Abstract
In this study I highlight the spatial exclusions that migrant domestic workers (MDWs) experience in Lebanon. I argue that migrant domestic workers constantly challenge such spatial exclusions by using the exact spaces that they are excluded from as the bases for a meso-level of resistances—strategic acts that cannot be classified as either private and individual or as organized collective action. I highlight three kinds of such resistive activities: the strategic dyads forged across balconies by the most restricted live-in workers, the small collectives formed outside ethnic churches by other live-in workers, and much larger worker collectives (that often cross national borders) in rental apartments occupied by illegal freelancers and runaways. By analyzing these spaces as strategic instances of workers’ collectives, I question the portrayal of MDWs in the Arab world as ultimate and defeated victims of abuse. But the continuum of resistive activities undertaken by MDWs in Lebanon also challenges the dichotomies often constructed between public (overt and organized) and private (individual and symbolic) forms of organization and resistances. This meso-level of resistance becomes particularly significant in a country like Lebanon, where MDWs are forbidden from forming or joining formal unions, and becomes critical for workers from many countries in Africa and South Asia who, unlike the larger Filipina community, have little access to formal support systems like consulates and embassies.
It is a hot and sultry Mediterranean Sunday afternoon. The meandering dusty streets of Tripoli, Lebanon, are almost empty. There is very little activity on the streets, and even the usual orange juice vendors have taken refuge from the afternoon sun. The picture is somewhat different one level above the street. One in every four balconies is occupied by women—Black African women. Some are sweeping the balconies, banging dust out of carpets, but most others are just hanging onto the railings and conversing with women on the balconies of neighboring buildings. I yell out a “salaam” at two of them. They grin down at me and include me in their conversation. I have half an hour before the Sunday service starts at the Ethiopian Pentecostal church down the street, enough time to conduct my first official “balcony talk” 1 (Field Notes, Tripoli, Lebanon, June 2010).
In 2008, Human Rights Watch reported that every week one migrant domestic worker (MDW) commits suicide in Lebanon by plunging from the balcony of a tall residential building. A high level of abuse, isolation, and a feeling of helplessness were cited as the reasons that drive these women to plunge to their deaths. I started this research project in October 2009, right after four more African migrant domestic workers committed suicide within a span of 10 days. 2 My initial plan was to collect oral histories of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, partly as an attempt to give voices to the “victims” of abuse. But how does one study invisible populations, hidden behind closed doors? How could I access this population of workers if their “Madam” did not give consent? The methodological challenges of accessing these women set the stage for the main argument of this article.
My hunt for respondents revealed some unexpected spaces created by migrant domestic workers depending on their work status and ease of mobility. Curiously, these are often the exact spaces to which MDWs are excluded, whether by their employers or society at large, but ultimately these spaces form the core of their possibilities for forming alliances and resisting. While the most restricted live-ins use their employers’ balconies as spaces for interacting with other live-ins, some live-ins also use their ethnic churches to form alliances with other MDWs. In the third category are (illegal) freelancers who forge alliances in apartments in battle-scarred abandoned buildings in a neighborhood near Beirut. These alliances and spaces complicate the victimhood and abuse narrative often associated with migrant domestic workers in the Middle East (Abu-Habib 1998; Hamill 2011; Human Rights Watch 2008; Jureidini 2002, 2010, 2011). In addition, I argue that these spaces, often described in migrant worker literature as “weekend enclaves” and “ethnic carnivals,” are not just examples of coping mechanisms and “imaginary communities” (Parreñas 2001; Yeoh and Huang 1998), but powerful instances of resistances at the meso-level.
Private, individual, and everyday forms of resistances by migrant domestic workers have been well-documented by scholars across the globe (Adams 2000; Gamburd 2000; Gill 1994; Lan 2000, 2003a; Palmer 1989; Parreñas 2001; Rollins 1985). The more public, overt, and organized forms of resistance adopted by migrant worker unions and associations, mostly in countries with a long history of organized, collective action by workers, have recently been documented by labor scholars (Anderson 2000, 2010; Chang 2000; Chin 2003; Constable 2009; Ford and Piper 2007; Gurowitz 2000; Law 2003; Lyons 2007). I argue that the resistive activities one observes in Lebanon are neither individual nor organized union work. These activities occur at the dyad and small group level but are a critical form of support for MDWs who do not have legal recourse to more organized and large-scale forms of resistance. By highlighting this hybrid form of resistance, I challenge the dichotomy between private and public forms of resistance in the existing literature. Extending James Scott’s (1990) conceptualization of infrapolitics as the middle ground between passive acquiescence and outright social mobilization, I posit the meso-level of resistive acts as a progression from individual and private contestation to a more organized public expression of defiance. The meso-level of resistive acts and the alliances formed potentially provide a basis for more radical resistance to domination.
