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Book Review: Human Rights and Migrant Domestic Work: A Comparative Analysis of the Sociolegal Status of Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers in Canada and Hong Kong

In Human Rights and Migrant Domestic Work the author takes on the daunting task of evaluating the ways in which the application of domestic and international law to migrant domestic workers is shaped by broader socio-political and economic factors. Comparing the situation of Filipina migrants in Hong Kong with that experienced by their compatriots in Canada reveals some disappointing similarities. In both places, human rights and labor laws that should protect workers do not cover migrant domestic work, either because the workers are non-citizens or because their workplaces are also private residences. Santos shows, in a compelling legal analysis, just how migrant workers fall outside the normative cases envisioned by domestic and international laws. Originally presented as a dissertation at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Canada, the text still bears strong structural traces of its academic origins. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 lay out the conceptual framework used, review the alternative analytical approaches to international and domestic law available and rehearse the applicable international human rights laws available as recourse for the exploitation and abuse of migrants. Chapters 4 and 5 then offer in-depth analyses of the administrative, legislative and human rights approaches taken to migrant domestic workers in Canada and Hong Kong. Chapter 6, which then offers a comparison of the two case studies, shows that, despite very different colonial histories and legal systems, there are striking commonalities between Canadian and Hong Kong approaches to migrant domestic workers’ rights claims. The concluding chapter then explains these commonalities through recourse to a body of legal theory – ‘Third World Approaches to International Law’ – that allows the author to construct an explanation of the underlying racisms and colonialisms that prevent migrant Filipinas doing domestic work from effectively mobilizing host nations’ and international legislation to defend their human rights. HUMAN RIGHTS AND MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORK: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIOLEGAL STATUS OF FILIPINA MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS IN CANADA AND HONG KONG. By Maria Deanna P. Santos. Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2005. Pp. 260.