Gender, Migration and Domestic Service (Routledge International Studies of Women and Place)

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE Global political and economic restructuring has led to more women seeking paid ...

Author: Janet Momsen

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GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

Global political and economic restructuring has led to more women seeking paid employment and to stronger flows of female migrants. The decline of the extended family, demographic changes and the shrinking of the welfare state are forcing middle-class women to seek assistance with domestic duties, as they spend more time outside of the home at work. This is coupled with a situation where affluent households affirm their middle-class status by the employment of domestic help. All of these factors result in an increase in demand for domestic workers, which is encouraging the migration of women from rural areas to cities, and from poorer countries to wealthier ones, to fill positions in domestic service. Gender, Migration and Domestic Service examines a wide range of migration patterns that have arisen, both on a national and international scale, exposing the tensions and difficulties inherent in this kind of movement. These include legal issues, both in terms of immigration laws and the contractual agreements (or lack of them) available to domestic workers; cultural and language diversities and barriers; the impact of the disruption to families caused by females moving to livein employment, and thus away from the family home; and empowerment issues on two levels—where the employer experiences an increase in status from employing domestic workers, and where the domestic worker experiences a change in status by contributing to the family income, of by their workplace providing an arena for social interaction which would otherwise be unavailable. Case studies are taken from Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Africa, and are based on fieldwork using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The various crosscutting aspects such as class, status, race and ethnicity, gender relations, violence, state controls on migrants, and motives of migrants are drawn out, and regional and national differences exposed. Janet Henshall Momsen is a Professor of Geography in the Department of Human and Community Development, University of California, Davis. In 1988 Professor Momsen founded the Gender Commission of the International Geographical Union and is currently a Director of the Association of Women in Development.

ROUTLEDGE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES OF WOMEN AND PLACE Series Editors: Janet Henshall Momsen and Janice Monk 1 GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE Edited by Janet Henshall Momsen Also available from Routledge:

DIFFERENT PLACES, DIFFERENT VOICES Gender and Development in Africa, Asia and Latin America Edited by Janet Momsen and Vivian Kinnaird FEMINISM/POSTMODERNISM/DEVELOPMENT Edited by Marianne H.Marchand and Janet L.Parpart GENDER, WORK AND SPACE Susan Hanson and Geraldine Pratt FEMINIST POLITICAL ECOLOGY Global Issues and Local Experience Edited by Dianne Rocheleau, Esther Wangari and Barbara Thomas-Slayter WOMEN OF THE EUROPEAN UNION The Politics of Work and Daily Life Edited by Janice Monk and Maria Dolors Garcia-Ramón WHO WILL MIND THE BABY? Geographies of Childcare and Working Mothers Edited by Kim England WOMEN DIVIDED Gender, Religion and Politics in Northern Ireland Rosemary Sales WOMEN’S LIFEWORLDS Women’s Narratives on Shaping their Realities Edited by Edith Sizoo GENDER, PLANNING AND HUMAN RIGHTS Edited by Tovi Fenster

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE Edited by Janet Henshall Momsen

London and New York

First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1999 Janet Henshall Momsen All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utlised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gender, migration, and domestic service/edited by Janet Henshall Momsen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Women domestics-Case studies. 2. Women alien labor-Case studies. 3. Women immigrants-Case studies. 4. Emigration and immigration law. I.Momsen, Janet Henshall. HD6072.G46 1999 99–11633 331.4’8164046–dc21 CIP ISBN 0-203-45250-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-76074-3 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-19067-3 (Print Edition)

CONTENTS

List of tables

viii

List of figures

ix

List of contributors

x

Preface 1

Maids on the Move JANET HENSHALL MOMSEN

PART I North America

xiii 1

21

2

Is this Canada?: domestic workers’ experiences in Vancouver, BC GERALDINE PRATT IN COLLABORATION WITH THE PHILIPPINE WOMEN CENTRE

23

3

Jamaican domestics, Filipina housekeepers and English nannies: representations of Toronto’s foreign domestic workers BERNADETTE STIELL AND KIM ENGLAND

43

4

Making maids: United States immigration policy and immigrant domestic workers DOREEN MATTINGLY

61

PART II South America

79

5

Race and domestic service: migration and identity in Ecuador SARAH A.RADCLIFFE

81

6

Transcending gendered boundaries: migration for domestic labour in Chile KATINA PAPPAS-DELUCA

95

PART III Europe

111

vi

7

Overseas domestic workers in the European Union: invisible women BRIDGET ANDERSON

113

8

The role of ethnicity in shaping the domestic employment sector in Britain ROSIE COX

131

9

Cinderella need not apply: a study of paid domestic work in Paris REKHA NARULA

145

Domestic work abroad: a necessity and an opportunity for rural women from the Goriška borderland region of Slovenia ANA BARBIČ AND INGA MIKLAVČIČBREZIGAR

161

10

PART IV Africa

175

11

‘Home is where the children are’: a qualitative study of migratory domestic workers in Mmotla village, South Africa TESSA LE ROUX

179

12

Working in the city: the case of migrant women in Swaziland’s domestic service sector MIRANDA MILES

191

PART V Asia

207

13

Interlinking trajectories: migration and domestic work in India PARVATI RAGHURAM

209

14

Maids in space: gendered domestic labour from Sri Lanka to the Middle East MUNIRA ISMAIL

223

15

‘Learning the ways of thepriyayi’: domestic servants and the mediation of modernity in Jakarta, Indonesia REBECCA ELMHIRST

237

16

Foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong and their role in childcare provision VICKY C.W.TAM

259

vii

17

Singapore women and foreign domestic workers: negotiating domestic work and motherhood BRENDA S.A.YEOH AND SHIRLENA HUANG

273

Conclusion: future trends and trajectories JANET HENSHALL MOMSEN

297

Index

301

TABLES

2.1 Number of individuals going to Vancouver and Toronto through the Foreign Domestic Movement (1982–92) and Live-in Caregiver Programs (1992–96) 4.1 Personal characteristics of domestic workers 4.2 Primary reason for first migration from Mexico to the United States 4.3 Why are more women doing domestic work now? 4.4 Education and occupation in Mexico before migrating by date of migration 8.1 Nationality of paid domestic workers in London 9.1 Migrant flows into France, 1946–60 9.2 Migrant flows into France, 1961–73 9.3 Women as a percentage of certain nationalities in France, 1946–90 9.4 Percentage of immigrant women within the population of France, 1911–90 9.5 Migrant women in France as a percentage of all migrants, by country of origin, 1996 11.1 Children of interviewees 13.1 Aid from Chettiar networks during migration 13.2 Kin aid for Devendras during migration 14.1 Labour migration from Asian countries to the Middle East, 1983 14.2 Distribution of migrants by ethnicity, 1985: (men and women) 14.3 Distribution of female Muslim migrants by age, 1993 14.4 Educational level according to ethnicity of migrants (%) 15.1 Employment history of domestic servants in Jakarta 15.2 Time allocation of a domestic worker and her employer’s household 17.1 Sociodemographic characteristics of foreign domestic helpers in Singapore 17.2 Sociodemographic characteristics of employers surveyed

26

64 67 68 72 136 147 147 149 149 150 186 213 216 224 225 229 230 243 253 276 278

FIGURES

10.1 The Goriška region of Slovenia 15.1 The daily time-space paths of individuals in a Jakarta household

162 251

CONTRIBUTORS

Ana Barbič is a Professor of Rural Sociology in the Biotechnical faculty of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has diplomas in education and Psychology, an MSc in Sociology and a PhD in Social Sciences and was vicepresident of the European Society for Rural Sociology, 1988–93. Her research is on gender and rural issues especially in frontier areas of Europe. Rosie Cox is a Lecturer in Economic Geography at Coventry University, UK. She has a BA from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, MA from the University of California, Davis and a PhD in Geography from the University of Coventry. Her research interests include gendered and segregated labour markets in the UK and Brazil. Rebecca Elmshirst is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Brighton, UK. She has a BA from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, MA from the Univerity of British Columbia and a PhD from Wye College, University of London. Her research centres on gender, environment and migration issues, especially in Indonesia. Kim England is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Programme in Planning at the University of Toronto, Canada. She received her PhD from the Ohio State University, USA. Her research interests include labour markets, geographies of families, childcare and working mothers, and urban spaces and social identities. Shirlena Huang is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography of the National University of Singapore. She has a PhD from the University of Toronto, Canada. In her research she covers issues of urbanisation and conservation, as well as gender, with a focus on migrant labour flows within the Asia-Pacific region. Munira Ismail was an Adjunct Instructor in Geography at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA and is now living in São Paulo, Brazil. She has an MA and a PhD from the University of California, Davis. Her research interests include Geographical Information Systems; and gender, space and ethnicities amongst rural communities in South Asia. Doreen Mattingly is an Assistant Professor of Geography and Women’s Studies at San Diego State University, USA. She received her PhD from Clark

xi

University after gaining degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focus is on urban social geography, women’s work and politics and research methodology. Inga Miklavčič-Breziger is a graduate of the University of Ljubljana and is studying for a Master’s degree in Cultural Sociology and Museology. She is currently curator of ethnology at the Museum for the Goriska region in Slovenia. Miranda Miles is a Swazi citizen and a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a PhD from the University of Witwatersrand. Her current research topics include women in domestic service, sustainable housing and urban governance. Janet Henshall Momsen is a Professor of Geography at the University of California, Davis. She holds degrees in Geography and Agricultural Economics from Oxford and McGill Universities and a PhD in Geography from the University of London. Her current research interests are in gender, rural development, entrepreneurship and tourism in Hungary, the Caribbean and Central America. Rekha Narula is a doctoral student at Sheffield Univerity, UK. She has taught at the University of Versailles and is doing research on domestic workers in Paris. Katina Pappas-DeLuca has an MA in Geography from San Diego State University and is currently working on her doctorate in the School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA. Her research interests include sexuality and health, behavioural science and population studies. Geraldine Pratt has a PhD from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and is currently a Professor in the Geography Department there. She is Editor of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. She writes about gender and race in relation to labour issues. The Philippine Women Centre can be reached at 451 Powell Street, Vancouver, BC, V6A 1G7, Canada (phone/fax:+1 604 215 1103). Sarah Radcliffe received her PhD from the University of Liverpool. She is a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests currently include issues of national and geographical identities; contemporary socio-political change in Andean Latin America; feminist geography; and crtiques of postcolonialism. Parvati Raghuram is a Lecturer in the Department of International Studies, Nottingham Trent University, UK. She completed her PhD at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Her research interests are gender and development issues, especially in India; ethnic minority entrepreneurship in Britain; and research methodology. Tessa le Roux obtained her D.Litt et Phil. in Sociology from the Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg and taught in the Department of Sociology, University of Pretoria, South Africa. She has recently moved to Boston,

xii

Massachusetts, USA. Her research interests focus on family structures, single parenthood, domestic workers as mothers, and migration and family life. Bernadette Stiell is currently conducting research in geographical education at the School of Education, University of Leeds, UK. She received her MA in Geography from the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interest lie broadly within social geography and the use of qualitative methodologies, with a particular focus on issues of class, gender and ethnicity. Vicky C.W.Tam is assistant Professor in the Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist Univerity. She obtained her PhD in family social science from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA. Her current research topics are immigration; adjustment among Chinese adolescents; and childcare in Hong Kong. Brenda S.A.Yeoh completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford and is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on the politics of space in colonial and postcolonial cities as well as on gender and labour migration (skilled and unskilled) in the Asian context.

PREFACE

The idea for this book came from a realization that many of my graduate students were choosing to do research on domestic service, as were many of the best young social science academics. At a conference in South Africa in 1995, organized by the Commissions on Population and Gender of the International Geographical Union, on the subject of ‘Gender and Migration’, many papers focused on migrant domestic workers. Two years later, a conference sponsored by the International Geographical Union Gender Commission on ‘Women in the Asia-Pacific Region: Persons, Powers and Politics’, held in Singapore, also saw many papers on domestic service. Clearly, this was an important contemporary issue that needed to be considered in a global context. I was also intrigued by the interest shown in the topic by young women who had never had experience of employing domestic help. Almost without exception, their research focused on the maid as victim. One of these individuals has recently admitted to me that as soon as her first child arrived, and she had to look for childcare herself, her ideas and attitudes changed. As mothers and employers we cope with feelings of guilt and ambivalence. For Asian and African researchers who have usually grown up with servants, studying these workers often creates feelings of guilt for not having realized earlier the difficulties faced by domestic servants. Remembering my own problems in searching for childcare almost thirty years ago, before transnational networks and agencies were as formalized as they are today, and my dependence on friends in the Caribbean and Europe to identify and interview candidates, I am amazed at how quickly the global system of such employment has grown. Studies of domestic service are unusual, in that they demand such reflexivity on the part of the researcher. If the maid is perceived or defined as having some form of ‘otherness’, then we are so defining ourselves and have to struggle with feelings of sisterhood, guilt and dependence in relation to the worker. I am very grateful to all those whom I approached for their efforts in meeting my deadlines, and for responding so positively to my suggestions for changes to their first drafts. I am especially appreciative of the efforts of the five contributors who produced babies during the gestation of the book. I am also extremely indebted to my research assistant, Molly Mugnolo, for all her help and efficiency in chasing up details and additional information from

xiv

contributors, also for implementing my editorial scribbles and formatting the chapters. Any mistakes are my responsibility. Finally, I should like to dedicate this book to my mother, Marjorie Eileen Henshall (1904–97), who died while the book was in production. She was always there to support me and to take care of my children, while I did fieldwork or taught in places as disparate as Rio de Janeiro, St. Lucia, Grenada, Barbados, Nevis and Montserrat, as well as Calgary, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and California. She was a truly transnational, global, and very adventurous mother and grandmother, and is sorely missed. I wish she could have read the finished book.

1 MAIDS ON THE MOVE Victim or Victor1 Janet Henshall Momsen

There is a growing interest in the marginalised, invisible, subaltern voices of our globalizing world. Amongst the most ignored have been those of migrant domestic workers, the vast proportion of whom are women (Phizacklea 1983; Lawson 1998). Until recently, women were statistically invisible in migration data and by taking up jobs within the private domestic sphere remained largely unrecorded in censuses, and often out of reach of labour unions and non-governmental organizations. Feminist scholars, in recent years, have analysed paid domestic service as a means through which asymmetrical, intersecting relations pertaining to gender, race, culture, class and citizenship status are structured and negotiated (Pratt 1997). They have argued that negotiations in the reproductive sphere are as crucial as (and cannot be divorced from) those within the productive sphere, in producing the hierarchies and matrices of domination and subordination which underpin gender relations. This is particularly pertinent in the light of the current climate of global economic restructuring, with major implications for the international mobility of female labour and the structural positions of women. In migration, women may choose domestic work as the only legal way to cross international boundaries. Sometimes this movement is illegal, as in the case of Paraguayan women working as domestic servants in Buenos Aires, or Hungarians crossing the border daily to clean houses in Vienna, or else it is largely undocumented, as in Singapore. Elsewhere, this international movement of women to work as domestic servants is highly regulated by governments. Today, migrant domestic workers, whether different in terms of citizenship, ethnicity or rural upbringing, now constitute a social ‘other’, subordinate directly to their employers and more generally to the urban host society. To explain the dynamics of the social relations of dominance and deference, a traditional explanatory framework has examined the phenomenon of domestic servants working in employers’ households as a culture-contact situation, wherein the tensions and relations between the foreign worker and the employer are read in terms of cultural oppositions. Not only does the framing of the ‘other’ operate at different levels, it often does so in mutually reinforcing ways. The ‘other’ is not monolithic but consists of degrees of ‘otherness’, accentuated by the coming together of different cultural worlds which diverge from and/or resonate with one another in multiple ways.

2 GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE

Hitherto, studies of migrant female domestic workers have tended to focus on one recipient country (Cock 1980; Bunster and Chaney 1985; Romero 1992; Gill, 1994; Huang and Yeoh 1996; Chin 1997; Constable 1997) or region (Jelin 1977; APDC 1989; Chaney and Garcia Castro 1989). This volume brings together an international collection of case studies from Europe, North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. It includes both inter-state and intra-state migrant domestic workers, and considers the worldwide commonalities in the experiences of these women, and the distinctive differences related to local conditions. Such comparisons, based on detailed field studies, provide new insight into the increasingly valuable and widespread phenomenon of the contemporary ‘maid trade’. Domestic service in historical perspective Secular trends in domestic service work have most often been explained in terms of the process of industrialisation and modernisation, but regional differences have been persistent. From the Middle Ages, servants were more common in northern Europe than in southern Europe and despite the ending of feudalism and the growth of new industrial jobs, by the mid-nineteenth century early censuses revealed that these patterns continued. In France, in 1872, servants made up 6.5 percent of the total population (5.2 percent of men and 7.6 percent of women), while in Belgium, in 1890,11.5 percent of the population were servants (13.7 percent of men and 9. 6 percent of women). In contrast, in Spain, in 1860, 1.3 percent of all men and 1. 5 percent of women were servants, and in Italy, according to the 1861 census, 1. 5 percent of men and 2.9 percent of women were servants (Reher 1998:208). Industrialisation and urbanisation are said to encourage the growth of the domestic service workforce, because they produce a servant-employing middle class and a surplus of unskilled female labour. Coser (1973) sees domestic service as a premodern occupation which is obsolete in a modern society. Similarly, Boserup (1970: 103) argues that ‘it is a characteristic feature of countries at an intermediate stage of economic development for a large number of women to be engaged in paid housework’. According to this model, the number of domestic workers declines rapidly as new opportunities for female employment become available, the size of middle-class families declines, and the mechanisation and commercialisation of household tasks eases the burden. The high number of domestic servants, amounting to one-fifth of the female workforce in many Latin American and African countries today, is seen as being related to their intermediate stage of development, but also to the low level of commercial services and to the polarisation of incomes (Kuznesof 1989). In those countries where slavery continued into the mid to late nineteenth century, as in Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States, or slave-like arrangements prevailed well into the twentieth century, as in East Asia, the industrialisation model may not be so relevant. Higman (1989) argues that the model does not hold for Jamaica, where the dual economy and the emergence of

MAIDS ON THE MOVE 3

a new bourgeoisie as the servant-employing class led to a decline in the social status of servants, with potential workers preferring to remain unemployed despite the improved wages available. In the nineteenth century, mechanisation of agricultural work drove many rural young women to seek employment as servants to the new middle classes in the cities. Around 2 million women were employed as servants in the second half of the nineteenth century in Britain, especially in southern England, when domestic service occupied over 40 percent of employed women, compared to 3–5 percent of the male labor force (Gregson and Lowe 1994). However, during the Second World War, many servants took up new occupations, as employment opportunities for women opened up. After the war, live-in servants disappeared from most middle-class homes and the feminine mystique persuaded women that they should do their own housework, although, as late as 1951,1.8 million people worked in domestic service in Britain, of whom 1.3 million were women. In the mid-nineteenth century, lack of employment opportunities for women and a shortage of prospective husbands, encouraged many young, single, and even married, European women to emigrate as servants. Some moved within Europe and the Mediterranean as wet-nurses and maids: Miklavčič-Brezigar and Barbič (Chapter 10 of this book) describe how rural Slovenian women exploited such opportunities in Egypt, following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. In the United States, most female servants in the north were Irish immigrants, but in the southern states they were predominantly Afro-American. Following the northward migration of southern blacks, it has been estimated that domestic service occupied three-quarters of the United States black female labour force by the 1920s (Katzman 1978). In Canada, Australia and the United States, the servant crisis of the late nineteenth century was met by encouraging the immigration of single women from Britain (Buckley 1977; Jackson 1984). In tropical and sub-tropical colonial areas, young rural women were sent to the cities by their families to support themselves as servants (Radcliffe 1990). Governments such as those in Mexico and Argentina ‘were known to place “vagrant” women arbitrarily in positions as domestic servants, in order to protect their morals and provide them with an education’ (Kuznesof 1989: 28). In China, many young rural women were forced into indentured servitude under the Mui Tsai System. Under this system young girls, sometimes under 10 years old, from impoverished families, were sold or adopted for their domestic services. Wages were rarely paid, but food and shelter were provided. Often, the mui tsai became a concubine of a male member of her employer’s household, or was married to a man of her employer’s choice and remained as a domestic servant. Others, although officially destined for domestic service, were sold to brothels. In the early twentieth century, there was a shortage of workers for household duties in Malaya and Hong Kong, and many mui tsai were brought from China. In 1934, almost 3,000 mui tsai were recorded in Malaya (including Singapore), and it was estimated that about 60 percent were ill-treated (Heyzer 1986). Today. the Mui Tsai System has been eradicated, but in many


contemporary societies variations of this system operate, encouraged by increasing rural poverty in many parts of the world.2 Even after such slavery was forbidden, Chinese women continued to seek domestic work in these neighbouring areas (Lai 1997). Long term patterns of urban families repeatedly seeking servants in the same villages and rural areas, are illustrated for Chile, by Pappas-DeLuca (Chapter 6 of this book), and for Indonesia by Elmhirst (Chapter 15 of this book). Yet, even in the global South, as city services such as the provision of water, electricity and garbage collection improved, and schooling expanded, the increased emphasis on mothering and the development of privacy as a family value, influenced households to employ fewer servants.3 The contemporary demand for domestic help is very different. The dual-career family emerged in the 1960s as a new femily form (Gregson and Lowe 1994) but one that could only function if there were surrogates to take over the wife’s domestic role. Sometimes, household tasks were shared between partners, and children or kin, usually the maternal grandmother, assisted. However, it is still a rare family in which women do not undertake a majority of the domestic tasks, even if they have a full-time job. It has been argued that by employing someone to undertake housework and childcare, the traditional household patriarchal system is preserved (Duarte 1989). The double burden of middle-class working mothers is reduced at the expense of increasing the burdens of the servant, who is often also a mother, as illustrated by le Roux (Chapter 11 of this book) and Yeoh and Huang (Chapter 17 of this book). In many countries, the 1980s saw a reduction in public social services provision, forcing families to turn to private hiring of workers to cope with childcare and elder care. In France, where state provision of childcare is more widespread than in most other western countries, domestic servants are mainly needed for household cleaning chores, as described by Narula in Chapter 9. Even where few women work outside the home, as in the Middle East, having a servant has become an important middle-class status symbol, according to Ismail (Chapter 14 of this book) as it has in Malaysia (Chin 1997) and in Europe (Chapter 7 of this book), despite growing participation of women in the labour market in these regions.4 The growth of dual-career families and the economic prosperity of the 1990s in the United States, has led to what The Economist (1998a:73) called the ‘nanny bubble’: Rich investment bankers with lots of children are moving into huge mansions where they need not one but often two live-in nannies. But there are not enough to go round. So the price of nannies…has soared. The hourly babysitting rate is nudging towards $20, while a live-in nanny can cost up to $700 a week, not to mention the costs of essential perks, such as a car and tennis lessons.

