Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

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The Morgan Lecture

From the Kafala to Human Trafficking: Migrant Domestic Work Across the Globe

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is the Doris Stevens Professor in Women’s Studies and Professor of Sociology and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton University

This talk provides a global overview of the labor exploitation faced by migrant domestic workers. It demonstrates how these workers share a legal status as bound laborers who cannot easily leave their jobs, rendering them uniquely vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking. Across the globe, migrant domestic workers operate under systems where their legal status mandates they work solely for a specific sponsor and, for the most part, live in their employer’s home. This reality suggests that the kafala—or a kafala-like system—is not unique to the Middle East, but is instead a global condition of labor.

This structural binding reveals that migrant women, who make up the vast majority of this workforce, are not treated as independent economic migrants, but are instead legally reduced to household dependents. This status severely limits their ability to participate in a free labor market, preventing them from seeking higher salaries or better labor standards, while simultaneously leaving Read more