Victims to rebels : predictors of collective action tendencies among migrant domestic workers from two community samples in Beirut

Abstract

In Lebanon, Migrant Domestic Workers (MDWs) are women who migrate primarily to work in households, enduring three-fold exploitation as women, migrants, and workers. Recently, MDWs have taken unprecedented initiative to organize themselves, including the launch of a trade union in 2015 that remains unrecognized by the Lebanese state. These developments suggest an urgent need for understanding these workers' willingness to participate in collective action (CA). The current study aimed at responding to this need by investigating the roles of identity, perceived injustice, participative efficacy, embeddedness, and the two emotions of anger and fear in predicting CA tendencies using a cross-sectional, correlational design. We conveniently sampled Filipino (N = 123) and Sri Lankan (N = 125) MDWs in public spaces in Beirut, to fill out a self-report questionnaire in their respective native languages. Results indicated that participative efficacy was a significant positive predictor of CA tendencies across both nationalities. In the Filipino sample, interpersonal injustice was shown to negatively predict willingness to engage in CA, and in the Sri Lankan sample, identity was shown to positively predict it. These results are discussed, with a particular focus on the importance of participative efficacy in predicting CA tendencies. Possible recommendations to civil society organizations are considered, and some directions for future research are proposed.