My argument unfolds as follows: After presenting my theoretic background, I describe the system of domestic labor migration in Lebanon—the kafala (sponsorship) system of recruitment and migration. Next I describe the research methodology, and then move onto the data analysis. I briefly describe the migrant domestic workers’ limited access to public spaces. Ironically but powerfully, migrant domestic workers challenge such dominant spatial exclusionary practices by using the exact spaces from which they are excluded as spaces to enact resistive acts and forge alliances. The final section maps the resistive activities and analyzes their realistic impact on the lives of these women workers.
From Victimhood to Resistance: Migrant Domestic Worker Understudy
In the 1970s Marxist feminists ignited the now vibrant debate on paid domestic work by recognizing the relationship between domestic work and capitalist accumulation (Hartmann 1976; Mies 1998). In the past two decades, however, this scholarship has increasingly taken a global turn. Two broad themes have emerged in the literature on migrant domestic work. One highlights the gendered and racialized dimensions of the migration of women and the transfer of care from the global south to the global north. This scholarship often engages with the vulnerability of noncitizen (or partial-citizen) immigrants working in isolation in private homes (Anderson 2000; Chin 1998; Constable 1997; Hondagneu-Sotelo 2001; Parreñas 2001; Raijman, Schammah-Gesser, and Kemp 2003; Ray and Qayum 2009). Scholarship on migrant domestic work in the Arab world, still an understudied topic, predominantly focuses on such notions of migrant domestic workers’ vulnerability and ultimate victimhood. In Lebanon, the issue has been recently highlighted by the mainstream media, as well as reports and campaigns by NGOs like Human Rights Watch, Caritas, the ILO, and other national organizations, as the horrific and extreme abuse of migrant maids (Hamill 2011; Human Rights Watch 2008). Even the foundational academic work on migrant domestic workers in Lebanon by Ray Jureidini (2002), which has influenced the handful of other studies in the region, compares the legal and work situation of domestic workers to “contract slavery.” 3 The vulnerability and slavery approach is useful in placing the issue on a global agenda and establishing legal standards for the protection of MDWs. But it has its drawbacks. The demand for the extension of human rights to MDWs on the basis of their overarching vulnerability delimits the political potential of workers to resist exploitation and abuses, form alliances, and fight for their own rights. Such third party demands, made on humanitarian grounds, conceal and diminish powerful struggles organized by the workers themselves.
The second strand of research, partly developed in response to the inadequacies of the victimhood model, resonates well with other writings on everyday resistances at the individual level (Scott 1985). Across disciplines, scholars have analyzed the most unlikely forms of subversions: small and local resistances, often remaining at the discursive level and not tied to the overthrow of systems or even to ideologies of emancipation. Scholarship on domestic work, in particular, has highlighted the everyday coping mechanisms, like foot dragging, chicanery, mockery, and cajolery, deployed by women in their negotiations with their (mostly female) employers (Adams 2000; Gamburd 2000; Gill 1994; Lan 2000, 2003a, 2003b; Palmer 1989; Parreñas 2001; Rollins 1985). The usual conclusion of these studies on individual acts of resistances is that these acts, albeit powerful, seldom transform structures of subordination. On the other end of the continuum of resistances is the more recent scholarship on domestic workers’ collective organizations, which has analyzed the efforts and triumphs of domestic workers’ unions in making collective and organized demands for improved working and living conditions. These studies focus on the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America, and/or on countries with a long history of organized, collective action by workers (Anderson 2010; Chin 2003; Constable 2009; Gurowitz 2000; Law 2003; Lyons 2007; Piper 2003). In general, the most visible migrant worker NGOs tend to be Filipina migrant worker groups, which is not surprising given the Philippines’ long history as a sending country as well as having a strong record of trade unionism (Lyons 2007). Despite these nascent efforts to build domestic workers’ unions, organizing women working in fragmented workplaces, with few avenues for interaction with each other, remains a daunting task for most countries.
In this article, I highlight a meso-level of resistances—strategic acts that cannot be classified as either private and individual or as organized collective action. These acts involve strategic dyads and small informal communities formed by MDWs. This middle ground becomes particularly significant in a country like Lebanon, where MDWs are forbidden to form or join formal unions. 4 In addition, the meso-level of organization becomes critical for workers from many countries in Africa and South Asia who, unlike the Filipina community, have little access to formal support systems like consulates and embassies.