MAIDS ON THE MOVE 5

At the other end of the scale, politically, economically and geographically, in China, ‘the thousands of rural young women in Beijing permit even ordinary urban residents to employ rural women as maids…. When migrants return home during the Spring Festival, life in Beijing becomes “very difficult”…for all these essential services [housework, child and elderly care] remain undone’ (Roberts 1997:272). As shortages develop, more women in poor countries are encouraged to migrate by rising expectations of good salaries, which are often not realised (as described by Pratt et al. in Chapter 2 of this book). Employers also expect more, and the dual stress of role strain (Gregson and Lowe 1994) and financial burdens may lead to increased violence towards domestic servants. In most households, the migrant worker is seen as substituting for the labour of the wife, with the wife’s income paying for the cost of employing this surrogate housewife (see Chapter 2). In this way, domestic patriarchy is maintained (Duarte 1989) yet, at the same time, society is imposing a backlash on working mothers.5 Despite such problems, demand for domestic workers remains high, and in modern Britain there are now more maids than coal miners (see Chapter 8). Migration for domestic service Female contract labour for overseas employment is now highly organised, both by sending and receiving governments and by recruitment and placement agencies. These agents intervene between employee and employer by constructing representations of both. Even when such jobs involve only internal migration, regional stereotypes are reinforced by agencies and advertisements (Gregson and Lowe 1994; Bakan and Stasiulis 1995; Pappas-DeLuca in Chapter 6 of this book; Cox in Chapter 8). Rural residents are often preferred, as they are considered more malleable according to Elmhirst (Chapter 15 of this book) and docile and adept at domestic chores (Tyner 1996). Workers see migrating from the countryside to work in relatively wealthy urban homes as a way of becoming ‘modernised’, if only in terms of using household equipment, suggests Elmhirst (see Chapter 15). In Ecuador, this process is also seen by prospective maids as a step towards upward social mobility, epitomised as ‘whitening’, according to Radcliffe (Chapter 5 of this book), although black Ecuadorians scoff at such an ideology of social and cultural miscegenation. Most domestics also face culture shock in ways that are not always appreciated by the employer.6 Religion For many employers, this is a very important characteristic of the person who is to care for their children. The Roman Catholicism of Philippine workers benefits them in Italy and Spain. Sri Lankan Muslims are so heavily in demand by Middle Eastern employers that they command higher wages and do not have to pay fees to the recruitment agencies or their air fare. Without this debt, they can leave their jobs more easily than other Sri Lankans, and so are seen by the agencies as more


troublesome (Ismail and Momsen 1997). Yet, the ease of marketing Muslim maids is reflected in the fact that, although only 7.4 percent of the population of Sri Lanka is Muslim, they make up 23 percent of the domestic workers (see Chapter 14 of this book). Indeed, Samarasinghe (1998) argues that some Singalese Buddhists convert to Islam and adopt Muslim names in order to benefit from this religious preference in the job market. On the other hand, Malaysia is not so welcoming of fellow Muslims from Indonesia, because it is feared that they can blend in too easily with the Malay population, become permanent residents, and change the nation’s ethnic balance (Chin 1997). Vulnerability and violence Domestics and workers in the entertainment/sex industry are ‘increasingly recognised in the international community as the most widely exploited and most vulnerable to abuse and violence’ (Stasiulis and Bakan 1997:32) among migrant workers. One of the problems is the fluidity between these two occupations, as perceived by employers, and as sometimes created by unscrupulous recruitment agencies. In Singapore and Malaysia, female domestic workers have to undergo government-ordered regular pregnancy tests, supposedly to ensure that maids do not develop a sideline as prostitutes. Violence against domestics is hard to quantify, but it falls into various types: physical violence, ranging from rape to repeated slapping; overwork, including having to work for more than one household and being refused days off; non-payment of wages or a reduced salary; and poor living conditions, including lack of food and privacy (see Chapters 7 and 14). In the first quarter of 1996 alone, thirty Filipina domestic workers returned home in caskets, mainly from Hong Kong and Singapore (Nova 1997). Refusal to allow communication with families, withholding of passports, overwork and unpaid salaries were most prevalent in Saudi Arabia among Middle Eastern countries (Kanlungan Centre Foundation 1997), but the Philippines cannot stop sending workers to Saudi Arabia, because that country is the source of their oil supply (Javate de Dios 1995:8). Most workers suffered from more than one type of violence, and the trauma of their experiences affected their ability to reintegrate into society when they returned home (Nova 1997). There is a basic asymmetry in the relationship between the migrant domestic worker and her employer, in terms of the status and rights associated with citizenship. This makes the migrant worker more vulnerable to mistreatment, however, the work itself is seen as making citizenship or permanent residence possible, especially in Canada (Stasiulis and Bakan 1997), the United States (Colen 1990) or Europe (Sørensen 1998). In spite of this, many migrant workers are illegal, and choose to work as live-in domestics because it is an occupation which provides a place to live for newly-arrived immigrants, and is least likely to be checked by immigration authorities and employers, who often do not worry about the legal status of their worker (Kossoudji and Ranney 1984; Mattingly in Chapter 4 of this book; Anderson in Chapter 7).7 These workers are the most

MAIDS ON THE MOVE 7

vulnerable, as they are denied the right of appeal to even the weakly enforced contract regulations of their natal countries, their country of residence or a recruitment agency. In Italy, domestic workers are predominantly part of the large black economy (Campani 1993; Barsotti and Lecchini 1995; Miklavčič-Brezigar and Barbič in Chapter 10 of this book) and migrant women domestic workers (legal and illegal) are thought to be more prevalent in Italy than in other European countries.8 It is estimated that there are seven times more illegal than legal Indonesian migrant workers, and that 60 percent of Sri Lankans migrate outside official channels (Stasiulis and Bakan 1997:37). In Singapore, in 1994, 95 percent of Filipino overseas contract workers did not have work permits from the Philippine government, and, despite the ban on the deployment of domestic workers to Kuwait imposed by the Philippine government in 1988,24,000 Filipinas were working there as domestics in 1995 (Stasiulis and Bakan 1997). Public awareness of the extent of illegal Filipina workers came about as a result of the Flor Contemplacion ‘mega drama’ (Cooper 1997). Flor Contemplacion was hanged in Singapore on the March 17,1995, for the murder of a fellow Filipina and the child of her employer. Her execution occurred in the run-up to a fiercely fought election in the Philippines, and led to the resignation of two Cabinet members and a temporary ban on the employment of Filipinas in Singapore as maids, as well as to a reduction in the level of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The situation soon returned to normal, with between 70,000 and 80,000 Filipina domestic helpers in Singapore in the fiscal year 1996/7 of which 80 percent came as ‘tourist workers’ without work permits from the Philippines (Gonzalez 1997). This arrangement is legal in Singapore but is not considered so by the Philippine government. Similar ‘mega dramas’ have occurred in the Middle East (see Chapter 14) and in the United States and France (see Chapter 7). The status of migrant domestic workers, whether legal or illegal, is a human rights problem. In 1990, the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. As of December, 1997, only eight countries had ratified the Convention (Philippine Migrants Rights Watch/ Asian Partnership in International Migration 1997). Twenty ratifications are needed to make the Convention legally enforceable.9 Immigration policies It has been argued that immigrant women are the ‘absent centre’, ignored in policy, research and action on women’s rights and immigration (Hoskyns and OrsiniJones 1995:53). Specific immigrant quotas for workers to fill areas of perceived shortage, have the effect of not only gendering domestic work, but creating an overlap of gender, age and ethnic segregation in different national labour markets (see Anderson in Chapter 7 of this book). For example, until 1996, special visas allowed Filipinas to enter the United States more easily as nurses than as domestics, 10 althoughthey could not work as nurses in Italy, as this profession was restricted


to Italians until recently (Campani 1993). In the 1960s and 1970s, West Indians were especially favoured in the Canadian market for childcare workers (Henry 1968). In the United Kingdom, at this time, West Indians, as Commonwealth citizens, could enter as nurses (Beishon et al. 1995), and women from the French Caribbean played a similar role in France, whereas southern Europeans, especially Portuguese women, found it easier to get work permits as domestics in Britain (see Chapter 8). Canada now demands higher standards of education and experience, so that West Indians have been largely displaced by Filipinas, as described by Pratt in Chapter 2, and Stiell and England in Chapter 3. Young Europeans can now enter the United States on special visas, as au pairs, to work as household helpers. These visas dictate the number of hours to be worked per week and the minimum wages to be paid but there is much non-compliance.11 Japan does not allow employment of domestic servants in Japanese homes, limiting foreign female migrants to work in the entertainment industry, or for diplomats based in Japan. In Pakistan, because of the problems faced by their migrant maids in the Middle East, only older women were allowed to take jobs there. In India, changes in the demographic structure of migration streams have resulted in domestic service changing from a male occupation to one for older women, and, more recently for younger women, according to Raghuram (Chapter 13 of this book). Such labour market segregation is a function of official immigration and employment policies, both national/federal and state/provincial, as described by Mattingly in Chapter 4, by Anderson in Chapter 7 and by Cox in Chapter 8, and of stereotyping by gatekeeping agencies and employers (Bakan and Stasiulis 1995), as illustrated by Pratt in Chapter 2, by England and Stiell in Chapter 3, by Cox in Chapter 8 and by Narula in Chapter 9. It is also influenced by national immigrant networks, which tend to reinforce the concentration of certain groups of people in domestic service in particular countries (Campani 1993). This phenomenon is also described by Raghuram (see Chapter 13), Miklavčič-Brezigar and Barbič (see Chapter 10) and Miles (see Chapter 12). Remittances Foreign-exchange remittances from these workers have become vital to many of the governments of the labour-exporting countries, as well as to the families of individual workers, as detailed by Miklavčič-Brezigar and Barbič (see Chapter 10). Although it is difficult to separate money sent by women domestic workers from that remitted by other migrants, and an unknown proportion goes through informal, and therefore unrecorded channels, it is estimated that in the whole of Asia, overseas workers in 1995 sent home some US$75 billion, about one-third more than was received in foreign aid. Since the proportion of women among these migrants has been growing, and, generally, women are more consistent and reliable transmitters of remittances to their families back home, a high proportion of such remittances must come from women domestic workers.

MAIDS ON THE MOVE 9

Chin (1997:365) suggests that Indonesian and Filipina domestic workers remitted between one-third and one-half of their monthly earnings to their families. In 1994, remittances from foreign domestic workers were the third largest source of foreign exchange for Sri Lanka. Samarasinghe (1998) states that in 1994, 84 percent of Sri Lankan workers in the Middle East were women, with even more being recruited to work in Singapore, Italy, Greece and Cyprus. These women saved well over 90 percent of their earnings, according to Samarasinghe, and remitted almost all of these savings home. Most of this money goes into paying off debt (Ismail and Momsen 1997) and improving their homes. Such economic targets are usually met (Ismail and Momsen 1997; Miklavčič-Brezigar and Barbič Chapter 10 of this book). Unfortunately, a large number of husbands quit their jobs as soon as their wife starts sending money back, and with family needs and expectations continuing to grow, she is forced to accept a further contract in order to support the family when she returns home after completion of her initial contract (Ismail and Momsen 1997). The figures also fail to take into account remittances in kind, such as clothes, toys and electronic items, that are sent or brought back by these workers. Clearly, the trade in female domestic workers is so important financially to the sending countries, and to the families of the migrant workers, that it is impossible for it to be stopped. For governments, such as that of the Philippines, which is faced with structural adjustment of its economy and a growing population, the export of young workers reduces the number of unemployed, and thus the danger of social disaffection. It also provides a cheap flexible labour force, willing to undertake low-paid work in the recipient countries: this allows employment of these countries’ skilled female workers outside the home, without the need for government social services to replace their reproductive work. This commodification of the transnational ‘maid trade’ between the global south and the rich industrialised nations of the north, is beneficial to both exporting and receiving countries, and has become highly politicised, with profits being taken by official and unofficial agencies at all stages of the migration process. Education Many people ascribe this migration predominantly to the push factors of poverty at home (Enloe 1989), but we should not ignore the importance of individual decision-making. Both structure and agency are involved in migration, and the more educated the worker is, the more likely it is that she has made a personal decision to move. People taking jobs as domestic workers are not necessarily the poorest and least skilled. Migrants are increasingly well-educated and from families with sufficient income to fund the costs of migration. Ismail (Chapter 14 of this book) shows that it is the better educated Muslim women who migrate to the Middle East from Sri Lanka, and Campani’s research in Tuscany indicated that most Filipina domestics were from lower-middle-class families, with 70 to 80 percent having completed high school (Campani 1993:197). Domestic workers


going to Canada under the Live-In Caregiver Programme now must have finished high school and have some experience of childcare work. Pratt (1997:173) reports that Canadian nanny agents trivialised Filipinas’ educational attainments, in order to provide a ‘comfortable rationale to Canadian households for what might otherwise be conceived of as a highly contradictory situation: low-priced, welleducated labour’. It is perhaps not surprising that several of the Filipina maids interviewed by Pratt, complained of becoming de-skilled during the two years they had to spend in domestic service (see Chapter 2), as did West Indian domestics in New York (Colen 1990), and former weavers from Tamil Nadu in Delhi (see Raghuram in Chapter 13). In 1995,17 percent of Filipinas in Singapore had a university degree, and 45 percent had some tertiary education (Gonzalez 1997: 15). Mattingly (Chapter 4 of this book) also notes that the current economic crisis in Mexico is leading to the migration of trained teachers and nurses to the United States, where they can earn more as maids than they can working in their professions in Mexico. On the other hand, Pappas-DeLuca (Chapter 6 of this book) argues that rural migrants in Chile take jobs as domestics in Santiago, in the hope that they will also be able to advance their education in the city. Such an aspiration is often frustrated in the case of maids in South Africa, according to le Roux (Chapter 11 of this book) and for Filipinas in Vancouver (Chapter 2 of this book). Many workers are mothers, and seek the relatively high-paying jobs as surrogate mothers in other people’s homes in large cities or overseas, in order to allow their children to be better educated and to lead more comfortable lives (see Chapters 6 and 17). Although the presence of the domestic worker may maintain the patriarchal family ideal of gendered divisions of labour,12 the worker herself may be utilizing these traditional ideas to free herself from restrictive family control and to seek for new opportunities, according to Pappas-DeLuca (see Chapter 6) and Ismail (see Chapter 14). Much work on migrant domestic workers sees them only as victims, forced to take up this work by poverty. However, it is only the more enterprising who dare to undertake such migration and although economic issues may be foremost in their decision-making (Ismail and Momsen 1997), many are seeking adventure, freedom, independence, education, training and social upward mobility. A few succeed spectacularly, as shown by Ismail in Chapter 14. Despite the incredible restrictions and controls imposed by employers and immigration laws, many maids develop systems of resistance. The space of domestic work Domestic service, by its location within the private domestic space of the employer, transgresses the boundaries of the public/private, production/ reproduction dichotomies. Such dualisms are based on power, and are socially constructed in order to maintain an opposition between sameness and difference (Pile 1994). Furthermore, as Radcliffe (1993:103) has argued, ‘the reality of women’s lives goes beyond simple dichotomies, and is embedded in active

MAIDS ON THE MOVE 11

engagement with subjecthood, identity and social transformation’. Domestic space can be seen as a contact zone, within which, negotiations over ‘otherness’ and identity, based on race, class, religion, age, education, sophistication and citizenship are constantly underway (see Chapter 17). These negotiations are not always based on a unidirectional power relationship, but change as the household becomes ever more dependent on the alien, the ‘other’ who is in the midst of the most private confines of the family. Buang (1997) looks at the tension between the benefits and constraints for employers of migrant housemaids in Malaysia, and calls them ‘elusive rescuers’. Pratt (Chapter 2 of this book) shows how Canadian employers struggle to cope with a nanny’s illness, or her days off. Dominance and deference, exploitation and engagement, are continuously restructuring the relative positions of employer and employee within the space of reproduction. Pappas-DeLuca argues that this inter-dependency allows the maid to develop a space of resistance. She sees this as a complex situation, in which physical and social mobility are literally and figuratively in conflict. The prospect of work in the apparently protected space of a private home may have persuaded the maid’s parents/husbands to allow them to leave the haven of their own home, and to move to the city or to a different country (Jelin 1977). Indeed, some employers see the offer of free accommodation within their home, especially to refugee women, as a form of charity, which should be sufficient reward for the work expected of these migrant women (see Chapter 7 of this book). The spatial and physical restrictions experienced by domestic workers within their employers’ households, parallel the constraints they experience in the wider society as a result of their sex and class. In Chapter 6, there is an exploration of how migrant maids negotiate with their physical spaces, as well as their gender roles, in apparent attempts to maximise their mobility within employers’ households and, thus, in society at large. This space of resistance may be seen as a Third Space’, created by the very act of labour migration. McDowell (1995) suggests that the largely metaphorical locational terminology of postmodernism, is now paralleled by the dislocations caused by the reshaping of the real world, as migrant flows move over ever-greater distances, and women, in particular, move from the margins to the centre. Such large-scale movement of women, personalises and feminises a tension between the global and the local, which Bhabha (1994) sees as creating new and transitional, or hybrid, identities through the intermixing of peoples. Living within the private space of a strange family, caring for children and performing menial tasks for them, accelerates such hybridisation of identity for domestic workers. Bhabha (1994:218) further suggests that this migration opens up ‘a cultural space —a third space—where the negotiation of incommensurable differences creates a tension peculiar to borderline existences. He defines the residents of this third space as continuously remaking the boundaries and challenging the bases of difference. Such is the hybrid identity of maid and mistress, with similarities of femininity and motherhood sometimes overcoming differences of race and class. Similarly, sex tourism in the Philippines can be viewed from the perspective of


negotiated spaces of identity, with the bar as a third space, within which differences between Western men and Filipinas are negotiated (Laws 1997:110). The private space of the maid within the employer’s household private space has to be negotiated, and there is strong resistance to sharing this space with a child (see Yeoh and Huang in Chapter 17 of this book) or with another employee (see Miles in Chapter 12). Outside the workplace, a parallel negotiation takes place within the host country, and a third-space meeting place for maids is often created as a place of sustenance and resistance. This may be a community centre, as in Vancouver (Chapter 2), a refuge provided by the Church (Chapter 10), or even a public park where nannies can gather on their days off, as in Hong Kong (Chapter 16). Where the dominant presence of an immigrant group is resented by local residents, a private third space consisting of a supportive network offering job openings, legal advice and cheap overseas telephone calls (Sørensen 1998); or emergency accommodation and cultural activities (as in Vancouver); contact with compatriots and religious support, as described by Miklavčič-Brezigar and Barbič (Chapter 10 of this book) for Slovenians in Egypt and Italy; or the short-term emergency job replacements mentioned by Raghuram in Chapter 13, provides an opportunity for the reinforcement of local identities. Organisation of the Book The chapters have been organised by continent, because these reflect quite different circuits of migration, with distinctive legal restrictions and nationalities involved. Filipinas are global workers to be found on all continents; Sri Lankans, although still going mainly to the Middle East, are beginning to move more widely, and Europeans are taking up élite positions in North America. However, on the whole, migration is short distance. Most domestic workers in the United States are from Mexico and the Caribbean; in Europe, they come from southern and eastern Europe and North Africa, and in Asia from Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines, to Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. The coverage is well balanced, with three chapters on North America, two on South America, four on Europe, two on Africa south of the Sahara, two on South Asia, and three on South East and East Asia. All the authors base their findings on interviews, usually of employees, sometimes of employers, as in the case of Hong Kong and Singapore (Chapters 16 and 17) and London (Chapter 8), sometimes of gatekeepers (Chapters 3, 8 and 14), and often of all three. In preparing their chapters, contributors were asked to consider the varying perceptions revealed by the interviews, the impact of official gatekeepers on migration for domestic work, and the major characteristics associated with this work in their own particular research site. The sixteen chapters include six on internal, rural-to-urban migration (Chapters 5, 6, 11, 12, 13 and 15), two involving daily commuting in part (Chapters 4 and 10), and eight on


international labour migration, of which five (Chapters 2, 3, 14, 16 and 17) involve short-term contract migration. Several themes emerge, cross-cutting all regions. First, is the stereotyping and representation of maids by employers and agencies, and in migration rules. This stereotyping is based on race, ethnicity, class, caste, education, religion and linguistic ability, and results in a degree of ‘otherness’ for all domestic servants. However, such a formalisation of difference does not always put the servant in the subordinate position, and can vary from place to place. Professionally-trained British nannies occupy an élite niche in Britain and North America, and may indeed be seen as looking down on their employers (Stiell and England in Chapter 3 of this book). In Malaysia, Indonesians are considered better workers than Filipinas, although they are paid less (Chin 1997). In Canada, Filipinas are preferred to West Indians, because they are seen as less aggressive (Chapter 3). Filipinas also benefit from their ability to speak English and Spanish, and their Roman Catholicism, in Europe. Sri Lankan Muslims are preferred in the Middle East as being most suitable for childcare in Muslim families, and the ability of most Sri Lankans to speak some English makes them welcome in Singapore. Second, is the distinction between working as a live-in domestic and living out. In countries where living in is a condition of entry, as in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Middle East, it is especially resented as a control over the worker, leaving her vulnerable to exploitation and ill-treatment. On the other hand, the provision of accommodation may be a very important benefit for a newlyarrived migrant, as discussed by Raghuram in Chapter 13, allowing them to save money and minimise travel-to-work time, as African research shows (see Chapters 11 and 12). Most will move out as soon as possible in order to have privacy, set up their own family (Pappas-DeLuca in Chapter 6) or have their own piece of land on which to be buried. Having your own home and working on a daily basis is seen by many immigrant women as a first step in upward social and professional mobility (Campani 1993). Often, working for several households can bring in more income than living-in and working for one family, (see Mattingly in Chapter 4 and le Roux in Chapter 11). A third theme is the importance of networks. Networks of kinfolk may be important in obtaining the job (see Chapters 2, 6, 13 and 15). Organisations established by the church, labour unions or non-governmental organisations13 for domestic workers, might provide support, training and advice (see Chapters 6 and 10). Organisations set up by domestic workers themselves, may also be of vital importance for newly arrived migrants (see Chapter 2 of this book and Sørensen 1998), in providing services and a place to which they can go in their time off. Migration for work in domestic service, although having deep historical roots, has been reinvented in the last two decades, in response to the global spread of neo-liberal economic policies and the increased paid employment of women. It has now become a transnational activity, in which women leave their native land to work for a short period in a foreign country, in order to support the families left behind. The impact of this new activity on the women themselves and their


