Producing and shaping migrant domestic workers’ everyday lives: The role of the migration broker

This paper examines the role of migration brokers in producing and shaping the everyday lives of Sri Lankan live-in migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the State of Kuwait: a long-established pattern of migration for paid household work in the Global South. While the paper is based on qualitative methods, it derives its theoretical inspiration from the field of sociology of translation, framing brokers as a form of ‘translational expertise’: an important informative perspective on migration brokerage, which remains significantly under-researched. Brokers translate the everyday lives of MDWs at the intersection of state policies, employment practices and MDWs’ hopes and desires for mobility. What is considered translational expertise is neither fixed nor given; instead, it is a conditional form whose meaning and value are determined by social validation within the contexts and conditions of everyday life.