Formalizing Employment in the Global South The Recognition of Domestic Workers as Employees in Morocco

This article examines the interplay of actors that led to the legal recognition of the status as employee to female domestic workers in Morocco in 2016. Those female workers can now benefit from protections such as the right to a minimum wage, health coverage and paid leave. The article analyses the political processes that led to the legislative decision in 2016, focusing on the configurations of actors and the local power relations, for a reform that took more than a decade to be implemented. This singular case of the extension of contributory social protection offers a counterpoint to the opposite process of “deformalisation” of employment and extension of non-contributory benefits in the Global North. It thus acts as an analyser, through the prism of the Global South, of the current transformation of social policies between contributory (labour-based) and non-contributory formulas.