families,13 and its future trajectory in the face of what may be a global recession, will be discussed in the concluding chapter. Notes 1 In this chapter the terms ‘maid’, ‘housemaid’, ‘domestic’ and ‘domestic worker’ are used interchangeably to denote an individual worker undertaking a range of reproductive tasks for a private household. 2 In 1993, in a village in Yunnan, southern China, I was told by the village leader that the local government had just that year passed a law forbidding parents to sell their daughters as ‘housekeepers’. Two years earlier, in an even more remote minority village in the mountains of Yunnan, I met a man who had been captured as a child some forty years earlier in battles between rival warlords, and enslaved by his captors. Such slavery did not end officially until 1956. He was ethnically different from other villagers, but had eventually been allowed to marry and was integrated into the community of his former enemy: both he and the village leaders were willing to talk openly about this episode in local history. Hooper (1998) reported that there were 25,000 foreign prostitutes in Italy including Nigerians, Albanians and Poles, many of whom had been abducted from their own countries or lured to Italy with promises of formal sector jobs. Most had had their identification papers taken away and were kept under tight control by their captors and/or pimps so that very few have been able to appeal to local authorities for assistance. 3 My mother-in-law, who lived in Rio de Janeiro from the 1920s until the 1970s, employed six full-time household staff. Her daughter, who lived in São Paulo, had one full-time live-in maid, while today, her grandchildren living in Brazil have only once-weekly cleaning ladies. When my mother-in-law retired to the United States, she managed with three full-time immigrant household staff. Her children in North America turned to immigrant (Mexican, Jamaican-English) mother’s helps for childcare, and one of her grandchildren offered childcare for others in her own home. Her nephew in Paris employs a male Sri Lanka Tamil refugee. Today, the Swiss nanny who worked for the family in Rio, lives a comfortable life in Los Angeles, at the age of 94, being cared for by the youngest of her charges, a woman, and by the son of another of her former (male) charges. 4 Economic crisis and falling prices for petroleum combined with improvements in women’s education, are overcoming social restrictions on working women in Muslim countries. The Economist (1998b: 48) reported that there were now over 250,000 working women in Saudi Arabia, many of whom were utilizing electronic media (telephone, fax and the soon-to-be, on-line e-mail) to run businesses, while still avoiding meeting men face to face. 5 See for example the Louise Woodward case, where an English au pair, described as a nanny, was convicted of murdering her young charge. The mother, an ophthalmologist, was severely criticised by the media for leaving her child in an employee’s care. 6 When I employed a Jamaican mother’s help in Calgary, Canada, she had never before been out of Jamaica. She was puzzled by the ‘hole in the wall’ (the fireplace), the use of blankets on the beds and the loss of all greenery in the garden as temperatures fell in the autumn. Both the Jamaican, and the English woman whom I employed


7

8

9 10

when I had my second child, could not believe the Albertan winter weather of brilliant sunshine with below-zero temperatures. Despite repeated warnings, the Jamaican went out without gloves and got incipient frostbite in her fingers, and the English woman, a trained nurse, on a weekend backpacking trip to the Rockies, had to be airlifted out with hypothermia. Fortunately, I had insisted that she be accompanied on this excursion by Albertan students trained in mountain survival techniques. She later married one of these companions and now lives in British Columbia. Only in cases of high-profile employers, is the legality of such workers checked in the United States. When Jane Harman ran as a candidate for governor of California in 1998, she was criticised for employing a British nanny, from 1989 to 1992 who did not have the legal right to work in the United States. This issue was first raised when Harman won her congressional seat in 1992. In 1993, both Kimba Wood and Zoe Baird had their nominations by President Clinton for attorney general rejected, after revelations that they had hired undocumented immigrant women as nannies. In 1998, the ‘nanny tax’, which, in the United States, is owed on wages paid to childcare providers, housecleaners and other in-home workers, was reportedly one of the taxes least likely to be paid, because it was rarely enforced. The number of households paying this tax fell from 500,000 in 1994, immediately following the Wood and Baird cases, to 314,000 in 1996 (Johnston 1998). In 1984, legal, non-EU foreign female domestic workers made up only 6 percent of the total, but by 1987 they constituted 52.2 percent of the total number of registered domestic workers (Campani 1993:206). The main source nations were the Philippines, the Cape Verde Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, El Salvador and Peru (Campani 1993). Hoskyns and Orsini-Jones (1995:63) explain the importance of domestic workers in Italy as follows: ‘Italian women are very house-proud and like to have a helper in the house. Since very few indigenous Italian women are willing to work as [domestic servants], the immigrant [domestic servant] is usually the easiest choice, as she is relatively easy to find, works long hours and, if undocumented, cannot complain of the way she is treated by her employers.’ They also blame the inefficiencies of the Italian welfare system, which forces Italian women to look after old and sick relatives, thus increasing the need for help in the house (Campani 1993). Despite recent attempts to regularise undocumented immigrants and tighten border controls, Italy is still seen as a relatively easy route for illegal entry into the European Union (Campani 1993). The Philippines is the only Asian country to have ratified this Convention by December, 1997. The H1-A program that admitted foreign nurses, expired in 1996. About 35,000 H-1A visas were issued to foreign nurses between 1989 and 1996. The United States House of Representatives immigration subcommittee held a hearing on November 5th, 1997, on a bill that would permit up to 500 foreign nurses to enter the United States each year to work at hospitals in poor neighbourhoods. The demand for nurses is still there, especially for geriatric care. In January, 1998, the United States government broke up a ring that brought nurses into the United States fraudulently, under a temporary foreign-nurses program intended to alleviate nursing shortages. Five Americans, led by Billy Denver Jewell, a Texan owner of 22 nursing homes, pleaded guilty to submitting more than 1,100 fraudulent petitions to bring in registered nurses. The Filipina and Korean nurses brought in by Jewell, paid recruiters in their countries between $1,500 and $7,500 for visas, and Jewell


collected another $1,000 to $1,500 from each nurse employed in his nursing homes. Jewell paid them between $5 and $9 an hour, instead of the prevailing wage of $14 per hour. The State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service said that this was the largest visa fraud investigation ever conducted in the United States (Martin 1998). 11 The United States exchange visitor program, issues J-l visas to foreigners coming to the United States as part of a cultural exchange program. One part of the J-1 program is the au pair program, which was made permanent by 1997 legislation. The United States Information Agency, rather than the Department of Labor, administers the au pair program, which has brought about 50,000 European domestic helpers to the United States since it started in 1986. About 8,000 were expected in 1997. The au pair program is meant to provide an educational and cultural exchange ‘with a childcare component,’ in which the employee is treated as an equal by the employer. Under regulations adopted in February, 1995, to curb past abuses, United States households must pay au pairs at least $155 a week, for a maximum of 10 hours a day and 45 hours of responsibility a week. Au pairs caring for children under 2 years of age must be at least 21 years old and have 200 documented hours of childcare experience. Eight agencies are certified to bring au pairs to the United States. They charge families in the United States between $3,000 and $4,000 to find an au pair for them, and then counsel the family and the visiting foreigner while they are together. One agency advertises that ‘au pairs are cheaper than daycare.’ Most au pairs must post a bond with the agency that arranges for them to enter the United States. In November, 1997, a 19–year-old British au pair, Louise Woodward, was convicted of second-degree murder when the baby in her care died. However, the judge reduced her crime to manslaughter and sentenced her to time-served, resulting in her immediate release. Clearly, the regulations for au pairs were not followed in this case. 12 The patriarchal household is further maintained by the common belief that the salary of the domestic worker is related only to the earning power of the wife and mother. In Canada, the tax system reinforces this by allowing the costs of childcare to be deducted from the income of the lowest-paid member of the employing household, usually, and formerly, specifically, the mother. 13 I have received a great deal of help from Fe Caridad M.Sarmiento, an NGO worker from the Philippines, and Sih Handayani, who founded an NGO in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 1992, to empower domestic workers. Both Fe and Sih were awarded Fellowships in 1998 under the program funded by the Ford Foundation run by the Gender and Global Issues Group at the University of California, Davis, in the Spring Quarter of 1998. They are both working to train domestic workers and to make them aware of their rights.

References Asian and Pacific Development Centre (APDC) (1989) Trade in Domestic Helpers: Causes, Mechanisms and Consequences, Selected Papers from the Planning Meeting on


International Migration and Women, Quezon City, Philippines, 30 November–5 December, 1987, Kuala Lumpur: Asian and Pacific Development Centre. Bakan, A.B. and Stasiulis, D.K. (1995) ‘Making the match: domestic placement agencies and the racialisation of women’s household work’, Signs, 20, 2:303–35. Barsotti, O. and. Lecchini, L. (1995) ‘The experience of Filipina female migrants in Italy’, in International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, San Miniato, Italy, 28–31 March, 1990, New York: United Nations. Beishon, S., Satnam, V. and Hagell, A. (1995) Nursing in a Multi-Ethnic NHS, London: Policy Studies Institute. Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture, London: Routledge Boserup, E. (1970) Women’s Role in Economic Development, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Buang, A. (1997) ‘Elusive rescuers: coping with migrant housemaids, a Malaysian experience,’ in U.J.Fairhurst, I.Booysen and P.S.Hattingh (eds) Migration and Gender: Place Time and People Specific, A Collection of Papers, Pretoria: Faculty of Science, University of Pretoria. Buckley, S. (1977) ‘British female emigration and imperial development: experiments in Canada, 1885–1931’, Hecate, 3:26–40. Bunster, X. and Chaney, E. (1985) Sellers and Servants: Working Women in Lima, Peru, New York: Praeger. Campani, G. (1993) ‘Labor markets and family networks: Filipino women in Italy’, in H. Rudolph and M.Morovasic (eds), Bridging States and Markets: International Migration in the Early 1990s, Berlin: Edition Sigma. Chaney, E.M. and Garcia Castro, M. (1989) Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Chin, C.B.N. (1997) ‘Walls of silence and late twentieth century representations of the foreign female domestic worker: the case of Filipina and Indonesian female servants in Malaysia’, International Migration Review, 31, 2:353–85. Cock, J. (1980) Maids and Madams: A Study in the Politics of Exploitation, Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Colen, S. (1990) ‘“Housekeeping” for the green card: West Indian household workers, the state and stratified reproduction in New York’, in R.Sanjek and S.Colen (eds), At Work in Homes: Household Workers in World Perspective, Washington DC: American Ethnological Society Monograph Series. Constable, N. (1997) Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Cooper, N.I. (1997) ‘In the wake of Flor and Sarah: analyzing the “mega dramas” of transnational dilemmas’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Women in the Asia-Pacific Region: Persons, Powers and Politics, Singapore 11–13 August, 1997, Singapore: National University. Coser, L.A. (1973) ‘Servants: the obsolescence of an occupational role’, Social Forces, 52, 1:31–40. Duarte, I. (1989) ‘Household workers in the Dominican Republic: a question for the feminist movement’, in E.M.Chaney and M.Garcia Castro (eds), Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Economist (1998a) ‘Nanny bubble’, July 25, 1998:73.


Economist (1998b) ‘Putting Saudi women to work’, September 26, 1998:48. Enloe, C. (1989) Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Gill, L. (1994) Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class and Domestic Service in Bolivia, New York: Columbia University Press. Gonzalez III, J.L. (1997) ‘Filipina domestic helpers in Singapore two years after the Contemplacion furore: some observations for Philippine policy élites’, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Women in the Asia-Pacific Region: Persons, Powers and Politics, Singapore 11–13 August, 1997, Singapore: National University. Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (1994) Servicing the Middle Classes: Class, Gender and Waged Domestic Labor in Contemporary Britain, London and New York: Routledge. Handayani, S. (1998) Personal communication, June 6, 1998 Henry, F. (1968) The West Indian domestic scheme in Canada’, Social and Economic Studies, 17, 1:83–91. Heyzer, N. (1986) Working Women in South-East Asia: Development, Subordination and Emancipation, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Higman, B.W. (1989) ‘Domestic service in Jamaica since 1750’, in E.M.Chaney and M. Garcia Castro (eds), Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hooper, J. (1998) ‘Anti-vice drive arouses passions’, Guardian Weekly, August 30, 1998:7. Hoskyns, C. and Orsini-Jones, M. (1995) ‘Immigrant women in Italy, perspectives from Brussels and Bologna’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2:51–76. Huang, S. and Yeoh, B. (1996) Ties that bind: state policy and migrant female domestic helpers in Singapore’, Geoforum 27, 4:479–93. Ismail, F.M. and Momsen, J.H. (1997) ‘Migration as the nexus of gender and religion: the migration of Sri Lankan Muslim women to the Middle East’, in U.J.Fairhurst, I. Booysen and P.S.Hattingh (eds), Migration and Gender: Place, Time and People Specific, A Collection of Papers, Pretoria: Faculty of Science, University of Pretoria. Jackson, P. (1984) ‘Women in nineteenth century Irish emigration’, International Migration Review, 18, 4:1004–20. Javate de Dios, A. (1995) ‘Migrant women workers: issues and problems’, in M-L. Brillantes (ed.), Proceedings of the Issue Forum on Migrant Women Workers. What is Congress Doing for Them?, Quezon City, Philippines: Centre for Legislative Development. Jelin, E. (1977) ‘Migration and labor force participation of Latin American women: the domestic servants in the cities’, Signs, 3, 1:129–41. Johnston, D.C. (1998) ‘Many sneaky returns add up to a lot of income tax cheats’, New York Times, reprinted in the Sacramento Bee, April 15, 1998: A12. Katzman, D.M. (1978) ‘Seven days a week: women and domestic service in Industrialising America’, New York: Oxford University Press. Kanlungan Centre Foundation (1997) Statistics on cases of abuse against Filipino migrant workers, July-September, 1997, Quezon City, Philippines: Kanlungan Centre Foundation. Kossoudji, S.A. and Ranney, S. (1984) The labor market experience of female migrants: the case of temporary Mexican migration to the U.S.’, International Migration Review, 18, 4:1120–43.


Kuznesof, E. (1989) ‘A history of domestic service in Spanish America, 1492–1980’, in E.M.Chaney and M.Garcia Castro (eds), Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Lai, A.E. (1997) ‘“When I was six…Now that I am sixty-six”: experiences of coping with change among older women in Singapore’, paper presented to the International Conference on Women in the Asia-Pacific Region: Persons, Powers and Politics, Singapore 11–13 August, 1997. Laws, L. (1997) ‘Dancing on the Bar: sex, money and the uneasy politics of third space’, in S.Pile and M.Keith (eds), Geographies of Resistance, London: Routledge. Lawson, V.A. (1998) ‘Hierarchical households and gendered migration in Latin America: feminist extensions to migration research’, Progress in Human Geography, 22, 1:39– 53. Martin, P. (1998) Personal communication, 25th July, 1998. McDowell, L. (1995) ‘Spatializing feminism: geographic perspectives’, in N.Duncan (ed.), Body Space, London: Routledge. Nova (1997) Findings of a Study on the Reintegration of Female OCWs who Have Survived Violence Abroad, Quezon City, Philippines: Kanlungan Centre Foundation. Philippine Migrants Rights Watch (PMRW) and Asian Partnership in International Migration (APIM) (1997) Rights of Migrant Workers: A Primer on the UN Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, Manila: PMRW and APIM. Phizacklea, A. (1983) One Way Ticket: Migration and Female Labor, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pile, S. (1994) ‘Masculinism, the use of dualistic epistemologies and third spaces’, Antipode, 26, 3:255–77. Pratt, G. (1997) ‘Stereotypes and ambivalence: the construction of domestic workers in Vancouver, British Columbia’, Gender, Place and Culture 4, 2:159–77. Radcliffe, S. (1986) ‘Women’s lives and peasant livelihood strategies: a study of migration in the Peruvian Andes’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool. Radcliffe, S. (1990) ‘Ethnicity, patriarchy and incorporation into the nation: female migrants as domestic servants in Peru’, Environment and Planning D, 8, 4:379–93. Radcliffe, S. (1993) ‘Women’s place/El lugar de mujeres: Latin America and the politics of identity’, in M.Keith and S.Pile (eds), Place and the Politics of Identity, London: Routledge. Reher, D.S. (1998) ‘Family ties in Western Europe: persistent contrasts’, Population and Development Review 24, 2:203–34. Roberts, K.D. (1997) ‘China’s “tidal wave” of migrant labor: what can we learn from Mexican undocumented migration to the United States?’, International Migration Review, 31, 2:249–93. Romero, M. (1992) Maid in the United States, London: Routledge. Samarasinghe, V. (1998) The feminisation of foreign currency earnings: women’s labor in Sri Lanka’, The Journal of Developing Areas, 32 (Spring): 303–26. Sarmiento, F.C.M. (1998) Personal communication, June 16, 1998. Sørensen, N. (1998) ‘Cracks in the mirror: relations and translations in transnational landscapes’, paper presented to the International Conference on ‘The crisis of citizenship? Nationalism, transnationalism and global ethnic conflict’, University of California, Davis, April 24–25.


Stasiulis, D.K. and Bakan, A.B. (1997) ‘Regulation and resistance: strategies of migrant domestic workers in Canada and internationally’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 6, 1:31–57. Tyner, J.A. (1996) ‘The gendering of Philippine international labor migration’, Professional Geographer, 48,4:405–16

Part I NORTH AMERICA

The United States is unique, in that, since 1930, women have outnumbered men as immigrants; in Canada, also, a slightly higher proportion of women than men entered the country between 1960 and 1989, and both countries have more-foreign born women than men in their populations (United Nations 1995). Recent changes in the migration policies of both countries have affected the number and nationality of migrants. In the United States, the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act only succeeded on reducing temporarily the number of undocumented migrants crossing the Mexico-United States border. The 1996 Immigration Reform Act (IRA), by increasing border controls and penalties for illegal entry to the United States, reduced the amount of seasonal or circular migration, as did the IRCA (Espenshade et al. 1997). As a result of the legislation making those who sponsored family members entering the United States also responsible for their support, women who no longer saw their migrant husbands regularly, were forced to migrate independently and usually illegally. In addition, the cessation of welfare benefits to non-citizens in 1996, coupled with anti-immigrant state legislation in California, made it increasingly necessary for migrant women to work. In Canada, increased emphasis on training in caregiving and language skills, benefited Filipina and European immigrant women over other groups. Despite these restrictions, female migration has not fallen due to the fact that migrants’ remittances are so vital to the economies of both Mexico and the Philippines: these remittances are the third largest source of foreign exchange in both countries. For women migrants, domestic service is the main occupation for which they can obtain legal permission to work, and it is this occupation which allows them to become permanent residents of the United States and Canada. As a result many migrants to North America view work as a live-in domestic as but a brief step in the settlement process. For both Mexicans and Filipinas, migration in addition to being an economic necessity, is also often viewed as a rite of passage. Young European women see work as a nanny in North America as a short-term adventure, providing a chance to earn more than in most European countries, while seeing the world. For illegal immigrants, domestic service in a private house is often the easiest job to get, and the one least likely to result in their being apprehended by the authorities.

22

In both Canada and the United States, federal and provincial/state governments have enacted laws to protect live-in caregivers: these laws ensure that they earn a minimum wage, work no more than a set number of hours and get certain social benefits and taxes. However, in both countries, these regulations are only enforced when it is politically expedient to do so. Regional patterns can be observed in the dominant nationalities employed as domestics: in California and the south-west, mainly women from Mexico and Central America are employed, while on the east coast, Caribbean migrants predominate. In Canada, West Indians have largely been replaced by Filipina workers in the last fifteen years, with Vancouver and Toronto being the main locations for employment of domestics. In the United States, such employment is concentrated in the east coast megalopolis, from Boston to Washington DC, and on the west coast, from San Diego to San Francisco, where the largest concentrations of highly-paid dual career families are found. References Espenshade, T.J., Baraka, J.L. and Huber, G.A. (1997) ‘Implications of the 1996 welfare and immigration and welfare reform acts for United States immigration’, Population and Development Review, 23, 4:769–802. United Nations Secretariat (1995) ‘Measuring the extent of female international migration’, in International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, San Miniato, Italy, 28–31 March, 1990, New York: United Nations.

