Redressing harms to migrant domestic workers: global and regional spaces
Rianne Mahon
Abstract
This article analyses spaces for seeking redress for the harms experienced by migrant care workers and those left behind, working with the concept of depletion through social reproduction. While ‘global care chains’ also highlights the tolls exacted, depletion through social reproduction adds the important quasi-legal concept of ‘harm’, explicitly inviting reflection on spaces for redress and claims-making. Nation-states clearly constitute important spaces for seeking redress but migrants are left as ‘partial citizens’, protected by neither receiving nations nor their own governments. Accordingly, this article focuses on spaces for claiming rights at the global and regional (Asia-Pacific) scales, as well as the networks of international organisations, civil society organisations and trade unions that can use these spaces to claim redress.