Turning a blind eye: the British state and migrant domestic workers' employment rights

*A conference organised by the Working Lives Research Institute*

The report of a WLRI research project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation,
looking at the enforcement of employment rights for migrant domestic
workers in Britain is to be launched at a conference in May. Based on
survey material, individual records recovered from the UK Borders Agency
and interviews with migrant domestic workers, the project identifies
widespread tax evasion and breaches of employment rights, and examines the
extent to which they are detected and rectified by the State's
enforcement bodies.


The report ("Turning a Blind Eye") and its implications for the fight
against exploitation and forced labour will be presented by authors Nick
Clark & Leena Kumarappan and discussed with a panel of distinguished
experts including:

  * Dr Bridget Anderson, Centre for Migration Policy and Society
  * Richard Murphy, Tax Research UK
  * Marissa Begonia, Justice for Domestic Workers (J4DW)
  * Paul Whitehouse, Chair, Gangmasters Licensing Authority
  * Professor John Gabriel, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Social
    Sciences, London Metropolitan University
  * Speaker from Unite the Union

*Time:* 10am - 4.00pm

*Date:* 26th May 2011

*Venue: *Toynbee Hall
28 Commercial Street
London E1 6LS

*RSVP* (limited space):
workinglives@londonmet.ac.uk <mailto:workinglives@londonmet.ac.uk?subject=>
0207 320 3042

Wedding Bellas and women who refuse to leave

Nela Milic will be our first artist in residence at Bridging Arts in west Cornwall, previewing her show  Wedding Bellas, funded by the European Cultural Foundation, on Sunday 29 May 2011.  The exhibition is opening in Barking, London, on 31 May 2011. We will feature an online gallery of photographs in Wedding Bellas , monthly over the coming year. There's a link with migration.... as Nela explains:

Wedding Bellas
" Wedding Bellas is a photographic project about female desire for roots and stability. It explores a wish to belong. It acts as a comment on aging, migration and marriage, but can be a record of an individual’s urge to hide personal problems, as a human need for dressing up etc... The project presents brides passionately attached to the objects of their marriage. Wedding dresses are surrounded by other wedding iconography, but the image is not a joke – it is a serious matter - an event of desperation and illusion shot as on a true wedding ceremony. The photographs are stories of twelve women who refused to leave. Many have been rejected by their partners, by their landlords, by their employers, but majority have been refused to stay in the country by the state. The women showed an extraordinary resilience and resourcefulness in the face of sometimes all of these rejections happening at once and the burden of so many problems caused them to escape into fantasy by opting for equally stable, rooted and good looking ‘Queen’s subjects’ – a lamp post, a tree, a traffic sign – London landmarks... With the mix of the text and image we disturb the perception of migrants and refugees in the UK today. The project is funded by European Cultural Foundation with women from Migrants Resource Centre and females who wanted to join them. "
Nela Milic