2 IS THIS CANADA? Domestic workers’ experiences in Vancouver, BC Geraldine Pratt in collaboration with the Philippine Women Centre

Joanne’s experience: I left the Philippines January 22,1992 as a tourist to Singapore. I was forced to leave my country because I wanted to follow the footsteps of my sisters who are now in the United States. From what I know they are doing fine. It was really shocking for me because I really didn’t have any experience of doing domestic work or as a nanny. In the Philippines I worked in a bank and as a teacher. I paid P 10,000 [roughly Can$500]1 tomyagent in the Philippines and 800 Singapore dollars to a Singapore agency. I only worked with my first employer for one and a half months. They were inhuman. I had to work also for their extended families: cleaning their mom’s place, and their brother’s and sister’s places. I fought with my first employer. I was able to find another employer. They were quite okay, even though I didn’t have any days off [in two years and three months]. I just bore all the hardship because I really wanted to have the experience doing domestic jobs to be able to come to Canada, which I thought of as a good stepping-stone [possibly to the United States]. The fee to come to Canada in September 1994 was $2,300. I just wanted to try another place. When I came to Canada, I waited for the agent in the airport for two hours. ‘Whom are you looking for?’ [people at the airport] would ask. I really felt like crying because I don’t know anybody here in Vancouver. I waited for two hours [for the agent], then at their house they brought me corn for dinner: steamed corn and a glass of milk. For ten hours I went hungry in Seoul [making the connection to Vancouver]. How could I tell them that? When I woke up I was told that I had to stay for five days. I did the laundry. There was one room full of dirty clothes, a real mountain heap! I washed the whole day, only for the clothes to be scattered by the [agent’s] kids. It was laundry—five loads every day—for four children. Later I learned that they did this to everyone. It was just my tough luck that I was alone, nobody else in my batch. I did vacuuming and mopping. The children would always be [outside] and were very dirty when they came in. The dishes were always stacked up in their rooms. ‘Is this Canada?’ I asked myself. Why wasn’t my employer picking me up? They said it was the


holidays, and there were five days to go before their return. I felt as if a thorn had been removed from me. They said this was ‘training’, so it was free. The food was incomprehensible. [The agent] lost my work authorisation and blamed it on me. I went to Immigration and reported this and they looked into my case. It was $36 for a new work authorisation. I got my SIN [Social Insurance Number] only after seven months, so B.C.Medical arrived only then. [This means that Joanne was technically without medical insurance for seven months. She was then billed retroactively.] I also met an insurance agent and I was convinced to get a life insurance policy, paying a premium of about $52 a month. I now get a net of $1,200 a month [working as a nanny in Vancouver]. This is okay. The two kids come home from school around 4.00 p.m. Because the kids are now in school from 8.30 to 4.00, my baby-sitting is lessened. I will drive the kids to school from 7.30 to 8.30 a.m. I’m done by 7 or 8 p.m. That’s 12 hours a day. But I’m free after I’ve loaded laundry. That’s only 15 minutes anyway. I iron clothes, prepare for dinner. I clean the house, but only on a weekly basis. Vacuuming and dusting is once a month because there is an air filter, which sucks the dust. Cooking [a daily six-course meal] is the heaviest chore. I can have visitors, but only if they’re female. Being a nanny, we have to face a lot of terrible experiences from our employers, who are exploiters and oppressors, doing dirty, difficult and dangerous jobs. Working long hours, underpaid, and still we are blamed. For example, some employers are complaining that their children are developing speech problems because of our Filipino accents. Joanne is one of fourteen domestic workers who participated in a research project at the Philippine Women Centre2 through the summer, fall and early winter of 1995/6. Educating, organizing and mobilizing work amongst Filipina migrant workers has been an important focus of the Centre throughout its operations. This is in recognition of the extreme exploitation and oppression of domestic workers, and, consequently, their great potential for leading collective action and organizing further efforts. Through informal discussions, collective living, social activities and formal education sessions, the Centre has gained a rich understanding of the situations, experiences and needs of these women. Working towards empowerment, through participatory methods that are part of the women’s vibrant culture (singing, the use of Tagalog, dancing and skits), the Centre has built and sustained a community of strong and empowered women of color, despite their marginalisation within Canadian society. The research project reported on here emerged within the context of this ongoing community action. Based on a collaboration between a university researcher, Geraldine Pratt, of the University of British Columbia’s Department of Geography, and the Centre, it was loosely framed as an opportunity for domestic

IS THIS CANADA? 25

workers to tell their own stories, in their own terms, around themes that were important to them.3 Persistent themes were domestic workers’ disappointments on arrival in Canada, and the difficulties that they encounter trying to implement employment regulations legislated by the 1995 British Columbia Employment Standards Act. In this paper, we explore the range of employer tactics, operating at the margins of legality, which make it so difficult for domestic workers to claim rights they anticipated when they came to Canada, and for which domestic worker advocacy groups have fought so hard.4 In detailing these disappointments, difficulties and tactics, we rely on direct quotation of domestic workers’ conversations. We judge it important to let Filipina domestic workers present their experiences verbatim, in order to convey a richer sense of their lives, their concerns, and their individual and collective efforts to overcome the problems that they encounter. We offer these stories as a potential source of information and support to other domestic workers, and to employers of domestic workers (past, present and prospective), so that they might see the employment relation through different eyes. The current slippage between employment regulations and lived experiences in British Columbia is of critical concern to those who would like to see changes in labor conditions, not only in principle, but within the lives of domestic workers. The stories also point to the need for systemic changes to the Live-in Caregiver Program, and within Canadian society, generally. Coming to Canada The one experience shared by all those who participated in the workshops, is that they are currently employed and able to stay in Canada through the Live-in Caregiver Program. This is a visa program, designed and implemented by the Canadian federal government to create a supply of domestic workers at rates affordable to middle- and upper-class Canadian families. After two full years of live-in service (which must be completed within three years of entering Canada5), the domestic worker is eligible to apply for an open visa, and subsequently, for landed immigrant status. Although the federal government regulates the Live-in Caregiver Program, provincial governments regulate the employment conditions of domestic workers. The vast majority of domestic workers are women, and, since 1984, most of those coming to Vancouver originate from the Philippines. (For overviews of the history of domestic worker immigration programs in Canada see Arat-Koç l989; Bakan and Stasiulis 1994; Daenzer 1993; Mikita 1994.) The comparison between Vancouver and Toronto (see Table 2.1, Stiell and England 1997; Chapter 3 of this book) displays both common trends and differences: in line with national trends, the number of women working as domestics in both cities under the Live-In Caregiver Program has increased tremendously through the 1980s and 1990s, while the proportion of women coming from Europe under these arrangements has declined precipitously. In Toronto, there remains a larger percentage of


domestic workers from Latin America (especially Caribbean countries) than is the case in Vancouver. This reflects, in part, the influence of different networks, including networks of recruiting agencies. Table 2.1 Number of individuals going to Vancouver and Toronto through the Foreign Domestic Movement (1982–92) and Live-in Caregiver Programs (1992–96)*

Source: Landed Immigrant Data System, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Ottawa**** Notes * From 1993 on, numbers of those entering through the Foreign Domestic Movement and Live-inCaregiver Programs are combined. ** Includes Australasia and the Pacific. *** Includes the United Kingdom. **** These are official data of the Government of Canada and the best data available. However,they may include coding problems at the individual level.

For those who participated in this study, their routes to Canada were varied, and they came with a wide range of skills and occupations, including midwife, registered nurse, teacher, social worker, book-keeper and bank clerk. They left the Philippines because of a chronic economic crisis, which manifests itself in an underdeveloped agrarian economy, high rates of unemployment, low wages, and a system of patronage that makes employment opportunities dependent upon ‘not what you know, but whom you know’. The mass exodus of these women is also encouraged by official Philippine government policy (known as the ‘Labour Export Policy’ or LEP), which seeks to quell social unrest, pay foreign debt, and

IS THIS CANADA? 27

conform to IMF-World Bank-imposed conditions (Rafael 1997; Tolentino 1996). The Philippines is now the top labour exporter in the world, with an estimated 7 million overseas workers (Boti 1997). Some domestic workers were hired directly from the Philippines by Vancouver employers, often through the help of a relative living in Vancouver. Joanne’s experience of working in Singapore or Hong Kong before coming to Canada is, however, more typical. (For information on the circumstances left behind in Singapore, see Huang and Yeoh 1994,1996; Yeoh and Huang 1995, 1998; Chapter 17 of this book and for Hong Kong, see Chapter 18.) Several domestic workers discuss the hopes and expectations that they brought with them to Canada: Susan: I had very high expectations when I came because many were saying that life here is beautiful, it is good. But bullshit. When I arrived I asked myself, ‘What kind of life did I come to?’ It seems more difficult to make money here than in Hong Kong. I found out that there is almost nothing left for me after some small items. Mhay: When I was still in the Philippines, I tried counting how much I would make in Canada. I thought, 15,000 to 17,000 pesos. Wow, that’s big money. Canada is really super. But when I started working, God, I had to pay $350 for my plane ticket alone. And there were other expenses. I was really upset. Elsie: I was expecting tall buildings and multitudes of people. But when I came, I thought I was in a rural area. Susan: This was also my expectation. Very high indeed. I thought that I could go to school and study as soon as I arrived. Elsie: At the immigration office alone, I was already told that I would not be allowed any vocational courses. I was upset, as studying was one of my main reasons for coming here. Susan: I feel that my life has been turned upside down. Mhay: And I thought that there would be several of us domestic workers in a single home. That was what I thought when I was still in the Philippines. But when I came, I ended up alone as a babysitter. Susan: I thought I would be able to study computer engineering only to find out that I cannot get to school. What a shitty life…. That’s why sometimes I regret my coming here, as it was not within my expectations. The only hope here is that I can look forward to going back to school in two years time. Jeorgie: It’s a long wait, huh? Susan: I feel frustrated at times… Jeorgie: I really thought that the 8-hour workday was being implemented. And that you are already free to do what you want after working 8 hours. I never expected to be working long hours. Cel: So, did you not explain this when you went to the immigration office?


Susan: The High Commissioner in Hong Kong told us that we have the right to complain against our employer, that we have the right to go anywhere after our working hours, and that we will get our T-4 and our record of employment when we leave our employer. And he told me that I cannot work other than for my employer. Jeorgie: This was not told to us. All that they said was that we have a chance to apply for a landed immigrant status. This is all he said. Susan: They also told us that. Labour conditions for Filipina domestic workers in Vancouver Hours and wages The preceding quotes indicate a real disappointment about wages and hours of employment as a domestic worker in Canada. Before changes to the British Columbia Employment Standards Act in March, 1995, domestic workers were extremely vulnerable, because there was no requirement that their employers compensate them for work beyond 8 hours a day. Domestic workers are now covered by overtime regulations and should be paid a minimum hourly wage ($7 an hour from October 1, 19956) and ‘time-and-a-half’ (i.e., $10.50) for work beyond 40 hours a week. As of October, 1995, the minimum wage for caring for a family of four for 40 hours a week, amounted to $650 (after deductions for income tax, Canada Pension Plan, Unemployment Insurance, Medical Insurance and a standardised deduction of $3007 for room and board). Wages are supposed to be scaled to family size and to increase with the numbers of people in the household. Despite the fact that domestic work is now more fully regulated by the provincial labour code, these regulations are not fully implemented. Among the women who participated in the focus groups, wages varied from minimum wage to Joanne’s high of $1,200 net a month (with most much closer to the minimum). It is clear that long hours and numbers in the household do not automatically translate into higher wages. Yolly, for example, earns $804 net a month and works 12 hours a day for a family of six. There are 15 rooms in the house, on 3 floors, and 4 bathrooms. It is Yolly’s responsibility to clean the house. A common frustration is the employer’s unwillingness to raise wages over time. This frustration, as well as the necessity of confronting employers over wages and hours, was voiced throughout the focus groups. Marlyn: Why are we still having this problem regarding the salary? When, in fact, when they [her employers] applied at the employment centre [they received a copy of the contract]. We still have to inform them. Ana: They don’t follow the rules.

IS THIS CANADA? 29

Endrolyn: If you force them to pay this amount [in the contract] and they cannot reach this amount and you ask them to pay it every month…they will not treat us nicely. Marlyn: If they cannot afford to have a nanny, then don’t get a nanny. Endrolyn: But they need a nanny. Marlyn: Of course, but they have to pay the right salary. Ana: Like me, I’ve been working with them for a year already and I redid the contract, they are just paying the same amount. Endrolyn: Did they increase your salary? Ana: No they didn’t. That’s why I want to talk to them. I’m still on minimum wage. Marlyn: No. You know why? Because the reason is that there is a law. They have to follow the law. Ana: How come they cannot follow the law? Yolly: Yah. That’s what my employer says. That’s the minimum [and so that is all she has to pay]. Marlyn: [Employers say:] ‘We will not increase you from this amount because this is the law. What ever is the law [I will pay]. The law is there.’ Ana: Okay. Then I will follow the law [too]. I will just work eight hours too. And I will just look after your baby, just baby-sitting. I will not do anything else. Because that is the way you pay me. Employer tactics to dampen wage claims and extend hours Given the variable and negotiated nature of hours and wages, it seems important to document several tactics that are commonly used by employers to challenge or weaken wage claims. After reviewing nine specific tactics, we consider four broader conditions that predispose employers to use them. Two tactics are mentioned in the preceding conversation between Endrolyn, Marlyn, Ana and Yolly. First, some employers seem to be using the minimum wage law as a ceiling rather than a minimum wage, and are using the new standards set by the Employment Standards Act to freeze nannies’ wages at the minimum wage. Second, Endrolyn expresses some sympathy for her employers’ inability to pay wages (and some fear about the repercussions of pressing wage demands in those circumstances), and it seems that some employers are quick to justify low wages in terms of their inability to pay. Interviews conducted by Pratt in 1995, with 52 employers of domestic workers, suggest that this financial constraint is not straightforward, and has to be assessed in relation to patriarchal assumptions within Canadian households, namely that because childcare should be a woman’s job, the cost of childcare ought to be calculated as a percentage of the woman’s, rather than the household’s salary. Within many households, 25 to 30 percent of the woman’s salary seems to be a magical tipping point, after which it is judged uneconomic to hire a nanny. Given that wages and incomes are assessed within


such a complicated, social process, it is difficult for an individual domestic worker to assess employers’ claims. In the quote that follows, Susan indicates that this argument has been used to justify her low wages. In addition, she introduces a third tactic, that of carrying expectations of low wages and long hours across extended family members: Susan: The first time, my employer asked me if my wages are acceptable, because that is the minimum wage in B.C.—$750 net. I told them I was earning more than this in Hong Kong, but they told me that they could not afford to give me more even if they wanted to. Cel: So why did they hire you in the first place? As well, you are working long hours, well over the minimum hours [usually until 6.00 or 8.00 p.m. in the summer, but often until 11.00 or 12.00 p.m. in the winter]. Susan: I think that they had become used to this when my sister was working for them. Mhay: You mean your sister had been their employee too? Susan: You see, this was the situation. Actually, I had another employer when I applied through the agency, Able Nanny. But my prospective employer did not process my papers, and my sister who was working with my present employer was pregnant at the time. Her contract expired and she did not want to work for a while, but her employer really needed somebody to work for them. So I ended up taking the place of my sister. Cel: So you followed your sister’s experience too of working for them. Since they had the previous experience with members of your family, they just let you work long hours just like they did in the past, and without much compensation. Susan: I should have been getting time and a half for those extra hours. Cel: You had better tell them about this while you are relatively new to them… You will be conditioned slowly to accept those long hours. Susan: That’s what they did to my sister. She did not know too many people here and she was staying in the weekends with her friend in Surrey. When her employers needed her on the weekend, they would call her even at night and ask her to come back to care for the chi They often do this to her. Cel: That’s why you have to tell them about this…they already hac precedent with your sister. So they think that you will simply folk what she used to do for them. Just look at Mhay’s case. Becau her auntie was working long hours for her employers, when Mh took her auntie’s place, she was expected to do the same. They aware of this and they are abusing and using you especially if y don’t complain. In the cases of Susan and Mhay, their employers’ previous relations with member of their extended family, makes it challenging for them as incomi domestic workers to redefine the implicit labour contract.

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Fourth, some employers count work hours in a way that differs from t domestic worker’s assessment. A particularly contentious area concer whether a domestic worker is actually working while children are sleeping April: She told me that I should start working from the hour the children wake up. [Her employer, who works as a nurse, leaves the home at 6.00 a.m. on some mornings of what is a rotating and complicated weekly shift. Since her child wakes up at 8.00 a.m., she tells April to start counting her working hours from 8.00 a.m., even though she is clearly responsible for the child from 6.00 a.m. to 8.00 a.m. April then works until 8.00 p.m., when her employer returns from work. An instance of this causing April real inconvenience and expense, is when she has had a day off the previous day, and slept over at a friend’s house or the Philippine Women Centre. In this instance, she must get up early and take a cab, at the cost of $35 in order to be at her employer’s home by 6.00 a.m.]…. Is it [right to consider it] an ‘off day’ when the children aren’t there? That’s what my employer does, even if I’m in the house because I’m doing the laundry. She wants to consider that an ‘off day’, so that it will be considered as exchange for my extra [working] hours…. She’s so ungrateful. She’ll go to work on holidays— when her work falls on a [statutory] holiday— from 8.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m. for two days, and then the next [third] day from 5.30 p.m. until 8.00 a.m She arrives [home] at 8.00 a.m. and sleeps until 2.00 or 2.30 p.m. I work in the morning, but then I stop for two hours [mid day] and work again from 5.30 p.m. until the child goes to sleep. So, her computation is from 5.30 until 10.30 p.m., because the child is sleeping [after 10.30]. Even if I am sleeping, I’m still at work, but she says that’s my off [time]. But you’re still responsible during those hours! [When April called the Employment office, she was told that this was a violation of the Employment Standards Act. As long as the nanny is in the house alone, she is working. However, she has yet to convince her employer.]

In a similar vein, there seems to be a lack of clarity about whether a domestic worker is an employee or ‘family member’, when it comes to cleaning up after dinner: Mhay: I have changed now. Before, when we were through with our supper, I would tell my employer to leave everything to me to clean up. Now, when they start doing the after-supper work, I leave them and don’t bother asking them to leave these things to me. Cecilia: You leave them? Mhay: So, I would let her help me. I thought that if you eat supper, so you should also put away what you have eaten. I’m already over my hours, and I don’t have to do these things anymore.


Cecilia: But don’t you feel uneasy, especially that you are in their house? Susan: Especially if they are around? Cecilia: It must be a difficult feeling, right? Another source of dispute is that employers may fail to recognise that a domestic worker is working, when she is alone in the house and responsible for it (e.g., when house-sitting for an employer on vacation). A fifth tactic is to shame the domestic worker who demands her rightful wage, by labeling her as materialistic. As Inyang notes: ‘I agree. The eight hours are not followed. But when you speak out, you are embarrassed or something. They will say you are materialistic, or whatever.’ This is a stereotype of Filipina nannies that was voiced by a good number of employers, in a series of interviews conducted by Pratt in the summer of 1995. It is an insult that builds from a romanticisation of the job, and the view that the ideal nanny delivers a labour of love rather than a professional service. Sixth, some employers imply that the $300 that they are able to deduct from wages for room and board, grossly undervalues their costs, be they actual or in forgone revenue. Cristy, for example, has been told by her employer that her accommodation, a basement suite, could be rented for $650 a month. By implication, Cristy is receiving an extra $350 a month. This can be an effective strategy for quieting wage demands, but it is irrelevant given the terms set for the Live-in Caregiver Program. A seventh employer tactic involves not so much dampening wage demands, as increasing a nanny’s work load while simultaneously decreasing their own costs. This involves ‘subcontracting’ their nanny’s labour to another employer, usually by taking in another child, or forcing her to clean a relative’s or friend’s house or their own office, without remunerating the nanny for the extra work involved. The most pressing problem with these arrangements (beyond the obvious fact that the benefits often flow in one direction—to the employer), is that it places the live-in caregiver in a situation of vulnerability vis-à-vis her immigration status. By federal regulation, the live-in caregiver is not allowed to work for a second employer. She is technically violating her contract by doing so, thereby jeopardizing her chances of attaining landed immigrant status after her two-year stint as a live-in caregiver. The worst case of abuse of this sort was encountered by Pratt in her interviews with employers: one set of employers had reduced their costs for a live-in caregiver to under $500 a month, by subcontracting their nanny’s services to another family, who brought their child daily to the official employer’s home for full-time childcare. The experience of working for two employers was by no means uncommon to the women who participated in the focus groups. Mhay, Endrolyn, April and Susan all work for two employers. Endrolyn tells that the second employer put some pressure on her to sign a childcare form, so that he could claim a childcare deduction on his income taxes.8 Endrolyn notes: ‘I’m not selfish with my signature but I’m not landed,’ and refused. April also takes care of another child in the afternoons and receives no extra money for this, despite the fact that

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she gets the minimum wage. The other family pays her employer $350 a month. This involves extra work for April, but also adds the difficulty of coordinating two employers with different expectations. One day, for example, April decided to take the two children on a Sky Train (rapid transit) trip. She had told her own employer of this plan, but not the second employer. She remembered the omission when she was on the expedition, and called the neighbour from downtown. The second employer was very angry, and, when he came to pick up his child at the end of the day, insulted April by saying This is not Manila. It is Canada’. An eighth tactic that has become more prevalent within the last few years, is for employers, with the encouragement of the nanny agencies, to require a oneto three-month unpaid ‘try out’ period. This ‘try out’ period is triply problematic: it forces domestic workers to work without wages for a period of time; it violates the federal government’s stipulation that a domestic worker must process her Employment Authorisation Permit before beginning employment, and it ‘eats into’ the three-year period in which the domestic worker must complete her two years of live-in employment, thus placing immense pressure on her to work illegally or under exploitative conditions. Finally, a related tactic is for employers to hire an unemployed domestic worker, resident in Canada, and insist that she begin work immediately while she waits for her employment authorisation to be processed (a process that may take two to three months). This violates the terms of the Live-in Caregiver Program, and places the domestic worker in a position of vulnerability, whereby she risks deportation. Structuring conditions: agents, governments and discourses Specific employer tactics must be viewed within a broader context of how the Live-in Caregiver Program is currently structured and interpreted. We call attention to four factors: the globalisation of labour conditions; the live-in requirement; the temporary immigration status; and the lack of clarity concerning rights and benefits. The Filipina domestic workers who participated in the workshops, perceived their situations to be worse than those of European and Canadian nannies. For lower wages, they are expected to work as both housekeepers and nannies, while Canadian/European women tend to be responsible for less housework. Their perceptions of differential treatment are verified by conversations with nanny agents and employers (Pratt 1997), and are, in part, justified by agents and employers, who are aware that the Live-in Caregiver Program ultimately rewards Filipina women with Canadian citizenship. European women, on the other hand, are less likely to use their job as a domestic worker as an avenue towards landed immigrant status, and function more as short-term visiting ‘au pair’. (For a consideration of these distinctions in Toronto, see Arat-Koç 1992; Bakan and Stasiulis 1994, 1995; England and Stiell 1997; Stiell and England in Chapter 3 of this book).


