On International Women’s Day, a new collection of soundwalks capturing the experiences of women migrant workers in London will be launched.

These soundwalks will provide an opportunity for listeners to gain a unique insight into the lives and experiences of migrant workers who are employed in domestic spaces (e.g. homes, providing care). The collection has been informed by the women’s experiences and created together with them; through the recordings, they have chosen how to tell their own stories.  Utilising the soundwalks, they guide listeners on a journey to various locations across the Capital:  at sites where workers have escaped from abusive employers or at key points in collective activism; some focus on reconciling LGBTQ identities with religion, and some should simply be listened to ‘on an empty stomach’.

 On a day when women’s work is publicly celebrated and their voices and experiences brought to the fore, there are thousands of women across the UK whose work will remain unseen, hidden and unrecognised, and whose voices will not be heard.  The recordings seek to redress this balance and, particularly in the midst of increasingly polarised (mis)representations of migrants – as threats on one hand, as victims on the other – to provide a space for these women to share their voices and tell their own stories.

The soundwalks have been produced in collaboration with Dr Ella Parry-Davies, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and BBC/ AHRC New Generation Thinker, as a part of her wider research into transnational migration and can be found at www.homemakersounds.org.