Exploring the “Illegal” Motherhood of Migrant Domestic Workers Under the Kafala System in Lebanon: An Arts-Based Research

West Asia is home to the Kafala system, a labor migration system known as “modern day slavery”. Under the Kafala, migrant domestic workers’ (MDWs) lives are under the tight control of the state and its citizens. While the Kafala is renowned for the abuses and lack of protection it provides migrant workers, it also entails another side of intimate control over migrant women’s bodies and reproductive lives. In Lebanon, MDWs’ intimate lives and reproduction are tightly controlled under Kafala. Domestic workers are subject to pregnancy tests upon arrival in the country and are deported if found pregnant. It is illegal for them to start a family in Lebanon and doing so often irregularizes them. Despite this illegality, migrant women employ an intimate resistance (Pande, 2018) defying the state’s claim to their bodies, as some of them have children and create families in Lebanon. This research paper builds upon seven artistic research sessions with a group of eight Ethiopian MDWs founders and members of the community-based “Tsenat” group for migrant mothers in Lebanon. Using an arts-based, feminist and participatory methodology, it explores the experiences of women MDWs who become pregnant and raise their children in the country. This paper studies the visible and invisible barriers they face, the solidarity network they created, and their imagining of their futures. As arts-based research has not been commonly used with research involving MDWs in Lebanon, this paper combines an under researched topic with an under practiced methodology.