Despite the essential role that migrant domestic workers perform, their work—and human worth—is often disregarded. The issues facing migrant domestic workers go beyond harsh labor conditions and immigration regulations that tie their work permits to their employers. These issues—all of which migrant domestic workers have shared with me—involve a disregard for their humanity through policies that treat them as sources of contagion (e.g., mandatory annual HIV and pregnancy tests) and as wards (e.g., employers’ refusal to permit days off and the imposition of curfews). The problems facing migrant domestic workers stem from a devaluing of care and domestic work, alongside the routine ignoring of their own caring needs. A key principle of a caring society emphasizes the importance of meeting people’s caring needs (Glenn Reference Glenn2000). The inability of policymakers to recognize and meet migrant domestic workers’ need for care through policies shows migrant domestic workers’ invisibility.
Existing domestic and transnational legal protections for migrant domestic workers are inadequate. Feminist researchers have exhaustively detailed the failures of states in safeguarding migrant domestic workers’ interests and the challenges of creating regulatory policies that provide them with protections (Bagnon et al. Reference Bagnon, Calamba, Cordero, Massie, Minh, Murage, Martinez and Shaw2024). In response, migrant domestic workers have formed their own organizations and advocacy movements to challenge abusive policies and practices of sending and receiving states. They have also openly criticized the tendencies of so-called progressive organizations such as labor unions and migrant justice organizations to disregard their concerns and caring needs. To be clear, migrant domestic workers’ concerns are not solely about policy deficiencies. They also encompass the need for everyday modes of support. As such, migrant domestic workers often create “communities of care,” providing each other with support and bearing witness to each other’s journeys (Francisco-Menchavez Reference Francisco-Menchavez2018; Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023).
Care Activism
In contrast to other progressive social movements, which prioritize publicly visible sites of organizing and seek “wins” through policy changes, migrant domestic workers practice “care activism.” I define care activism as “the distinct ways that migrant care workers care for themselves, for each other, for fellow migrant care workers in their immediate circles, and for the larger, transnational community of migrant care workers…as a framework, care activism challenges stereotypical perceptions of abject, downtrodden and long-suffering migrant care workers” (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 3). Care activism contributes to a more caring society because it centers an ethic of care in movement organizing, where activist organizations’ primary purpose is to be there for each other in a world where one’s humanity is oftentimes overlooked. Put differently, migrant domestic workers’ communities of care give them access to networks that provide them with ongoing support, filling in the gaps when institutions and systems fail.
The use of care activism as a political strategy is important because of the way it sees care as a fundamental value to organizing. By seeing movement actors as human beings with caring needs, care activism strengthens movement-building and provides an example of spaces where care is prioritized. Care activism encourages dreaming and working towards more caring futures. For the migrant domestic worker activists I interviewed, their fight for a more caring world is tied to the obligations they felt toward previous generations of migrant domestic worker activists to carry their legacy forward, as well as to future migrant domestic workers, to whom they wanted to bequeath a more caring world (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 12).
But can care activism be extended towards people who are not migrant domestic workers, including their employers and receivers of care such as seniors and disabled people? And what coalitions do migrant domestic workers form with other communities? The process through which we pursue care justice—in this case, through activism—should center care for different actors to ensure movement longevity, with people more likely to stay involved because their needs for care are acknowledged. Embedding care activism in other movements and coalitions makes care the priority in all actions—from movement-building and strategizing to long-term movement demands. Seeing care as an essential value helps reorient activist priorities toward not only seeking policy “wins” but also centering the needs of people within these movements.
Coalitions of Care
In coalitions of care, members see their fates as interlinked, value each other’s humanity, and believe that care is a fundamental value that should be prioritized in society. Labor conditions of migrant care work are such that the power that employers hold over them is magnified more so than in other employment relationships, as employers oftentimes determine workers’ ability to stay in the country. My research on migrant domestic workers’ movements in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, however, revealed that some employers were part of coalitions of care.
