Discussion with a group of travel agents and informal recruiting agents in Rayachoty, November 2013.
- 23.
The taxi service I had hired had sent this taxi driver on the days he was in Kadapa.
- 24.
More than half the workers in my sample (307) had migrated since 2000. About 53% of all workers were below 30 years at the time of their first journey.
- 25.
For details of Government orders, see Kodoth and Varghese (2011).
- 26.
Bhattacharya, K. (2017, January 7). Overseas Indian Affairs Ministry, MEA merged. The Hindu. It was reported that the merger was expected to ‘increase efficiency of emergency work abroad’.
- 27.
Office Order NoZ-11025/126/2015-Emig (pt.File) of August 2, 2016.
- 28.
- 29.
Press Release, Embassy of India in Oman, September 18, 2017, see also notifications by the embassy of India in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
- 30.
This was revealed by a stakeholder who was privy to the negotiation.
- 31.
Daniel, G. (2015). Embassy of India, Kuwait. http://www.indembkwt.org/dispnews.aspx?id=687§ion=1, accessed on May 15, 2017.
- 32.
According to information sourced from the POE in Hyderabad, over 37,000 women were granted emigration clearance by his office alone and he estimated that over 90% of total emigration clearance granted to women was for Kuwait (Interview, February 22, 2013). See also Table 5.1 for 2013. Since the change in rules, the yard in front of the POE’s office in Hyderabad which used to teem with women has almost emptied out. Observation by Sister Lizzy Joseph of the NDWM who conducted orientation sessions for women emigrants at the POE’s office. Ironically, the re-routing of women through illegal channels makes them unavailable for these sessions.
- 33.
The number of Indian migrant domestic workers (male and female) who have been given emigration clearance for recruitment in gulf countries since September, 2014 till date is 58163. Unstarred Question no 3226, Rajya Sabha, Answered on December 15, 2016, Indian migrant domestic workers in the Gulf countries,
- 34.
Estimates of the stock of Indian women domestic workers in Saudi Arabia rose from 10,000 in 2001 to 50,000 in 2013 (Kodoth 2016a).
- 35.
In my sample survey, Kuwait accounted for 37% of journeys undertaken by sample domestic workers over varying periods of time and the UAE was the second most prominent destination. The sample was selected to reflect diversity of migrants and destinations and hence is likely to underestimate the dominant destinations and give relatively more prominence to less prevalent ones. Saudi Arabia accounted for 17% of journeys from Trivandrum and 12% from Kadapa, where it was second to Kuwait in terms of principal destinations (Kodoth 2016a). Other sources indicate that Kuwait and Oman are the largest destinations. For more detailed discussion, see Kodoth (2016a).
- 36.
- 37.
Interviews with women who had been taken across these international borders by the land route. See also Mallick (2017).
- 38.
Conversations with SEWA activists and with Reetha’s brother and other family members at their home in May 2016.
- 39.
Saudi Arabia provides a 90-day visa initially, and this is converted into a two-year work visa once a sponsor is found.
- 40.
Michelle first said she took the flight from Bombay but also that it took four days to reach the city which was unlikely. On examining her passport, I learnt that she had gone from Ahmedabad and have pieced together the account from her description.
- 41.
A number of women Trivandrum who were recruited in 2015–2016 went from Nagpur. Information SEWA activist.
- 42.
Discussion with returnee domestic workers who had been mobilized by SEWA in a highland village in Trivandrum. The workers spoke about their personal experiences at one-to-one meetings after the joint discussion where they discussed the issue generally. Sister Sally, the representative of the National Domestic Workers Forum in Trivandrum, noted that prospective emigrants are difficult to find because of secrecy.
- 43.
In East Godavari too, there had been instances of local pastors who were part of networks that exploited women who were poorly informed by eager to find employment in the Middle East (Kodoth 2016a).
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Kodoth, P. (2020). Unauthorized Recruitment of Migrant Domestic Workers from India to the Middle East: Interest Conflicts, Patriarchal Nationalism and State Policy. In: Baas, M. (eds) The Migration Industry in Asia. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9694-6_5
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