The host societies of migrant Filipina domestic workers should also be held more accountable for their welfare and for that of their families. These women’s work allows First World women to enter the paid labor force. As one Dutch employer states, “There are people who would look after children, but other things are more fun. Carers from other countries, if we can use their surplus carers, that’s a solution.”
Most receiving countries have yet to recognize the contributions of their migrant care workers. They have consistently ignored these workers’ rights and limited their full incorporation into society. The wages of migrant workers are so low that they cannot afford to bring their own families to join them, or to regularly visit their children in the Philippines; relegated to the
status of guest workers, they are restricted to the low-wage employment sector, and with very few exceptions, the migration of their spouses and children is also restricted.” These arrangements work to the benefit of employers, since migrant care workers can give the best possible care for their employers’ families when they are free of care-giving responsibilities to their own families. But there is a dire need to lobby for more inclusive policies,and for employers to develop a sense of accountability for their workers’ children. After all, migrant workers significantly help their employers to reduce their families’ care deficit.
The Care Crisis in the Philippines: Children and Transnational Families in the New Global Economy by Rhacel Salazar Parrena
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I’d like to draw the attention of white feminists here. Why are immigrants’ rights, and the rights of domestics who are women of color, not an intregal part of your platform? Why isn’t Caitlin Moran, Jessica Valentine, or any other major white feminist talking about the care crisis in third world nations as impoverished women facing daunting lives move to entirely new worlds to take care of WHITE CHILDREN so that WHITE WOMEN can go to work?
Your advocacy, your movement, is built on the backs of THESE WOMEN and Black women who have had to IGNORE THEIR OWN FAMILIES, THEIR OWN CHILDREN, SO THAT YOU COULD LEAVE THE HOUSE.
If there is ever an issue that is FOUNDATIONAL to the lives of well-to-do white women or Western feminists in general, it is the appalling way domestic workers are treated. While that Caribbean nanny, Black mami, or Filipina au pair takes care of your child, did you ever stop to think about their families and the lives they’ve left behind?
How without immigrants or women of color, white women wouldn’t be able to work at their own leisure? That white men wouldn’t enjoy the knowledge that there is no such thing as a care crisis in America?
(via rafsimon-murderer)
