Détails du document

Working and often living in other people’s homes, migrant domestic workers are among
the most vulnerable workers, at risk of abuse and exploitation that often happens behind
closed doors, making it difficult for them to seek help, and for people on the outside to see
what is happening.
Every year, around 15,000 migrant domestic workers, many of them women from Asia and
Africa, travel to the UK with their employers to look after their children, care for their elderly
parents, clean their houses, and cook for them.
This report documents the abuses and exploitation faced by these migrant domestic
workers who travel to the UK with their employers and the challenges they can experience
when seeking redress. This report does not, however, address issues faced by migrant
domestic workers who arrived in the UK by other means, for instance as asylum seekers,
spouses or who are European Economic Area nationals.
While the category of domestic workers in private households as defined by the Home
Office also includes drivers and gardeners, the domestic workers interviewed for this
report worked inside their employers’ homes as cleaners, nannies, cooks, and/or cared for
their employer or a member of their employers’ family.
The report also sets out relevant domestic, European, and international law, which is
supposed to safeguard the rights of migrant domestic workers in the UK.
The report finds that some employers subject domestic workers to abusive living and
working conditions, including forced labour. Safeguards are inadequate to prevent abuses;
to allow those who are abused to escape and find protection; or to hold those responsible
to account.