Understanding the political in the management of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon :biopolitical exclusion and reduction to “bare life” in post-civil war context -

Abstract

Lebanon hosts more than 200,000 Migrant Domestic Workers (MDWs), a number which constitutes 5percent of the Lebanese population, but falls short on managing their presence, work, and lives along the lines of the protection of human rights and the minimum standards of living upheld by international conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention concerning Forced or Compulsory Labor, and the Convention concerning the Abolition of Forced Labor among others. This study aims at exploring the power relations structuring the lives of these MDWs through the theoretical frameworks of governmentality and biopolitics developed by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. The study will rely on existing data gathered and analyzed by Lebanese civil society actors and research conducted by academics. In this thesis I argue that the problem of MDWs in Lebanon is largely the result of the system’s need to create a group of people with a defined identity that is managed within a Foucauldian-Agambian “state of exception” where laws are not applicable and where basic rights can be violated, reducing human beings to bare lives that can be exploited and oppressed with impunity. The study will also show the biopolitics that are at play in the creation of the sponsorship system which gives an unprecedented control over the life of MDWs to their employers.