Can something as simple as a quilt be the first step in a national initiative to ensure rights for domestic workers? In Ireland, it can. What began as a community art project of current and former domestic workers has turned into a national movement to create and enforce laws protecting domestic workers from abuse and exploitation. The result is a pilot project that might make slavery and exploitation of domestic workers in Ireland as rare as the Reconciliation Quilt.
The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) has been working with migrant workers in the country since 2001. After hearing a growing number of horror stories of the abuses and difficulties faced by domestic workers in private homes, they created a support group for the women in the industry. At first, the goal of the project was to give domestic workers a safe space to reflect on and share their experiences. But it soon became clear that policies and laws protecting domestic workers in Ireland, like in many countries in the world, were in desperate need of a sprucing up.
So MRCI created Blurred Boundaries, a quilt and multi-media art installation made by domestic workers about their experiences — the good, the bad, and the slavery. The quilt contains panels about the abuses many migrant domestic workers suffer, the institutions which help them feel supported and empowered, and the policy structures that need to be in place to help workers maintain their freedom and safety. The project soon began to generate national discussion about domestic workers' rights in Ireland and highlighted extreme cases of abuse and slavery that occurred because national labor protections. For example, one worker sewed a panel with a picture of a woman standing under and umbrella in a rain storm. The woman was a domestic worker like her, the artist explained, the rain was exploitation, and the umbrella was the laws and policies that prevent the exploitation from falling on the domestic worker.
Now, thanks in part to MRCI and their innovative campaigns to put a megaphone to the voices of migrant domestic workers, Ireland is now implementing a pilot program, which — for the first time ever — will allow for inspections of working conditions in private homes. In Ireland, the National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) doesn't have the authority to enter a person’s home without their consent to check working conditions for a domestic worker. But the pilot program will give inspectors the right to interview both an employer and their employee outside the home and to demand access to documentation regarding wages and working hours. NERA will use the national database of employers to identify people employing domestic workers in the home. They will also respond directly to complaints made by domestic workers about members of the public.
The ability for an agency to monitor the conditions of domestic workers — and make sure unscrupulous employers know they can't get away with abusing or enslaving them — is a critical step in preventing trafficking into domestic servitude. And in Ireland, a national initiative to crack down on these violations was inspired by a community art project designed to make domestic workers' voices heard. It's a moment of social change that shows even something as simple as quilting — or listening — can be the first step in ending human trafficking across a whole industry, or even across a nation.
GOT A TIP FOR US? Is there a story or campaign in your area that we'd want to know about? E-mail us at humantraffickingtips@change.org
Photo credit: clairity
Amanda Kloer is a Change.org Editor and has been a full-time abolitionist in several capacities for seven years. Follow her on Twitter @endhumantraffic
Source: End Human Trafficking
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