COVID-19 and the Sporadic Precarity of Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

This webinar explores the sporadic precarity encountered by migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong when the city was hit by the Omicron outbreaks in early 2022. Migrant workers have long been suffering from job insecurity and structural vulnerability due to the contractization and flexibilization of work. The paper discusses how this structural vulnerability came to intersect with the health risks induced by a highly infectious disease. Adding to the debates of the structural precarity characterizing migrant work, we will further interrogate how workers are also susceptible to ‘sporadic precarity’ - the kind of sporadic risks, uncertainty, vulnerabilities and stigmatization at times of crisis. The webinar will elaborate on the ‘sanitized divide’ between local families and domestic workers that flares up the unequal and unethical treatment of workers.