The Madam, the “Sri Lankyiyi” and the Kafala System of Recruitment in Lebanon
The history of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon should be seen against the backdrop of international and regional developments. The 1970s oil boom dramatically expanded inter-Arab and Asian–Gulf migrations. Although initially these migrations were mostly male workers, there was an increased feminization of the migrant labor force in the 1980s and early 1990s. Initially, young unmarried women from rural areas, Palestinian women from Lebanon’s refugee camps, Kurdish refugees, and women from neighboring Arab countries, such as Syria and Egypt, made up the domestic labor force. Since the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, Arab maids were slowly replaced by women of (Black) African and Asian origin (Jureidini 2009). These women were not only less expensive but also considered more submissive than their Arab counterparts (Moukarbel 2009). In the postwar environment, there was an even more rapid internationalization of the domestic labor force.
The number of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon is difficult to accurately estimate as many workers do not come through official labor schemes or they stay past their visas and work illegally. It is estimated that in 2009 this small country had more than 400,000 migrant domestic workers (Human Rights Watch 2009). The largest numbers are from Ethiopia, followed by the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka (Jureidini 2009). But this study indicates that in the past decade, migrant domestic workers have started arriving from other Asian and African countries such as Nepal, Madagascar, Cameroon, Benin, Seychelles, and Togo (see Table 1). These “new” MDWs are potentially the most vulnerable as their home countries often do not have labor-sending agreements or a diplomatic presence to support their migrant populations. The continuous influx of African and Asian women, in turn, has lowered the social status of domestic workers, and given domestic work a negative racial connotation, making it less attractive to Lebanese and other Arab women. Indeed, domestic work has become so racialized that the word “maid” has been replaced by “Sri Lankyiyi”—a racial slur used by Lebanese employers while referring to their migrant domestic worker, whatever her nationality (Jureidini 2004). A racist employer, however, is just one actor in the migrant workers’ journey.
Sample Characteristics
The testimonies of participants in this research repeatedly highlight the need to look beyond the Madam/maid dyad, especially at the exploitative potential built into the kafala (guarantee/sponsorship) system. Currently, to enter Lebanon for work, an MDW has to be officially “sponsored” by a Lebanese agency or individual employer (the kafil). The kafala system is a reflection of state practices of control and exclusion of migrant labor, but also gives employers a misguided sense of possessing the worker. The sponsors perceive the advance payments made to the recruitment agency as an “investment,” which gives them a sense of possessing the MDW and her time. This paternalistic relationship between the sponsor and the worker is further reified by the MDW’s dependence on the employer for ensuring her legal status in Lebanon as well as financing her return ticket home. The kafala system, by making the MDW dependent on the employer for her legal and economic existence in the country, creates the bases for much of the violations. The same system allows the violations to go unpunished. MDWs have few options even when they face severe violation of rights. They cannot change employers unless the employer agrees to sign a release waiver. In addition, the system makes an MDW illegal as soon as she escapes from the house of her sponsor-employer, even if it was in response to systematic abuse on the part of the employer. She loses her legal residency and the right to work and is under constant threat of detention. To add to the exploitative nature of the system, migrant workers are not governed by Lebanese labor law, and subsequently cannot claim Lebanon’s minimum salary, demand time off, or get health, accident or end-of-work compensation. Legally, they are barred from joining labor unions.
Research Method
The research described in this article is part of my larger research project on migrant domestic work in Lebanon, for which I conducted fieldwork between 2008 and 2010 in Lebanon’s two most prominent cities—Beirut and Tripoli. This article is based on oral histories collected from 57 MDWs, including “live-ins,” “freelancers,” and “runaways” 5 (see Table 1). Most of the conversations were in English, but some were in Arabic, French, Bengali, and Hindi. I used a translator for oral histories conducted in Arabic and French. I spoke to participants on balconies and in places where migrants generally congregate. I also conducted participant-observation for over six months in the spaces where MDWs gather to spend their day off, such as churches, ethnic stores and restaurants, cyber cafés, and rental apartments inhabited by illegal freelancers and runaways.
I used various approaches to gain access to the migrant workers. In the first round of fieldwork, I met some migrant women through my Lebanese contacts and three through the snowballing method. But most others I met by chance on the streets, or outside their churches, ethnic stores, and rented apartments. My ambiguous looks and ability to speak English, Hindi, Bengali, and Arabic worked to my advantage. Sometimes it was the Ethiopian women who mistook me for a fellow citizen and initiated a conversation. Sometimes the Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, and Nepalese women did the same. In the second round, I interviewed women in my capacity as a consultant with an independent NGO working on MDWs’ rights. As far as possible, I chose interviewees in the second round so as to make the sample representative of the overall population of MDWs in the country—the highest percentage of the interviewees are from Ethiopia, followed by respondents from the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka (see Table 1).
