Modern Slavery
Europe's Army of Filipino Domestic Workers
They clean, walk dogs and take care of children, day in and day out, for years at a time. A photography project shows how women from the Philippines work in poor conditions in Europe so that their families back home can have better lives.
For our Global Societies project, reporters around the world will be writing about societal problems, sustainability and development in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The series will include features, analyses, photo essays, videos and podcasts looking behind the curtain of globalization. The project is generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
This is a story of rich and poor in close quarters. And it is one in which France and the Philippines, which are otherwise separated by 11,000 kilometers and two continents, are likewise close together.
It is the story of Donna and Jhen, two women from a poor area near the Philippine capital city of Manila who have been living in Paris for years, fluffing the pillows of the rich. They asked that we not use their last names. It is also a story of photographer Thomas Morel-Fort, who frequently crossed paths with the women in his neighborhood, until he finally approached Donna and Jhen and listened to their stories.
He learned that one of the Philippines’ most-exported commodities is women’s labor. Indeed, the majority of people who move abroad from the Philippines are women, and before the coronavirus struck, thousands of them were leaving home each month. They traveled to faraway places to work as cleaners, nannies or cooks for the rich in places as far-flung as Singapore, Kuwait and Paris. The remittances they send home each month keep their families afloat.
A Filipino domestic worker washes dishes on board a barge along the Seine River in Paris.
Foto:
Thomas Morel-Fort
Donna starts work early in the morning and continues until late evening. She cleans the windows for wealthy families, makes sure refrigerators are full, that the kids are in diapers and the dogs have been taken for walks. She is paid irregularly and lives on friends’ sofas because she can't afford rent in expensive Paris. If they work every day, the women earn between 1,500 and 2,000 euros a month, the photographer says.
Jhen irons laundry at luxury hotels in Paris and is often booked to clean apartments rented on Airbnb. But she has lost a lot of business since the arrival of the coronavirus and the collapse of tourism in the city.
The burden these women carry is enormous, says Morel-Fort. He says they are driven by the desire to give their children a better life so that they can be educated and find good employment.
Jhen's family in the Philippines: Several families live from the money that Donna and Jhen regularly wire back home.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort / Thomas-Morel-Fort
Ironically, it is the very jobs that have kept women down and destitute for centuries – housekeeping, caring for children and cooking – that are now empowering Filipino women to lift, if not themselves, then at least the next generation out of poverty.
Family Life as a Shaky WhatsApp Connection
Take Nicole, Donna's daughter, for example. Thanks to her mother’s money, she was able to finish college and train as a nurse, thus fulfilling the dream Donna once had for herself: to work in a hospital. Or Ron, Jhen’s son. He attended an expensive private school, financed by the wages his mother earned cleaning.
Photographer Morel-Fort says families back at home often lack understanding of the hardships these women face in Europe. There is a prevailing prejudice that any life in Europe is better than life in the Philippines.
Greetings from back home: Jhen's daughter Jennidel (right) and her aunt telephone with Jhen in Paris.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort / Thomas-Morel-Fort
That, though, isn't always true. Donna and Jhen live in France illegally, which means they have no rights and are dependent on their clients. For years, they have only seen or heard from their children in photos and through internet phone calls – family life as a shaky WhatsApp connection.
There are stories of employers who take away the women’s passports so they can’t run away, of physical violence and blackmail. And they are frequently accused of transgressions like stealing food, mobile phones or money.
Morel-Fort spent years building trust with Donna and Jhen. At one point, he even went undercover to get a job with Donna’s clients in order to research working conditions. "We didn’t have a minute to ourselves,” he says of the time. "We worked hard, slept, and then started working again.” He says there wasn’t even a day’s rest. On one occasion, the employer was unhappy with the color of the water in the swimming pool, so they had to drain the pool and spend all night cleaning it.
A rare moment of peace and quiet: Donna, Jhen and another friend meet up during the evening. The Filipino community in Paris is large.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Then, in summer 2019, the photographer traveled to visit Donna’s and Jhen’s families in the Philippines. He made the trip that Donna and Jhen have been longing to take for years. While he was there, he met two large families who are all dependent on the wages of women in Europe.
Morel-Fort was there for Nicole’s graduation party, and he took photos as she received her nursing diploma on stage. "When I gave Donna the photos back in Paris, she looked happier than ever,” the photojournalist says.
