Saving Malagasy Domestic Workers Abroad». The Appropriation of «Neo-abolitionist» Rhetoric in Ambositra (Madagascar) [‘Sauver les domestiques malgaches à l’étranger’. L’appropriation de la rhétorique ‘néo-abolitionniste’ à Ambositra (Madagascar)]

By analysing the labour conditions and the points of view of Malagasy domestic workers who worked in Ambositra (Highlands of Madagascar) or abroad (in Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Maurice), this article explores the local re-appropriation of a global neo-abolitionist discourse that, by underlining the risks of migration, emerges often as a way to limit the efforts of women who are trying to emancipate themselves from the harsh economic conditions they are experiencing in Madagascar. For most of the domestic workers I met, this discourse runs the risk of hiding the violence and abuses linked to domestic work in Madagascar, of diminishing their opportunities to build effective migratory trajectories, and of re-moralising, for the good of the employers, paternalistic power relations that tend to belittle and infantilize their employees.