Years ago, Anne came to Hong Kong as one of the city’s 380,000 migrant domestic workers. While initially hopeful, she quickly found herself in an abusive situation familiar to many of those 380,000 people. After sinking into a deep depression, she found a way out by calling HELP, a local NGO working tirelessly to pull workers like her out of exploitative domestic labor, and discovered a new life for herself.

Hong Kong is widely known as a global financial hub. This economic international superpower relies on the labor of its massive population of migrant domestic workers who serve wealthy families.

Like many immigrant laborers across the world, MDWs (migrant domestic workers) struggle with exploitation resulting in underpayment. Groups like HELP for Domestic Workers are taking measures to break mistreated laborers free of harsh conditions through advocacy, educational programming, emotional support, and emergency shelter. Anne’s is just one success story.

Facing Hardships

A Stanford University study shows that Hong Kong’s ultra-wealthy 0.001% owns more than half of the city’s income, while the women who run their households often live off less than minimum wage.

Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers tend to obtain fragile visas to work in homes and send money back to their families. They sign contracts from agencies that provide household employers, and those agencies demand placement fees that often lead workers quickly into debt.

According to the Hong Kong Labour Department, contracts dictate that employers must pay MDWs the official allowable minimum wage, but there is no requirement to adjust that rate for inflation, so MDWs end up earning far less than the average person.

Additionally, a mandatory live-in policy results in a total loss of privacy for laborers. They commonly sleep in kitchens, bathtubs and on couches while on call 24/7. If given a day off, it is usually spent out in public in large groups.

The U.S. State Department’s 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report dedicates an entire segment to the trafficking of migrant domestic workers, explaining that some agencies strategically use debt-based coercion as a pipeline into labor trafficking, sometimes withholding workers’ identification documents until they pay their debts, which can take years. Visa regulations and other systematic obstacles have made it difficult for workers to legally report abuse. However, grassroots efforts have been at work to help the situation for decades now, with growing impacts in recent years.

How HELP Is Helping

HELP for Domestic Workers is a local NGO providing thousands of Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers with counseling, shelter, education on their legal rights, and other adaptive support systems. Volunteers are also taking active steps to help propel workers into higher degrees of success, envisioning a Hong Kong where migrant workers have the chance to achieve their dreams, where they no longer live under exploitation.

In 2025 alone, HELP volunteers provided employment guidance to more than 800 MDWs, emotional support to over 900, and communicated with almost 4,000 people in need through outreach.

HELP also uses its platform to amplify media coverage centering Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers, like one HKFP story on loan sharks’ exploitation of migrant domestic workers through online scams and a Tatler piece on how migrant domestic workers are supporting their communities using art. In doing so, they spread further awareness of the issues MDWs face and relentlessly call attention from both the public and government officials to the cause.

A Broader Horizon

Organizations like HELP for Domestic Workers not only provide the help they promise, but they also give hope to unseen yet important Hong Kong communities.

By drawing attention to the voices of Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers, the focus turns to all immigrant laborers, all those victims of exploitation and systematic disregard. Actionable attention like this generates meaningful grassroots movements like HELP, a conglomeration of ordinary people doing their part to aid their communities.

– Aren Lau

Aren is based in Brooklyn, NY, USA and focuses on Good News and Politics for The Borgen Project.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons