Anti-Racism Movement, Migrant Domestic Workers’ Community Organizing Within the Lebanese Socio-Legal Context.

A Feminist Participatory Action Research Project.

This research focuses on ‘Safe and Fair Migration: A feminist perspective on women’s rights to mobility and work’ based on the experiences of migrant domestic workers and how the Kafala System in Lebanon controls their lives.

Mesewat — A non-profit Ethiopian activist community group led by migrant workers and Lebanese activists. They work on supporting migrant domestic workers to gain their rights and to abolish the Kafala System.

The Kafala system: Gendered and racialized migrant domestic work — oversees migrant workers in Lebanon (mostly women). Migrant domestic workers are always under sponsorship in both their work and their residency status which is most often the same place. But the Kafala system is more of a “regulatory procedural mechanism” rather than an actual labor law. This denies them their labor rights and protection because they are being excluded from the labor law.

Feminist Participatory Action Research — a feminist research approach that supports the cause of their participants by cooperating together as well as collecting experiences in order to identify the gender based discrimination against migrant women domestic workers.

Resistance against the Kafala system — many migrant domestic workers came together to help each other and to try to gain recognition and abolish the Kafala systemso that they can claim their rights. They have also been gaining many support from NGOs and activists.