Paper short abstract:

The entry of Domestic workers into the urban economy is mainly through the informal labour market to ‘precarious work’ which makes them marginalized and highly the vulnerable group in terms of being protected by the state, labour law or social protection measures.

Paper long abstract:

ILO defined the informal economy as “all economic activities by workers and economic units that are- in law or in practice- not covered or insufficiently covered by formal arrangements (ILO, 2002)”. Researchers dealing with informality have found that there are direct linkages between informality and persistent poverty (Chen et al., 2005; Samal, 2008). Other researchers [e.g. De Soto (1989, 2000)] directly linked informality to economic exclusion for the most vulnerable groups in society. Labour in informal economies is constituted primarily of migrant workers from rural to urban areas who are already vulnerable and marginalized, economically and socially (Hart, 1973). Their entry into the urban economy is mainly through the informal labour market to ‘precarious work’ which earns low wages, income insecurity, and occupies low-quality jobs, which makes them marginalized and highly vulnerable group in terms of being protected by the state, labour law or social protection measures. Additionally, they are precarious in their powerlessness. In this study, we particularly focus on domestic workers, as a group of informal workers, predominantly migrant and female. This paper qualitatively explores the impact on the “precarity” of domestic workers as a consequence of COVID-19. Thirty live-out domestic workers from Dhaka were selected and interviewed randomly from a survey. Findings showed that all the domestic workers lost their jobs initially when the lockdown began in late March 2020 without compensation or prior notice due to safety measures are taken by the employers. This impacted their overall livelihood and household welfare and necessitated various coping strategies to survive.