It is not an easy task to write about the history of organizing by migrant
domestic workers in Lebanon during the nineties.1 The “archive” of this
struggle, an important source for historical writing that could illuminate
radical moments from the past to support intersectional struggles in the
present, is elusive and incomplete.2 Even if archival documents were within
reach, however, they could only lay claim to history fragmentarily, long after
heroines had disappeared—and they haven’t seized to be present.3 The first is
Malini (Mala) Kandaarachchige who arrived in Lebanon from Sri Lanka during
the civil war, labored in domestic work, and organized the Sri Lankan
community surrounding Dahr el-Souane around mutual aid praxis in the
nineties. Difficult material conditions forced educator and longtime community mobilizer Gemma Justo out of her home in the Philippines and into postwar Lebanon where she spent more than two decades initiating repatriation
processes, advocating on behalf of migrant domestic workers, and contributing to transform the local feminist movement. Then at the close of the nineties, missionary Aimée Razanajay gave up a more privileged life in Madagascar and came to Lebanon as a domestic worker. Dedicating her resources, she organized through the church to repatriate Malagasy domestic workers enduring exploitation and abuse. However diverse their strategies may have been, these women were notable makers of that decade’s organizing history.