Establishing contact with the live-in MDWs with no access to the outside world was a daunting task. But this was a population critical for my research. For this population of live-in workers I devised an unusual but effective way of gaining access: balcony talks. I cannot take credit for this novel way of interaction; I was temporarily borrowing a tactic of interaction devised by the workers themselves. A domestic worker and friend introduced me to some MDWs who are locked inside and have conversations only across balconies. Most other balcony talks were unplanned—I often yelled out greetings to women while they swept their balconies and got permission for a longer balcony talk later in the day. Here the conversations were naturally shorter than, and not as detailed as, the oral histories I collected from women who had fewer restrictions on their mobility. But despite the unusual nature of these interactions, the balcony talks provided some of the most invaluable information. Given the contentious legal status of some of the participants in this study, I have used pseudonyms for all individuals, and I received consent from all respondents. For balcony talks, consent was given verbally.
Spatial Discipline
Spatial Discipline within the Home and Outside
Spatial structures discipline MDWs in Lebanon in two distinct ways: through the delineation of appropriate space within the employer’s house and through the restriction and surveillance of space outside the house. Typically, there is limited home space made available to an MDW. Her bedroom (when available), the kitchen, and the balcony are deemed appropriate spaces. For most live-in MDWs, home and workspace collapse into one space—one that is constantly under surveillance. To find privacy, live-in MDWs often “have to go public” (Lan 2003b, 528). Public spaces may offer an escape route by giving women anonymity and the freedom to be themselves. But almost all live-ins in this study faced restrictions on their participation in public spaces—all said that they needed permission to leave the house to meet friends, go to the market, or even step out. Some were allowed out only when accompanied by their employers, walking the dog, or throwing trash. Then there were others, who were practically prisoners in their employer’s house.
My research indicates that the restrictions on access to public space differ by the nationality of the MDW. Filipina women with a long history of sending migrant women to Lebanon, a relatively effective embassy, as well as regional communities have more systematic support structures in place. They are less likely to be severely restricted in movement than their counterparts from Bangladesh, Nepal, and different countries in Africa. Filipina women often have a strong church community and are more likely to get each Sunday off for church service. 6 The day off is one of the most effective mechanisms to restrict MDWs’ access to public space. Some women were just not given any time off at all. Most women get a few hours away from work, every second Sunday. But, quite often, this time off is also monitored by the employers. Employers ensure that the MDWs engage in only “appropriate” activities, and the Sunday service is, often, deemed such an appropriate act.
It would be misleading to suggest that employers are solely responsible for restricting MDWs’ access to public spaces. Gendered and raced forms of exclusion from public space are enacted in various ways. For instance, in many parts of Asia and the Middle East, women are disciplined in public spaces through overt acts of sexual harassment, wolf-whistling, sexual remarks, and even touching. This gets compounded for MDWs in Lebanon who face increased and unusually aggressive harassment because of their race, nationality, and presumed vulnerability as transient workers with little support structure.
These disciplining tactics are employed not just on the streets but in other public spaces as well. There are many “no-go” zones within restaurants and cafés. For instance, most MDWs are allowed entry into restaurants only when accompanied by their employers. They are not allowed to swim in the resort pools and encouraged to not venture near the pool area (North 2009). In general, MDWs are systematically assigned to marginal public spaces. For instance, even the leisure activity deemed appropriate by employers—the act of attending Sunday service—is assigned to churches reserved for non-Lebanese ethnic groups. All the churches I observed as part of this research were explicitly assigned to marginal spaces. For instance, in a neighborhood in Beirut, while the Catholic Church for Lebanese is set in a magnificent sixteenth-century building, the Pentacostal church for Ethiopians is housed in the dingy basement. In Tripoli, a similar demarcation can be seen where a small room behind a massive Catholic Church has been assigned to Filipina church-goers.
But MDWs do not passively accept these marginal spaces as a disciplining and exclusionary tactic. In the next section, I demonstrate that MDWs constantly challenge such spatial exclusion by using the exact spaces that they are excluded from as the bases for different levels of resistive activities. The balconies at home, the marginal space of the ethnic church, and battle-scarred apartments in ethnic neighborhoods become spaces of strategic and resistive acts aimed at improving their living and working conditions. I highlight three levels of resistive activities: the strategic dyads forged across balconies by the most restricted live-in workers, the small collectives formed outside ethnic churches by other live-in workers, and, finally, much larger worker collectives (that often cross national borders) in rental apartments occupied by illegal freelancers and runaways.
