Beyond Nannygate: Using the Inter-American Human Rights System to Advance the Rights of Migrant Domestic Workers

Abstract:     
This article evaluates the potential role of the Inter-American human rights system in efforts to advance the rights of migrant domestic workers in the United States. For many years, the only significant power that migrant domestic workers seemed to possess was the ability to ruin the chances of high-level political appointees. Ironically, this power has come through their vulnerable position in the legal order of the United States. Migrant domestic workers suffer abuse based on both their migration status and their status as workers in the home, factors that exclude them from certain protections under U.S. law. In addition to these formal exclusions, migrant domestic workers often experience discrimination based on gender, race and ethnicity. Although these violations are the very kinds of exploitation that human rights law was created to prevent and remedy, advocates and scholars have not focused on using human rights to advance the rights of migrant domestic workers in the United States.

The article considers the causes for this failure, and argues that there are compelling reasons to use human rights law to advance migrant domestic workers' rights. First, U.S. actions and inactions can be scrutinized in certain international institutions charged with monitoring compliance with human rights law. Second, human rights law allows advocates to clearly articulate the obligations of the state to halt abuses that occur in the private realm. Finally, human rights law already binding on the United States can provide robust norms for migrant domestic workers fighting overlapping forms of discrimination that may not be easily challenged under U.S. law.

The paper demonstrates that the Inter-American human rights system - through its expansive norms, progressive interpretive practices, and venues for complaint and investigation - provides promising opportunities for U.S.-based advocates fighting the interlocking forms of vulnerability and discrimination that migrant domestic workers face.

Keywords: Human rights, gender, migration, international law

Accepted Paper Series