Intersecting oppressions and mental distress: Migrant domestic workers under the Kafala system in Lebanon

This article examines how intersecting oppressions within Lebanon’s Kafala (sponsorship) system shape the mental distress of migrant domestic workers (MDWs), situating these experiences within the country’s multi-layered crises. Drawing on intersectionality and social psychology frameworks, the study analyses how gender, race, class, legal status, and migration trajectories combine to produce structural vulnerability and psychosocial harm. Based on qualitative interviews with forty-seven MDWs of diverse nationalities and fifteen key informants, the findings identify mechanisms through which systemic exploitation, legal precarity, social isolation, and xenophobia generate and sustain mental distress. The Beirut port explosion emerges as a compounding crisis that magnified existing inequities, further constraining access to support and intensifying social exclusion. The analysis highlights both individual and collective coping strategies, including migrant-led networks, religious practices, and creative expression, while also interrogating the constraints that limit their transformative potential. By using Lebanon as a qualitative case study, this article illustrates how intersecting oppressions, amplified by compounding crises, shape MDWs’ mental distress, offering insights relevant to similar sponsorship-based labour regimes globally. The article concludes by identifying implications for policy and practice, including the need for trauma-informed, culturally responsive mental health services and the dismantling of exclusionary labour regimes.