In addition, however, the conversations with Filipina domestic workers demonstrate the ways in which agents transport domestic workers’ previous work experiences and labour conditions, from across the globe, into the Vancouver labour market. This is done in ways that predispose their Vancouver employers to perceive them as cheap, exploitable labour. The process begins with the types of photographs that agents suggest Filipina women send, to accompany their applications to prospective Canadian employers: one that shows them caring for children and a second that shows them cleaning. Some agents explicitly tell women not to send a photograph that shows them as attractive. The application forms also signal to prospective employers that Filipina women are ripe for exploitation. Inyang, for example, was told to indicate her willingness to work from 6 a.m. until late at night. Further, Vancouver employers seem to be curious about, and aware of, the highly exploitative conditions for domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong. Domestic workers, below, tell of their efforts to resist the introduction of these conditions into Vancouver. Ana: These employers here in Canada, they just ask you about your previous employer because maybe they will learn the fact of what you are doing in Singapore. Like, oh, [you were] washing the car, then they will think that they can ask you to do this here. Endrolyn: They are asking me. [They think:] Oh, I like this girl. She washes the car. But they wash the car. I said she should do that. It is not my job. That’s why I came here to Canada: to work less. That’s why I spend my money (more than 2,000 dollars) to come here to Canada. Because I want to escape my job in Singapore. Ana: They are thinking, maybe, just like, ‘Oh, maybe she will do it here, because she did it in Singapore. Why can she not do it here?’ Endrolyn: They are always asking me: ‘Did you clean the grey car?’. But I always spend more time doing the Mercedes car because it is white. [It is driven by] the lady. I don’t care if [the grey car] is dirty, because it is a company car. But I don’t wash the car every day. My boss said that I [also] have to learn how to measure the water, the gasoline, the oil. [He says] ‘Maybe one day you will have a car.’ [He says it] just to challenge me so that I will do the job, but they [really just] want me to do their car. Marlyn: So that later on you will be the one to do that, right? Endrolyn: That is easy for me [to wash the car]. I just spray the water. Gerry: But not many employers here ask you to wash the car? Endrolyn: [Pointing to Marlyn] Her too. Marlyn: No. That is not my job anymore. Endrolyn: That is why we came here. Because [there is] lesser work. Yolly: My employer asked me to clean her car. For the first time, I did it. But for the second time, I refused, because I was thinking that Canada is different from Singapore.

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Ana:

Inyang’s employer said that it is her job and Inyang resisted that [by saying] ‘No, it is not my job. It is not in my contract.’9

Cristy: Employers don’t care about this live-in policy, because once they have a live-in nanny [they benefit]. And they’re basing it on our experience: that you’ve been doing it somewhere else, therefore you can do it here, that’s what they think. And then, because you’ve worked 24 hours [a day] in Singapore, they think, well, you could do that here. They don’t care about the [particularities of this] live-in [care-giver] policy. They disregard it. Because you are indeed living in and have done more before than what they are asking now. It was already too much, what your employers were doing to you before. It’s really very important for us to have a certain community. These comments must be placed within the broader context of labour migration under globalisation, facilitated through international institutions and trade agreements, such as APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation). One of the recommendations of the Immigration Legislative Review of Canada’s immigration and refugee system (entitled ‘Not Just Numbers’ and released on Dec 31, 1997), was that the Live-in Caregiver Program be subsumed by a temporary Foreign Workers Program. The proposed Foreign Workers Program would likely make it more difficult to move from temporary employment to landed immigrant status, and would bring Canada in line with the labour migration policies of other industrialised countries (Hyndman 1998; Philippine Women Centre 1998). Cristy’s analysis, above, leads us to a second structuring condition: the fact that the live-in requirement makes it very easy for employers to stretch the workday. The Canadian federal government stipulates that a domestic worker who comes to Canada through the Live-in Caregiver Program must live in her employers’ home. The employers are required to provide a separate bedroom, with a lock, as well as access to a bathroom. The requirement that nannies live in clearly lowers the costs for their employers, because employers in 1995 were able to deduct $300 a month for room and board from the required minimum wage payment. Privatised childcare (which then costs the employer about $900 a month, after the deduction), was thus brought within the reach of middle-income families. Given that a onebedroom apartment rented for roughly $640 a month, in 1995 (Vancouver Courier 1995:6), nannies living outside their employers’ homes clearly require a higher wage. It should be recognised that the live-in requirement creates the situation of indentured. Domestic worker advocacy groups have long recognised the potentials for abuse that result from the live-in requirement: it makes the workday permeable, and increases domestic workers’ sense of isolation and vulnerability. This was borne out by the remarks of most of the women who participated in the focus groups:


Ana:

What about how the live-in policy affects the employer’s treatment. Instead of paying a double fee—one for the babysitter and one for cleaning —they just pay one. It’s a package deal. Inyang: How does live-in affect us? They cut down their costs. The wages are low, but then, there you are, that’s why you live in. So that any time they need your help, they can knock on your door. But then they still give me my ‘normal’ Saturday and Sunday. But this is my problem: if they need me, they just call me, without notice, and demand. My employer is demanding sometimes. Like on my holidays. I was on my holiday already, but then they asked me to go to their house, to take care of their kids! Without asking, or saying whether they’re going to pay me, or give me extra time off. They just demand me to come quickly. So that’s my employer. Finally, employers have considerable flexibility in negotiating labour conditions, including wages and hours, because there seems to be some uncertainty—even among government agencies—about rights and benefits. In the course of conversation at the Centre, two instances of real confusion about rights and benefits became apparent, both of which reflected the lack of clarity among government agencies. The first concerned unemployment insurance, and whether a domestic worker who terminates her own employment is eligible to receive it. She may be, although there have been instances in which employment insurance agents have denied individuals this right, on the grounds that, technically, an unemployed domestic worker is not available for work (a condition for receipt of employment insurance), because her work authorisation restricts her to working for one employer. This is an important point, because access to this benefit would make it possible more easily to leave an oppressive work situation. Second, there was a good deal of confusion about medical insurance: a number of domestic workers who participated in the workshops had found themselves without coverage at one time or another. The confusion stems from uncertainty as to whether the employer is, or is not paying the premium. Employers are now required to pay for the interim private insurance required to cover the three-month waiting period for socialised medical insurance (the Medical Services Plan or MSP); because this is a new requirement, it is not clear whether all employers are complying. A second concern is that medical insurance expires with the work authorisation, and thus, under some circumstances (i.e. when unemployment coincides with the end of the work authorisation), an unemployed domestic worker may be without medical insurance. The third concern is less a matter of confusion, than discrimination: domestic workers are ineligible for MSP premium assistance (for low-income individuals), despite the fact that their low incomes justify such assistance. Beyond the uncertainty surrounding medical insurance, it is also the case that the right to sick leave is inadequately regulated by current employment standards. In addition, it is actively discouraged by the federal government requirement that two years of live-in domestic employment be completed within three years.

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Marlyn, for example, found herself replaced and without a job when she took an extended sick leave. More common, were stories of an inability to allow oneself to be sick. Certainly, in Pratt’s interviews with employers, they spoke of a nanny’s sickness as a minor disaster, one which precipitated frantic early-morning phone calls, by means of which they pieced together adequate childcare for the day. If this was unsuccessful, the employer (usually the woman) would stay home from her own waged employment. Few employers seemed to plan for the likelihood that their nannies, like any employee, would be sick for at least a few days a year. This may reflect the difficulty that employers had in framing themselves as employers (as opposed to ‘team players’ or benevolent ‘family’ members), as well as their feelings that the childcare worker is irreplaceable (at least in the short term) because of her special relationship to their child(ren). The difficulties of domestic workers attending to their own sick bodies are further compounded by the live-in arrangement, as well as the generalised denigration of the actual work that they do: employers are able to assess, judge, and contest claims to ill health, or else convince themselves of the practicality of tending small children while lying prone on the living-room couch. The stories that domestic workers told centered mainly around employers’ disinterest in their health when they are less than fit, as well as their own insecurity in asserting their rights to be unwell. For example, April tells of the following circumstance: They let me off when I had dysmenorrhea. Her ex-husband arrived so I could go and get an ultra-sound. It was my [day] off the following day, but she asked me to pay for that too [in working hours]. She said, ‘Well, don’t clean. Just take care of the child.’

A benefit to which domestic workers are entitled, if injured on the job, is Workers Compensation Benefit, although many employers have been found not to pay into the benefit, as is required of them. This, however, does not affect the domestic worker’s right to claim the benefit. Working for change Domestic workers at the Philippine Women Centre shared some common hopes, disappointments and difficulties in connection with their experience in Canada. We believe that federal and provincial governments can, and should, address some of these difficulties more effectively. It is the federal government that prohibits educational training while workers are under contract through the Live-in Caregiver Program. This prohibition frustrates domestic workers’ attempts to upgrade skills; in addition, domestic workers with other professional experiences and aspirations find themselves deskilled during the minimum two-year period for which they must be registered in the Live-in Caregiver Program, before being eligible to apply for Canadian


citizenship. This perpetuates their underdevelopment as women, moving them from professional jobs back into the home. Provisions around subcontracting also need to be reassessed by the federal government. The experiences of domestic workers at the Centre tell us that subcontracting of domestic workers, by one employer to another, is extremely common, but that the domestic worker is rarely compensated for the increased work load. The worker is afraid to protest because of her vulnerability in violating the terms of her visa. The possibility of reaping the benefits of working for more than one employer, with a formalised contract, may be one avenue for releasing domestic workers from the economic necessity of living in their employers’ homes. Regardless of the viability of this particular solution, the live-in requirement should be removed: as long as the workplace is also the domestic worker’s home, her ability to challenge the employer to conform to employment regulations, especially in terms of hours of work and salary, is severely compromised. The vulnerability created by the temporary status of immigrant domestic workers in Canada also compromises their capacity to challenge employers. This temporary status should be removed and domestic workers should be allowed to enter Canada as landed immigrants. The provincial government, which has jurisdiction over the employment relation, must clarify to both domestic worker and employer what tasks count as work or leisure, who should pay for the worker’s medical insurance, and rights to sick leave. Entitlement to sick leave is more than an informational issue, however, and must be written into the Employment Standards Act and enforced. The issue of enforcement is perhaps the most difficult to tackle. The recent experience of Vancouver domestic workers suggests that employers are loathe to obey existing regulations pertaining to hours of work, minimum wage and overtime pay. Recently, the provincial government has attempted to deal with this problem by creating a registry of employers. Our perspective is that this registry is ineffective unless it is made public and employers are penalised for violations, with serious violators being refused the right to hire another domestic worker. Employers’ reluctance to comply with existing regulations is extremely difficult to engage, interwoven as it is with a range of social relations. Patriarchal relations within the household dictate that many employers calculate their ability to pay in terms of the woman’s (as opposed to the household’s) income, despite the removal of gender discrimination from the tax laws: this lowers the wage that employers judge themselves capable of paying. Histories of neo-colonial and racist relations lead some employers to believe that different job conditions and wages are appropriate for ‘Third World’ women, as compared to their Canadian or European counterparts. Recognition of the potency of these entrenched value systems should serve to reinforce the responsibility of provincial governments to pay extremely close attention to the enforcement of existing regulations. In one of the workshops, the Director of the Centre urged a domestic worker to file for unemployment insurance benefits: ‘to find out whether or not this is a democratic country. And in doing so, you learn something about whether there is

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a different set of rights between you and other Canadians.’ We must push, not only for legislative reform, but also for systemic changes and against everyday practices, in order to ensure a uniform set of rights in Canada and end the forced migration of women from the Philippines. Acknowledgments This paper is adapted from a more extended working paper (Pratt in collabouration with the Philippine Women Centre 1997). We would like to acknowledge the funding of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We thank Dan Hiebert and Greg Cunningham, and the Vancouver metropolis project (RIIM) for making the data presented in Table 2.1 available to us. Thanks are also due to Janet Henshall Momsen for inviting us to contribute to this volume, and for her editorial advice. We are enthusiastic about this opportunity to exchange information about the experiences of domestic workers worldwide. Notes 1 In September, 1998, a Canadian dollar was worth US$0.66; in mid-1996, it was worth US$0.74, and in mid-1992 it was worth US$0.83. 2 The Philippine Women Centre (PWC) was conceptualised in 1986 by a group of Filipino-Canadians, including domestic workers, connected with the British Columbia Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (BCCHRP.). This group was organizing in the Filipino-Canadian community, in the Greater Vancouver area, to gain deeper insight into the community, especially the increasing number of Filipino domestic workers. The group believes that the presence of these Filipino domestic workers in Canada has its roots in the political and economic crisis in their country of origin. Through the efforts of a group of six Filipina women, the PWC was formally launched in February, 1990, and officially registered as a non-profit society in January, 1991. Its vision was that of an empowered community of PWC members who share:

• a common interest in issues and problems relating to their reality as marginalised women of color in Canada; • a common desire to preserve and increase awareness of their shared historical and cultural roots in a multi-racial society; • a common willingness to uphold the principles of human rights and freedom for all Filipina women, wherever they may be. In sum, the PWC aimed to empower women of Filipino origin to understand the socio-economic roots of the challenges they face as immigrants, as women of color, and as low-income earners and to collectively assert their struggle for their rights and welfare.


3 We attempted to proceed in a fully collaborative way. Initial meetings took place using a two-pronged approach: Geraldine Pratt met several times with Cecilia Diocson, current director of the PWC, and with full-time and part-time staff at the Centre, in order to establish rapport and a sense of shared objectives and compatible perspectives. These representatives of PWC then met with domestic workers who were coming to the Centre, to explore their interest in and support for the project. None of us had experience of doing participatory action research: the way in which we conceived it, was as a fully participatory, non-hierarchical research process, in which everyone had the opportunity to participate by setting themes and suggesting methodologies (e.g. story-telling and role-playing). The shared goal was to produce reports that would be of interest to a broad audience, from domestic workers through to academics. Our first day-long workshop was dedicated to developing thematic foci; we later pursued these in two day-long sessions, in which we broke into smaller focus groups consisting of five to six women. The focus groups were facilitated either by Cecilia Diocson or by a staff member, with the intention being that each member of the group could, and should take the role, and gain the experience of, facilitating the discussion as the process developed. We met six times: first to develop themes; twice to break into focus groups consisting of five or six women, in order to discuss the themes; and three more times to code, verify and analyse the personal narratives. We analysed the transcribed focus group material together, by taking turns in reading it aloud to the entire group (composed of roughly 18 women). This was a time-consuming process, but was enormously helpful in terms of verifying what was said, and guiding us towards an interpretation of it. It also led to further consideration of issues that had previously been discussed, as well as new ones. All discussions took place in Tagalog (apart from the focus groups that included Geraldine Pratt, which took place in English): these discussions were then translated and transcribed. We assumed that the personal nature of some of the accounts could be more comfortably communicated in the women’s first language. All those who participated were already regular attenders at the Centre and there is no technical way of claiming a typicality for their experiences. They were, however, connected to many other domestic workers and spoke more generally of their own and their friends’ and their relatives’ experiences as domestic workers. As an outsider, in terms of language, national origins and class, Geraldine Pratt participated as both observer and questioner, often asking for contextualizing details concerning issues with which she was unfamiliar. She brought some material resources in the form of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council research funding, and experience in coding and analyzing qualitative data. We view this project as an experiment in working across the line that divides activists and academics. We have no doubts about our differences, but are optimistic that we bring varying resources together in a fruitful way. Reflecting this duality of focus, the workshops allowed us to accumulate oral histories, but may, in fact, have accomplished more than this. For example, in the course of talk about benefits, Mhay discovered that she had no medical insurance. On another occasion, Bing realised that her employer had replaced her when she went on holiday, with a cleaner who earned far more for that single task than she did as a nanny (also trained as a school teacher), who cleans and cares for children. These examples of sharing of information and support are part of the day-to-day work of the Philippine Women Centre.

IS THIS CANADA? 41

4 There are three groups lobbying for domestic workers’ rights in Vancouver: the Philippine Women Centre; the Vancouver Committee for Domestic Workers and Caregivers’ Rights, and the Westcoast Domestic Workers’ Association. For the West-coast Domestic Workers’ Association submission to the British Columbia Employment Standards Act Review Committee, see West Coast Domestic Workers’ Association (1993). 5 This creates a series of potential hardships. Given the need to complete two years of employment within three years, domestic workers’ opportunities to take sick leave or risk periods of unemployment are restricted. The latter may bind a domestic worker to an exploitative employer. It also shortens the time available to save money for the immigration process. The costs of immigration are considerable: $500 for each adult and $100 for each child, the ‘head tax’ of $975 for each adult, and a $150 fee (per family) for the open visa. When a domestic worker applies for landed immigrant status, she must now include all of her dependents in the Philippines on her application form. If any of these dependents fail to meet immigration requirements (e.g. due to failing a medical examination or a criminal record check), the process can be delayed, or the domestic worker deported. This is a gender issue, insofar as the Canadian state binds the woman to her family (e.g. to a husband whom she may wish to divorce), rather than treating her as an individual. 6 As of April 1, 1998, the minimum wage in British Columbia is $7.15. 7 The deduction was raised to $325 on November 1, 1996. 8 Childcare expenses used to be only deductible from the mother’s taxes, but now the deduction is available to the parent with the lowest income. 9 Washing a car has a different meaning in Singapore. Although it is a harder job in Singapore, because you may have to carry the water down from an apartment to the garage, it has the advantage of allowing nannies to get out to talk to other nannies. Under the building, in the parking lot, there is privacy to speak with other nannies. This opportunity also arises when nannies put the laundry out. Otherwise, domestic workers in these focus groups reported that their employers disallowed or discouraged them from talking to other nannies. Yolly, for example, was told, ‘ Yolly, you can talk to other nannies if you say only nice things about me.’

References Arat-Koç, S. (1989) ‘In the privacy of our own home: foreign domestic workers as solution to the crisis in the domestic sphere in Canada’, Studies in Political Economy, 28:33– 58. Arat-Koç, S. (1992) ‘Immigration policies, migrant domestic workers and the definition of citizenship in Canada’, in V.Satzewich (ed.) Deconstructing a Nation: Immigration, Multiculturalism and Racism in ‘90s Canada, Halifax: Fernwood. Bakan, A. and Stasiulis, D. (1994) ‘Foreign domestic worker policy in Canada and the social boundaries of modern citizenship’, Science and Society, 58:7–33. Bakan, A. and Stasiulis, D. (1995) ‘Making the match: domestic placement agencies and the racialization of women’s household work’, Signs, 20:303–35. Boti, M. (director) (1997) Modern Heroes, Modern Slaves, Montreal: Multi-Monde Productions. Daenzer, P. (1993) Regulating Class Privilege: Immigrant Servants in Canada, 1940s-1990s, Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.


England, K. and Stiell, B. (1997) ‘“They think you’re as stupid as your English is”: constructing foreign domestic workers in Toronto’, Environment and Planning A, 29, 2:195–215. Huang, S. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (1994). ‘Women, childcare and the state in Singapore’, Asian Studies Review, 17:50–61. Huang, S. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (1996) ‘Ties that bind: state policy and migrant female domestic helpers in Singapore’, Geoforum, 27:479–93. Hyndman, J. (1998) ‘Looking awry: the global economic emphasis of the 1998 legislative review and its gendered implications for refugees and immigrants’, paper presented at the Canadian Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Ottawa, June. Mikita, J. (1994) The influence of the Canadian state on the migration of foreign domestic workers to Canada: a case study of the migration of Filipina nannies to Vancouver, British Columbia’, unpublished M.A. thesis, Simon Fraser University. Philippine Women Centre (1998) Commentary on ‘Not Just Numbers’, Brief to The Honourable Lucienne Robillard, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, March 9, 1998. Available from Centre ([email protected]). Pratt, G. (1997) ‘Stereotypes and ambivalence: nanny agents’ stereotypes of domestic workers in Vancouver, B.C.’, Gender, Place and Culture, 4:159–77. Pratt, G. in collaboration with the Philippine Women Centre (1997) Is This Really Canada? Domestic Workers’ Experiences in Vancouver, B.C., Occasional Paper of the Centre for Womens Studies and Gender Relations, University of British Columbia. Rafael, V. (1997) ‘“Your grief is our gossip”: overseas Filipinos and other spectral presences’, Public Culture, 9:267–91. Stiell, B. and England, K. (1997) ‘Domestic distinctions: constructing difference among paid domestic workers in Toronto’, Gender, Place and Culture, 4:339–59. Tolentino, R. (1996) ‘Bodies, letters, catalogs: Filipinas in transnational space’, Social Text, 14:49–76. Vancouver Courier, ‘West End Top Choice’, December 3, 1995:6. West Coast Domestic Workers’ Association (1993) Brief to Employment Standards Act Review Committee, Available from the West Coast Domestic Workers’ Association, #302, 119 West Pender Street, Vancouver, B.C. Yeoh, B.S.A. and Huang, S. (1995) ‘Childcare in Singapore: negotiating choices and constraints in a multicultural society’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 18:445– 61. Yeoh, B.S.A. and Huang, S. (1998) ‘Negotiating public space: strategies and styles of migrant female domestic workers in Singapore’, Urban Studies, 35:583–602.