MIgrant Domestic Workers and Meso-level of Resistances
Balconies and Strategic Dyads
Most middle-class Lebanese live in high-rise apartments with large spacious balconies. Many of the respondents in this study claimed these balconies as their space—a place from which they could converse with MDWs in apartments in adjacent buildings or with women walking on the streets below.
Imee from the Philippines believes that the balcony is a space she has effectively colonized.
Whenever I get very mad at her [the employer] and want to hit back or shout back at her, I tell myself, get away from the kitchen. I slowly walk away to the balcony. She has also learnt this: When I walk to the balcony, she knows I am angry. She lets me alone for some time at least. Now when I am tired after a day’s work, she sometimes says kindly, “Why not take your tea and go out to your balcony?”
The balcony is the space assigned to Imee, but it is also the space she has created as her own. The balcony is often claimed as a space where the MDW can get more privacy and escape the surveillance of her employers. But, more importantly, this space, carved out by live-ins facing the most restrictions on access to public space, is where they can converse with MDWs in apartments in adjacent buildings or with women walking on the streets below. For women with no support structures, and with the most restrictions on movement, alliances across balconies become a critical source of information sharing. Many MDWs arrive into Lebanon through recruitment agencies that give them misleading and inaccurate information. Consequently, workers arrive with very little knowledge about Lebanon, living conditions, job duties, and, most importantly, their rights within Lebanon. My conversations with MDWs from the street to the balcony often revealed the women’s desperate attempts to collect information, even if from strangers on the street. Typically a conversation would progress in the following manner:
Salaam, sister (followed by something in Amharic—the national language of Ethiopia)!
Salaam! I am sorry I don’t speak Amharic. Can you speak English?
Where are you from? How long is your contract? How much do you earn?
Longer and more planned conversations revealed the critical role that these balcony talks played for live-in MDWs with severe restrictions on mobility. Across balconies, women consult each other on the severity of restrictions on their mobility, whether they are given access to their own passport, and the regularity of payment. MDWs are often advised by their allies on neighboring balconies on how to effectively negotiate days off. Gabra from Ethiopia describes how the balcony talks helped her negotiate two hours off every Sunday:
I have a Srilanki friend, in the same building. She is not really my friend but she is also on contract. We see each other on the balcony but we never got time to talk too long. She told me when she goes out to throw the bag (trash) and, yalla, I will too. So we go out together and she says, “Your madam is not bad. Tell her you want to go on Sunday. Tell her you want to go for Ethiopian service.” In Addis I went to church but not too much. But Madam does not know that. I told Madam I need to go to church every Sunday, and she said ok!
Gabra forged her alliance across the balcony and by coordinating the trash-throwing with her neighbor. She took her neighbor’s advice and used the church as an excuse to negotiate some hours off from work. For many MDWs with no support structures, such alliances across balconies become increasingly critical in situations of severe restrictions and extreme abuse. Alliances across balconies literally set in motion a chain, where an abused MDW shares her grievance with her neighbor, who either consults her own employer, a community leader, or, in some cases, even embassy representatives.
In another case, two MDWs used the balconies to collectively devise an escape route. I met Angel and Mariel from the Philippines at a shelter run by the embassy. They recall the day of their escape:
We used to talk, talk, talk over the wall. “How it is for you?” “How it is for you?” But it was not good, no phone, no Sunday off, not even salary every month. It is not right! So we started talking slowly. We lived not far from the embassy and that day we decided to leave. It was a Friday. We were on the second floor. She climbed out of her window and I from the balcony. We climbed out of the house with bed sheets. We climbed from the second to the first floor. From the first floor we jumped. On the street we met an African man and he helped us to get to the embassy. We left our papers, passport, everything behind. But we were out!
The balcony transforms from a marginal space assigned to restricted live-ins to an avenue for forging strategic dyads with workers in the neighboring balconies. This is where the most restricted live-ins hold long sessions of balcony talks with MDWs in neighboring apartments and share information on salary, contracts and access to passports. This is also where they strategize how to negotiate leaves, leisure time and more freedom. The balconies are the first step in forming a community and finding broader support structures, especially in cases of extreme confinement. For other live-ins with fewer restrictions, Sundays are the days they are allowed access to more public spaces like cyber cafés and selected ethnic churches.