Doris Lee, whom I met in Hong Kong, was one such employer. When we spoke in 2017, Lee ran an organization called “Open Doors,” which sought to present positive portrayals of migrant domestic workers in popular discourse and to support migrant workers. Open Doors was part of the larger progressive migrant workers’ movement in Hong Kong, providing support for different campaigns, including calls to raise migrant domestic workers’ wages. Lee spoke often and publicly in the media, declaring her support for this campaign, serving as a counterweight to the voices of many employers who called migrant domestic workers greedy for seeking wage increases. As Lee said, in response to my question of why she decided to be involved with the migrant domestic workers’ movement, “I was already familiar with some migrant groups, and they were familiar with me, and so they would call me from time to time asking me if I could speak because I was an employer…then once, someone told me, ‘Oh it would be good if there was an employers group that were different’…in other words, it made a difference to organize employers, so that was also motivating and inspiring for me” (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 144).
Migrant domestic worker activists told me that the migrant domestic workers’ movement needed allies like Lee. Because Open Doors also had campaigns paying tribute to migrant domestic workers, which highlighted the need to see care work “with dignity” (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 145), the activists I interviewed appreciated how employers like Lee showed genuine appreciation of the work that they did. “I don’t like it when employers feel sorry for us. When they feel bad for us, it’s like they don’t see the work that we do. They need to respect our work,” Ella, a migrant care worker activist, told me. For Ella, employers who understand that migrant domestic workers are in a working relationship, rather than being “part of the family,” show that they recognize the value of care work. Doing so signifies a commitment to creating equitable conditions of work, thereby strengthening relationships of trust between migrant care workers and employers.
Lee’s decision to create a progressive employers’ group was inspired by similar progressive employers’ groups in New York City, where she used to live (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 144). Alana Glaser’s (Reference Glaser2023) research on domestic worker organizing in New York shows the vital role that employers’ groups played in shifting discourses regarding care work. These tactics are important when employers speak to other employers, reminding them that their homes were the workplaces of migrant domestic workers and that they needed to follow labor regulations. Although seemingly an obvious point, this reminder was illuminating for many employers, who tended to see themselves not as “bosses” but simply as parents “getting help.” The feminist convictions of employer-organizers that migrant domestic workers should be at the helm of the movement, that care work is important and should be compensated as such, and that care is a key human value helped legitimize their presence in migrant domestic workers’ movements.
Coalitions of care can also exist between migrant domestic workers and care receivers, particularly disabled people who share a similar ethos of care. When both parties see themselves as being interdependent—where migrant domestic workers respect disabled individuals’ autonomy and disabled care receivers recognize the importance of ensuring good conditions of work—coalitions of care are possible. One such initiative, of which I was a part, was a project called “Towards Just Care” (TJC). TJC gathered disability and migrant justice advocates together to conceptualize ways to make home-based care and support equitable. Over the span of 1 year, a series of long conversations took place between migrant care work and disability justice advocates, culminating in a workshop. In these discussions, the group examined how disabled people and migrant care workers fared under Ontario’s home care policies, providing openings to “collectively imagine more just care systems for all” (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, 6).
The stories that people shared provided opportunities for establishing common ground. For example, Alessia, a disabled woman who “needs support with personal care and transferring,” noted that government-funded home care support services did not cover all her needs. While she was able to pay for other costs not covered by these services herself, cutbacks would present challenges (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, 26). Similarly, Grace, a migrant care worker who came to Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program, shared concerns regarding the austerity measures that Alessia discussed. Grace’s working conditions were already suboptimal. She had little job security, had a hard time getting compensation for the hours that she had worked, and at one point, was sexually assaulted by a client (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, p. 35).
Through shared dialogue, care receivers and care workers understood the systemic inequalities that both faced, with state-driven austerity programs making it harder to give and receive high-quality, well-compensated care. These dialogues enabled an understanding of how policies “pit workers and receivers against each other” (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, 35), paving the way for imagining what a just care system could look like for both. In the workshop concluding the TCJ project, disabled people and migrant care workers identified a shared set of values, including “critical hope for a better future,” “anti-capitalist politics,” “collective access for all,” and the “universal human need for care” (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, 38). Acknowledging common needs and similar visions of a caring society created an opening to dream of alternative, more caring futures.