3 JAMAICAN DOMESTICS, FILIPINA HOUSEKEEPERS AND ENGLISH NANNIES Representations of Toronto’s foreign domestic workers1 Bernadette Stiell and Kim England Canada has a long history of ‘importing’ (im)migrant women to fill the demand of middle class families for live-in domestic workers. Since the nineteenth century, the Canadian government has designed a number of programs to recruit women of different nationalities as domestic workers. Generally, the women who have entered Canada as domestic workers reflect broader patterns of immigration to the country—from Europe up until the 1950s, then from the Caribbean to Asia at the present time. Currently, the majority of foreign domestic workers in Canada are from the Philippines, although Europe (especially Britain) and the Caribbean continue as important source regions. The majority of Canada’s legally documented foreign domestic workers are concentrated in Ontario, of which, by far the highest proportion reside in the Toronto region (Serwonka 1991; Bakan and Stasiulis 1997; Grandea 1996). Toronto has traditionally had the highest demand for foreign domestic workers, in part because it is Canada’s largest city and, more recently, because of the rapid increase in women’s paid employment in professional occupations. In the late 1990s, Ontario continues to be the most popular destination for new arrivals, but increasing numbers are going to other provinces, especially British Columbia (see Pratt 1997: Chapter 2 of this book). Domesticity is a supposedly universal and ‘natural’ attribute of women. At the same time, paid domestic work is racialised (see also Chapter 7), and, we argue, in a context where (im)migrant women are an important source of paid domestic workers, national identities are seen as signifying a group’s proclivity for domestic work, as well as the quality of the care they are able to provide. In this chapter, we explore the construction and representation of national identities, through a targeted, empirical case study of foreign domestic workers in Toronto. Our analysis is based on interviews with domestic workers and the staff of domestic worker placement agencies. We argue that the way in which placement agents match ‘suitable’ employees to jobs, reinforces stereotypes pertaining to the ‘natural’ qualities of women of different nationalities. We also show that domestic workers’ identities are influenced by the representations and constructions of others (governments, placement agencies, employers and other domestic workers), and that their everyday experiences are implicit and explicit testaments to the potency of national identity constructions.


Immigration, national identities and foreign domestic workers My premise is that the foreign domestic program is really two programs. One is the true temporary worker program involving British nannies and the like. This one should be left alone. The second program, involving the Caribbean and the Philippines, is, however, a sham…very few people from this latter group come with the intention of remaining in domestic work…. And the upgrading courses that we make them take, are more for show than substance…. So where does this leave us?…it leaves us with a program that pumps people, who have gone through a half-assed selection assessment, into the Canadian labour market (Employment and Immigration Canada, Policy Files 8600–8610 Memorandum; cited in Daenzer 1993:125). More than 90,000 women have arrived in Canada, since 1981, under two federal government programs (the Foreign Domestic Movement programme 1981– 92, and the Live-in Caregiver Program 1992 to the present). These programs require that domestic workers/caregivers be ‘live-ins’ at their employer’s home for their first two years in Canada (after which, they can apply for landed immigrant status). The above quote, from an immigration officer (referring to the Foreign Domestic Movement programme), clearly reveals the powerful ways in which stereotypes about different nationalities are created and perpetuated through government programs that recruit domestic workers from particular countries. Between the mid-1950s and the early 1980s, most foreign domestic workers entering Canada were from the Caribbean. Under the FDM programme (1981–92) about 43 percent of the foreign domestic workers entering Canada were from the Philippines; 19 percent from Europe (excluding the UK), 12 percent were from the UK, and 10 percent from the Caribbean, (Macklin 1992; Murdock 1992; Grandea 1996). There are numerous critiques of immigration programmes in Canada relating to foreign domestic workers, particularly regarding their racist and sexist overtones (see Ng 1992; Arat-Koç 1992, 1997; Macklin 1992; Murdock 1992; Bakan and Stasiulis 1997, 1995). The over-representation of immigrant women of colour among foreign domestic workers is rationalised in terms of their being predisposed to domestic work (Rollins 1985; Glenn 1992; Macklin 1992; Ng 1993; Bakan and Stasiulis 1995; see MacDonald 1998, for a discussion of naturalizing mothering, and delineating and policing the line between mother and caregiver). Macklin (1992) demonstrates this point with the example of Mary, the white Canadian employer of Delia, a Filipina domestic worker: Mary (can) objectify Delia in various ways that are influenced, but not precluded by, gender. For example, Mary can hardly claim that Delia is ideally suited to domestic work because she is a woman, without impugning herself, but she can fall back on Filipina women being ‘naturally’ hardworking, subservient, loyal, tidy house-keepers, and ‘good with children’.

TORONTO’S FOREIGN DOMESTIC WORKERS 45

In this context, race, ethnicity and culture conjoin with sex, to create a subcategory of women whose subordination other women can rationalise by projecting onto them the stereotypical ‘feminine’ qualities that patriarchy has used against women generally (Macklin 1992:754, emphasis in the original). Macklin’s argument that race/ethnicity, culture and gender, are employed to create a subordinated (‘foreign’) group of women, would suggest that national identities are being imbued with far more subtle connotations than merely the ‘country of origin’. At their most general level, the wider geographical contexts and differences associated with race/ethnicity, immigration and citizenship status, language and culture, are all encompassed by national identity. Further expansion of the term could be taken to include religious affiliation, and even education and training, thus highlighting the complex range of political, economic, cultural and social constructs that divides people. These divisions center on exclusionary/ inclusionary boundaries that ascribe differential degrees of power, value and prestige, by focusing on biological, cultural or historical commonalities (Anderson 1991; Jackson and Penrose 1993; Sarup 1996). Clearly, national identities are deeply gendered, raced and classed (Radcliffe 1990, 1996; Anthias and YuvalDavis 1992; Walter 1995). In this context, we view national identities as involving the simultaneous and inseparable operation of various social relations of difference. Together, national, gender, class, and racial/ethnic identities form interlocking, relational, socially constructed systems of oppression and privilege. Within this complex system, there is a multiplicity of individual and group identities that are positioned, and gain meaning, in relation to other identities. In dealing with views of the national identities of ‘others’, it is often difficult to determine the boundary between the stereotype and reality. In stereotyping a national group, certain characteristics are conflated, generalised, and often distorted. By thus doing, individual differences are ignored (Bush 1990). For instance, as a group, Filipinas are seen as submissive, hard-working housekeepers, whereas English ‘nannies’ are seen as well-trained carers of children. As we explore these preconceptions, we see that such notions of group identities not only permeate the popular consciousness, but are also reinforced by ‘external’ constructions of national identities by placement agency staff, as well as by the ‘internalised’ notions of identity of domestic workers themselves. Foreign domestic workers in Toronto Our purpose in this chapter is to illustrate ways in which domestic workers’ national identities are constructed, and obtain meaning, in relation to one another. We draw on two sets of in-depth interviews conducted by Bernadette.2 The first set were carried out with the owners or senior staff at twelve placement agencies specializing in foreign domestic workers (the agencies are identified by number). Interviews with agency personnel revealed clear differences in the way various


national identities are represented, both in terms of their suitability for different types of domestic work and their ability to provide quality care. This reflects Bakan and Stasiulis’ (1995) suggestion, that in order to be competitive, agencies project particular racialised and gendered stereo-types regarding domestic work. We examine some of the ways that national identities are engaged by placement agencies when matching jobs with workers. When asked whether their clients ask for domestic workers from specific countries of origin, numerous agents made similar comments to those quoted below: Employers ask for all sorts of things. For example, if they want a driver, you won’t usually look at Filipinas because they usually don’t drive. Or if they want housekeeping, you won’t look for a trained European nanny, because they won’t want to do housekeeping. So it has more to do with what the job requires rather than them saying ‘I want a Filipina’. They do ask for a certain nationality, because if they’ve had a good experience with one nationality, they’ll want that again. If they’ve had a bad experience with one nationality, then they’ll want a different one. (Agency 5) These remarks highlight Arat-Koç’s (1992) contention that European women get employed as ‘nannies’, who are engaged only in child-care, while Third World’ women get jobs as ‘domestics’, and are expected to do both child-care and housework, and often to work longer hours. Agency personnel therefore play an important allocative role in pre-selecting and matching domestic workers of different national identities to the expressed, or, as the staff member of Agency 5 indicates, the perceived needs of their clients. The second set of interviews were conducted with eighteen women who were, or had been, paid domestic workers in Toronto.3 The women interviewed came from nine countries of origin—Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Eire, Jamaica, the Philippines and Thailand. We do not pretend that this small sample is representative of all domestic workers in Toronto, rather, we believe that these women reflect some of the diverse identities and experiences of the varied group of workers in Toronto. The majority of the women were in their twenties or thirties; all but two were single (the two who were married were also the only ones with children). The interviews with paid domestic workers demonstrate the ways in which ‘external’ representations of their national identities are internalised by the women themselves. The interpretations and meanings that the domestic workers attach to their occupation and experience, are inextricably interwoven with their own national identity, other people’s image of their national identity with regard to domestic work, and how they define themselves relative to other foreign domestic workers. In many ways, it could be said that the identities of foreign domestic workers are formed in relation to Filipina women (who currently form the largest group of foreign domestic workers in Canada) and their English counterparts (in


terms of the latter’s cultural and political dominance). Throughout the rest of the chapter, we examine comments made by the interviewees, regarding domestic workers from Jamaica, the Philippines and England—the three major source countries for domestic workers in Toronto. Our aim is not only to illustrate the relational nature of identity formation, but also to show how domestic workers themselves engage stereotypes of national identities in order to draw out distinctions among themselves. ‘Jamaicans, especially, are very aggressive and I’m proud of that’ In the 1870s, recruitment focused on the ‘home country’ (i.e. Britain), as the concern was to get women of the right national and racial stock. After the First World War, however, the government assumed a more aggressive role in recruiting alternative sources, as demand continued to outstrip the dwindling supply from Britain. Initially, north western Europeans were ‘preferred’, but because recruitment proved unsuccessful, programs were implemented to recruit the first non-whites from Guadeloupe, in 1911. Unlike their white counterparts, these women were bonded for two years and earned less than half of the pay of white domestic workers. The 1950s and 1960s saw the introduction of further experimental programs, such as the Caribbean Domestic Scheme, which was set up as a result of pressure from Caribbean governments to circumvent Canada’s discriminatory immigration policies. This marked the shift towards domestic work being seen as the work of women of colour from Third World countries; AfroCaribbean women, especially those from Jamaica, have been associated with paid domestic work in Canada since the 1950s (Calliste 1989; Daenzer 1993). The interviews clearly support previous studies that highlight the importance of ‘race’/racism in the construction of paid domestic work. Bakan and Stasiulis (1997) suggest that the images of paid domestic workers from the Caribbean have shifted over time. Initially, they were represented as docile, jolly and good with children (‘Aunt Jemima’ or the ‘Black mammy’), but more recently they have been viewed as difficult, aggressive and selfish. They suggest that the shift relates to Afro-Caribbeans’ increased collective action in domestic workers’ rights groups (such as INTERCEDE—International Coalition to End Domestics’ Exploitation —in Toronto), behaviour that contradicts their earlier, more submissive image. Certainly, the staff at a number of the agencies expressed reservations about placing Afro-Caribbean domestic workers: I gave up hiring West Indian women, unless they had really good references, where they’d been with a family for three years, or five years. I gave up. I would like them, but two or three months later, they’ d have a couple of hundred dollars in the bank, and their boy friend would say ‘Hey man, let’s party!’ So I gave up. So I’m very leery of West Indians. The other thing, which I really hated myself for doing, but I’d ask them on the phone very


precisely about their experience, and they’d lie through their teeth! And I’d ask for references, and the reference would have a West Indian accent, and —its their culture—it is far more important to support your friends and family than it is to tell the truth. So I gave up. (Agency 1) There has not, however, been a total shift away from hiring Afro-Caribbean women as domestic workers. Interestingly, the owner of Agency 4 distinguishes between different types of Afro-Caribbean women. She uses age and, at least by implication, period of immigration, to differentiate between ‘retired West Indians’ and younger, more assertive ‘Jamaicans’. She started by describing her affinity for West Indian women: I think West Indian people are lovely. If I’m in a jam for someone, I’ll always go to one of my retired West Indians. Especially with my elderlies, the really difficult jobs, if it’s an Alzheimer’s patient, it’s hell. So, I really use them. (Agency 4) On the other hand, the same woman speaks much less fondly of ‘Jamaicans’: Jamaicans are the most assertive group F ve ever met in my life. I can be just as tough as them though, maybe not tougher, but just as tough, if I have to be [if it doesn’t work out with their employers]…. You have to be in a job a long time, and be very good at what you do before you tell a person who employs you where to go and what to do. (Agency 4) Although the statement regarding ‘retired West Indians’ refers to elder care, it shows how certain groups of domestic workers are still potentially vulnerable to exploitative agents and employers. Long after they complete their immigration requirements, some women may have no choice but to remain in domestic work, often performing the most difficult jobs (‘my elderlies’) that the agencies might not otherwise fill. In her comments regarding ‘Jamaicans’, the owner of Agency 4 suggests that domestic workers are expected to be compliant, unassertive and to ‘know their place’, both in relation to employers and placement agency personnel. Seemingly, ‘West Indian’ women might be able to do this, whereas ‘Jamaican’ women cannot. Cynthia and Felicity, the two Jamaican women interviewed, were aware of the representation of Jamaican women as difficult and aggressive. They said that they were proud of being characterised as ‘aggressive’. Cynthia said: Jamaicans, especially, are very aggressive and I’m proud of that. We don’t take bull, right. We tell you if we don’t like something. [Employers] can’t


take that. We talk English, and we understand, we don’t just answer in monosyllables. They don’t feel comfortable. (Cynthia) Cynthia and Felicity regard what is seen as ‘aggression’ by placement agencies, as self-respect and a strategy of resistance against their employers’ attempts to exploit them. Cynthia points out that, unlike other domestic workers (she later specified Filipinas), English is her first language, which makes her feel less exploitable in English-speaking Canada. Yet, Cynthia also embraces the image of the ‘caring West Indian’ versus the ‘aggressive Jamaican’: ‘You won’t find a more loving nanny than a West Indian, we have more discipline. The Filipinas don’t discipline the kids, or they’re scared of them.’ In drawing a contrast with Filipinas, Cynthia not only illustrates the relational nature of identity formation, but also shows that workers themselves engage national identities to draw out distinctions among foreign domestic workers. Moreover, her comments highlight the culturespecific construction of ‘being a woman’ or ‘carer for children’, and of ‘feminine characteristics’ such as caring and discipline. Felicity and Cynthia’s experience of racism, greatly shaped their feelings of respect and dignity regarding their employers. Their comments show that they see race and racism as fundamental in explaining their exploitation and the lack of respect shown by employers. Cynthia and Felicity also maintained that it is impossible to untangle ‘race’ from other systems of difference that shape their experience. It’s a matter of colour too. Let’s face it…it’s a combination of the fact that you’re Third World, and it’s racial too because they figure you’re Black and you’re stupid, or you’re coloured and stupid, or you’re Third World and stupid…. Even if you’re not stupid, it doesn’t make a difference! (Cynthia) Sometimes when they treat you badly, its because you’re Black, and they really just don’t have any respect for you as a human being, no matter how educated, well-spoken and no matter how good you are with the kids. But its also because they pay you to be in their house that makes it even worse, you become nothing in their eyes. I can’t tell you why, there are so many reasons, but they happen together, we come as one package…. What I can’t deal with is the idea that because I mop their floors, I’m stupid. They can do anything they want to me. They don’t have to respect you, but they come with this disguise, ‘Oh, you’re part of the family.’ They hug you. I don’t want to be hugged! For God’s sake, I’m your employee, treat me like an employee! I don’t want to be hugged. But that’s their way of trying to outsmart you. It’s emotional blackmail. You’re meant to think, This nice white lady, she’s hugging me.’ Then I’m supposed to take everything they


dish out. I don’t want that. I just want to be respected as a worker, with an employer-employee relationship. (Felicity) Felicity’s comments also underline what Gregson and Lowe (1994) describe as false kinship ties, what Rollins (1985) terms ‘maternalism’ (i.e. the highly gendered and personal nature of the paid domestic work relation). Being ‘like one of the family’ was interpreted by Cynthia and Felicity as a means of extracting further unpaid physical and affective labour, without the genuine caring and respect associated with familial relationships. As Cynthia said: ‘You’re supposed to feel so privileged to be part of their family that you overlook everything else.’ Intimacy, affective labour and a high degree of maternalism, often veil the asymmetrical class relation associated with paid domestic employment. The interviews also reveal that the class relation is constructed in relation to interlocking systems of race/ethnicity and gender. The extent and way in which maternalism and false kinship relations are experienced, obviously depend on the personalities of the individual domestic worker and her employer. However, the interviews suggest that more equitable, mutually supportive and respectful relationships were most often experienced where there was greater similarity in the identities of the domestic worker and her employer. ‘Many people want Filipinas because they are excellent housekeepers’ The source countries for Canada’s foreign domestic workers changed considerably in the 1980s (following the introduction of the FDM). Particularly marked, was the increase in the numbers of Filipinas among entrants, from 15 percent in 1983 to 65.7 percent in 1992 (Grandea 1996). It is difficult to assess the exact reasons for the increase in Filipinas—whether through Canadian government targeting or, merely, increased supply. A number of factors have been suggested, including ‘the cult of domesticity’ that continues to define Filipina femininity; the Philippine tradition of high female participation rates in education and employment; and the Philippine government’s vigorous pursuit of overseas employment as a means of alleviating chronic unemployment and balance of payment problems (Eviota 1992; Grandea 1996). It also seems that the shift from Afro-Caribbean, to Filipina women, was facilitated by placement agencies’ practices. In contrast to the ‘assertive Jamaican women’, the agency staff tended to represent Filipinas as ‘knowing their place’ (Daenzer 1993; Bakan and Stasiulis 1995). Filipinas are portrayed as ‘naturally’ docile, subservient, hard-working, good-natured, domesticated, and willing to endure long hours of housework and child-care with little complaint. Placement agencies recognise and use these differences in the recruitment process:


Some employers ask for a specific nationality…. Many people want Filipinas because they are excellent housekeepers…. I don’t think they pick Filipinas because they want their children to learn the Philippine language. They are very good workers. They are also very quiet. They keep themselves to themselves. They’re not looking for friends, and that, for many employers, is an asset. (Agency 3) Such stereotypes concerning national identities seem to be all-pervasive, and are (partly) internalised by foreign domestic workers. A Filipina INTERCEDE staff member remarked that she saw Filipinas as very adaptable and able to assimilate quickly into new cultures, while remaining very cohesive as a group. Establishing identities in relation to Filipina domestic workers was not just restricted to Jamaican women. Many of the white Canadian and European women constructed themselves relative to ‘Filipina domestic workers’, illustrating that race/ethnicity is integral to the construction of whiteness: I’m Canadian, I speak near-perfect English, and I’m educated…our relationship [with her employer] is pretty good. Having me was a bit of an adjustment, because she was used to having a Filipina nanny, and to have someone who understands everything she says to me, and someone who’s not going to fight her exactly, but not meekly let her walk all over me, was a big change for her. Sometimes we have our altercations over it. Other than that she really likes me, and I really like her. (Barb, Canadian) I don’t know why employers pick nannies of different nationalities, but I know mine picked me and not a Filipina because they didn’t want [the children] picking up on the foreign accent. Although I have an accent too, it is not as huge or whatever, as strong. They also said that they don’t mind if I speak German to the kids, but I don’t though. I’m too much into English. They also wanted someone who will put their foot down with the kids, because they [Filipinas] can’t. They wanted someone with a strong will, and I’m stubborn…. Filipina girls are all being treated more like a little sister, a family member. They fear the day she leaves, they depend on her so much. My experience is, and what I’ve heard from different people is, that they will do anything. They just say ‘yes and amen’, and that’s it. They never say ‘no’, they work for low wages, which is bad for us European nannies because they will undermine everything. Demands for better wages, which will be better for them in the long run too, will be undermined by them saying yes to everything and not standing up for themselves. (Silke, German)


Barb and Silke make reference to language (an issue also raised by Cynthia and Felicity). Silke’s remarks indicate that some employers prefer European nannies because of the potential linguistic education of their children. She also reflects the prestige that is accorded to European languages and culture. Moreover, Barb and Silke’s comments indicate that national identities undercut notions of a universal experience of paid domestic work, in this case because of differences in their relative understandings of acceptable levels of pay and working conditions. Silke also refers to Filipinas being treated ‘more like a little sister, a family member’. Unlike Cynthia and Felicity, Joan, Naomi and Wilma, three of the five Filipinas interviewed, said that they preferred to feel ‘like one of the family’, and that if their employers treated them well, they were happy to work hard. Joan provides an example of conditions she has tolerated, that we suspect many other domestic workers would reject: In my second job they got only one bedroom apartment, so they give me an extra bed in the living room. But I don’t mind because they are very nice to me. They really treat me as a member of the family. We eat together, we watch TV together. They are a very nice family. (Joan)

Edith, Joan, Jocie, Naomi and Wilma constructed their identities relative to other national groups of foreign domestic workers. They viewed their representation as hard-working and uncomplaining as a positive characteristic, setting them apart from other groups of domestic workers. Joan said: They [employers] like Filipinas —us—instead of other nationalities, because we never complain and we are very hard workers’. Jocie agreed, There’s less problem [with Filipinas], because they don’t complain. Even though they get into trouble, they just want to stay quiet’ However, Jocie’s explanation of why this is the case, is very revealing: ‘You know why? Because they don’t want to get bad record from government. They want their immigrant status.’ Jocie’s comments are indicative of a more general trend that we noted. Rather than being a purely ‘cultural’ reaction or ‘natural’ attribute of their national identity, their hardworking and compliant ‘nature’ is at least a partial result of a strong desire, on the part of some of the Filipinas, to stay in Canada and gain landed immigrant status, often with the eventual aim of sponsoring the migration of their families. The goal of immigration also helps explain why a number of the Filipinas (and Jamaicans) put up with intolerable conditions and treatment from their employers. In a number of instances, domestic work provided much needed remittances to support children and relatives in their homeland—for example, Joan sent money to her husband and child still living in the Philippines. Changing jobs entailed bureaucratic delays, considerable expense, and could reduce their chances of being viewed as reliable and hard-working when they came to submit their application for landed immigrant status.


