Placement agencies and migrant live-in domestic workers in an Indian metro city: A view from below into the evolving practices of intermediaries in Mumbai
This report examines the role of placement agencies in the migration of live-in domestic workers from Ganjam, Odisha to Mumbai, Maharashtra. Based on fieldwork conducted in Mumbai in the backdrop of COVID-19 pandemic, it primarily draws on interviews with placement agency owners and live-in domestic workers. It underscores the need for further research to address challenges faced by domestic workers in accessing decent work and calls for nuanced policies to improve access to rights and safety during the process of seeking placement as well as in the workplace.
The findings of this report point to the need to bring the practices of placement agencies into sharper analytical focus, to enable perspectives and policy regimes on human trafficking to become less divorced from the realities of contemporary intermediation in the case of live-in domestic workers. It highlights the importance of understanding the nuances of labour intermediation so that labour law, social policy and organizational interventions can be made more relevant and attuned to the new issues emerging from the increasingly multi-layered intermediation systems that have come into being.
From Home Village to Metro City: Looking back and ahead at a labour migration corridor for domestic workers in India