Migrant Domestic Workers: Debating Transnationalism, Identity Politics, and Family Relations. A Review Essay. ANNELIES MOORS Department of Anthropology and Sociology/Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, University of Amsterdam
Home and Hegemony. Domestic Service and Identity Politics in South and Southeast Asia, edited by Kathleen Adams and Sara Dickey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle. Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Housemaids, by Michele Gamburd (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000). Doing the Dirty Work: The Global Politics of Domestic Labor, by Bridget Anderson (London: Zed Books, 2000). Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers, by Nicole Constable (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work, by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
If in the 1970s modernization theorists predicted the demise of paid domestic work, developments during the last two decades have proven them wrong. Both in the North and in the South the number of those engaged in paid domestic work has grown rapidly. In some cases, like China and India, intra-state migration is predominant. Elsewhere, in the United States, Canada, and WesternEurope, as well as in growth areas such as the Gulf States, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, the presence of large numbers of migrant domestic workers from abroad has been particularly striking. In fact, in a number of cases the growth of domestic labor as a field of employment has led to the feminization of outmigration. By the late 1990s, there were between 1.3 and 1.5 million Asian women working in the Middle East. Whereas in the 1970s women formed about 15 percent of the migrant labor force, in the mid-1990s almost 60 percent of the Filipino migrant labor force was female, and women constituted approximately 80 percent of the Sri Lankan and the Indonesian migrant labor force (Gamburd 2000:35). 0010-4175/03/386–394 $9.50 © 2003 Society for Comparative Study of Society and History
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migrant domestic workers 387 Still, paid domestic work has not been a prestige zone in the world of academia. Some do not consider the private sphere a site of serious academic work; for those involved in gender and women’s studies, paid domestic work has long been a sensitive topic since it highlights inequalities amongst women; and labor and migration studies have only recently paid attention to female labor migrants. Whereas there is a respectable tradition of historians studying paid domestic work in the United States, Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, the colonies, studies of the present-day situation in the South have by and large focused on two geographic areas: Latin America and southern Africa. Only recently have book-length studies about migrant domestic workers in and from Asia become available that are informed by current debates on transnationalism, gendered migration, and domestic labor. This essay draws on a selection of these groundbreaking studies. Adams and Dickey (2000) is an edited volume with contributions that focus on the identity politics involved in the employer-domestic worker relation in South and Southeast Asia. Constable (1997) is a case study of Filipina “foreign domestic helpers” in Hong Kong that concentrates on the control and discipline exercised by agencies and employers and the multiple everyday ways in which domestic workers respond. Gamburd (2000) deals with the impact of the migration of women to the Middle East on gender relations, class status, and caste hierarchies in a coastal village in Sri Lanka. Anderson (2000) is a broad-ranging comparative study that investigates the racialization of paid domestic labor in the North. And finally Parreñas (2001) examines the position of Filipina domestic workers in the international division of reproductive labor and compares the forms of exclusion they experience in Rome and Los Angeles. In this essay I selectively highlight some major issues these studies have raised, in particular their contribution to debates on transnationalism and the state, the transformation of domestic space, and the production of transnational families. transnational relations and state control The geographic mobility of domestic workers is not a new phenomenon. Domestic slavery moved people over great distances and in many regions there are longstanding traditions of rural domestic workers being employed as bonded labor in urban areas. Contemporary globalization, however, with its tremendously increased speed of the circulation of people, goods, and images, has not only greatly facilitated the international migration of domestic workers but has also enabled them to maintain close contacts with their places of origin. Whereas migrant domestic work can be seen as a strong case of transnationalism from below, investigating this form of employment simultaneously broadens, reframes, and recasts several debates on transnationalism, mobility, and the state. It highlights how transnational mobility is not equally accessible to all migrants and points to the contradictions embedded in such forms of mobility. Whereas many female migrant domestic workers travel great distances to reach their