Respect and dignity are fundamental to a person’s feeling of self-worth and selfesteem, and are important in defining the dynamics of the social relations of paid domestic work. Some employers did not seem to respect their Filipina employees’ efforts to learn English. In fact, having their intellect demeaned was a particularly familiar experience for the Filipinas, as Joan illustrates: Sometimes when I want to tell her something, like I keep forgetting the proper words to use to say it and I get frustrated. I have to think first and then go back to her. My first employer thinks I am stupid. They don’t want me to talk to other Filipinos. They say they don’t want me to use the telephones. (Joan) This is more evidence of domestic workers feeling that their employers consider them to be stupid. Joan’s comments also indicate that her first employer actively increased her sense of isolation, by trying to prohibit contact with other Filipinas/ os! The interviews with Edith, Joan, Jocie, Naomi and Wilma are full of statements that illustrate the potency of the stereotype of the uneducated, poor, Third World’ domestic worker of colour, who cannot speak English. This stereotype can be so persuasive that it may lead to their educational achievements or middle-class background being discounted (see also Chapter 2). Joan continued to tell Bernadette about her first job: At my last employer, her daughter—she were talking to me, asking me about life in the Philippines… And I was telling her, I never worked as a domestic back home. All of my family are educated, all the children and everything. And she felt that because she was not educated, she was just a high school graduate, working in Bell Canada, she felt like I am over her. She said to me, even though you are educated, they don’t acknowledge your education here and you still belong to poor country. That’s what she told me! I don’t say anything, because I think I hurt her feelings in some way. She had to find some way to put me down. I just don’t say anything. I feel bad, but I just don’t say anything. I just keep quiet. (Joan) It is evident that Joan disrupted and challenged the Third World domestic’ stereotype. The family member re-asserted an asymmetric power relation by reconstructing Joan as a ‘Third World domestic’, and discounting her worth, achievements and background as ‘inferior’ to her own.


‘She won ‘t get a qualified English nanny to do what she wanted’ Britain continues to be an important source country for Canada’s domestic workers. When the LCP (Live-in Caregiver Programme) was initially introduced, there were strict requirements regarding formal training and education,4 and this led to a relative increase in the number of women coming to Canada from England (as opposed to Britain), especially those with NNEB5 qualifications. There is a sense among the agencies that English women do not generally come to Canada with the aim of immigrating, unlike other groups of domestic workers: Now, most of the trained nannies that come in, they don’t come here to emigrate, you know. A nanny is a professional who uses her profession to travel, just like other people do. You know if you had the opportunity to travel, you go…. I am talking about trained nannies from Britain. And I don’t think its more than 25 percent of them stay, and it’s usually because they’ve met Mr. Wonderful anyway, or they like the life…. The women coming in from the Third World, I mean they haven’t come here to work with children, they’ve only come for their landed immigrant status. (Agency 3) In addition, the LCP (at least initially) seemed to have resulted in agencies that recruited trained or NNEB nannies (such as the owner of Agency 1) attempting to re-assert the prestige of ‘nanny’ and promote it as a profession that should be accorded a high degree of respect. It seems that the term ‘nanny,’ came only to be used to refer to formally trained nannies, such as English NNEBs. Some agency owners remarked that, during the 1980s, the term ‘nanny’ started to be used more generally to include ‘unqualified’ Third World’ women. They seemed keen on differentiating between ‘trained nannies’ and ‘other nannies’, again positioning one group in relation to others: [In] England, you think of a nanny as somebody who’s trained, [but] I’m using the word [nanny] in the Canadian sense. I have now come to realise that what the government think of as a nanny is just any female—you know, if you are a woman, you must be able to cook, clean and look after children. So I’m going to use the word ‘nanny’ in the Canadian sense, and if I’m talking about what, as a Brit, you call a nanny, I would add the adjective ‘trained’ nanny. (Agency 1) This agency staff member was obviously critical of assumptions that domesticity is a natural and universal experience for women. She also illustrates the intersection of gender (women ‘cook, clean and look after children’), class (‘trained nanny’) and national identity (‘Brit’) in defining one group as different


from (and even superior to) the others. However, not all the agencies had completely positive views of ‘English nannies’. The owner of Agency 2 had herself previously employed an English nanny: ‘Some of the English nannies can be absolutely horrendous. I had one like that. I asked her to wipe down the kitchen counters for me. Then I heard her telling her friend on the phone, ‘she thinks I am her skivvy’. The argument about ‘trained nannies’ and their reluctance to do housework, reflects much of the rhetoric surrounding the NNEB qualification in England. Nannying is promoted as a profession, and students are encouraged to protect their professional status by resisting employers’ attempts to add housework to their duties. Of course, the notion of the ‘trained professional’ can be regarded as a vehicle with which to legitimate the exclusion of ‘undesirable others’ from paid domestic work. Such views were evident in interviews with agencies and some of the domestic workers, and influence the assessment of certain qualities among domestic workers as ‘highly regarded’, while other qualities are seen as less desirable. For example, Maggie, the Irish woman we interviewed, reflected on the image of the trained, English nanny. Her Irish identity and lack of formal training meant that she constructed herself as distinctly ‘other’ in relation to English NNEB nannies. A lot of the English nannies are very professional, they’ve taken the NNEB, it’s more like nannying is a career to them and they idolise Lady Di, people like that. They see the nanny as being prestigious, and it really is to them. And they take a two-year course to do it, so they take it really seriously…. The employers love that. As opposed to the other nannies, they have sole care of the children, educating the children, no house cleaning. (Maggie, Irish) Maggie seemed to have absorbed the rhetoric of the NNEB qualification, commenting that NNEBs are ‘very professional’ and do ‘no house cleaning’. Interestingly, other studies indicate that the white, upper-class image of a ‘Mary Poppins’ or ‘Lady Di’ is often not borne out in the class background of the NNEB nannies, the majority of whom are from working-class or lower middle-class backgrounds. Moreover, a significant proportion also belongs to racialised minorities (Gregson and Lowe 1994; Bakan and Stasiulis 1995). Karen, Kath and Sue, the three NNEB trained, white, English women we interviewed, clearly saw their identity as ‘nannies’, as professional and prestigious (they had all arrived under the LCP). For example, Karen felt that NNEB nannies were: ‘the “crème de la crème” of the profession…we are able to command high wages around the world and receive better treatment, partly because we have a higher estimation of ourselves’. Kath reiterated this point: England turns out all the trained nannies, because of the education system, the NNEB is pretty well regarded. I’m pretty well respected…what you say


goes, and they’re willing to come around to what you want. Well this one [her current employer], more than the first one. They know what you’re capable of. She’s always had NNEBs. She knows what to expect. (Kath) The prestige of the English identity and accent, and the traditional status of the white ‘English nanny’ continue to be held in high regard in Canada. Their significance seems greatly heightened in a culture and marketplace where ‘things British’ are still valued highly among some groups (including the popular consciousness of many potential employers). This was clearly understood by Karen, Kath and Sue. For instance, Sue remarked that: Being British, the things we get away with! Our English accents—people just bend over backwards to help us, ‘Oh what a lovely accent!’ ‘What can I do for you?’ ‘Oh, since you’re British, you can have it free, or you can have it cheaper!’…. [Employers] like the English accent; they like the way we speak, they like our education, the way we speak to the children. Manners, they’re really keen on manners, because we think they’re very important, especially table manners. (Sue) One important issue for the English NNEB trained nannies was the perceived need to remain in an unsuitable job. When they reported enduring poor working or living conditions, it was usually in their first job, which was often arranged before their arrival in Canada. These jobs often fell short of their expectations, but they remained with these employers in the pursuit of a good reference for their next job. As Kath described: My first job changed, that’s why I was only there for a year. It was awful. They changed a lot of things once I got here…they wanted a housekeeper and they took the car away from me, extended my hours, but that just wasn’t on. When I tried to talk to them about it, they said they’d deal with it later, but later never came. When you’re at college they drum it into you that you have to do your first year, you have to get that experience, and then a good reference. They don’t tell you how easy it is to get another job over here. So I stuck it out, I was unhappy, but I did it. (Kath) Despite Kath’s confidence and assertive nature, she felt powerless to effect change with her exploitative employers. As a ‘career nanny’, her perceived need for a good first reference effectively removed her bargaining power and left her with no choice but to ‘stick it out’, even though she was unhappy. Of course, while asymmetrical relations can still exist for English NNEB nannies, many soon


realised that their ‘Englishness’, experience and training could secure them a better-paid job with better conditions and more respect. As Sue noted: [My first employer] wanted the best of both worlds, but at a very cheap price. She was silly, because she won’t get a qualified English nanny to do what she wanted. Other [nationalities of] nannies will work extra hours with no pay, but not me! For a lot of my English nanny friends, their first job doesn’t go well. Once they’ve got into Canada, they’ll get themselves a job that they want. (Sue) We would like to end our discussion of ‘Jamaican domestics’, ‘Filipina housekeepers’ and ‘English nannies’ by emphasising that many of the women interviewed shared a number of common concerns. Almost all the domestic workers had, at some stage, experienced difficulties related to living-in, especially in dealing with employers who frequently demanded additional duties not stated on their contracts. But those who were less marginalised tended to be better able to negotiate these situations. Their locations in the systems of difference often related to their sense of self-worth in terms of their occupation and their experience of respect. Conclusion This chapter explored how gendered, racialised and classed representations of national identities, infuse the construction of paid domestic work in Toronto. Canada’s foreign domestic worker immigration policies contain explicit and implicit understandings of which national groups should perform particular kinds of paid domestic work. As the demand for live-in domestic workers has increased, so have the number of domestic worker placement agencies. These agencies have taken up some of the recruiting and selection functions that were previously the domain of the government. By the very act of matching foreign domestic workers with jobs, agency staff help create and perpetuate images of which national identities are best suited to what types of jobs. We also investigated the internalisation of these representations by the domestic workers themselves— those whose everyday experiences are partially predicated on the various definitions of their employment suitability, which in turn are based on constructions of their national identities. Central to our argument is an emphasis on interlocking, relational systems of difference, and how identities are expressed through representations, language, the practices of various ‘gatekeepers’, and the lived experience of foreign domestic workers. Thus, it is not simply a matter of any one axis of difference operating in isolation: the NNEB nannies, for example, cannot extricate their ‘Englishness’ from their training; neither can the Filipinas, who are stereotyped as ‘naturally enjoying’ housekeeping. National identities are constructed through mutual


imbrication with other social relations of difference, especially gender, race/ ethnicity and class. We have attempted, in this chapter, to provide insights into the dynamic, intersubjective constitution of such national identities. Notes 1 This chapter is a rewritten version of two previously published papers (England and Stiell 1997; Stiell and England 1997). We thank the staff and volunteers of INTERCEDE for their time, and for access to their resources. Thanks also go to the ‘foreign domestic workers’ and agency staff who participated in our research. We are grateful to Janet Momsen for giving us the opportunity to further disseminate our work. 2 I (Bernadette) conducted the interviews, and quickly realised that my own identity was significant in the subtle and not-so-subtle interactions between the participants and myself (this issue has recently received a great deal of attention from geographers: see, for example, England 1994; Katz 1994; Moss 1995). My country of origin (England), language, accent (that of South East England), race and culture (British-West Indian), education (graduate student at the University of Toronto), and gender, all, to some extent, affected the negotiation of the ‘researcher-researched’ relationship. I was able to relate with great ease to the English and Irish women, and we talked freely about our experience of being ‘Anglos’ in Canada. There were also certain points of connection between myself and the Jamaican women, in terms of a shared ‘West Indian’ identity—they disclosed a number of experiences and opinions that I do not believe they would have so readily revealed to a Canadian or white English interviewer (like Kim!). Communication was also facilitated by the fact that they saw me as a West Indian (albeit British-born), who was struggling, as they were, to settle, study and move forward in a foreign country. It must be said, however, that there were occasions when they assumed rather too much common ground between us, and I was unable to appreciate fully the subtle nuances of everything they. Perhaps the greatest social distance was that between the Filipinas and myself; this was, in part, due to a lack of shared language fluency, and my unfamiliarity with their culture (all the interviews were conducted in English). I attended a number of INTERCEDE meetings and was able to talk more informally with domestic workers generally, especially Filipinas, who constitute the majority of the membership. Kim and I decided that I should conduct more interviews with Filipinas—not only because they are the largest group of foreign domestic workers in Toronto, but also because I wanted to obtain a clearer picture of the range of their individual experiences and the complexities of their social worlds. 3 A decision was made to concentrate on the domestic workers and placement agencies, rather than the employers. The role, attitudes and opinions of employers would form another, highly informative study, but were outside the scope of this research. Moreover, several of the domestic workers said they would have refused to participate in the study had their employers also been involved. It is also likely that the women would have been far more inhibited when giving their opinions and talking about their experiences, if their employers were also interviewed.


4 Following intense lobbying from advocacy groups such as INTERCEDE, the requirements were amended, so that applicants could substitute one year of domestic work experience for the formal training requirement (Velasco 1997). This led to a relative decline in those coming from Britain, and a relative increase in those coming from the Philippines. 5 The NNEB (National Nursery Examination Board) diploma is offered only in Britain. It is a two-year, post-secondary training programme and is one of the most widely recognised qualifications in childcare.

References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Anthias, F. and Yuval-Davis, N. (1992) Racialised Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle, London and New York: Routledge. Arat-Koç, S. (1992) ‘In the privacy of our own home: foreign domestic workers as solution to the crisis of the domestic sphere in Canada’, in P.Connelly and P.Armstrong (eds) Feminism in Action: Studies in Political Economy, Toronto: Canadian Studies Press. Arat-Koç, S. (1997) ‘From “mothers of the nation” to migrant workers’, in A.B.Bakan and D.Stasiulis (eds) Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bakan, A.B. and Stasiulis, D.K. (1995) ‘Making the match: domestic placement agencies and the racialisation of women’s household work’, Signs 20, 2:303–35. Bakan, A.B. and Stasiulis, D. (1997) ‘Foreign domestic worker policy in Canada and the social boundaries of modern citizenship’, in A.B.Bakan and D.Stasiulis (eds) Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bush, B. (1990) Slave Women in Caribbean Society, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Calliste, A. (1989) ‘Canada’s immigration policy and domestics from the Caribbean: the second domestic scheme’, in J.Vorst and the Society for Socialist Studies (eds) Race, Class, Gender: Bonds and Barriers, Toronto: Between the Lines. Daenzer, P.M. (1993) Regulating Class Privilege: Immigrant Servants in Canada 1940s-1990s, Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. England, K. (1994) ‘Getting personal: reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research’, The Professional Geographer 46, 1:80–9. England, K. and Stiell, B. (1997) ‘“They think you’re as stupid as your English is”: constructing foreign domestic workers in Toronto’, Environment and Planning A 29: 195–215. Eviota, E. (1992) The Political Economy of Gender: Women and the Sexual Division of Labour in the Philippines, London: Zed Books. Glenn, E.N. (1992) ‘From servitude to service work: historical continuities in the racial division of paid reproductive labour’, Signs, 18, 1:1–43. Grandea, N. (1996) Uneven Gains: Filipina Domestic Workers in Canada, Ottawa: The North-South Institute. Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (1994) Servicing the Middle Classes: Class, Gender and Waged Domestic Work in Contemporary Britain, London and New York: Routledge.


Jackson, P. and Penrose, J. (eds) (1993) Constructions of Race, Place and Nation, London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Katz, C. (1994) ‘Playing the field: questions of fieldwork and geography’, The Professional Geographer 46,1:67–72. MacDonald, C. (1998) ‘Manufacturing motherhood: the shadow work of nannies and au pairs’, Qualitative Sociology 21, 1:25–53. Macklin, A. (1992) ‘Foreign domestic worker: surrogate housewife or mail-order bride?’, McGill Law Journal 37, 3:681–760. Moss, P. (1995) ‘Embeddedness in practice, numbers in context: the politics of knowing and doing’, The Professional Geographer 46, 4:442–9. Murdock, R. (1992) ‘Cross border shopping for domestic labour’, Canadian Woman Studies 12, 4:60–3. Ng, R. (1992) ‘Managing female immigration: a case of institutional sexism and racism’, Canadian Woman Studies 12, 3:20–3. Ng, R. (1993) ‘Racism, sexism, and immigrant women’, in S.Burt, L.Code and L.Dorney (eds) Changing Patterns: Women in Canada, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Pratt, G. (1997) ‘Stereotypes and ambivalence: the construction of domestic workers in Vancouver, British Columbia’, Gender, Place and Culture 4:159–77. Radcliffe, S. (1990) ‘Ethnicity, patriarchy and incorporation into the nation: female migrants as domestic servants in Peru’, Environment and Planning D 8, 4:379–93. Radcliffe, S. (1996) ‘Gender nations: nostalgia, development and territory in Ecuador’, Gender, Place and Culture 3, 1:5–21. Rollins, J. (1985) Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sarup, M. (1996) Identity, Culture and the Postmodern World, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Serwonka, K. (1991) The Bare Essentials: A Needs Assessment for Domestic Workers in Ontario, Toronto: INTERCEDE. Stiell, B. and England, K. (1997) ‘Domestic distinctions: constructing difference among paid domestic workers in Toronto’, Gender Place and Culture 4:339–59. Velasco, P.M. (1997)’ “We can still fight back”: organising domestic workers in Toronto’, in A.B.Bakan and D.Stasiulis (eds) Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Walter, B. (1995) ‘Irishness, gender, and place’, Environment and Planning D 13:35–50.

4 MAKING MAIDS United States immigration policy and immigrant domestic workers 1 Doreen J.Mattingly

The international migration of women for domestic service is shaped by several processes, including global and regional inequalities, previous migration patterns and networks, and national immigration policies. United States immigration policy has specifically facilitated the employment of foreign ‘au pairs’ (see Chapter 1), and has made domestic service one of the most common forms of employment for less educated female migrants. One United States immigration law in particular —the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act—has had the unintended effect of increasing the prevalence of paid household work among Mexican immigrant women. Migration from Mexico to the southwestern United States has a long and complex history. In the twentieth century, Mexican immigration to the United States has varied with changing economic conditions on either side of the border. During times of hardship in Mexico, the number of people heading north has swelled. Labour shortages in the United States have spurred the recruitment of Mexican migrant labour, while periods of economic decline in the United States have triggered deportations and border fortifications. Amid these changing tides, twentieth-century immigration from Mexico has largely been understood—and treated in employment policy—as labour migration. Whether desired as relief for labour shortages, or vilified as the cause of recession, Mexican immigrants have been viewed, and treated as, workers. Given that the labour force participation of men has historically been greater than that of women on both sides of the border, it comes as no surprise that men have comprised the majority of the immigrant stream and have been the focus of United States immigration policy. Women, on the other hand, have been (and continue to be) viewed generally as economic dependents. This limited acceptance of Mexican immigrants into American society as (male) workers, but not as (female) citizens who are entitled to support for social reproduction, is a persistent gender dimension of Mexican immigration to the United States (Mattingly 1997). Yet, Mexican immigrant women have a long history of employment in the United States, in houses, farms, factories, hotels and restaurants. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), also known as the Simpson-Rodino Act, was designed to limit illegal immigration to the United States. IRCA criminalised the employment of undocumented immigrants, while

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granting amnesty to millions of previously undocumented immigrants who were living and working in the United States. Although there is little evidence that IRCA has been effective in limiting undocumented immigration, it has had a large impact on the labour market for immigrant workers. Studies have shown that IRCA has increased discrimination against all Hispanics (United States General Accounting Office 1990), pushed undocumented immigrants into unprotected and poorly paid jobs, and contributed to the overall casualisation of urban labour markets in the United States (Sassen and Smith 1992; Donato and Massey 1993). By limiting the other employment options of immigrant women, IRCA has directly contributed to the growing pool of domestic workers. This paper draws on interviews conducted in 1993 and 1994 with 35 current and former domestic workers in San Diego, California. The interviews are used to explore the connections between women’s immigration from Mexico to California, their employment in paid household work, and the unintended effects of IRCA. The paper begins with a discussion of my research methods, and a brief description of the women interviewed and their work. I then go on to look at the effect of IRCA on the migration of Mexican women. Methodology Evaluating the role of United States immigration policy on immigrant domestic workers was one of the foci of a research project on paid household work in San Diego, California. During 1993 and 1994,1 collected 3 original data sets: a telephone survey of 500 San Diego households; in-person interviews with 29 employers of domestic workers; and in-person interviews with 32 immigrant domestic workers and 3 former domestic workers.2 The in-person interviews with domestic workers were conducted with the help of Bertha Jottar, a bilingual research assistant from Mexico who had lived in San Diego for several years. The interviews lasted between 1 to 3 hours, depending largely on the participant’s willingness to talk (participants were paid $10 for their participation in the project). The interview covered details of the respondent’s employment and information about the households that she worked for, as well as information about the employment, residential and migration histories of herself and her family. We asked both detailed, factual questions (How much do you charge per house? How long have you been cleaning there?) and open-ended questions (Have you ever had trouble finding new houses? Why did you choose domestic work?). Given the invisibility of immigrant domestic workers, locating respondents for in-person interviews was something of a challenge. Initially, we asked ‘key informants’ in the immigrant community to connect us to domestic workers, with considerable success. For example, the youth director of a local Catholic church with a large immigrant population allowed us to interview women in her office while church activities were going on. In addition to using personal contacts, we also spent time in public places in wealthy neighbourhoods where domestic workers often congregate: in public parks during the day, and at bus stops in the

GENDER, MIGRATION AND DOMESTIC SERVICE 63

early evening. We also posted flyers at these locations to recruit participants. Finally, once we had interviewed a domestic worker, we asked her for the names and telephone numbers of other local domestics who might be willing to be interviewed. The presence and presentation of Bertha and myself affected the content and the tone of the interviews, although in different ways. Bertha, who grew up in an urban, middle-class household in Mexico, felt that her class position influenced some workers’ representation of themselves and their work. For example, some women who had been middle-class in Mexico took great pains to assure her that their present employment as a domestic was only temporary. My presence affected interviews differently: as a young, middle-class, Anglo graduate student, speaking awkward textbook Spanish, I played a less active role in the interviews than did Bertha. Several women did tell me, however, that I should write about their work so that people would stop saying that immigrants do not contribute to the economy. ‘Where would all of those doctors and lawyers be without us?’ one woman asked. The work of those women we interviewed fell into two different categories. Some were employed as ‘live-in’ nannies or baby-sitters, usually caring for children and performing most housekeeping and laundry duties. Other domestic workers are hired only to clean, usually juggling several employers, cleaning for each on a weekly or bi-monthly basis. Romero (1992) calls these workers ‘job workers’, since they are usually paid by the job. None of the women we interviewed worked for a housekeeping franchise, although some had in the past. Table 4.1 details the characteristics of the immigrant domestic workers interviewed for this study. The table shows the different characteristics of live-in, and job workers. Live-in work tends to be done by women who are younger, single, and childless, although a few live-in workers were older women whose children had grown. Live-in workers are also likely to be more recent immigrants, and to be in the country illegally (see also Chapter 7). Job-work is dominated by older married women with children of their own. The table reveals a common pattern, whereby workers begin their careers in live-in work, and move to job-work when they have children. Over half (53 percent) of the job workers had been live-ins when they first arrived in the United States, and pregnancy was the most common reason women gave for leaving live-in jobs. Whether live-in or live-out, domestic service is hardly the ideal job. The hours are long; the work is considered low status and is physically demanding; the pay and schedules are unreliable, and formal benefits are non-existent. In addition, workers are constantly subject to the whims, and, in some cases, harassment, of their employers (Rollins 1985; Palmer 1989; Romero 1992). The job is not, however, completely undesirable. The average hourly wage for job work is over $8.00 (see Table 4.1), and many jobs pay upwards of $10 an hour. An established job worker, with a full schedule of adequately-paying employers, can take home over $1000 a month, as did almost a quarter (23.8 percent) of the live-out workers interviewed. In addition, some job workers find that the job offers an unusual amount of flexibility, which can be vital in managing their own family

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Table 4.1 Personal characteristics of domestic workers

Source: Personal interviews

responsibilities. Even live-in work, the least desirable form of domestic service, offers some women with few resources, much-needed jobs. Although the reported hourly pay for live-in work ($2.72 an hour) is well below the legal minimum wage, live-in workers are provided with room and board, and so are often able to save, or to send money back to Mexico. IRCA and women’s immigration In this section, I look at the relationship between IRCA and women’s migration from Mexico to the United States. The relationship has implications for paid household work, since this occupation is common among immigrant Mexicanas in American cities, particularly those who are in the country illegally. In adopting this focus, I do not mean to suggest that immigration policy is the only, or even the primary factor causing the expansion of domestic service in the United States. Since 1982, Mexico has undergone a severe and prolonged economic transition, characterised by high unemployment, harsh austerity measures and cuts in the real wages of urban workers. Despite optimistic projections, NAFTA-led modernisation and the 1994 peso devaluation, have further downgraded economic conditions in Mexico, creating unprecedented levels of unemployment and high rates of inflation (Oliveira and Garcia 1997). The restructuring of the Mexican economy has also led to marked increases in women’s paid work in that country, as a result of the increase in service-sector employment and the financial hardship of families (Oliveira and García 1997). In addition to strong economic push factors, there is a persistent demand for paid household help in San Diego and other American cities. The expansion of high-wage employment in the United States, especially among women, has created a growing demand for housekeepers, nannies and other in-home care providers.