Ethnic Churches, Practical Prayers, and Worker Collectives
The Service at the Pentecostal Church for Ethiopians in Tripoli starts at 11 am. The first time I attended the service I was instantly struck by two things: First, there was more activity outside the church than inside of it, and second, the pastor was an Ethiopian migrant domestic worker herself. The courtyard outside the church starts filling up at least an hour before the actual service. There is indeed an air of “carnival.” Women are dressed up in boots, tight jeans, and colorful attire—finally able to shed their dowdy “maid” clothes or uniforms. They gather in groups of three or four, talking and sharing ethnic food. Many use the service as an excuse to get some time off, and women can be seen walking off in pairs to shop, get their hair braided or simply unwind with their colleagues. The street outside is invariably cluttered with Lebanese and Syrian workers, often posing with their motorcycles. The men try hard to strike up conversations with the women, either through mild flirtation or aggressive harassment. The women seem unperturbed, perhaps because this is the usual Sunday ritual. But trouble erupts if any of the men cross over the invisible boundary and enter the church courtyard. This is space colonized by the MDWs, which they aggressively protect. I witnessed one such confrontation.
A Lebanese man entered the courtyard one Sunday with a photograph of a young Ethiopian woman. He announced in a loud voice that the woman was a maid at his place, whom he loved like his own daughter. She had come for service the previous Sunday but had not returned home. Anyone who provided information would be rewarded, he added. His announcement was followed by loud, indignant whispering among the women. I was chosen as the speaker for their side and was instructed to ask the man in English one question: “Did she have her passport with her?” When the surprised man said no, another woman stepped up and added, “Tell him, if she was like his daughter, why did he keep her passport? Does he understand that she is a thief (an illegal) now because she is out on the street without a passport?” When the man again mentioned the promised reward, the pastor, Vanessa, firmly escorted him out of the courtyard. The indignant conversation continued for hours, and an MDW added, “As if we would have sold our sister for his Lebanese money.”
The scene inside the church is more somber. It usually involves a bit of singing and sudden outbursts of crying. But the service is not just an outlet for grief and grievances. Pastor Vanessa, a former MDW, plans her prayers and teachings strategically. Her “practical prayers” preach tolerance while simultaneously emphasizing workers’ rights. Vanessa teaches the MDWs at her church to learn to balance and make rational, practical decisions about escaping an abusive contract:
Here I am, teaching to my sisters, “Be strong! Everything is not dark…tomorrow there is a light. When there is a mountain in your life, face it! Don’t run.” So I am teaching them how to respect her (the employer), at the same time, respect yourself. Make it a balance with your response . . . make it a balance. You have to know your right. If they shout at home sometime, remember they can shout sometimes. Don’t forget that running away will make you a thief (illegal). But tell them, with respect, it is not their right to shout, this is my work. . . . But if they hit you, raise a hand at you, raise your hand and stop the shoe. God will not stop the shoe for you [emphasis in the original].
Vanessa’s “practical prayers” teach the women about their right to work in an environment free of abuse. She encourages them to respect their employers and avoid becoming illegal, but to confront any physical abuse instantly. Such practical prayers and a supportive community bring MDWs back to church every Sunday. These women have no prior ties with each other, and are often not from the same city or even country, but what binds them together is their work status and experience as MDWs. Rosie from the Congo summarizes:
I met most of my friends . . . say colleagues, here, in this church. I have heard of an office (consulate) in Beirut but we all call on our church friends for troubles. . . . The good thing about coming here is that we know each other by face. We are all the same—housemaids. Even when we see housemaids from other nationalities—Ethiopians, Bangladeshi—we feel like we are closer—we can share food, stories, sorrow, but also money and plans . . . find ways to deal with problems with Madam and the police.
These faith-based communities, albeit powerful, have one drawback—non-Christian MDWs often suffer because of the lack of such communities. Although there is one (Nigerian) group for Muslims, it is dominated by migrant men. The only other religious community that I am aware of is a Buddhist group for Sri Lankans. But their meetings are sporadic and limited to women in Beirut. The need for a community is so pressing that four respondents in this study confessed that they “pretended” to be church-going Christians just to be included in a supportive community of women.
Rented Apartments and Illegal Collectives
Scholarship on migrant communities has described “weekend enclaves,” accessible public meeting points that draw large numbers of MDWs and cater to the cultural and economic needs of specific groups (Beyene 2005; Danis 2007; Evans-Pritchard 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994; Huang 1999; Lan 2003b; Parreñas 2001; Yeoh and Huang 1998). This literature highlights the role of social networks and communities in mitigating the atomized labor relations within domestic work. Dora, a neighborhood in Beirut, can be classified as such a weekend enclave, popular amongst MDWs for several reasons.
