MIGRANT LIVES | Abuse of Migrant Domestic Workers

Today we are going to open a door that many prefer to keep closed: the reality of thousands of migrant women working in the domestic and care sector. A reality marked, all too often, by silent abuse. When a person migrates and works in a home, three factors of extreme vulnerability intersect: being a woman, being a foreigner, and working in the private sphere. Because it is not an office or a factory, what happens inside a house remains out of the public eye. This becomes the perfect setting for exploitation: endless working hours, wages below the minimum, lack of rest, and, in the most serious cases, withholding of documents or psychological violence under the threat of deportation. There is a very deceptive phrase that is often heard: "She is like family." But the reality is that she is not family; it is a labor relationship. And using affection to demand unpaid overtime or 24-hour availability is, plain and simple, abuse.

 

Patricia López Muñoz 

Student of English Studies 

High Technician in Sociocultural Animation 

Specialist in Immigration 

High Technician in Social Integration