Triangulations of “Motherly Love”: Negotiated Intimacies among Migrant Domestic Workers, Mothers, and Children

2021 ◽  
pp. 0192513X2199385
Author(s):  
Iris Hoiting
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Mothers And Children ◽  
Care Relationships ◽  
Relational Contexts ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

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.”

scholarly journals “Dad, Wash Your Hands”: Gender, Care Work, and Attitudes toward Risk during the COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 237802312096437
Author(s):  
Janani Umamaheswar ◽  
Catherine Tan
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Gender Differences ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Masculine Norms ◽  
Depth Interviews

Recent analyses of responses to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have posited that men’s dismissive attitudes toward the risks of the virus reflect their attempts to conform to masculine norms that valorize bravery and strength. In this article, the authors develop an alternative account of the gender differences in attitudes toward COVID-19. Drawing on three waves of in-depth interviews with college students and members of their households ( n = 45) over a period of 16 weeks (for a total of 120 interviews), the authors find that men and women in comparable circumstances perceive similar risks of COVID-19, but they diverge in their attitudes toward, and responses to, these risks. Connecting scholarship on gender and care work with research on risk, the authors argue that gender differences in attitudes toward risk are influenced by the unique and strenuous care work responsibilities generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which are borne primarily by women—and from which men are exempt.

scholarly journals Bodies of Hope and Disruption

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (Summer) ◽  
pp. 78-92
Author(s):  
Jillian Grisel
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Western Medicine ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Health Intervention ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Mental Health Intervention ◽  
Racial Hierarchies ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

One way neoliberalism and patriarchy maintain power is under racial hierarchies that legitimize the removal of non-white bodies to places of disposability. I aim to illustrate this violence and how it plays out through migrant domestic workers in a Lebanese context, tracing their pathway to incarceration. I also attempt to dispel the myth that suggests migrant domestic workers are victims in their location of disposability through my experience facilitating a mental health intervention in a Lebanese prison. I demonstrate this by reflecting on how Western medicine reinforces the oppression of migrant domestic workers relative to my own subjectivity and how they resist through acts of feeling and care-work.

scholarly journals “We Say ‘Mothers’ But Mean ‘Parents’”: Qualitative Perceptions and Experiences With Father Absence Among Curaçaoan, Curaçaoan-Dutch, and Dutch Young People

2021 ◽  
pp. 074355842110148
Author(s):  
Mariëlle Osinga ◽  
Diana D. van Bergen ◽  
Odette J. van Brummen-Girigori ◽  
Tina Kretschmer ◽  
Margaretha C. Timmerman
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Father Absence ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Absent Father ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Emotional Pain ◽  
Biological Father ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Depth Interviews

Perceptions and experiences with biological father absence might vary depending on the extent to which father absence constitutes a common family form, like it does in many Caribbean countries. The goal of this qualitative study was to better understand what it means to grow up without a father for Curaçaoan ( n = 19; 15–24 years), Curaçaoan-Dutch ( n = 15; 14–29 years), and Dutch ( n = 16; 16–26 years) young men and women. Findings from thematic analyses of ethically approved in-depth interviews revealed that most interviewees from all three cultural groups perceived no bond with and upbringing from their absent father. The interviewees noted emotional pain, but also mentioned that (m)others compensated for their father’s absence. Dutch interviewees were more negative about their absent father, and both Dutch and Curaçaoan-Dutch interviewees experienced more difficulties with respect to their father’s absence compared with Curaçaoan interviewees. Studying the similarities and differences between perceptions and experiences with father absence enriches our knowledge of what it means to grow up without a father. Doing so from young people’s point of view and across cultures has important practical value by providing a fuller understanding of the meaning of father absence for young people across cultures.

scholarly journals Służąca, pracownik, domownik. Polki jako pomoce domowe w Neapolu w kontekście retradycjonalizacji instytucji

2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-109
Author(s):  
Anna Rosińska-Kordasiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Domestic Worker ◽  
Fictive Kinship ◽  
Interactional Perspective ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Female Migrant ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

The text is based on fieldwork research in Naples, mainly on the analysis of in-depth interviews with Polish female migrant domestic workers. The analysis is presented against the background of re-traditionalisation of the institution of domestic service, caused by contemporary migration processes, which introduce serious asymmetry to the situation of domestic worker. Combining own research materials with the information from literature concerning contemporary and past domestic workers, the text aims at individuating and describing basic models of relationships between domestic worker and employers. The individuated models are: “overt degradation”, “fictive kinship”, “professionalisation” and “friendly professionalism”. The article employs symbolic-interactional perspective to show the interplay between models and perspectives and the ways the models are used in everyday interactions between domestic workers and employers.

