Indentured Labor or “Good Governance”? Interrogating eMigration and Workers’ Negotiations Over Contracts in Kenyan Domestic Worker Labor Migration to the Gulf States
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24229230 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paula Mählck (0000-0003-4234-4007, Stockholm University), Marygorety Akinyi Otieno (0000-0001-6807-4522, University of Nairobi), Aina Tollefsen (0000-0002-7643-0272, Umeå University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 316-338 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Politics International Studies in Gender State & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1072-4745 • E-ISSN: 1468-2893 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/sp/jxag018 |
| OpenAlex | W7202266795 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
This article critically examines the governance of Kenyan domestic workers’ labor migration to the Gulf states through digital platforms such as the Labor Mobility Management Information System (LMMIS). Drawing on interviews with returnee migrants and other stakeholders, it interrogates whether contemporary eMigration systems reproduce colonial-era indenture logics by creating a “fiction of free labor” through contractual rituals. The study reveals how debt, work contract substitution, and structural barriers exacerbate vulnerabilities, despite state efforts to ensure “good governance.” By applying a pluralizing social reproduction approach, the authors highlight the gendered, racialized, and neoliberal dimensions of care work migration, urging reforms that center migrant agency and rights.
debt bondage · Emigration · employment contracts · Good governance · Gulf states · indenture · migrant agency · Neoliberalism · race and gender · returnee migrants · Social reproduction · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Labor Law and Work Dynamics · Migration and Labor Dynamics
Social Reproduction Theory
Indian Migration and Empire
Impossible Citizens
Care, Gender and Migration
Depletion
Servants of Globalization
Global Value Chains, Labor Organization and Private Social Standards
Analysing the history of agrarian struggles in Tanzania from a feminist perspective
Women in Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar)
Domestic work and international migration in Latin America
Mistresses” and “maids” in transnational “contact zones”
The Making of a Business Case for Unpaid Care and Domestic Work in the Global South
From Indenture to “Good Governance”
Bound Coolies’ and Other Indentured Workers in the Caribbean
The commodification of social reproduction
Pluralizing social reproduction approaches
Global Care Chains
Rethinking power, production, and social reproduction
Re-visiting the 'black box' of migration
Global care, local configurations - challenges to conceptualizations of care
| Highly cited | No |
|---|