You can view the photo gallery of the lives of these migrant workers and their families here:
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Fotostrecke
Female Migrant Workers in France: A Life Between Manila and Paris
This piece is part of the Global Societies series. The project runs for three years and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Global Societies series involves journalists reporting from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe about injustices in a globalized world, societal challenges and sustainable development. The features, analyses, photo essays, videos and podcasts, which originally appeared in DER SPIEGEL’s Foreign Desk section, will also appear in the Global Societies section of SPIEGEL International. The project is initially planned to run for three years and receives financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is funding the project for a period of three years at a total cost of around €2.3 million.
No. The foundation exerts no influence whatsoever on the stories and other elements that appear in the series.
Yes. Large European media outlets like the Guardian and El País have similar sections on their websites -- called "Global Development" and "Planeta Futuro," respectively -- that are likewise funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
In recent years, DER SPIEGEL has complete two projects with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the European Journalism Centre (EJC): "Expedition BeyondTomorrow," about global sustainability goals, and the journalist refugee project "The New Arrivals," which resulted in several award-winning multimedia features on the issues of migrants and refugees.
All Global Societies pieces will be published in the Global Societies section of the SPIEGEL International website.
25 BilderFemale Migrant Workers in France: A Life Between Manila and Paris
1 / 25
Donna, 42, has lived in Paris for eight years now. She’s from the Philippines, from a poor peasant family from the countryside around 300 kilometers from the capital city of Manila. She once dreamed of becoming a nurse. But to pay for her children’s schooling, she went to Paris to find domestic work. She now takes care of the children and households of rich families.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
2 / 25
Photographer Thomas Morel-Fort lives in Paris. He noticed in his neighborhood that many Filipino women there provide childcare for French families, picking the children up from school and taking them to the playground. At some point in 2014, he approached one of the women. He got to know Donna, pictured here, and he listened to her story.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
3 / 25
Some of the women work in France for years without valid papers, almost invisible to society, without regular working hours and often without any certainty about when they will be paid next. Because rents in the city are prohibitively expensive, Donna spent the month of February 2017 sleeping on a friend’s sofa.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
4 / 25
One of her other jobs is walking the dogs of a French actress. To get to Europe, Donna paid a smuggler the equivalent of 13,000 euros in 2011. She then worked in Denmark and Iceland before moving to France.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
5 / 25
Donna hasn’t seen her family in the past eight years. And she doesn’t know when she will be able to return to her home country. There’s a risk she wouldn’t be allowed to return to France if she left. She has been waiting for a legal residency permit in the country for years.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
6 / 25
Donna, with a microphone in hand, at a karaoke bar. A friend rented the basement of a Japanese restaurant to celebrate her birthday. It’s a rare evening of entertainment.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
7 / 25
In May 2016, Donna and the photographer spent the summer working together at the summer home of a rich family. The villa is located in the hills of Cannes. Photographer Morel-Fort went undercover to get hired as a worker for the family. He spent one and a half months experiencing first hand how hard the conditions are for migrant workers. "We didn’t have a minute to ourselves,” he says. "We worked, slept, worked. We had to wait a long time to get paid."
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
8 / 25
The domestic workers in the household, almost all from the Philippines, were also accused of stealing food, mobile phones or money, he says. The domestic workers lived in rooms located below the swimming pool of the vacation home. Most of the time, they ate together in the garage. They experienced almost nothing of Cannes' beautiful surroundings.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
9 / 25
In the evening, Donna checked for messages from her loved ones back home. This sparked the idea in photographer Morel-Fort to travel to the Philippines to visit Donna’s family. And so he did, in the summer of 2019.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
10 / 25
Tublay in the Philippines in 2019: Donna’s family lives here. Bagui City, about three hours from here by car, is the nearest metropolis. When the photographer visited Donna’s family, the internet reception was only sufficient to make WhatsApp calls to Donna from the doorstep of the house. That’s why Donna’s parents and two of her sons are huddled so closely together. Morel-Fort recalls how tears flowed during the phone calls.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
11 / 25
The entire family in the Philippines hinterlands is dependent on the money Donna sends home each month. It’s normal there for multiple generations to live under one roof to help make ends meet. But the family lacks an understanding of how harsh the conditions are for Donna in Europe. In their imagination, life is always better in Europe.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
12 / 25
Jon, 45, is Donna’s husband. They have four children together. Photographer Morel-Fort notes that in Philippine society, despite its patriarchal structures, many men like Jon are dependent on their wife's wages. In turn, they are responsible for taking care of the children.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
13 / 25
Donna’s father Glen, seen here cradling his youngest grandchild, was a farmer all his life. He and his wife continue to grow coffee plants and flowers, products that they sell for very little money to people in the village.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
