My Home Is Not My Home

About

l'étrangére is proud to host an exhibition, My Home is Not My Home, a project that emerged as a response to the invisibility and marginality of migrant domestic workers due to their class, gender and ethnic positions. It explores the question of how art practices intervene in dominant structures and culture when the conditions of migrant women workers are impaired by sexualisation, racism and labour exploitation.

Each year the Home Office issues approximately 16,000-19,000 visas under its 'domestic workers in privatehouseholds' scheme, which allows foreign families to bring domestic workers to the UK. However, working in private households, migrant domestic workers rarely have the opportunity to share their stories of hardship, struggle and disempowerment.

The exhibition presents a combination of video interviews and mobile phone footage produced by migrant domestic workers who were trained in video production during the participatory workshop series. The workshop series was a collaborative project held by an academic, a filmmaker and twelve migrant domestic workers from The Voice of Domestic Workers in London. The videos offer a glimpse into the everyday work and life of migrant domestic workers. They provide us with new ways to think about what we see or don't see – in migrant domestic workers and even in ourselves. An accompanying exhibition showcases objects from the lives of domestic workers such as letters from children, a bracelet made while in detention at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre,  and the hoodie and tracksuit trousers which were the only items one woman had on her when she escaped her employer in the middle of the night.