The Foreign Service Journal, December 2013

34 DECEMBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Beyond the Wilberforce laws, we can be agents of change to combat the cultural indifference and violence toward domestic employees in the kafala system. Yet another person I talked to for this article—a local doctor who has seen firsthand some of the abuse these women endure— argued in the opposite direction: “These women will keep com- ing even if every caring expatriate refused to employ them as an act of rebellion against the current system. And they would be much, much worse off. They are driven here by poverty, and they are trapped here by debt and the prevailing culture. I think if you have a commitment to human rights and labor rights, you should embrace the moral burden to sponsor and employ someone.” We have helped each of the women we’ve employed pay off back debts and secure actual, legal documentation, when their numerous previous employers had flouted or even manipu- lated their own countries’ labor laws to extort money from these domestic employees and keep them in bondage. But again, that kind of help only seems to enable a culture and a legal system that beg for fundamental change. Real Change The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 outlines the many forms of modern slavery and workplace abuse and the American gov- ernment’s commitment to combating it. The act governs U.S. personnel’s involvement in domestic employment abroad, but its bite stops at the borders of the embassy community’s bubble. In truth, the U.S. government does little to enforce its provi- sions beyond issuing an annual management notice to warn employees of consequences. (I would welcome examples of enforcement, if they exist; we all know FSOs or their family members who treat their domestic employees like dirt.) Real change in the region will only take place when those of us involved in the system work harder to spark the moral imagination of our friends, our children’s classmates’ families and wider circles outside the bubble. When we find ourselves or others talking about domestic employees like chattel—“I ordered her from the Philippines,” or, “I was so mad at my idiot nanny that I could have punched her” (just two of many statements I overheard from otherwise well-to-do, relatively Western sponsors)—we are not simply dehumanizing these human beings; we are also dehumanizing ourselves. It’s shameful—not classy—to talk about or treat a domestic employee as if she were a dog in the room, unable to understand what is being said about her. We need more conversations across the region to pool our collective moral reasoning for the good. I’d recommend explor- ing the work of scholars who have delved more deeply into this subject. For a start, try Andrew Gardner’s City of Strangers: Gulf Migration and the Indian Community in Bahrain (ILR Press, 2010) or “Of Maids and Madams: Sri Lankan Domestic Workers and Their Employers in Jordan” ( Critical Asian Studies 40.4, 2008) by Elizabeth Frantz, an anthropologist to whom I’m par- ticularly indebted for help in thinking through these questions. Kwame Anthony Appiah’s The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011) is another essential resource, and I’d also recommend the work of Amnesty International on the treatment of migrant workers in the Persian Gulf region. Until recently, I was relatively uninformed about and inat- tentive to migrant labor laws in the United States. But now that I’ve been a participant in the kafala system, I am more alert to immigration and “guest worker” issues here, too. I’m coming to see that the moral task of any decent government is to craft and enforce laws that permit labor to flow, as it inevitably will, in a way that also promotes just, livable working contexts for employers and employees alike. Beyond the Wilberforce laws, we can be agents of change to combat the cultural indifference and violence toward domestic employees in the system. We can watch for signs of abuse and mistreatment among the maids and nannies we see regularly. And we can volunteer at domestic employee safe houses throughout the region, donating clothing, food and legal exper- tise to the most vulnerable. At the very least, we can be honest stewards of their stories as witnesses to a wider world. I want to respectfully employ the women who care for our children, wash our dishes, fold our clothes and facilitate our busy lives. I believe that others in the expatriate community want that, too. Together, perhaps, we could help to create some meaningful moral and cultural resistance to the soft form of slavery that kafala embodies. n