Domestic Servitude

This chapter looks at domestic servitude, a type of modern slavery that is often said to be the most difficult to detect because victims have so little contact with people outside of the homes where they live and work. The case study focuses on a Nigerian couple who has been convicted for domestic servitude. Their story is situated in the contexts of gendered inequality, poverty and globalization that inform the history of fosterage and post-colonial migration from Nigeria. The case illustrates how the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa scheme creates lawful frameworks within which victims have very few rights once they have left their permitted employment in the UK. The chapter asks if the modern slavery agenda is capable of fixing the problem of domestic servitude, not because culturally pervasive practices inspire it, but because the UK’s immigration system channels some of the world’s most destitute workers into very poorly paid work undertaken in the most under-regulated and most privatized employment sector.