Immobilisation of migrant domestic worker women and their children born in Lebanon

Abstract

While scholars of migration have drawn our attention to the plight of children ‘left behind’ when their mothers migrate, children born to migrant women in destination countries have received far less consideration. In destinations such as Lebanon, migrant domestic worker employment–and right to residency–is governed by the kafala, or sponsorship, system which prohibits pregnancy and childbirth. Despite this prohibition, considerable numbers of migrant women do give birth, leaving them at risk of unemployment, visa and work permit cancellation, and ‘illegalisation’. Compounding the situation, many mothers in this situation encounter substantial barriers to returning to home countries with their children. This paper draws on interviews with Ethiopian mothers living in Lebanon and other key informants, to examine the gendered and racialised structural, symbolic and interpersonal violence that governs the lives of these women and their children. We argue that the interlocking violence to which they are subjected results in the immobilisation of migrant mothers and their children, placing them at high risk of lifelong harm within a system that produces and reproduces global inequalities and im/mobilities.