174 Between Private and Public
relations. Comparing 1885 with 1907, domestic slaves declined from 58%
to 21%, wage servants doubled from 13% to 27%, and evlatlıks tripled from
5% to 18%. See Ferhunde Özbay, Female Child Labor in Domestic Work in
Istanbul: Past and Present (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press, 1999), 9ff.- Özbay, Female Child Labor in Domestic Work in Istanbul.
34.erhunde Özbay, “Invisible Members of Istanbul Households: Life Stories F
of Residential Servants,” paper presented at ESSHC at Free University,
Amsterdam, 2000. - Özyeğin, Untidy Gender.
- Özbay, Female Child Labor in Domestic Work in Istanbul.
- Rima Sabban, “From Slaves to Domestics: A Fine Foreign Line,” paper pre-
sented at the SSRC Workshop on Historical Trajectories, Istanbul, 2003.
38.ima Sabban, “Women Migrant Domestic Workers in the United Arab R
Emirates,” in Gender and Migration in Arab States: The Case of Domestic
Workers, edited by Simel Esim and Monica Smith (Beirut: ILO, 2004),
85–104. Indian houseboys, for instance, had to face fierce competition from
Filipina women who were willing to work for lower wages and were able to
combine a number of tasks: driving, teaching and child care.
39.egarding Kuwait, see Anh Nga Longva, R Walls Built on Sand: Migration,
Exclusion, and Society in Kuwait (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997).
40.ver more restrictive measures have been taken. By 1996 officials in the E
UAE had become increasingly worried about the number of foreigners,
especially Indians, and implemented measures explicitly aimed at limit-
ing the employment of domestic workers. Expatriates are only allowed to
employ one domestic worker and must pay a high fee to employ a foreign
domestic worker ($1400, about equal to their yearly salary); heavy fines
were introduced to penalize those hiring a foreign domestic worker on a
visa sponsored by a third party; and in an attempt to diversify its labor
force and to curb illegal migration, nonnationals are not allowed to employ
a domestic of the same national origin. See Sabban, “Migrant Women in
the United Arab Emirates,” 10.
lso, regulation does not necessarily mean improvement. In Jordan, the A
recognition of agencies has not led to greater security for domestic work-
ers; it has merely added further steps that must be undertaken in the proc-
ess of labor migration, with subcontractors all taking a share. See Jaber,
“Manille-Amman, une filiere de l’emploi domestique.” Finally, Jureidini and