Kalayaan works with migrant domestic workers in the UK to improve and to help them access their rights. Migrant domestic workers are predominantly women who have entered the UK with a named employer to work in the employer’s private household. Some migrant domestic workers are in good employment where they are respected and paid properly for their important work which often involves caring for children or elderly people, cooking and cleaning.
Unfortunately however the hidden and often informal nature of work in a private home where the worker is dependent on their employers for housing and immigration status as well as employment and where hours are often seen to be flexible means that many workers are often seriously exploited, some are abused, and some subjected to forced labour or have been trafficked to the UK for domestic servitude.
Kalayaan offers individual advice and support to migrant domestic workers in the UK as well as using this experience to produce data and briefings on the situation of migrant domestic workers in the UK, to feed into policy and to push for improvements of the rights of migrant domestic workers.