Many women from southern African countries migrate without legal documentation to South Africa to seek better economic prospects. However, they often face marginalisation and discrimination in transit and upon arrival. Once they reach their destination there are barriers to their security and stability; namely, the legal code in South Africa hosts a policy gap that exacerbates exploitation by employers. [1] This article centres these women’s experiences as important and deserving of study and protection.
Many undocumented women choose to become live-in domestic workers for South African families, which offers them many benefits, but also costs them greatly. Women are highly concentrated in this sector, with 80% of domestic workers in South Africa being female. [2] The benefits afforded through this arrangement include cash payments and accommodation at the job site, which solves a logistical problem of finding accommodation, but can also provide protection from or mediation with immigration enforcement or police officers. Additionally, in kind payments from employers in the form of clothing, transportation costs, and children’s school fees are commonly received. [3] However, these benefits come at the cost of exploitability and dependence.
Undocumented workers exist on the margins of society, in a legal situation that excludes them, in actuality and out of fear, from accessing their rights. [4] Furthermore, since domestic work is considered to exist within the private sphere and the informal sector, policymakers have failed to create legislative protections regulating the industry. [5] Therefore, undocumented workers in general, and this industry in particular, exist in a policy gap that allows for exploitation by individual employers.
Because they have little legal protection, undocumented workers live precariously and almost entirely dependent on their employers. They report very low wages, which are determined by the employer, long working hours with continuous on call time, and limited personal leave. [6] The constant fear of deportation makes it difficult - if not impossible - for these women to join legally recognised organisations, such as labour unions, which serve to protect the rights of workers and bargain for fair wages. Therefore, it is observed that the lack of collective action among these workers serves to lower the bargaining power of each individual worker. [7] They are replaceable and can easily be dismissed if they do not agree to the employers’ suggested wages or work conditions. [8] Furthermore, live-in status means that these women work for practically all of their waking hours and are often on call for the children when they are asleep. Finally, personal leave for holidays and visits back home are not treated as a right, but are granted at the discretion of the employer, and can be withheld. [9] It should be noted that not all employers exploit undocumented women domestic workers in these ways; however, the choice of an employer not to exploit does not diminish the exploitability or vulnerability of this group. [10]
In 2008 labour protections and rights were extended to all undocumented migrant workers, [11] undoubtedly intended to improve the work situation and increase security for them. Yet many undocumented migrant women still feel as though they have no rights in South Africa and are therefore unable to seek formal and legal support in enforcing their rights, [12] which means that their exploitability and vulnerability have not been ameliorated by the protections. Furthermore, undocumented migrants who are aware of their rights established through United Nations Declarations and South African national law, said they were fearful of reporting rights violations to the police because of the possibility of detention and deportation, which could cost their livelihood. [13]
Intersectionality as a Lens for Understanding Marginalisation
In this section, I discuss the continued low pay faced by undocumented women domestic workers, despite the introduction of laws meant to increase their pay security. I use the theory of intersectionality to understand this phenomenon. In this context, intersectionality refers to the overlapping types of marginalisation faced by these women, including their gender, migrant and illegal status, race, and labour status, which combine to create a complex situation of exploitability and marginalisation. I argue that laws targeting low pay are only marginally effective at increasing equality and empowerment, because they view this issue only as a function of labour rights and fail to address the other aspects of disadvantage that consort to produce persistent low wages.
In actuality, low pay is also a function of status as an illegal migrant, womanhood, and race. [14] It is evident that migrants in general make less money than South African nationals. Undocumented migrants make even less than their documented counterparts because they have little legal redress against unfair wages through the justice system, cluster in low paid jobs, and face discrimination based on their migration status. [15] Undocumented migrant status further contributes to low pay because these women are often not comfortable forming collectives that can bargain on their behalf for better working conditions and remuneration, for fear of deportation. [16] In fact, many women domestic workers from Lesotho perceive that they do not have any rights in South Africa, because of their illegal migrant status, though this is not true. [17] Since access to human rights is often tied up with citizenship, irregular migration status can be linked with a denial of various human rights. [18]
Additionally, gender factors heavily into the equation; women in general are paid less than men. [19] Women may have left their home countries due to gender inequality and discrimination, which increases the motivation for them to remain in their destination country and could create a situation in which they tolerate worse pay and more abuse than men would. [20] Furthermore, women in general receive less education than men, which can cause them more difficulties in accessing their rights and legal protections, again increasing their toleration of low pay and abuse. [21] And finally, women are much more vulnerable to sexual abuse than men, which could be perpetrated by their employer, thereby increasing inequality in the employer / employee relationship and decreasing their likelihood to advocate for better pay.
