On 27 September, we, the Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law, hosted the tenth Sarah van Walsum Lecture, where Helma Lutz, presented her research on the lives of migrant care workers. This event also served as a kick-off for the new academic year of the International Migration and Refugee Law Master’s programme.

The event began with introductory remarks by Betty de Hart, setting the stage for Helmas’s lecture titled “Work in a Hard Place: Migrant Care Workers’ Life in Transnational Households”. In her presentation, Helma highlighted the critical issue of care migration, which tends to respond to the growing demand for care workers and is often associated with poor pay and challenging working conditions. In doing so, Helma strengthened the gender perspective in the field, as care workers are predominantly women who leave their families to provide essential care services.

By including voices from her interviews, Helma illustrated the lived experiences of care workers, revealing their struggles and aspirations. Many migrant workers experience emotional distress from separation, and are overwhelmed and overburdened by their responsibilities, creating a tension between their private lives and their public role. Her research also highlighted systemic barriers faced by care workers. In particular, the concept of ‘presence time’ emerged as an important issue, illustrating how work expectations can blur the boundaries between work and private life. In this context, she found that migrant care workers were often vulnerable to exploitation under existing labor laws.

In her conclusion, Helma proposed a social debate on the relationship between employment and care work as a gender-democratic project and a pardigma shift. She called for better support systems to protect migrant care workers, fair treatment mechanisms and also opened up the discussion about the framing of elderly homes.

After her talk, a question and answer session, moderated by Martijn Stronks, encouraged a lively discussion among the participants. The evening ended with informal drinks, which encouraged further reflection on the presentation and topic.

Thank you, Helma and to all who attended and participated in this important discussion. We look forward to our next event in the Sarah van Walsum lecture series.