388 annelies moors place of employment, once they have arrived they often find their mobility severely restricted. And while some migrant domestic workers are undocumented, the international migration of domestic workers is also highly stateregulated. Sending states have a strong interest in maintaining relations with labor migrants as they are a major source of foreign currency. Yet, as Constable (in Adams and Dickey) indicates, attempts to tie these migrant domestic workers to the state are not limited to regulations about remittances; some embassies, for instance, organize festivals and contests to promote the image of migrant domestic workers, defining them as “economic heroes” who not only sacrifice themselves for their families but also for the nation. Simultaneously, however, in settings where women’s migration goes against the grain of established notions of domesticity, morality, and motherhood, their employment abroad has become a topic of political controversy. As women are often seen as symbolically representing the nation, there can be strong sensitivities about the migration of women domestic workers; in Sri Lanka, and especially in Indonesia, there have been highly charged debates on this issue. Gamburd (209ff) investigates how “horror stories” about promiscuity, abuse, and harsh working conditions of domestic workers in the Middle East that circulate in the media and the world at large affect the experiences of Sri Lankan domestic workers and how others perceive them. Robinson (in Adams and Dickey) traces how political-religious organizations in Indonesia have brought this issue into public debate; they criticize the state for not sufficiently protecting migrant domestic workers and argue for putting an end to this form of labor migration. Migrant domestic workers have increasingly turned to Malaysia rather than the Gulf States, emphasizing the commonalities of ethnicity (being Malay) rather than those of religion (being Muslim). Elsewhere the effects of transnational migration on those left behind have become a source of political unease. In the mid-1980s, when migration by Filipina women who left their children behind increased rapidly, the problem of the “broken home” became a topic of national debate, as Parreñas (144) points out. Similarly, receiving states aim at controlling the employment of foreign domestic workers. Their policies are indicative of the relations between the state and the emerging new middle classes. Some states only allow particular types of families to employ foreign domestic workers (requiring certain income levels and family compositions) and particular categories of domestic workers to enter the country (such as only women from specific countries). Usually they also stipulate particular employment conditions, in some cases only allowing domestic workers to work on a live-in basis tied to one particular employer, limiting the duration of the labor contract, and explicitly forbidding permanent settlement and family reunification (see for instance Constable 1997 for Hong Kong). Despite such measures, considerable sensitivities about the employment of migrant domestic workers remain. Some blame mothers in better-off
migrant domestic workers 389 households for neglecting their offspring and poor local women for refusing to engage in this line of work, as has been the case in Jordan. Others warn of “national disaster scenarios” wherein children are insufficiently socialized as citizens of the nation-state in terms of such crucial markers as language and religion. The latter has been of particularly concern in those Gulf States such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates where foreigners make up the large majority of the population and an even larger part of the work force (see Longva 1997). Even if domestic workers find ways to circumvent state regulations, these various debates and forms of state intervention affect their position by limiting both their space of negotiation at the sites of employment and their options for forging and maintaining transnational family relations. As Anderson points out, women’s immigration status and whether or not they live with their employers have a major impact, with undocumented live-in domestic workers in a particularly vulnerable position. Turning to domestic workers’ identity construction, Adams and Dickey argue that this is less influenced by the country where they work, and more by whether they are working in their own country or abroad. Parreñas adds to this factor the impact of the composition of the migrant communities. Whereas in Rome, where virtually all Filipina women work as domestics, they experience exclusion from the dominant society, in Los Angeles, where domestic workers form a minority of the migrant population, they underline their exclusion from the Filipino middle class. transforming domestic space The production of domestic space needs to be placed in a wider societal and historical perspective. In tracing the history of paid domestic work, we must ask not only who is involved in what forms of paid domestic work, but also, “who is the domestic worker replacing.” This allows us to link the issue of migrant domestic labor to global inequalities, shifting relations between the state and society, and notions of modernity and morality that entail particular family relations, labor relations, and evaluations of domestic work. Constable addresses such issues in her book in an exemplary manner; she not only traces how Filipinas have replaced Chinese domestic workers (be it bondservants, sworn spinsters, or refugee women), but also points out how the notion of the “superior” Cantonese domestic is central to the present-day discourse on foreign domestic workers, and functions as a tool to put these foreign workers “in their proper place” (58). Paid domestic work brings together people from very different backgrounds in intimate and highly personalized interactions in the domestic sphere. Because “housework” is not only a necessity of life, but is central to social and cultural reproduction (Anderson), paid domestic work transforms at least two sets of identities: that of the employer and that of the domestic worker. Employing a domestic worker is not simply a strategy that enables female em-