14 / 25
Donna’s mother Rita is seen here picking coffee beans. Grandparents often take over the upbringing of the children as the mothers earn money. Rita also used to work abroad. She was employed as a domestic worker in Taiwan and stayed there for three years. She is the only one who really understands how much Donna is sacrificing for her family. Donna’s children – three sons and a daughter – have been able to go to school, financed by the money their mother wires each month.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
15 / 25
Donna’s daughter Nicole is 19 years old. Here, she is pictured on her way to the university in Bagui City, a three-hour drive from her village. Nicole is living her mother’s dream. She just finished her education to become a nurse. Photographer Morel-Fort was there when she received her diploma.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
16 / 25
Nicole’s graduation was a big day. She wants to start working as a nurse in her home country. Later, she might go abroad like her mother. Nicole is the first person in her family to graduate from university.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
17 / 25
Meanwhile, in Paris: Jhen also works as a domestic helper for French families. She’s also from the Philippines, from the greater Manila area. She left her children, who are 15 and 17, behind. When the photographer first met her in 2016, she lived in a 9-square meter apartment for which she paid 440 euros a month.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
18 / 25
For the most part, Jhen makes her living doing laundry at hotels and cleaning Airbnb apartments. Since the arrival of the coronavirus in Europe, tourism has ground almost entirely to a halt in Paris, and Jhen has lost many clients. Morel-Fort says she is only working three to four hours a week right now, and she is only able to wire a small amount of money back home.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
19 / 25
Each year, the Filipino community in Paris hosts a Christmas party. Morel-Fort says that even though most are living in the country illegally, French society tolerates the migrant workers. "These people are almost invisible,” says Morel-Fort. "They work, work, work, and then they disappear late at night into the outskirts of the city. They don’t ask for anything.” At the same time, the women are essential in keeping many French households running.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
20 / 25
The photographer also visited Jhen’s family. He met her sister, who was pregnant with her sixth child at the time, in mid-2019. And he met Jhen’s children. Her son was attending a private school and Jhen was paying his tuition. At the time, Jhen’s 17-year-old daughter Jennidel was pregnant. Jhen feared that this would jeopardize her daughter’s graduation from high school.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
21 / 25
Jennidel at school. She’s one of the best in her class. Jennidel still doesn’t know what she will do once she becomes a mother. Abortion is strictly prohibited in the Philippines. For many families, a young daughter having a baby can create financial difficulties.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
22 / 25
Ron, 20, is Jhen’s son. He goes to a private school. His mother is also paying for the car Ron is leaning against in the photo.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
23 / 25
The family often eats together at night. They also lack an understanding of the hardships Jhen takes on so that the family back home can be reasonably well off. Jhen hasn’t been home in seven years.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
24 / 25
Jhen’s niece gets ready for school while the others are still sleeping. Jhen wants her children to get good degrees so they can enter into better professions.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort / Thomas-Morel-Fort
25 / 25
Room for privacy? Non-existent. It’s almost impossible to talk to their mother in France in peace because the rooms are always full of family members, the photographer says.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort / Thomas-Morel-Fort
Donna, 42, has lived in Paris for eight years now. She’s from the Philippines, from a poor peasant family from the countryside around 300 kilometers from the capital city of Manila. She once dreamed of becoming a nurse. But to pay for her children’s schooling, she went to Paris to find domestic work. She now takes care of the children and households of rich families.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Photographer Thomas Morel-Fort lives in Paris. He noticed in his neighborhood that many Filipino women there provide childcare for French families, picking the children up from school and taking them to the playground. At some point in 2014, he approached one of the women. He got to know Donna, pictured here, and he listened to her story.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Some of the women work in France for years without valid papers, almost invisible to society, without regular working hours and often without any certainty about when they will be paid next. Because rents in the city are prohibitively expensive, Donna spent the month of February 2017 sleeping on a friend’s sofa.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
One of her other jobs is walking the dogs of a French actress. To get to Europe, Donna paid a smuggler the equivalent of 13,000 euros in 2011. She then worked in Denmark and Iceland before moving to France.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Donna hasn’t seen her family in the past eight years. And she doesn’t know when she will be able to return to her home country. There’s a risk she wouldn’t be allowed to return to France if she left. She has been waiting for a legal residency permit in the country for years.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Donna, with a microphone in hand, at a karaoke bar. A friend rented the basement of a Japanese restaurant to celebrate her birthday. It’s a rare evening of entertainment.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
In May 2016, Donna and the photographer spent the summer working together at the summer home of a rich family. The villa is located in the hills of Cannes. Photographer Morel-Fort went undercover to get hired as a worker for the family. He spent one and a half months experiencing first hand how hard the conditions are for migrant workers. "We didn’t have a minute to ourselves,” he says. "We worked, slept, worked. We had to wait a long time to get paid."