Care Justice and Coalitions of Care
Whether it is possible to overcome existing power imbalances to create non-hierarchical coalitions of care is a pressing question. Respectful working environments where people’s caring and working needs are met can exist. Spaces where people’s common humanity and their mutual desires for more caring futures can be cultivated. Nevertheless, in a global system rife with inequality, migrant care workers from Global South countries are compelled to seek economic opportunities elsewhere. The result is that migrant domestic workers are perpetually placed in a situation where their needs and rights are subordinated to those of their employers and care receivers in the Global North.
Coalitions of care point to the generative possibilities of creating spaces where care justice is central, and not merely an afterthought. Although it is difficult to solve structural inequalities in the distribution of care work and access to care resources, recognizing that such inequalities undergird migrant domestic work might create policy innovations that offer alternatives to continued reliance on labor migration. Such alternatives should also envisage ways to meet migrant domestic workers’ own caring needs, a growing concern among aging care workers who have developed work-related disabilities and have no one to care for them (De Leon and Nassiri-Blower Reference De Leon and Nassiri-Blower2024; Tungohan and Ticar Reference Tungohan and Jessica Ticar2022).
Examples of coalitions of care show how relationships between migrant domestic workers and employers, and between migrant domestic workers and disabled care receivers, shift when there is mutual acknowledgment of each other’s caring needs. Seeing care work as labor worthy of protection improves the working conditions of migrant domestic workers. More importantly, such coalitions highlight the commonalities in people’s experiences. For workers, employers, and care receivers, society’s sidelining of care has meant that they all have to navigate a system where high-quality, affordable care is rare, and where migrant care workers lack robust labor protections and recognition of their caring needs. Coalitions of care, similarly to migrant domestic workers’ communities of care, therefore, help instill dreams of more caring futures. They help us imagine what care justice looks like when care becomes a universal good.
Open access
Despite the essential role that migrant domestic workers perform, their work—and human worth—is often disregarded. The issues facing migrant domestic workers go beyond harsh labor conditions and immigration regulations that tie their work permits to their employers. These issues—all of which migrant domestic workers have shared with me—involve a disregard for their humanity through policies that treat them as sources of contagion (e.g., mandatory annual HIV and pregnancy tests) and as wards (e.g., employers’ refusal to permit days off and the imposition of curfews). The problems facing migrant domestic workers stem from a devaluing of care and domestic work, alongside the routine ignoring of their own caring needs. A key principle of a caring society emphasizes the importance of meeting people’s caring needs (Glenn Reference Glenn2000). The inability of policymakers to recognize and meet migrant domestic workers’ need for care through policies shows migrant domestic workers’ invisibility.
Existing domestic and transnational legal protections for migrant domestic workers are inadequate. Feminist researchers have exhaustively detailed the failures of states in safeguarding migrant domestic workers’ interests and the challenges of creating regulatory policies that provide them with protections (Bagnon et al. Reference Bagnon, Calamba, Cordero, Massie, Minh, Murage, Martinez and Shaw2024). In response, migrant domestic workers have formed their own organizations and advocacy movements to challenge abusive policies and practices of sending and receiving states. They have also openly criticized the tendencies of so-called progressive organizations such as labor unions and migrant justice organizations to disregard their concerns and caring needs. To be clear, migrant domestic workers’ concerns are not solely about policy deficiencies. They also encompass the need for everyday modes of support. As such, migrant domestic workers often create “communities of care,” providing each other with support and bearing witness to each other’s journeys (Francisco-Menchavez Reference Francisco-Menchavez2018; Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023).
Care Activism
In contrast to other progressive social movements, which prioritize publicly visible sites of organizing and seek “wins” through policy changes, migrant domestic workers practice “care activism.” I define care activism as “the distinct ways that migrant care workers care for themselves, for each other, for fellow migrant care workers in their immediate circles, and for the larger, transnational community of migrant care workers…as a framework, care activism challenges stereotypical perceptions of abject, downtrodden and long-suffering migrant care workers” (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 3). Care activism contributes to a more caring society because it centers an ethic of care in movement organizing, where activist organizations’ primary purpose is to be there for each other in a world where one’s humanity is oftentimes overlooked. Put differently, migrant domestic workers’ communities of care give them access to networks that provide them with ongoing support, filling in the gaps when institutions and systems fail.
