This Saturday 18th October is Anti-Slavery Day 2025. 

Migrant domestic workers have looked at labour exploitation in the eye. Due to systematic restrictions on our work and our ability to challenge abuse in the workplace, many migrant domestic workers live and work on the margins of exploitation, abuse, trafficking and even slavery.

To understand why the problem is so pronounced in this sector, we must understand the history of the Overseas Domestic Worker visa. It is a history where progress has been both hard won and easily lost.

Before 1998, migrant domestic workers who entered the UK with their employer had no formal immigration status which recognised them as workers. They had no access to workers’ rights, and were made extremely vulnerable to unbelievable abuses. 

Eventually, the original Overseas Domestic Worker visa was introduced in 1998, as a result of workers calling for recognition as workers with the support of the then Transport and General Workers Union or TGWU (now Unite). This included important protections that would allow workers to change employers, and to apply to extend their visas if they were in full time employment in the sector.

And yet, in 2012 the UK government took these protections away. They changed the immigration rules for overseas domestic workers that made life harder and more dangerous. Under the new rules, workers became tied to the employer that facilitated their arrival to the UK. This meant they couldn’t change jobs or switch employers, even if they were being abused or exploited. 

Later, in 2016, the possibility of moving to a different employer was re-introduced, but with the visa lasting only six months, there was simply not enough time to find new, decent work in practice. Who would employ someone in their home to care for their kids or a family member, with only a few months left on a non-renewable visa? 

A year into this new government, and the situation has yet to improve. The government’s Immigration White Paper mentions a review of the route; this needs to be in the direction of greater protections and rights for workers. 

There is a wealth of evidence as to what works for workers. We know, for a fact, that greater ability to choose and change employers substantially lowers the risk of exploitation, abuse, trafficking and modern slavery. 

On Wednesday 15th, we will be in parliament talking to politicians about their support for migrant domestic workers and how this needs to translate into changes to reinstate the 2012 visa protections in the immigration rules or in primary legistation. This means allowing migrant domestic workers to change their employer (but not work sector), to renew their visa for a period of not less than 12 months, to be allowed partners and children to apply to join them, and to be allowed a route to indefinite leave to remain.

Migrant domestic workers have been calling for their rights to be reinstated every Anti-Slavery Day since 2012. Now is the opportunity for this government to do the right thing.

Marissa Begonia is the founder and director of Voice of Domestic Workers and was herself a migrant domestic worker for many years.