
Brokered Domestic Work: The Sri Lanka-Saudi Market
Since the early 1980s, Sri Lankan women have been migrating in great numbers as domestic workers to the oil-rich Arabian Gulf. This labor outflow was an outcome of Sri Lanka’s economic liberalization reforms in 1977 and the Arabian oil boom in 1973, which opened up a profuse market for paid domestic labor in a context of globalization. Today, migrant domestic work has become one of Sri Lanka’s key exports in terms of the contribution to foreign exchange earnings. Of the Gulf domestic labor importers, Saudi Arabia remains significant, with Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia having forged...