The main street of Dora is dotted with Asian and African restaurant and grocery stores, African salons that offer “braiding,” stores with international calling and cyber phone facilities, and Western Union outlets for sending remittances back home. There are some big malls, the equivalent of dollar stores, that sell cheap gift items for women to send back home. The street has all nationalities intermingling with each other—from Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nepal, Cameroon, Nigeria, and many other smaller African countries. Conspicuously absent from the streets are any Lebanese, except the occasional shopkeeper. Dora is also the primary residential area for illegal freelancers. Illegal freelancers and “runaways” rent apartments, some often shared by up to 20 women. I visit the top floor of one such building, occupied by freelancers from different African countries. The bullet holes in the exterior of the building are not unusual—just another relic of the city’s violent past. Most buildings in this neighborhood, however, are exceptionally dilapidated. The electricity supply is uncertain and the area is plunged in total darkness every day from 6:00 pm to midnight. These buildings may not pass any safety or health standards but are spaces that the women have successfully occupied despite all the challenges associated with being an illegal noncitizen.
Despite the dilapidated exterior, the apartment is as close to home as possible. There is a cozy sitting room with wall-to-wall rugs, three sofas, and a shelf holding a television. On one side are many extra chairs piled up. I am informed that these chairs are used for the weekly meetings of the African community. Another apartment in the same building houses a group of 12 South Asian women—all illegally working in a cleaning company. On the same street, a few buildings down, there is a similar apartment occupied by illegal women workers from another African community. Every Sunday these spaces become avenues for migrant workers to gather and discuss problems that they face in Lebanon and, sometimes, get assistance. It is ironic that illegal migrant workers, despite legal vulnerabilities, have more freedom to organize and form worker communities than legal live-ins (Lan 2007).
These communities have many similarities to formal unions. The groups have rules of membership, hold regular meetings and a yearly election of leaders, and also have a constitution. Some are even given token recognition by their consulates for their contribution to “social work.” The rental apartments housing these informal communities play diverse roles—the primary one is to provide temporary refuge for runaways. The apartment has a revolving and ever-expanding list of residents; almost all are women who have run away from their sponsors. Older migrants, with a better understanding of labor laws and rules of deportation, are often the leaders of these communities. The leaders have more established networks and can counsel new immigrants and fresh runaways on the ways of getting freelance work. The elected leaders occasionally act as mediators in the case of problems between employers and workers.
My conversations with Talisa, the elected leader of an African community and who pays a bulk of the rent for the apartment, are constantly interrupted by phone calls from workers seeking advice. Apart from giving advice on conflict resolution, as the elected leader of the community, Talisa even volunteers to talk to employers. She recalls a conversation with an employer whose daughter kept accusing a worker of stealing from her.
This girl [a live-in] is a regular member, two weeks she did not come. She phoned to say she was in a problem. I went to the house and I told them [the employers], “Look—why should you tell her that she is stealing your things while she is not taking? . . . You say she is taking but she is not taking and you are not asking her. You are just accusing her. Where would she keep it? . . . You are not talking to my sister in a very good way and your daughter is insulting her every time. You have no right to treat a worker this way.
At the next meeting, she gave some practical counseling to the worker herself and advised her to remember the good side of her employer and consider finishing the contract. Much like Pastor Vanessa’s “practical prayers,” the rented apartments become spaces where MDWs are counseled on practical ways to resolve employer–worker conflicts.
The membership dues and money collected are sometimes used to subsidize a woman’s ticket back home and, often, to buy clothes and food for women workers in prison. Many illegal MDWs working without official papers and live-ins facing charges of thefts by their employers spend months in prison before they are provided legal advice by organizations like Caritas and Human Rights Watch or deported back to their home country. 7 Community members with legal papers and community leaders visit these women with food and clothes collected by the informal community.
Although the informal community meetings are mostly for women migrating from the same country, sometimes alliances cross national borders. For instance, the apartment for Nepalese women is often visited by the Malagasy community leader and Sri Lankan women, and the apartment for the Togolese community is frequented by women (and men) from many other African countries. Women across nationalities share information about the effectiveness of their respective consulates, other networks and contacts. In some ways, these communities cross ethnic borders and become platforms for collective workers’ grievances.
Discussion
Spatial divisions and discipline are powerful tools in the process of othering. Space can be effectively used to reflect and reinforce relations of power between the dominant–subordinate and between citizen–alien. Despite these hegemonic spatial exclusions and marginalizations, migrant women in Lebanon do not accept these divisions as imminent, whether at home or in public spaces. In fact, they convert the marginal spaces allocated to them into spaces of resistive activities—whether at the level of strategic dyads or more formalized worker collectives in ethnic churches and rental apartments. The spaces they carve out for themselves and the scale of resistive activity depends on their work status. While live-ins use the balconies and ethnic churches for forming strategic dyads and small communities, the illegal population of runaways and freelancers form larger and more organized communities. It is indeed ironic that illegal migrant workers, despite their legal vulnerabilities, have more freedom to organize and form worker communities. But whatever the type of alliance—dyad or community—all serve to improve their lives as workers.
