Document Details

Conducted in partnership with the Pinay militants who have been actively working for the
defense of the rights of Filipino domestic workers in Quebec since 1991, this research aims to outline the effects of a lack of citizenship as different forms of privation and coercion organizing the specific exploitation of resident workers and the domesticity relationship. We also argue that the live-in requirement is part of a legal system which not only expresses, but also (re)organizes a "transitional form of exploitation" by way of a control on bodies located between slavery, "sexage" and employment (Colette Guillaumin: 1978), and which contributes to the production of an unfree form of labour. Also, we argue that this disposition, which was condemned by the ILO in the name of decent work, can be contested on national law grounds, through the right to liberty, guaranteed under article 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Throughout this report, it is the practical implications of this requirement to be living on the work premises - in terms of living conditions, work relationships, exploitation, and combatting rights violations - as experienced by the workers which are sought to be documented, in order to generate tools for analysis, information and mobilization