Regulation and Exploitation: Hong Kong’s Migrant Worker Crisis

From Wikimedia Commons, accessed October 24, 2015.

By Maxime Usdin

October 24, 2026

HONG KONG -- An Indonesian woman wants to find employment in Hong Kong. She contacts her local recruitment agency and provides them with her personal documents (passport, identity card or the like). The agency retains the documents and will return them only for a huge fee unless the worker signs uncomfortable contracts. After signing she undergoes a training period during which she is charged additional training and accommodation fees, must perform physical labor, has limited contact with the outside world, and may be subject to abuse. At the end of this period she is sent to Hong Kong with a small mountain of debt to the recruitment agency. By Hong Kong law, as a domestic worker she must live with her employer. Her contract states a monthly salary but her long working hours lead to a less than minimum hourly wage. She must repay her debt to the agency in order to receive her personal documents. If she quits her job, Hong Kong law states that she must leave within two weeks or apply for a visa extension which prohibits her from working. She ends up stuck in a house with abusive employers, working very long hours, and using most of her income to pay off her debt.

This is not the story of one worker, it is the lives of many. In its report, Amnesty International described tens of women subject to these human rights abuses. The stories of these migrant workers have also been described by news sources worldwide such as the South China Morning Post and http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/hong-kongs-indentured-servants... ">the New York Times.

On Sundays you can see migrant workers huddled on staircases in the Central neighborhood chatting on cardboard mats or finding some shade at the beach. They are mainly women from Indonesia and the Philippines who often work six days a week at or below Hong Kong's minimum wage of HK$30/hour (around $4 USD). According to a 2013 report by the Labour Department, there are over 300,000 migrant workers (officially known as “foreign domestic helpers”), comprising about 4% of the population. These workers leave their home countries to find employment bundled together with restrictive and exploitative regulations. In recent years, Hong Kong has come under global criticism for human and labor rights abuses against migrant workers. Cases of physical abuse by employers have also surfaced in the Hong Kong's courts.

There are many organizations working to help and protect migrant workers. Tammy Baltz, the Co-Founder and Director of the Fair Employment Agency (FEA), told Politics & Policy that it is very easy to become a licensed agency and that “there is a lot of gray area in agency regulation.” She criticized other agencies for their “illegal or unethical fees” and said that “there's not a lot of thought being put into what is the right matching between the [worker and employer].” There is little incentive in place for agencies to find appropriate pairings, if a worker quits the agency can earn more by signing a new hire.

It is unclear what future developments will bring to the migrant workers. Hong Kong is already suffering a housing shortage so changing occupancy laws is difficult. Many agencies hire workers in foreign countries, which makes combating illegal practices challenging. One thing that is certain is that the number of immigrants arriving in Hong Kong is growing with every year.