The practice of Middle Eastern employers to sponsor foreign workers that leads to binding employees to employers. The Khafala system has been criticized for its slave-like conditions.
Published in Chapter:
Tracing the Rights of Domestic and International Kenyan House Helps: Profiles, Policy, and Consequences
Dorothy Owino Rombo (State University of New York, USA) and Anne Namatsi Lutomia (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA)
Copyright: © 2018
|Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-3018-3.ch001
Abstract
This chapter traces a history of domestic workers both within, and to a lesser degree without, Kenya. Reading from international policy platforms—including the United Nations and various international non-governmental organizations—as well as academic research, Kenyan government policy documents, and online sources like blogs and periodicals that reveal this history and frame content addressing domestic workers, the authors develop an image of the situation of domestic work in Kenya. We identified missing protections of rights and made other policy recommendations in light of that situation. Using intersectionality to disclose how the different identities of gender, class, socioeconomic status, and ethnic identification (socially imposed or individually emphasized) of domestic workers in Kenya simultaneously clash and collude, workers nonetheless remain embedded within layers of marginalization that make the very circumstance of their work more challenging for upholding the human rights of these employees. By calling attention to the destiny of migrant domestic workers in comparison to local Kenyan domestics and linking to the present international push to protect migrant domestic workers, then, not only discloses but also hints at how the needs and interests of domestic Kenyan workers may be better met, respected, and protected. It suggests future work as well aimed at prompting an acknowledgment of, and policy changes with respect to, the basic human rights of other subaltern populations.