Finally, race also contributes to low pay for Black Africans. South Africa is a society with a long history of racial discrimination and violence, and though legally racial equality now exists, in reality Black Africans receive less pay than white, Asian, and coloured South Africans. On average, Black South Africans earn about 40% of the wages that white South Africans do. [22] In a country with high levels of wage differentials based on race, combined with migration status, Black undocumented migrants surely make less than their South African counterparts. Because of these overlapping systems of inequality and marginalisation, it is clear that targeting low pay as exclusively an employment sector issue is largely ineffective. Since labour rights are not the only cause of the low pay, increasing labour rights alone would not solve the issue.
Sources
[1] Altman, M. and Pannell, K. (2012) ‘Policy Gaps and Theory Gaps: Women And Migrant Domestic Labor’, Feminist Economics, 18(2), pp. 291–315. doi: 10.1080/13545701.2012.704149.
Wiego Law and Informality Project (2014) ‘Domestic Workers’ Laws and Legal Issues in South Africa’.
[2] Dinkelman, T. and Ranchhod, V. (2012) ‘Evidence on the impact of minimum wage laws in an informal sector: Domestic workers in South Africa’, Journal of Development Economics, 99(1), pp. 27–45. doi: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2011.12.006, p. 29.
[3] Griffin, L. (2011) ‘Unravelling Rights: “Illegal” Migrant Domestic Workers in South Africa’, South African Review of Sociology, 42(2), pp. 83–101. doi: 10.1080/21528586.2011.582349, pp. 91-92.
[4] Bloch, A. (2010) ‘The Right to Rights?: Undocumented Migrants from Zimbabwe Living in South Africa’, Sociology. SAGE Publications Ltd, 44(2), pp. 233–250. doi: 10.1177/0038038509357209, p. 245.
[5] Altman and Pannell, 2012, p. 295.
[6] Griffin, 2011, p. 89.
[7] Griffin, 2011, pp. 86-87.
[8] Griffin, 2011, pp. 92-93.
[9] Griffin, 2011, p. 90.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Griffin, 2011, p. 83.
[12] Griffin, 2011, p. 86.
[13] Bloch, 2010, pp. 237-243.
[14] Nyamnjoh, F. B. (2013) Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. Zed Books Ltd.
[15] Trad, S., Tsunga, A. and Rioufol, V. (2008) Surplus People? Undocumented and other vulnerable migrants in South Africa. Paris: Fédération internationale pour les droits humains, pp. 1–48. Available at: https://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/za486a.pdf, pp. 29-30.
Bloch, 2010, p. 242.
[16] Griffin, 2011, pp. 86-87.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Bloch, 2010, pp. 238-239.
[19] Bloch, 2010, p. 242.
[20] Magidimisha, H. H. (2018) ‘Gender, Migration and Crisis in Southern Africa: Contestations and Tensions in the Informal Spaces and “Illegal Labour” Market’, in Crisis, Identity and Migration in Post-Colonial Southern Africa. Springer, Cham, pp. 75–88.
[21] Kawar, M. (2004) ‘Gender and migration: why are women more vulnerable?’, in Femmes Et Mouvement: Genre, Migrations Et Nouvelle Division International Du Travail. Geneva: Graduate Institute Publications, pp. 71–87.
[22] Pupwe, O. K. (2015) Three Essays on Racial Wage Differentials in South Africa. Western Michigan University. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1539&context=dissertations, p. 88.