Understanding family separation in the context of live-in child domestic work- A qualitative study in Karnataka, India

This doctoral study focuses on the process of family separation that is experienced by live-in child domestic workers and their families in India. Indeed, child domestic workers who live at their employer’s homes often face long-term separation from their families. The child may be employed in a home far away from where the family resides (in different cities or states), and in many instances the child and the family may be unaware of where the child is employed, since it is often intermediaries (who may deceive the parents/families about location and conditions of employment) who broker deals between parents and employers and transport children to their employing families1 (Blaghbrough, 2008). Some of these children are rescued, but organizations rescuing them experience difficulties in re-uniting the children with their families, because, amongst other reasons, they sometimes experience both parental and child reluctance to engage in family reunification. Above, while scholarly work shows an increased interest in child labor in general and child domestic work specifically, research addressing lived experiences of child domestic workers in relation to their family relationships is surprisingly scant. With relevance to the difficulty that organizations face in the process of reunification, we seek to understand the meaning given to the nature and process of separation in the context of child domestic work in India.