Situating the Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the Gulf States: A Case Study of Saudi Arabia | Zenodo Skip to main Communities My dashboard Log in Sign up Published January 31, 2026 | Version 1.0 Journal Open Situating the Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the Gulf States: A Case Study of Saudi Arabia Authors/Creators Purabi, Bhattacharya (Contact person) 1 Show affiliations 1.
School of Media and Communication (SOMC) Adamas University, Kolkata, India. Description There has been a persistent increase in the population of migrant domestic workers (MDW), which are mostly women, in the Gulf Council Cooperation (GCC) countries since the 1980s. While they form an integral part of a Gulf household which has come to rely heavily on their labour, the MDWs have been conspicuously left out of the protection of labour laws. On the other hand, their public counterparts, working outside of the household, irrespective of the gender, are covered within a code of labour laws. Under the operation of the Kafala sponsorship system and in the absence of legal protection, MDWs remain highly vulnerable to abuse by their employers. The paper argues that such a peculiarity has arisen due to an intersection of varied phenomena, viz., the sanctity of the private space as against the public space which hinders the former from being recognised as a work space; the invisibility of the work done by women within the domestic sphere; and a ‘silent pact’ between the Gulf states and citizens which allows the former to exchange citizens’ political freedom for unhindered ‘enjoyment of life’. Indeed, an outright exclusion of MDWs from protective laws was possible because it is a sector dominated by women, migrating from countries where similar notions of the public-private divide and invisible labour prevailed. The paper takes a case study approach involving the case of Saudi Arabia to find patterns of exploitation and generalise for the larger GCC region. Files 06 Dr. Purabi Bhattacharya Prerak January 2026 Eng.pdf Files (98.8 kB) Name Size Download all 06 Dr. Purabi Bhattacharya Prerak January 2026 Eng.pdf md5:c98357bb7cbe5e9d4d35f6604427abf0 98.8 kB Preview Download Additional details Dates Available 2026-01-31 References 1 Aaserud, et al. (2013). The Protection of the Rights of Migrant Domestic Workers in a Country of Origin and a Country of Destination: Case Studies of the Philippines and Kuwait. John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 2 Abimourched, R. (2011). Migrant domestic workers in the Mashriq: Towards a rights-based regulatory framework, Carim Research Report. Florence: Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration. 3 AlShehabi, O. (2019). Policing Labour in Empire: The Modern Origins of the Kafala Sponsorship System in the Gulf Arab States. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 4 Alzahrani, M. (2014). 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"Global Rights Index," ITUC Survey of violations of trade union rights, accessed January 2, 2023, https://survey.ituc-csi.org/Qatar.html?lang=en . 59 Views 52 Downloads Show more details All versions This version Views Total views 59 59 Downloads Total downloads 52 52 Data volume Total data volume 5.2 MB 5.2 MB More info on how stats are collected.... 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