Picture This: Social Distance and the Mistreatment of Migrant Workers
International migrant workers are vulnerable to abuses by their employers. We implemented a randomized controlled trial of an intervention to reduce mistreatment of Filipino women working as domestic workers (DWs) by their household employers in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. The intervention -- encouraging DWs to show their employers a photo of their family while providing a small gift when starting employment -- caused DWs to experience less mistreatment, have higher satisfaction with the employer, and be more likely to stay with the employer. DWs' families in the Philippines also come to view international labor migration more positively, while they generally remain unaware of the intervention. An online experiment with potential employers in Hong Kong and the Middle East suggests that a mechanism behind the treatment effect is a reduction in the employer's perceived social distance from the employee.
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Copy CitationToman Barsbai, Vojtech Bartos, Victoria Licuanan, Andreas Steinmayr, Erwin Tiongson, and Dean Yang, "Picture This: Social Distance and the Mistreatment of Migrant Workers," NBER Working Paper 30804 (2022), https://doi.org/10.3386/w30804.Download Citation
Published Versions
Toman Barsbai & Vojtěch Bartoš & Victoria Licuanan & Andreas Steinmayr & Erwin Tiongson & Dean Yang, 2026. "Picture This: Social Distance and the Mistreatment of Migrant Workers," Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics, vol 4(2), pages 547-582.
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