390 annelies moors ployers to work in the public sphere; rather, it facilitates a particular higherstatus life-style. Yet tensions may occur between delegating housework and the work of care to domestic workers and hegemonic definitions of womanhood. Where women employers feel their identity and position as wife and mother threatened, mechanisms of control often focus on status, sexuality, and motherhood, as Constable (1997) shows for some Chinese employers in Hong Kong. Employers’ ways of dealing with domestic workers may range from harsh domination to more subtle forms of discipline, and various forms can coexist and sometimes compete. As Anderson reminds us, paid domestic work, entailing the repetitive performance of a particular persona, highlights the problematics of separating labor power from personhood. Various forms of “body politics” are central to such performances, expressing and producing particular sets of identities. “Body politics” includes styles of dress, make-up, hairstyle, and cleanliness in a broader sense, the use of language (and silence) and more generally demeanor, access to space (and privacy), and regulations of time (schedules and curfews). Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong, as Constable shows, often must follow timetables and work schedules, are told what to wear, how to have their hair done, and when to shower. Whereas the material control of employers over such basics as sleeping space, food, and hygiene is crucially important for employee well-being, especially for live-in domestics, these same fields are also symbolically highly charged. Commensality, for instance, is in many settings a key marker of belonging. Yet, power is not unilaterally held; with multiple identities and hierarchies at stake, the production of domestic space entails constant negotiation and multiple, if skewed, interdependencies as well. Hierarchies are not always linear, as Adams and Dickey show; in some cases the knowledge and even the formal education of domestic workers is superior to that of their employers. Constable (79) draws attention to the tensions that may arise when women employers whose middle-class status is quite recent and who view education as central to their upward mobility are confronted with the “downward” mobility of highly educated Filipina domestics. Parreñas, starting from the experiences of the domestics, points to the contradictory class mobility that Filipina domestic workers experience: a decline in social status coinciding with an increase in financial status (150). More generally, employers have to tackle the issue of how to incorporate domestic workers into the family household while simultaneously excluding them—they must be different from their employers, yet not too different. One common mechanism employed is to apply forms of quasi-kinship, with the domestic workers being “like a member of the family.” A number of contributors to Adams and Dickey’s volume, such as Weix and Adams for Indonesia, and Shah for Nepal, point to how such forms of quasi-kinship are nonreciprocal and feed into kinship relations that are clearly hierarchical (such as addressing domestic workers of whatever age as “younger sister”), while si-
migrant domestic workers 391 multaneously enabling domestic workers to make certain emotional and material claims. Domestic workers themselves reflect upon and partake in negotiations of difference and power in a great variety of ways. The books reviewed all reject conventional contrasts between domestic workers “either as passive pawns of exploitation or as active subjects successfully resisting control and discipline” (Constable, 203), but rather argue that cases reveal “neither full-fledged resistance nor complete acquiescence to hegemony” (Gamburd, 121). In concrete cases, the responses of domestic workers may vary from consensual to oppositional, and various combinations thereof. Dickey (in Adams and Dickey), for instance, poignantly illustrates how in a southern Indian city domestic workers and their employers use discourses about morality and civilization in a strongly oppositional mode. Constable shows how the actions of Filipina workers in Hong Kong include both forms of accommodation, acquiescence, and selfdiscipline (opposing Chinese stereotypes in the name of national pride), and a wide range of overt and covert forms of resistance. Next to everyday acts of subtle subversion, some domestic workers are also involved in political activism, varying from demonstrations organized by politically active migrant domestic worker groups in Hong Kong (Constable, 164ff ) to campaigns in