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
The domestic workers in the household, almost all from the Philippines, were also accused of stealing food, mobile phones or money, he says. The domestic workers lived in rooms located below the swimming pool of the vacation home. Most of the time, they ate together in the garage. They experienced almost nothing of Cannes' beautiful surroundings.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
In the evening, Donna checked for messages from her loved ones back home. This sparked the idea in photographer Morel-Fort to travel to the Philippines to visit Donna’s family. And so he did, in the summer of 2019.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Tublay in the Philippines in 2019: Donna’s family lives here. Bagui City, about three hours from here by car, is the nearest metropolis. When the photographer visited Donna’s family, the internet reception was only sufficient to make WhatsApp calls to Donna from the doorstep of the house. That’s why Donna’s parents and two of her sons are huddled so closely together. Morel-Fort recalls how tears flowed during the phone calls.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
The entire family in the Philippines hinterlands is dependent on the money Donna sends home each month. It’s normal there for multiple generations to live under one roof to help make ends meet. But the family lacks an understanding of how harsh the conditions are for Donna in Europe. In their imagination, life is always better in Europe.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Jon, 45, is Donna’s husband. They have four children together. Photographer Morel-Fort notes that in Philippine society, despite its patriarchal structures, many men like Jon are dependent on their wife's wages. In turn, they are responsible for taking care of the children.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Donna’s father Glen, seen here cradling his youngest grandchild, was a farmer all his life. He and his wife continue to grow coffee plants and flowers, products that they sell for very little money to people in the village.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Donna’s mother Rita is seen here picking coffee beans. Grandparents often take over the upbringing of the children as the mothers earn money. Rita also used to work abroad. She was employed as a domestic worker in Taiwan and stayed there for three years. She is the only one who really understands how much Donna is sacrificing for her family. Donna’s children – three sons and a daughter – have been able to go to school, financed by the money their mother wires each month.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Donna’s daughter Nicole is 19 years old. Here, she is pictured on her way to the university in Bagui City, a three-hour drive from her village. Nicole is living her mother’s dream. She just finished her education to become a nurse. Photographer Morel-Fort was there when she received her diploma.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Nicole’s graduation was a big day. She wants to start working as a nurse in her home country. Later, she might go abroad like her mother. Nicole is the first person in her family to graduate from university.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Meanwhile, in Paris: Jhen also works as a domestic helper for French families. She’s also from the Philippines, from the greater Manila area. She left her children, who are 15 and 17, behind. When the photographer first met her in 2016, she lived in a 9-square meter apartment for which she paid 440 euros a month.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
For the most part, Jhen makes her living doing laundry at hotels and cleaning Airbnb apartments. Since the arrival of the coronavirus in Europe, tourism has ground almost entirely to a halt in Paris, and Jhen has lost many clients. Morel-Fort says she is only working three to four hours a week right now, and she is only able to wire a small amount of money back home.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Each year, the Filipino community in Paris hosts a Christmas party. Morel-Fort says that even though most are living in the country illegally, French society tolerates the migrant workers. "These people are almost invisible,” says Morel-Fort. "They work, work, work, and then they disappear late at night into the outskirts of the city. They don’t ask for anything.” At the same time, the women are essential in keeping many French households running.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
The photographer also visited Jhen’s family. He met her sister, who was pregnant with her sixth child at the time, in mid-2019. And he met Jhen’s children. Her son was attending a private school and Jhen was paying his tuition. At the time, Jhen’s 17-year-old daughter Jennidel was pregnant. Jhen feared that this would jeopardize her daughter’s graduation from high school.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Jennidel at school. She’s one of the best in her class. Jennidel still doesn’t know what she will do once she becomes a mother. Abortion is strictly prohibited in the Philippines. For many families, a young daughter having a baby can create financial difficulties.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Ron, 20, is Jhen’s son. He goes to a private school. His mother is also paying for the car Ron is leaning against in the photo.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
The family often eats together at night. They also lack an understanding of the hardships Jhen takes on so that the family back home can be reasonably well off. Jhen hasn’t been home in seven years.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort
Jhen’s niece gets ready for school while the others are still sleeping. Jhen wants her children to get good degrees so they can enter into better professions.
Foto: Thomas Morel-Fort / Thomas-Morel-Fort
Room for privacy? Non-existent. It’s almost impossible to talk to their mother in France in peace because the rooms are always full of family members, the photographer says.
