Trans rights, migrant labour, and the hidden lives of domestic workers in Britain.

In this feedwarmer, we shine a light on Our Place Is Here - a powerful three-part podcast series created in partnership with the Our Place Is Here campaign produced by Aiwan and AiAi Studios in collaboration with gal-dem. The Filipino Domestic Workers Association, and campaign partners fighting for migrant workers’ rights including Kanlungan Filipino Consortium, The Voice of Domestic Workers, Kalayaan, and Purpose. Visit gal-dem.com to read the essays in both English and Tagalog, and find out what you can do to support the campaign. 

At the centre of our conversation is Nina’s story: a trans woman navigating life as an undocumented domestic worker in the UK. Her essay, read in both English and Tagalog, unpacks the intersection of gender, migration status, and labour - revealing what it means to survive, resist, and find dignity while working behind closed doors.

We reflect on the broader campaign, the dual-language production process, and what this project teaches us about trauma-informed storytelling, the politics of translation, and the role of podcasting as a tool for research and systems change.

In this episode:

• Living in fear of sirens: the everyday hypervigilance of undocumented migrant lives.
• The home as a site of vulnerability & resistance in domestic work.
• Finding agency through storytelling; how Filipino domestic workers claim their voices.
• What academia can learn from Our Place Is Here about language, knowledge, and accessibility.
• The politics of translation: why some words defy Tagalog equivalents - intersectional feminism, classism, racism, for example.
• Trauma-informed storytelling and how to avoid extractive narratives.

Our Place Is Here was created with and for the community it represents - centring the voices of domestic workers themselves, in their own words.

Listen, reflect, and ask yourself: who gets to be seen, and whose labour remains invisible?

Our Place Is Here was produced by Aiwan Obinyan with production and sound design by AiAi Studios. The Executive Producers for gal-dem were Suyin Haynes, Cici Peng and Katie Goh.

The Executive Producer for the Our Place Is Here campaign was Francesca Humi, supported by the Filipino Domestic Workers Association, Kanlungan and The Voice of Domestic Workers.

With graphics produced by Karis Pierre and artwork produced by Khadija Said.

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