the United Kingdom against the dependence of domestic workers entering the country with their employers (Anderson, 86ff ). In all cases, the social networks domestic workers are able to engage with are critically important, providing them with information, and material and emotional support. Whereas domestic workers tend to be labeled in terms of their national origin, religious difference is also a marker of identity in interactions between employer and domestic worker. Further, religion may frame the notion of paid domestic work (“service”) in particular ways. Religious beliefs may further the self-disciplining of domestic workers, may, as Constable points out, make it easier to deal with harsh situations, or provide arguments for oppositional positionings. The impact of religious organizations and institutions (e.g. churches) similarly varies (Anderson); they may well be a major resource that domestic workers turn to on their days off, and religious organizations may function similarly to placement agencies to “protect women domestic workers.” Many NGOs have a religious signature, and transnational networks of religious orders may also be involved in domestic work issues. In Rome, for instance, the Filipino Chaplaincy is the strongest advocate of Filipino workers, and provides them with spiritual activities, social services, and cultural activities (Parreñas, 205). producing transnational families The creation of transnational family relations appears as a mirror image of the production of domestic space at the locality of employment. If in the latter the
392 annelies moors household can be seen as a site of sharing space and time, within transnational families there are severe limitations to sharing space and time; if in the production of domestic space at the locality of employment the leading question is “who did this work previously,” for transnational families the question is “who is taking over the positions previously held.” Migrant domestic workers are a particularly salient case from which to discuss the production of transnational families from below, because it is by and large women who migrate. Yet, this gendered nature of paid domestic labor has remained undertheorized (see Hansen 1991). Often it has been taken for granted that paid domestic work is women’s work par excellence, both because it entails house and care work and because it is conducted in the domestic sphere. Still, even if the large majority of contemporary domestic workers are women (and children), this does not imply that women’s employment in this field is “natural.” Historical studies show that in parts of the world where women’s labor currently predominates in paid domestic work, men had previously also been employed as domestic workers, and in some areas, such as southern Africa and India, the employment of men as domestic workers is still common. There are in many settings strong tensions between women’s employment as migrant domestic workers and existing gendered divisions of labor, and these often center on the ideals of motherhood. Parreñas (249) notes a global commodification of caretaking that takes the form of a hierarchical chain of reproductive labor: domestic workers are taking care of the children of others, while their own children are cared for by kin, mainly female, and sometimes by local domestic workers. She points to a paradoxical result that mother-child ties are reduced to commodity-based relations, with love shown through material goods. Seeking greater economic security for the sake of one’s children goes hand-in-hand with a lack of intimacy and an increase in emotional insecurity. Precisely because of the expectations of traditional mothering, such forms of transnational mothering are often deemed insufficient. Gamburd (196) investigates the ways in which migration of Sri Lankan mothers has led to the “fragmentation of motherhood,” with mothering redistributed to a number of different people who, again, are often female relatives. She underlines that women, feeling a sense of pride in earning money, are able to broaden the spectrum of acceptable ways to love their children and care for their families. The perceptions of the women who remain in the village and look after the children of migrants has also changed, as they show a growing awareness of the market value of women’s domestic work. Simultaneously, women’s migration affects the ways in which men assert their masculinity; next to finding a job, this may vary from controlling women’s remittances to excessive use of alcohol. The migration of women domestic workers occurs at a specific intersection of the families’developmental cycle and the biographies of the persons involved. Family strategies and individual strategies are often hard to distinguish. If generally women argue that they leave for the sake of their families in order to pro-