The use of care activism as a political strategy is important because of the way it sees care as a fundamental value to organizing. By seeing movement actors as human beings with caring needs, care activism strengthens movement-building and provides an example of spaces where care is prioritized. Care activism encourages dreaming and working towards more caring futures. For the migrant domestic worker activists I interviewed, their fight for a more caring world is tied to the obligations they felt toward previous generations of migrant domestic worker activists to carry their legacy forward, as well as to future migrant domestic workers, to whom they wanted to bequeath a more caring world (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 12).
But can care activism be extended towards people who are not migrant domestic workers, including their employers and receivers of care such as seniors and disabled people? And what coalitions do migrant domestic workers form with other communities? The process through which we pursue care justice—in this case, through activism—should center care for different actors to ensure movement longevity, with people more likely to stay involved because their needs for care are acknowledged. Embedding care activism in other movements and coalitions makes care the priority in all actions—from movement-building and strategizing to long-term movement demands. Seeing care as an essential value helps reorient activist priorities toward not only seeking policy “wins” but also centering the needs of people within these movements.
Coalitions of Care
In coalitions of care, members see their fates as interlinked, value each other’s humanity, and believe that care is a fundamental value that should be prioritized in society. Labor conditions of migrant care work are such that the power that employers hold over them is magnified more so than in other employment relationships, as employers oftentimes determine workers’ ability to stay in the country. My research on migrant domestic workers’ movements in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines, however, revealed that some employers were part of coalitions of care.
Doris Lee, whom I met in Hong Kong, was one such employer. When we spoke in 2017, Lee ran an organization called “Open Doors,” which sought to present positive portrayals of migrant domestic workers in popular discourse and to support migrant workers. Open Doors was part of the larger progressive migrant workers’ movement in Hong Kong, providing support for different campaigns, including calls to raise migrant domestic workers’ wages. Lee spoke often and publicly in the media, declaring her support for this campaign, serving as a counterweight to the voices of many employers who called migrant domestic workers greedy for seeking wage increases. As Lee said, in response to my question of why she decided to be involved with the migrant domestic workers’ movement, “I was already familiar with some migrant groups, and they were familiar with me, and so they would call me from time to time asking me if I could speak because I was an employer…then once, someone told me, ‘Oh it would be good if there was an employers group that were different’…in other words, it made a difference to organize employers, so that was also motivating and inspiring for me” (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 144).
Migrant domestic worker activists told me that the migrant domestic workers’ movement needed allies like Lee. Because Open Doors also had campaigns paying tribute to migrant domestic workers, which highlighted the need to see care work “with dignity” (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 145), the activists I interviewed appreciated how employers like Lee showed genuine appreciation of the work that they did. “I don’t like it when employers feel sorry for us. When they feel bad for us, it’s like they don’t see the work that we do. They need to respect our work,” Ella, a migrant care worker activist, told me. For Ella, employers who understand that migrant domestic workers are in a working relationship, rather than being “part of the family,” show that they recognize the value of care work. Doing so signifies a commitment to creating equitable conditions of work, thereby strengthening relationships of trust between migrant care workers and employers.
Lee’s decision to create a progressive employers’ group was inspired by similar progressive employers’ groups in New York City, where she used to live (Tungohan Reference Tungohan2023, 144). Alana Glaser’s (Reference Glaser2023) research on domestic worker organizing in New York shows the vital role that employers’ groups played in shifting discourses regarding care work. These tactics are important when employers speak to other employers, reminding them that their homes were the workplaces of migrant domestic workers and that they needed to follow labor regulations. Although seemingly an obvious point, this reminder was illuminating for many employers, who tended to see themselves not as “bosses” but simply as parents “getting help.” The feminist convictions of employer-organizers that migrant domestic workers should be at the helm of the movement, that care work is important and should be compensated as such, and that care is a key human value helped legitimize their presence in migrant domestic workers’ movements.
