Negotiating social location as a workplace strategy: Gorkhali women migrant domestic workers and South Asian employers in Bangkok

Persistent economic inequality between men and women, combined with differences in gender expectations and growing inequalities among women globally, has resulted in families “outsourcing” childcare by employing migrant domestic workers (MDWs). While studies have addressed the intimacy and complexity of “mothering” in such contexts, the agentic position of child-recipients of such care have seldom been explored. This article increases our understanding of care-relationships by examining their triangularity among children, MDWs, and mothers in Hong Kong. Drawing on in-depth interviews with young people who grew up with MDWs, alongside interviews with MDWs themselves, this article describes processes through which care work transforms into what Lynch describes as “love labor” in these relational contexts. In these contexts, commodified care from MDWs can develop, through a process of mutual trilateral negotiations, into intimate love-laboring relationships that, in turn, reflect larger dynamics of familial transformation that are endemic to “global cities.”

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Better a Friend Nearby Than a Brother Far Away? The Health Implications of Foreign Domestic Workers’ Family and Friendship Networks

American Behavioral Scientist ◽

10.1177/0002764220910220 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 64 (6) ◽

pp. 765-783

Author(s):

Jing Ye ◽

Feinian Chen

Keyword(s):

Hong Kong ◽

Local Community ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Protective Effects ◽

Personal Network ◽

Potential Health ◽

Daily Contact ◽

Foreign Domestic Workers ◽

Reported Health ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

Migrant domestic workers provide essential services to the families they live with, but they are not considered a part of the family. As a group, they are not well-integrated into the society and often suffer from social isolation. In this article, we explore the potential health buffering effects of their personal network, in terms of family and friendship ties in both the local community and their home country. Existing literature provides inconsistent evidence on who and what matters more, with regard to the nature, strength, and geographic locations of individual personal networks. Using data from the Survey of Migrant domestic Workers in Hong Kong (2017), we find that family ties are extremely important. The presence of family members in Hong Kong as well as daily contact with family, regardless of location, are associated with better self-reported health. Only daily contact with friends in Hong Kong, not with friends in other countries, promotes better health. We also find evidence that the protective effects of family and friends networks depend on each other. Those foreign domestic workers with families in Hong Kong but also maintain daily contact with friends have the best self-reported health among all.

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Co‐living with migrant domestic workers is associated with a lower level of loneliness among community‐dwelling older adults: A cross‐sectional study

Health & Social Care in the Community ◽

10.1111/hsc.13520 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ken Hok Man Ho ◽

Daphne Sze Ki Cheung ◽

Paul Hong Lee ◽

Simon Ching Lam ◽

Rick Yiu Cho Kwan

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Community Dwelling ◽

Sectional Study ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Community Dwelling Older Adults ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

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The Giving Up of Weekly Rest-Days by Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore: When Submission Is Both Resistance and Victimhood

Social Forces ◽

10.1093/sf/soz089 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 98 (4) ◽

pp. 1695-1718

Author(s):

Margaret Fenerty Schumann ◽

Anju Mary Paul

Keyword(s):

Work Experience ◽

Home Country ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Sociology Of Law ◽

Signaling Mechanism ◽

Contract Renewal ◽

Temporal And Spatial ◽

Using Data ◽

Do So ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

AbstractWhy do so few live-in migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Singapore utilize their weekly rest-day entitlement? Using data drawn from 3,886 online profiles of prospective MDWs and 40 interview sessions with MDWs, employers, and manpower agencies, we demonstrate how the industry encourages a “logic of submission” around rest-days. Through processual analysis, we unearth multiple, repeated moments of capitulation at key moments in a MDW’s work-life: (1) their interactions with a recruitment agency while still in their home country; (2) their matching with an overseas employer; (3) the duration of their two-year contract; and (4) the time of contract renewal. Submission to less frequent rest-days can secure their employability and financial mobility but also further individuates the MDW within the employer’s household and may lead to the engraining of a habitus of submissiveness towards their employers that can open the door to workers’ exploitation. We demonstrate how nationality and work experience further inflect this logic of submission to motivate non-Filipina and inexperienced MDWs to request even fewer rest-days than their counterparts. By combining feminist migration scholarship on Asian MDWs, with a sociology of law analysis, we offer up an example of how the same act of submission can simultaneously embody both resistance and victimhood depending upon the temporal and spatial scale used, and varying interpretations of the rest-day benefit as a much-needed respite, a monetizable benefit, or a signaling mechanism.

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THE ENDURING VULNERABILITY OF MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS IN EUROPE

International and Comparative Law Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0020589313000195 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 62 (3) ◽

pp. 599-627 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Clíodhna Murphy

Keyword(s):

International Law ◽

Migrant Workers ◽

Domestic Workers ◽

Employment Law ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Regulatory Frameworks ◽

Labour Standards ◽

And Migration ◽

Migration Law ◽

Migrant Domestic Workers

AbstractWhile the rights of domestic workers are expanding in international law, including through the adoption of the ILO Domestic Workers Convention in 2011, migrant domestic workers remain particularly vulnerable to employment-related abuse and exploitation. This article explores the intersection of the employment law and migration law regimes applicable to migrant domestic workers in the United Kingdom, France and Ireland. The article suggests that the precarious immigration status of many migrant domestic workers renders employment protections, such as they exist in each jurisdiction, largely illusory in practice for this group of workers. The labour standards contained in the Domestic Workers Convention, together with the recommendations of the UN Committee on Migrant Workers on the features of an appropriate immigration regime for migrant domestic workers, are identified as providing an alternative normative model for national regulatory frameworks.

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