Brokerage in Migrant Domestic Work in Ghana: Complex Social Relations and Mixed Outcomes.

Abstract

Rural–urban migration from the poorer regions of Ghana to the south is an important part of the livelihood portfolio of poor families. In the urban areas of the south, domestic work – which is typically low-paid and insecure – is an important avenue of employment for women and girls from such backgrounds. Within this social space, recruitment brokers play a central role and are often portrayed in the migration literature as unscrupulous exploiters of domestic workers for their own profit and gain. Drawing on conceptualisations of migrant agency within the brokerage relationship, this paper challenges portrayals of brokerage purely as a ‘migration business’ and takes an approach that shows how migrants use brokers to further their own agendas.

The paper employs in-depth interviews conducted in Accra in 2015 with female migrant domestic workers, employers, brokers, relevant government ministries and unionised labour units, to provide insights into the social relations that underpin the recruitment process in Ghana and how aspiring migrants and brokers build trust to lay the foundations for complex and risky journeys.

They argue that, with an increase in labour migration, recruitment agencies and brokers have become important facilitators of migration. Brokers play a range of multiple and often contradictory roles in facilitating and mediating migration for domestic work. These roles, in some cases, could be said to be reinforcing patriarchal ideologies while, in other cases, brokers aid domestic workers to negotiate better terms and conditions of employment and to meet the latters’ aspirations. Thus brokers are an important part of migrants’ strategies to exercise agency in the context of highly unequal power relationships with the employer. These findings indicate the need for a more nuanced understanding of the mediating role of brokers and intermediaries as they traverse the multi-layered space in the recruitment process.