migrant domestic workers 393 vide a better future for their children, both Parreñas (66) and Gamburd (144) emphasize that some also leave in order to get away from abusive relationships or to escape particular family demands. Furthermore, since migration is a process, migrant domestic workers may gradually shift their alliances. Constable, for instance, shows that some workers extend their stay abroad because they find it problematic to “fit in” again with their families of origin, and perceive advantages in staying abroad. Another set of questions focuses on what actually happens when these migrant domestic workers return “home.” How does their stay abroad, with all its intended and unintended consequences, influence how they relate to their kin and their communities at large? How might returned workers be able to use their experiences abroad, and the relations and networks they have built up there, to improve their wider societal positions and those of the next generation. As Gamburd (125) highlights, the person able to spend the money often acquires more authority than the person who earned it. In her case study she argues that, in general, women’s migration seems to strengthen family relations and result in some leveling of the distribution of wealth in the village, even if unequal class relations are simultaneously perpetuated (with wealthier households able to send men abroad who earn considerably more than the poorer households that send women). some questions for further research As these studies all indicate, migrant domestic work is an apt site for studying forms of transnationalism from below. Some authors focus mainly on the ways in which migrant domestic workers are involved in the construction of domestic space at the site of employment; others highlight how migrant domestic workers are involved in producing transnational relations with their families “back home” or elsewhere. One series of questions for further investigation, then, centers on how these two sets of involvements are interrelated, how they impact upon each other, and how they affect the multiple identities and social positions of migrant domestic workers. These questions will further stimulate theoretical engagements with conventional approaches to “the political” and “labor” that have separated the cultural from the political, the private from the public, and reproduction from production, approaches that have contributed to academic invisibility of domestic workers.1 While the studies reviewed are great contributions to debates about migrant domestic labor and identity politics, some issues need to be explored further. To start with, the dynamics of religion have remained undertheorized. If some attention has been paid to the overt workings of “political religion” in public debates about migrant domestic work, and the ways in which religious institutions are implicated in processes of migration, we need also to investigate the 1 These questions and the issues mentioned below are taken up in a research programme on “the cultural politics of migrant domestic work” that is being developed at the University of Amsterdam (further information:
[email protected]).
394 annelies moors much more covert cultural-religious notions submerged in normative ideas about the family, labor, and domesticity. This would reframe debates on transnational migration and religion by broadening the field of study beyond the mainly male migrants active in transnational political-religious movements; this larger field would encompass women migrants who are involved in the embodied expressions of religion embedded in the micro-politics of domestic relations, while they simultaneously partake in, and are objects of, debates about class, (trans)national, ethnic, racial, and religious identities. Another area for exploration is the impacts that the mass-media and new means of communication have both on political debates about migrant domestic labor and on the daily lived experiences of domestic workers. We need to ask questions about different genres of mass-mediated representations of domestics that are popular amongst specific audiences, and about how domestic workers themselves are involved in the politics of representation. There is an additional problem of regional biases in the literature. For example, there have been very few theoretically informed studies of migrant domestic labor in the Middle East2; the work done on domestic workers there has by and large dealt with their abuse. While it is important to bring human rights issues into debates about migrant domestic workers, a more inclusive approach is required that leaves space for domestic-worker agency in relationships with employers and their families. I close with a final note of caution regarding the very topic of migrant domestic workers. The attention paid to those traveling abroad to work as domestics ought not obscure the substantial number of women who are working in their own countries as domestic workers and who often find themselves in a very different position in terms of public discourse, NGO activism, and access to resources. Comparing the situations of these women to those who go abroad, and the ways in which these different forms of migration relate to each other, is another promising field of research. o t h e r wo r k s c ited Hansen, Karen. 1991. Domestic Service. What’s in It for Anthropology? Reviews in Anthropology 16, 1:47– 62. Longva, Anh Nga. 1997. Walls Built on Sand. Migration, Exclusion, and Society in Kuwait. Boulder: Westview Press. Ozyegin, Gul. 2000. Untidy Gender: Domestic Service in Turkey. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
2 A strong exception is Ozyegin (2000), a fascinating comparative study of two categories of rural women (living either in doorkeeper households or squatter settlements) that work for the Ankara urban middle class. She does, however, not deal with migrant domestic workers from abroad.