Bordering domesticity: Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong’s contemporary art

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junting Huang
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Migratory Experience ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

Since the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of migrant domestic workers from the Philippines have moved to Hong Kong. As they filled the city’s growing demand for care work, they also altered the city’s art practice and cultural landscape. In this article, I propose to consider a double meaning of ‘domesticity’ – in both the language of motherhood and motherland – as a productive framework to investigate the migratory experience of Filipina domestic workers. Focusing on Cedric Maridet’s Filipina Heterotopia and Xyza Cruz Bacani’s We Are Like Air, I examine how ‘domesticity’ has become particularly pertinent to understanding the ‘border’ through the movement of bodies and the global transferral of care labour.

Financial Crisis and Migrant Domestic Workers in Spain: Employment Opportunities and Conditions during the Great Recession

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 1209-1229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zenia Hellgren ◽  
Inmaculada Serrano
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Job Destruction ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Family ◽  
Job Conditions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Female Migrant ◽  
Migrant Domestic Workers

This article explores the impact of the Great Recession on migrant domestic workers in Spain. We argue that the domestic service sector’s relative resistance to job destruction has transformed it to some extent into a refuge activity for unemployed women from other sectors, both migrants and native Spanish workers. This leads to intensified competition over jobs and increasing stratification among domestic workers, with serious consequences both for migrant women’s opportunities to make a living in Spain and for their migration projects at an international level. Based on 90 in-depth interviews with female migrant domestic workers and stakeholders, we find that this group of workers has been seriously affected by unemployment, underemployment, and worsened job conditions. As a consequence, new and already settled migrants find the chances to gain their livelihood in Spain substantially reduced, and many of those who migrated in order to support the family back home through remittances, or to save some money and eventually return, are at present unable to do so.

Cosmopolitan Empowerments and Biographical Trajectories among Young French Fans of Hallyu

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (34) ◽  
pp. 95-118
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Cicchelli ◽  
◽  
Sylvie Octobre ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
The Self ◽  
French People ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article explores the passion of young French people for the Hallyu, within the framework of an analysis of the contribution of the “consumption of difference” (Schroeder 2015) to the formation of the self through the figure of the 'cosmopolitan amateur' (Cicchelli and Octobre 2018a). We will first look at the reasons for the success of Hallyu in France then discuss the different forms of empowerment stemmed from the consumption of Korean products, among young people (74 in depth-interviews with young fans aged 18-31) with no previous link with Korea, which nurture their biographical trajectories.

Changing patterns of migration to Australia's Northern Territory: Evidence of new forms of escalator migration to frontier regions?

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Martel ◽  
Andrew Taylor ◽  
Dean Carson
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Life Events ◽  
Career Advancement ◽  
Work And Family ◽  
Northern Territory ◽  
Population Ageing ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Working Lives ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
New Perspective

Building on Fielding’s idea of escalator regions as places where young people migrate (often temporarily) to get rapid career advancement, this paper proposes a new perspective on 'escalator migration' as it applies to frontier or remote regions in particular. Life events, their timing and iterations have changed in the thirty years since Fielding first coined the term ‘escalator region’, with delayed adulthood, multiple career working lives, population ageing and different dynamics between men and women in the work and family sphere. The object of this paper is to examine recent migration trends to Australia's Northern Territory for evidence of new or emerging 'escalator migrants'.

The Innovators

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara J. Risman
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Gendered Expectations ◽  
Level Of Analysis

This chapter introduces the innovators and provides a portrait of them. The chapter analyzes these innovators at the individual, interactional, and macro level of the gender structure. The chapter begins at the individual level of analysis because these young people emphasize how they challenge gender by rejecting requirements to restrict their personal activities, goals, and personalities to femininity or masculinity. They refuse to live within gender stereotypes. These Millennials do not seem driven by their feminist ideological beliefs, although they do have them. Their worldviews are more taken for granted than central to their stories. Nor are they consistently challenging gender expectations for others, although they often ignore the gender expectations they face themselves. They innovate primarily in their personal lives, although they do reject gendered expectations at the interactional level and hold feminist ideological beliefs about gender equality.

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