Migration Jurisprudence from the South › United Kingdom

Basfar v. Wong

UK Supreme Court · United Kingdom · 2022-07-06 · National court

Citation: [2022] UKSC 20
Type of case: Private
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Can a diplomat claim immunity against a claim by a domestic worker kept in conditions of modern slavery?

What the court decided

No. Employing a domestic worker in conditions of forced labour is a “commercial activity” outside diplomatic immunity.

In plain language

A Filipino woman said she worked almost all day for a diplomat’s family in London, without pay and without her passport. The Supreme Court said the diplomat could not use immunity to avoid her claim.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Seorang perempuan Filipina mengaku bekerja hampir sepanjang hari untuk keluarga diplomat di London, tanpa upah dan tanpa paspornya. MA menyatakan diplomat itu tidak bisa memakai kekebalan untuk menghindari gugatannya.

Pertanyaan: Bisakah diplomat mengklaim kekebalan atas gugatan pekerja rumah tangga yang ditahan dalam kondisi perbudakan modern?

What happened afterwards

2022-07-06: Judgment; claim can proceed.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/uk-basfar-2022/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.