The UK domestic work industry is expanding. Private arrangements with domestic workers are growing in a setting where the cost of social care is progressively passed on from the state to the family. Yet domestic workers are increasingly unprotected despite the legislative and policy apparatus that British governments developed over the last decade to tackle human trafficking. Drawing on case law and empirical data, this article indicates how the welfare, migration, and labor market regime regulating social protection in the UK structures an environment of labor exploitation, which prevents authorities from tackling phenomena of exploitation and trafficking. © 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

UK Migration Care familistic welfare domestic work Criminal justice system Trafficking

United Kingdom social justice domestic work social policy labor market welfare impact trafficking migration