For over two decades now, increasing numbers of young Ethiopian women have been migrating to countries in the Middle East on temporary contracts as domestic workers. The contracts they sign with employment agencies and employers are intended to establish a regulatory framework for their terms and conditions of employment. Notwithstanding these contracts, some migrant Ethiopian women domestic workers experienced grave violations not only of their contract, but also of their basic human rights. These violations have led to descriptions of their situation as a form of ‘contract slavery’ (Jureidini and Mourkabel, 2004; Varia, 2011: 268). To escape these exploitative and often violent conditions, many women become ‘runaways’, leaving their contracted employer. Running away does not, however, produce conditions of ‘freedom’ for these women, and may substitute one set of ‘unfree’, exploitative conditions for another set. This paper draws on O’Connell Davidson’s (2010) argument that the discourse on contemporary forms of slavery allows the vigorous moral condemnation of slavery to coexist with the continued imposition of extensive, forcible restrictions on individuals deemed to be ‘free’. The paper explores the options available to Ethiopian women stigmatized as ‘runaways’ and analyses the degrees of freedom they experience. The paper argues that if the line between restriction and freedom is acknowledged as a social construct, then the ‘unfreedoms’ experienced by ‘runaways’ deserve greater attention, as they raise contentious and highly political questions about the rights of migrant domestic workers. The paper is based on multi-sited field research in Addis Ababa, Lebanon and in Kuwait. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with migrant domestic workers, as well as with the owners or managers of employment agencies and with government and non-government representatives.