IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v76y2023i4p724-747.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing the Labor Conditions of Migrant Domestic Workers in the Arab Gulf States

Author

Listed:
  • Lisa Blaydes

Abstract

Millions of migrant domestic workers—the vast majority of whom are women—are employed in households across Arab Gulf societies. Despite the ubiquitous presence of these foreign workers in Gulf households, little systematic information exists regarding the working conditions and treatment of this population. Findings from a survey of Filipino and Indonesian women who were previously employed as migrant domestic workers in the Arab Gulf states suggest that more than half of households subjected workers to at least one form of mistreatment. The most common forms included excessive working hours, late payment of salary, and denial of one day off per week. A smaller percentage of women reported limited access to food and medical care, mistreatment that is correlated with physical and emotional abuse. Understanding more about the extent of mistreatment—and the correlates of abuse—assists in the development of remedies aimed at improving workplace conditions.

Suggested Citation

  • Lisa Blaydes, 2023. "Assessing the Labor Conditions of Migrant Domestic Workers in the Arab Gulf States," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 76(4), pages 724-747, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:76:y:2023:i:4:p:724-747
    DOI: 10.1177/00197939221147497
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00197939221147497
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00197939221147497?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sabban, Rima., 2002. "United Arab Emirates : migrant women in the United Arab Emirates: the case of female domestic workers," ILO Working Papers 993662213402676, International Labour Organization.
    2. repec:ilo:ilowps:366221 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Linzer, Drew A. & Lewis, Jeffrey B., 2011. "poLCA: An R Package for Polytomous Variable Latent Class Analysis," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 42(i10).
    4. Suresh Naidu & Yaw Nyarko & Shing-Yi Wang, 2016. "Monopsony Power in Migrant Labor Markets: Evidence from the United Arab Emirates," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(6), pages 1735-1792.
    5. Ahlquist, John S. & Breunig, Christian, 2012. "Model-based Clustering and Typologies in the Social Sciences," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 92-112, January.
    6. Thiollet, Helene, 2011. "Migration as Diplomacy: Labor Migrants, Refugees, and Arab Regional Politics in the Oil-Rich Countries," International Labor and Working-Class History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(1), pages 103-121, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dina Bishara, 2023. "Introduction to a Special Issue on Labor in the Middle East and North Africa: Precarity, Inequality, and Migration," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 76(4), pages 627-645, August.
    2. Dalmazzo, Alberto & Leombruni, Roberto & Razzolini, Tiziano, 2023. "Anticipation Effects of EU Accession on Immigrants' Labour Market Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 16614, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kuriwaki, Shiro, 2020. "A Clustering Approach for Characterizing Voter Types: An Application to High-Dimensional Ballot and Survey Data," OSF Preprints v3rhz, Center for Open Science.
    2. Adrian O’Hagan & Arthur White, 2019. "Improved model-based clustering performance using Bayesian initialization averaging," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 201-231, March.
    3. Austan Goolsbee & Chad Syverson, 2023. "Monopsony Power in Higher Education: A Tale of Two Tracks," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(S1), pages 257-290.
    4. Seungwoo Han, 2022. "Spatial stratification and socio-spatial inequalities: the case of Seoul and Busan in South Korea," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, December.
    5. Alessandra Casella & Adam B. Cox, 2018. "A Property Rights Approach to Temporary Work Visas," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(S1), pages 195-227.
    6. Pérez, Jorge & Vial, Felipe & Zárate, Román, 2022. "Urban Transit Infrastructure: Spatial Mismatch and Labor Market Power," Research Department working papers 1992, CAF Development Bank Of Latinamerica.
    7. Aline Riboli Marasca & Maurício Scopel Hoffmann & Anelise Reis Gaya & Denise Ruschel Bandeira, 2021. "Subjective Well-Being and Psychopathology Symptoms: Mental Health Profiles and their Relations with Academic Achievement in Brazilian Children," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(3), pages 1121-1137, June.
    8. Jindřich Špička & Zdeňka Náglová, 2022. "Consumer segmentation in the meat market - The case study of Czech Republic," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 68(2), pages 68-77.
    9. Nicholas T. Davis & Kirby Goidel & Yikai Zhao, 2021. "The Meanings of Democracy among Mass Publics," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 849-921, February.
    10. Carter, Virginia & Derudder, Ben & Henríquez, Cristián, 2021. "Assessing local governments’ perception of the potential implementation of biophilic urbanism in Chile: A latent class approach," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    11. Arjan S. Gosal & Janine A. McMahon & Katharine M. Bowgen & Catherine H. Hoppe & Guy Ziv, 2021. "Identifying and Mapping Groups of Protected Area Visitors by Environmental Awareness," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-14, May.
    12. George J. Borjas & Anthony Edo, 2023. "Monopsony, Efficiency, and the Regularization of Undocumented Immigrants," NBER Working Papers 31457, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Assem Abu Hatab & Padmaja Ravula & Swamikannu Nedumaran & Carl-Johan Lagerkvist, 2022. "Perceptions of the impacts of urban sprawl among urban and peri-urban dwellers of Hyderabad, India: a Latent class clustering analysis," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(11), pages 12787-12812, November.
    14. Csereklyei, Zsuzsanna & Anantharama, Nandini & Kallies, Anne, 2021. "Electricity market transitions in Australia: Evidence using model-based clustering," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    15. Martin Eling & David Pankoke, 2016. "Costs and Benefits of Financial Regulation: An Empirical Assessment for Insurance Companies," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 41(4), pages 529-554, October.
    16. Sunil Kumar & Zakir Husain & Diganta Mukherjee, 2015. "Assessing Consistency of Consumer Confidence Data using Dynamic Latent Class Analysis," Papers 1509.01215, arXiv.org.
    17. Lorena Charrier & Paola Berchialla & Paola Dalmasso & Alberto Borraccino & Patrizia Lemma & Franco Cavallo, 2019. "Cigarette Smoking and Multiple Health Risk Behaviors: A Latent Class Regression Model to Identify a Profile of Young Adolescents," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(8), pages 1771-1782, August.
    18. Patrycja Klimas & Wojciech Czakon, 2022. "Species in the wild: a typology of innovation ecosystems," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 249-282, January.
    19. Adamson, Fiona, 2019. "The Migration State in the Global South: Nationalizing, Developmental, and Neoliberal Models of Migration Management," SocArXiv wze2p, Center for Open Science.
    20. Raphaela Grafiadeli & Heide Glaesmer & Birgit Wagner, 2022. "Loss-Related Characteristics and Symptoms of Depression, Prolonged Grief, and Posttraumatic Stress Following Suicide Bereavement," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-10, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:76:y:2023:i:4:p:724-747. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.