Restless worlds of work, health and migration: domestic workers in Johannesburg

Abstract

The lives of migrant women have generally received far less attention than those of their male counterparts. Similarly, male migrants have been the focus of research on the relationship between migration and HIV/AIDS. Little attention has been paid to the vulnerability of female migrants themselves to HIV infection and their access to health care and treatment. Domestic work is the second largest sector of employment for black women in South Africa, and the largest for black women in Johannesburg and, as this article shows, most of these workers are migrants. Based on a survey of 1100 domestic workers in Johannesburg, the article explores the lives of domestic workers, focusing on their experience as migrants, their working conditions, use of health-care services and knowledge of and possible vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

Notes

¹Respectively, Head of Palliative Care, Palliative Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of the Witwatersrand; and Project Manager, Southern African Migration Project, and Visiting Research Fellow, School of Public Development & Management, University of the Witwatersrand. The authors would like to thank the domestic workers who took time out of their busy working days to participate in this research, and to acknowledge the financial support from DFID (British Department for International Development) and CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) through the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) that made the study possible.