By analyzing these weekend enclaves as counterhegemonic spaces of political action and strategic instances of workers’ collectives, I question the portrayal of MDWs in the Arab world as ultimate and defeated victims of abuse. But I also challenge the implicit dichotomy drawn between private and individual forms of resistance, on the one hand, and overt forms of collective organization and union work, on the other. By highlighting the continuum of resistive activities undertaken by MDWs in Lebanon, especially at the meso-level, I challenge the dichotomies often constructed between public (overt and organized) and private (individual and symbolic) forms of organization and resistances. This meso-level of resistance becomes particularly significant in a country like Lebanon, where MDWs are forbidden from forming or joining formal unions. In addition, such dyads and communities become critical for workers from many countries in Africa and South Asia who, unlike the much discussed Filipina community, have little access to formal support systems like consulates and embassies.
In his book on subaltern resistance to inequitable labor regimes in Southeast Asia, James Scott (1990) gives a theoretical account of the middle ground between passive acquiescence and outright social mobilization. Scott visualizes “infrapolitics” as the form of political activity brewing beyond the gaze of authority: “If formal political organization is the realm of elites . . . of written records . . . and public action, infrapolitics is, by contrast, the realm of informal leadership and non-elites, of conversation and oral discourse, and of surreptitious resistance” (1990, 200). Scott goes on to argue that while these acts of infrapolitics are generally only visible to those “in the know,” they provide the basis for more direct acts of defiance. As Scott’s infrapolitics lies between micro-politics and macro-politics, so the “meso-level” of resistances discussed in this paper highlight a continuum between individual and collective acts of defiance. These alliances allow previously disparate workers to be linked through shared circumstances and to form coalitions, which help improve these circumstances. I see the meso-level of resistive acts as a progression from individual and private contestation to a more organized public expression of defiance. The meso-level of resistive acts and alliances formed are the building blocks with the potential capacity to provide oppressed classes—whether peasants, minorities, or migrant domestic workers—with a basis for more radical resistance to domination. Given the growing body of “resistance” literature on how seemingly powerless individuals attempt to push back against the structural forces that seek to subordinate them, this concept of “meso-level of resistances” extends beyond migrant domestic workers to studies involving other vulnerable populations of women, migrants, and/or workers.
It would be misleading, however, to ignore the practical constraints to the actual power of these resistive acts and alliances, especially the collectives of illegal workers. The limited impact of these collectives stems from several factors: The workers are all noncitizens, often illegal, and domestic work is excluded from labor laws. Subsequently, the collectives formed get only symbolic recognition from their consulates or embassies (when embassies exist) but are not recognized by the Lebanese government. Most communities and informal leaders often have to resort to indirect routes, like using Human Rights NGOs as mediators, for getting their voices heard and grievances noticed. Additionally, very often the community members and leaders are themselves illegal workers, which constrains their access to public institutions like the police, courts, immigration authorities, and the legal system. Although these illegal communities replicate the structure of union work, their roles and capacities are currently limited to that of a case-by-case mediator, sometimes between employer–employee, and occasionally between a migrant worker and a consulate.
Ethnic churches, albeit essential for recent migrants without any support systems, also have limited impact and reach. These communities are faith based and, as already noted, exclude much of the migrant population that follows Islamic, Buddhist, or Hindu beliefs. In essence, they exclude from their ambit a large proportion of the most vulnerable population from Nepal, Sri Lanka, and some parts of Africa. Finally, the creative and strategic space of balconies has its own irony. While this article highlights the success stories, the women with severe restrictions on mobility are seldom able to make use of such dyads across balconies. Balcony talks, in most cases, are merely coping mechanisms. Women converse across balconies to ease their feeling of complete isolation in an alien country. In fact, in some extreme cases highlighted by the media, the balcony becomes a space for a final act of resistance or an act of last resort—suicide.
The practical limits of these resistive acts and communities have obvious implications in the policy arena. There is an immediate need to develop the capacity of these collectives by giving them formal assistance and recognition from the government of Lebanon, embassies/consulates, and civil society. This would be the first step in facilitating the formation of a coalition of workers who are able to effectively advocate for their own rights.
Footnotes
Notes
Amrita Pande is a lecturer in the Sociology department at University of Cape Town. Her research primarily focuses on gendered bodies, gendered work spaces, and new forms of social movements. Her work has appeared in Signs, Qualitative Sociology, Feminist Studies, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Reproductive Biomedicine and in several edited volumes.