Architecture in Lebanon promotes discrimination against migrant domestic workers

In an interesting article published today, Al Akhbar highlighted a study by architect Bassem Saad entitled, ‘5 square meter maid’s room: Lebanese racist, gendered architecture- failure of architecture’. In his study, Saad analyzed the role of architecture in promoting unfair treatment and discrimination against migrant women domestic workers (MWDWs). The architectural patterns in Lebanon are founded on racism particularly in the design of maids’ rooms in such that they do not encroach on the general floor area ratio of the apartment, and that the average surface area of the room should not exceed 5 square meters. Such lodgings, the study said, are unlivable and lack the proper facilities or even windows for aeration. Racist and discriminatory dispositions are literally applied in construction and maids are squeezed into isolated ‘cavities’ inside the houses, according to the study. Architects, developers and real estate brokers consider that spaces devoted for live-in help are classified under the “category of non-aesthetic service-related elements in a design that must be cleverly concealed behind several layers of architecture to ensure that they are rendered as inconspicuous as possible.” The migrant domestic worker, Saad pointed out in his study, is “driven into this fragile state, which automatically gives her a deviated presence once dissimilar cultural norms are identified.” He considered that the legal framework of architectural racism is marked in the construction law which contains several provisions related to migrant workers. Firstly, the said Law refers to migrant workers’ rooms as “servants’ rooms”, going as far as referring to the helper in a feminine form, Saad expounded. According to him, this migrant worker’s lodging type is mentioned interruptedly throughout the law and in a number of texts related to other types of rooms, such as storage and laundry spaces, which originally are not designed to house people for extended periods of time. (Al Akhbar, December 2, 2016)