Labour emigration is not merely the business of states and governmental policies, but comes with a range of wider societal practices. This includes the production of -and contestation over -the

Migrants must often negotiate their rights while being hampered by their precarious resident status, within contexts where the overlap of migration, welfare, labour and gender regimes lead to incoherent and contradictory institutional set-ups that hinder their claiming of rights. The analysis of the legal consciousness of undocumented migrants in Germany reveals a complex set of orientations. On some occasions they waive their rights, accepting lower working conditions in order not to lose their jobsa finding that confirms existing research. At the same time, they also informally "enact" rights and access to institutions themselves. They appeal to the experiences of undocumented migrants with laws and access to social services in other countries. The finding of relatively widespread transnational legal consciousness adds a new dimension to the scholarship on migrant legal consciousness and claims-making, which has hitherto portrayed undocumented migrants as living in a legal limbo between their countries of origin and destination.

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This contribution focuses on the empowering political practices of RESPECT, the European network for migrant domestic workers. The paper contrasts RESPECT’s empowering approach with that of other actors in which migrant domestic workers are presented as victims and in which the struggle is situated within the discourse of combatting illegal immigration and trafficking in women. The central hypothesis of this paper is that this distinction between female migrant domestic workers constructed as victims of trafficking or as migrant women with subjectivity, voice, and agency is crucial in determining the type of advocacy strategy and (self-)representation of the women.

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