Coalitions of care can also exist between migrant domestic workers and care receivers, particularly disabled people who share a similar ethos of care. When both parties see themselves as being interdependent—where migrant domestic workers respect disabled individuals’ autonomy and disabled care receivers recognize the importance of ensuring good conditions of work—coalitions of care are possible. One such initiative, of which I was a part, was a project called “Towards Just Care” (TJC). TJC gathered disability and migrant justice advocates together to conceptualize ways to make home-based care and support equitable. Over the span of 1 year, a series of long conversations took place between migrant care work and disability justice advocates, culminating in a workshop. In these discussions, the group examined how disabled people and migrant care workers fared under Ontario’s home care policies, providing openings to “collectively imagine more just care systems for all” (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, 6).
The stories that people shared provided opportunities for establishing common ground. For example, Alessia, a disabled woman who “needs support with personal care and transferring,” noted that government-funded home care support services did not cover all her needs. While she was able to pay for other costs not covered by these services herself, cutbacks would present challenges (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, 26). Similarly, Grace, a migrant care worker who came to Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program, shared concerns regarding the austerity measures that Alessia discussed. Grace’s working conditions were already suboptimal. She had little job security, had a hard time getting compensation for the hours that she had worked, and at one point, was sexually assaulted by a client (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, p. 35).
Through shared dialogue, care receivers and care workers understood the systemic inequalities that both faced, with state-driven austerity programs making it harder to give and receive high-quality, well-compensated care. These dialogues enabled an understanding of how policies “pit workers and receivers against each other” (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, 35), paving the way for imagining what a just care system could look like for both. In the workshop concluding the TCJ project, disabled people and migrant care workers identified a shared set of values, including “critical hope for a better future,” “anti-capitalist politics,” “collective access for all,” and the “universal human need for care” (Hande et al. Reference Hande, Linton, Malik, Nicholson, Haggag, Di Virgilio, Lorde, Oldfield, Cartan, Santiago, Funk, Novek, Tungohan and Sethi2024, 38). Acknowledging common needs and similar visions of a caring society created an opening to dream of alternative, more caring futures.
Care Justice and Coalitions of Care
Whether it is possible to overcome existing power imbalances to create non-hierarchical coalitions of care is a pressing question. Respectful working environments where people’s caring and working needs are met can exist. Spaces where people’s common humanity and their mutual desires for more caring futures can be cultivated. Nevertheless, in a global system rife with inequality, migrant care workers from Global South countries are compelled to seek economic opportunities elsewhere. The result is that migrant domestic workers are perpetually placed in a situation where their needs and rights are subordinated to those of their employers and care receivers in the Global North.
Coalitions of care point to the generative possibilities of creating spaces where care justice is central, and not merely an afterthought. Although it is difficult to solve structural inequalities in the distribution of care work and access to care resources, recognizing that such inequalities undergird migrant domestic work might create policy innovations that offer alternatives to continued reliance on labor migration. Such alternatives should also envisage ways to meet migrant domestic workers’ own caring needs, a growing concern among aging care workers who have developed work-related disabilities and have no one to care for them (De Leon and Nassiri-Blower Reference De Leon and Nassiri-Blower2024; Tungohan and Ticar Reference Tungohan and Jessica Ticar2022).
Examples of coalitions of care show how relationships between migrant domestic workers and employers, and between migrant domestic workers and disabled care receivers, shift when there is mutual acknowledgment of each other’s caring needs. Seeing care work as labor worthy of protection improves the working conditions of migrant domestic workers. More importantly, such coalitions highlight the commonalities in people’s experiences. For workers, employers, and care receivers, society’s sidelining of care has meant that they all have to navigate a system where high-quality, affordable care is rare, and where migrant care workers lack robust labor protections and recognition of their caring needs. Coalitions of care, similarly to migrant domestic workers’ communities of care, therefore, help instill dreams of more caring futures. They help us imagine what care justice looks like when care becomes a universal good.