The Government Pushed Migrant Workers Out of the Conversation — Here’s How They’re Taking It Back

Public debates on migration often reduce migrants to categories: economic contributors, policy problems, or humanitarian subjects. Either “good workers” or “poor slaves” - as assessed by scholar Bridget Anderson - this categorisation denies migrants an independent voice - as embodied by the Modern Slavery Act, 2015.

Once seen as “workers” with rights, this legislation reclassified migrant domestic workers as potential “victims” - denying political agency and the legal right to work for those effectively tasked with caring for the UK’s households. Stripped of this recognition, they were no longer identified as individuals, but rather as victims who needed to be rescued.

Waling Waling Drama Group post-rehearsal at the Old Diorama Arts Centre

We have to remember that migrants have a history of political agency. In the 80s, migrant domestic workers organised themselves to form a collective that did not exist for them before. The workers recognised that the challenges of working in the UK without rights led to exploitation, which they had not faced with their employers earlier when they were brought by them from their home countries. The workers came together to campaign for their rights and continued their fight for about two decades. In 1997-98, the domestic worker visa was introduced, and it marked a historic victory for migrant domestic workers, a testament to their will and collective political strength. However, recent governments have since degraded these wins. 

“We have to remember that migrants have a history of political agency.”

The Waling Waling Drama Project, led by Cheryl Gallacher and Drashti Shah in collaboration with members of Waling Waling, a migrant domestic workers’ union, shows us how placing migrant voices centre stage can dislodge these paternalistic narratives. The project centres around Waling Waling’s campaign to restore the domestic worker visa, fighting for a workforce that is structurally marginalised and predominantly female. Domestic work occupies a paradoxical position: it is necessary for society yet systematically undervalued in a capitalist economy that defines worth by direct financial contribution. While domestic workers enable both current productivity and future generations, they face societal and economic neglect.

In the UK, immigration policies have restricted mobility and tied workers’ legal status to a single employer, further intensifying precarity for migrant domestic workers and limiting their capacity to organise or seek redress. Moreover, many workers face significant barriers to accessing information about their basic rights, such as the minimum wage, leaving them isolated and vulnerable.

Waling Waling Drama Project’s Antigone places migrant domestic workers at the centre of the narrative, allowing them to speak directly about the laws and systems that govern their lives. Drawing on Sophocles’ Antigone, the production uses theatre to question unjust legal frameworks and the power structures behind them.

“Antigone places migrant domestic workers at the centre of the narrative”

This is a political adaptation rather than a symbolic one, connecting Antigone’s defiance of immoral laws to the lived realities of migrant domestic workers in the UK, and asserting their right to challenge injustice and claim dignity and agency.

The artistic and narrative brilliance of the production comes from ‘narrative truth,’ and Waling Waling Drama Group’s co-directors hold it deeply in their creative process. The project has spanned about two years in a co-creative process with workers to develop three productions centring on the narratives of senior members of the organisation as well as the new generation of migrant domestic workers. As Drashti puts it, “We have built an understanding of the campaign over the year with members of Waling Waling sharing the history of the work, their campaign in the 90s, and what the fight is now. Only with that knowledge, ongoing conversations, being present in Waling Waling’s monthly meetings, and engaging with their work beyond the theatre project, have enabled us to create an exemplar piece that speaks their truth to power.”  

Performance at the Omnibus Theatre

As a performance, Antigone is marked by clarity. The performers’ presence on stage - women whose labour is often invisibilised - carries great political significance. They are not only workers but a collective with a history of victory, having battled the system in the 90s to win the right to work. They are a generation of women who have paved the way for the new generation of workers, and they have supported them in their journey of gaining dignity in an increasingly hostile political environment. 

With migrant domestic workers at the centre of the discussion post the performance, along with researchers in migration and law, the format of the event at St Margaret’s House demonstrated how the boundaries between art, advocacy, and civic engagement can be dissolved in cultural spaces. The performance’s impact extended beyond the stage, through the invitation of the performers to engage in a shared meal and discussion with the audience members. The space became a forum for confronting political questions that remain unanswered when key voices are often absent from the table. But not in this one. 

As a migrant engaging with this work, I found that Antigone did not ask for empathy alone, but for recognition. The project is built on the ethos of co-creation and solidarity, and the event beautifully marked the spirit of International Migrants Day, celebrating the lives of the migrants in a world that too often values their labour while devaluing their humanity.