Numerous studies have shown that the labour force participation of Mexican women increases dramatically following migration to the United States (Segura 1991; Briody 1987; Guendelman and Perez-Itriaga 1987), and studies in San Diego have consistently found domestic service to be an important occupation for immigrant women. Through her interviews with 184 immigrant Mexicanas living in urban communities in San Diego County, in 1982, Solórzano-Torres (1991) found that 45 percent of women with jobs, worked in private households. Chavez et al. (1989) found that 29.5 percent of the employed, undocumented Mexicana immigrants interviewed in San Diego and Dallas, in 1986, were household workers. Studies of immigrant communities in Houston (Cárdenas et al. 1982) and the San Francisco Bay Area (Hogeland and Rosen 1990) both found that domestic service accounted for roughly half of the jobs held by employed Mexicanas. Studies in Mexico show that many female return migrants, particularly those who are single, divorced or widowed, were domestic workers during their time in the United States (Guendelman and Perez-Itriaga 1987; Kossoudji and Ranney 1984). Studies comparing legal and illegal immigrants, consistently find that employment in domestic service is more common among undocumented immigrants than it is for those who are in the country legally. Stopping illegal immigration from Mexico was the goal of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. IRCA was introduced in response to the growing number of immigrants, and the public perception that undocumented immigration contributed to the unemployment of American citizens. The law increased American efforts to prevent undocumented immigration, especially along the nation’s southern border, and made it illegal to employ undocumented immigrants. Before the passage of IRCA, illegal migrants could be arrested for working in the United States, but the people who employed them could not. Under IRCA, employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers are subject to fines ranging from $250 to $2000 for each employee, with the possibility of up to sixmonths imprisonment for a repeated ‘pattern and practice’ of such violations (Tunnell et al. 1993; CIRRS 1988). IRCA also granted legal status to a substantial number of qualified immigrants, thereby reducing the size of the illegal immigrant population with one stroke of the pen.3 Current migration from Mexico to California has its roots in the United States Bracero Program, which recruited Mexican workers to mitigate the World War 2 labour shortage. Most of the workers recruited, as well as those additional workers who came illegally to work, were young men from poor, rural Mexican states. The Bracero Program ended in 1964, but through the 1970s, undocumented migration continued to be prevalent amongst young men who worked in seasonal agriculture for several months a year, and who then returned to their families in rural Mexico (Galarza 1964). During the last decade, the pool of migrants has become more diverse and now includes more women and children, more people from regions that have not traditionally sent migrants, and more migrants from working-class and middle-class backgrounds (Cornelius 1992; Bustamante 1990). IRCA was a compromise bill forged in the 1980s: it addressed both the desire to halt illegal

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immigration, especially from Mexico, and the need to protect those undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. Despite IRCA’s intent, substantial evidence indicates that illegal immigration has not declined significantly since its passage. Evidence from daily border counts (Bustamante 1990), Mexican sending communities (Donato et al. 1992b; Massey et al. 1990; Cornelius 1989a), and immigrant communities in the United States (Chavez et al. 1990; Cornelius 1989b) show that IRCA has not deterred immigration. Not only has the total number of illegal immigrants not been reduced, evidence from a variety of sources shows that since the law was put into effect, the illegal immigration of women and children has actually increased, both in absolute numbers and relative to male migration (Cornelius 1992; SólorzanoTorres 1991; Bean et al. 1990; Woodrow and Passel 1990; Bustamante 1990; Cleeland 1989). By 1988–89, the proportion of women and children apprehended in San Diego by the Border Patrol had significantly increased from pre-IRCA levels (Bean et al. 1990). Since the law’s passage in 1986, researchers have found more migration by whole family units (moving together), more familyreunification migration (women and children joining family heads already in the United States), and more migration by single women (Cornelius 1992; Bean et al. 1990). One study of border-crossers in Tijuana found an increase in the number of women from the interior of Mexico making their first crossing into the United States (Woo 1993). Some of this new migration is legal, as in the case of family members sponsored by citizens, but a substantial portion of it is illegal (Cornelius 1992). IRCA seems to have provided some of the impetus for women’s migration by encouraging whole-family and family-reunification migration. The law’s amnesty provision has increased the critical mass of legalised Mexicans who can sponsor new immigrants (Sassen and Smith 1992). IRCA has also increased the cost and risk of crossing the border, which has discouraged the pattern of male cyclical migration, and encouraged workers already in the United States to settle there, often bringing their families north (Kossoudji 1992). These documented effects of IRCA have directly fueled the expansion of the number of female legal immigrants, and markedly changed the gender composition of the immigrant stream. By changing the immigration patterns, the law has arguably increased the flow of women crossing the border without papers by creating women-centered migration networks and creating greater social acceptance for women’s migration in Mexico (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). A parallel situation can be found in the Bracero Program, which brought thousands of additional legal male migrants north, to work in California agriculture. Thousands of undocumented immigrants joined the legal migrant stream at that time, making use of the networks and employment opportunities designed for legal migrants (Galarza 1964). Interviews with domestic workers revealed the importance of economic motives in the migration of women for domestic service. When we asked domestic workers why they migrated to the United States, economic motives were cited as the most common cause. As Table 4.2 shows, over two-thirds of all those interviewed told


us that they first moved to the United States out of economic need, hoping to find work here. Economic motives were particularly important to those women who worked as live-ins when they first arrived, almost three-quarters (73.7 percent) of whom said they had migrated out of economic need. For many, economic motives include supporting a family in Mexico. The majority (68.8 percent) of domestic workers interviewed send some money to Mexico each year, and almost half (46. 9 percent) send money each month. Of the women who send money, almost threequarters (73.3 percent) send money to help support their parents’ households there. Two of the women interviewed also supported their own minor children who were living with family members in Mexico, and five others reported having done so in the past. For immigrant women who need to earn money quickly, live-in domestic work is one of the easiest routes, since live-in workers do not have to find housing or pay for their own living expenses. Table 4.2 Primary reason for first migration from Mexico to the United States

Source: Personal interviews *Responses for three former domestic workers are included. Two current domestic workers refused to answer questions about migration and two respondents live in Tijuana.

Although no historical data is available, evidence suggests that immigrant women’s employment in domestic service in San Diego, as is true of immigration of Mexicanas in general, is on the rise. In some locations, such as ‘la cuadra de las gatas’ (the block of cats)4 in Imperial Beach, the increase is obvious: here, women line the street hoping to find day work cleaning houses. In wealthy San Diego neighbourhoods, Mexicana domestic workers can also be seen waiting at bus stops and supervising children in public parks. The experiences of the domestic workers interviewed confirm that the pool of immigrant women looking for jobs in domestic service is, indeed, growing. When asked whether more immigrant women were looking for jobs in domestic work than in the past, all but one respondent answered affirmatively, some even noting an increase between 1990 and 1993. Leonora, a 27-year-old divorcee who supports her mother and daughter in Mexico City, has been working in domestic service in San Diego on and off since 1986. She commented on the increase in women looking for housekeeping jobs: ‘In 1991 I didn’t see so many domestics. Even since last year I have noticed

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more people saying that they would rather work as domestics or living in than doing a different job.’ Two-thirds of the respondents offered an explanation for this increase (Table 4.3). Most (60 percent) saw it as a function of either the accelerated migration of women from Mexico (40 percent) or of the limited job opportunities for women without papers (20 percent). Although the women were not asked how the growing number of domestic workers affected them, seven of them remarked that competition for jobs had become much fiercer in recent years, as a result of increased migration. Consuelo recently became a legal resident of the United States. When we interviewed her, she was in the process of leaving domestic work. This is what she said: I went to school to be a nurse’s aid because it was getting too difficult to find houses to clean. There are many people now who work for so little money, for whatever [they can get]. Employers don’t want to pay the fair amount, the real price for the job. So I decided to stop, you kill yourself for too little [cleaning houses]. Table 4.3 Why are more women doing domestic work now?

Source: Personal interviews

IRCA has not stopped undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States, and since its passage, more women have joined the migration stream. Economic pressures in Mexico and the hope of better opportunities in the United States, fuel a movement that United States immigration policy cannot prevent. Studies designed to evaluate the effect of IRCA on undocumented immigration, suggest that the law has contributed to changes in immigration patterns by terminating the historical pattern of male seasonal migration. My research shows that San Diego’s labour market for paid household workers is larger and more competitive since the passage of IRCA. While some portion of this increase can be attributed to changes in immigration, the changing labour market for undocumented immigrant workers in the United States has also pushed more women into household work. It is in the labour market that the effects of IRCA are most strongly felt. The law has seriously curtailed the employment options of undocumented women, in some cases limiting them to domestic work and other informal occupations. IRCA has also limited the employment and earnings of


immigrant men (documented and undocumented), increasing the importance of women’s earnings to immigrant households. IRCA and the domestic service labour market One of the well-documented effects of IRCA has been an increase in the economic and legal vulnerability of undocumented immigrants. Studies have found that IRCA has lowered wages and contributed to worsened working conditions for undocumented workers employed in the United States (Donato and Massey 1993; Donato et al. 1992a; Sassen and Smith 1992). Donato and Massey’s (1993) study of return migrants in thirteen Mexican communities in 1991, found that undocumented immigrants earned significantly lower wages than legal immigrants holding official green cards, even when skill level, education and length of stay were the same. They conclude that ‘IRCA sharply increased the penalties to illegal status among Mexican workers in the United States, suggesting a qualitative shift in the way that employers treat and evaluate their undocumented employees after IRCA (1993:539). Similarly, the research of Sassen and Smith (1992) in New York City, shows that IRCA has pushed illegal immigrants into low-wage jobs in the informal sector, where employers (often other immigrants) take advantage of their limited options. In an era of severely limited employment opportunities, domestic service has remained open to undocumented immigrants. Because domestic service—like gardening—takes place in private homes, it is an occupation that often goes undetected by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) (HondagneuSotelo 1994; Ruiz 1991; Bean et al. 1990). In addition, the INS has enforced employer sanctions most rigorously in high-paying, and therefore masculinised, jobs (Mines and Avina 1992). Many jobs held by women, particularly those in domestic service, are a low priority for the INS (Ruiz 1991). Among the 30,577 IRCA nonagricultural investigations between 1987 and 1990, only 43 were concerned with private households (United States Department of Labour 1991: 29). As a consequence of IRCA, domestic service remains one of the few jobs open to undocumented immigrant women. The domestic workers interviewed felt that IRCA had significantly reduced their employment options in the United States All but three of the domestic workers interviewed (90.6 percent) agreed that the law has made life harder for undocumented immigrants, not only by limiting the type of jobs they can get, but also by creating a climate where workers are forced to accept lower wages and less power in the workplace. Lourdes, a recent undocumented immigrant who has already encountered employers who refused to pay her the agreed amount or to let her leave at the agreed time, said she believed that employers often take advantage of undocumented immigrants:

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I think that we are exploited because people without papers have to work anywhere and for whatever amount, since when you don’t have papers you cannot defend yourself. In the words of Graciela, a documented live-out housekeeper who has been working in the United States since 1979: There are many women who are housekeepers now because they don’t ask for papers, and since we don’t have papers [working in houses] is much easier than in a company, where they will ask for them. Several women pointed out that it is not only a matter of whether employers will ask whether or not you have papers; private employers, unlike companies, are much more willing to believe workers and not ask to see any documentation, or to accept forged documents. When we asked Faustina, a live-out worker, about the effects of IRCA, she said: It is more difficult in general, because in many jobs they ask for papers. But I have noticed in this kind of job, they don’t ask much about papers. This is why so many women do this job. Because you work for individuals, and they don’t even know what your papers should look like, so they are less exacting. In a company, they know what a real green card looks like or if it’s a fake one, so it is more difficult to find a job in those places than in a particular home. If [people hiring domestics] ask for papers, they don’t even recognise if they are fake or not. The impact of IRCA is particularly severe for undocumented immigrants. As Table 4.1 showed, just over half of the domestic workers interviewed (53.1 percent) were undocumented at the time of the interview, although all were undocumented when they first arrived in the United States. Over half (62.5 percent) of the workers interviewed said they thought that since IRCA, the jobs open to undocumented women were basically limited to domestic work.5 One domestic worker told us of women who had lost their jobs in nurseries after INS raids, and had started to look for work in domestic service. Recent migrants and women without papers were the most likely to feel that IRCA had pushed more women into domestic work. All of the women who migrated after 1986 saw the lack of papers as a major factor pushing women into domestic service, and 82.4 percent of all undocumented women said the same. An additional way in which IRCA has increased the pool of domestic workers is by limiting the opportunities for undocumented immigrant women to move from domestic service to other jobs. Research on domestic service has found that the occupation has, historically, played two distinct roles in the careers of women. For some women, especially those who do not belong to racial minorities, domestic service can serve as a ‘bridging occupation’, held by women for part of their lives


before leaving the occupation for marriage or a more desirable job. In other cases, domestic service has been a ‘ghettoising’ occupation, especially when the workers are in a racial minority. This pattern is epitomised by the lifetime domestic employment of many African-American women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Katzman 1981). After IRCA, the opportunities for undocumented immigrant women to move out of domestic service became so limited that it now seems that household work is once again becoming an occupational ghetto. Pre-IRCA studies found that undocumented women frequently entered domestic service (especially as live-ins) when they first arrived in the United States; they then later moved out of the occupation into formal sector work, particularly in manufacturing (Solórzano-Torres 1991). Since the passage of IRCA, however, such mobility is increasingly difficult for women without documents (Hogeland and Rosen 1990). The women we interviewed were painfully aware of the limited job options of undocumented immigrants. Although most of the respondents knew of at least one woman who had left domestic service for another occupation, in every case the woman who changed jobs had a green card (either real or fake). Without documents, undocumented women felt that their only other employment options were baby-sitting children in their own homes (which pays less but allows them to stay at home with their own children) or low-wage, under-the-table work in other service occupations, such as cleaning in hotels, and restaurant work. In the context of these limited employment options, almost half (44 percent) of the respondents said that domestic work was preferable to other jobs available to them. Evidence of the ‘ghettoising’ effect of IRCA can be found in the number of educated and skilled undocumented immigrants who are employed as domestic workers. Without the restrictions imposed by IRCA, these workers would be able to make use of their skills in formal-sector jobs. Table 4.4 shows the education and employment background of domestic workers (including three former domestic workers) at their date of migration. The table shows that women who have migrated more recently are much better educated: a third have had some education beyond secundaria (middle school). In addition, a much larger proportion (almost half) of the later migrants had some employment experience in Mexico other than domestic work. Although two of these jobs were unskilled or semi-skilled jobs (receptionist and factory worker), it is noteworthy that five of the domestic workers had held skilled white-collar jobs before migrating, two as school teachers, two as social workers and one in business. If the sample is, indeed, representative of immigrant women in the region, this pattern suggests that more Mexican women from middle-class urban families are migrating to the United States. The employment histories of the women interviewed also raise the question of whether middle-class women may be choosing domestic service work at a higher rate than immigrant women from poorer families. In addition, the apparent concentration of skilled, educated immigrant women in domestic service points up a bitter irony: as the pool of Mexican immigrants expands to include trained, skilled women who could conceivably hold higher-status and better-

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Table 4.4 Education and occupation in Mexico before migrating by date of migration

Source: Personal interviews *Responses for three former domestic workers are included. Two current domestic workers terminated the interview before answering the question.

paying jobs than those in domestic service, the opportunities for such mobility without a green card have all but disappeared. Undocumented immigrants are not the only workers affected by IRCA: one of the law’s ironic outcomes has been a reduction in the wages and standard of working conditions of legal (resident alien) immigrants. There is a growing body of evidence that wages, working conditions and employment opportunities for legalised Mexican workers, declined, following the passage of IRCA (Sorensen and Bean 1994; United States General Accounting Office 1990). For example, a hiring audit carried out by the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) in Chicago and San Diego, found that Hispanics of foreign appearance (who were legal residents or citizens) were three times more likely than Anglos to encounter unfavourable treatment from employers (1990). The (1990) GAO report concluded that post-IRCA national-origin discrimination ‘constitutes a serious pattern of discrimination’ (p.5). Discrimination against legal immigrants has also affected the labour market for domestic workers. The low pay and limited opportunities that immigrant women face in formal-sector jobs may have been heightened by IRCA, making domestic service even more appealing for women who are established in the occupation. It is relevant to note here that in interview discussions about the negative effects of IRCA on legal workers, all of the examples cited by respondents concerned male immigrants. This may be because the other job options available to immigrant Latina women in Southern California were already, mostly minimum-wage, service-sector jobs, whereas immigrant men had previously found employment in some higher-wage occupations. The negative effects of IRCA on the wages of resident alien men emerged during interviews, as an indirect cause of domestic


service employment among married, legal-immigrant women. Lupe’s husband, Raul, joined the interview when he came home from his job as a gardener. Both Lupe and Raul were documented before IRCA, and both emphasised the problems that IRCA has caused for them: Raul: This is what I notice now in San Diego. It is worse for the legal worker. It seems that the law brought more people without papers. Now it is easier for employers to find people [to work] for cheap. Now, since the employer can be fined, he extorts the worker…. In the 1980s, we got better paid than now, we had insurance, we had everything…. I got fired after working for the same company for five years, once I got my papers. I don’t know why. Lupe: Sometimes I even think that it is bad luck to get papers…People without papers get the jobs because they will work for less salary and they don’t ask for insurance, or anything like that. When asked whether IRCA has had a similar effect on resident alien women, both Lupe and Raul said that they felt that it had not: Raul: What happens with the domestics, is that they have always been in the same situation. Nothing has affected them because the job has always been at the same level, they have not ever advanced. Owing to the fact that IRCA has reduced the employment and earning potential of immigrant men, it has, at the same time, increased the importance of domestic workers’ wages to their households. Among the married, live-out workers who knew how much their husbands earned, 47.6 percent earned themselves at least half of their household income. The seventeen married, live-out workers were then asked whether their families could survive without their income: although 35 percent said they could, 29.4 percent said they probably would survive, but only with difficulty, and 52.9 percent said that their families could definitely not survive. Again, women’s income is even more crucial for undocumented immigrants: 66.7 percent of the undocumented married women (all of their husbands are also undocumented) said that their families could not survive without the money that the women earn cleaning houses. While some women took pains to point out that their greater earning capacity was a function of the legal and political context (and not a failure on the part of their husbands) most were nevertheless proud of their financial contributions to the household. Since women have the possibility of relatively high earnings in domestic service, and since it is a job available to those who lack legal status, English-language ability and other job skills, domestic service employment has been an important factor in allowing immigrant women to meet their increased financial responsibilities. My interviews with domestic workers suggest an additional effect of the amnesty provision of IRCA on the local labour market for domestic workers: this is to increase the number of workers commuting from Tijuana. Like other border cities, San Diego has a long history of workers commuting from Mexico to work

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in all sectors of the economy (Herzog 1990). While residents of Mexican border cities are eligible for special permits that allow them to cross the border, Mexicans who are resident aliens of the United States are able not only to cross the border freely, but also to work in the United States. By increasing the size of the resident alien population in the United States, IRCA also increased the pool of workers who can potentially commute between the two cities. Given the dramatic differential in rent and cost of living between the two cities, the fact of living in Tijuana and working in San Diego allows workers to stretch their low wages. Several of the domestic workers interviewed said that women who migrate from Tijuana will often work for lower wages; in addition, two of the employers that I interviewed, employed housekeepers who commuted daily across the border. Conclusion While the demand for immigrant workers in Southern California has remained strong, the labour market and working conditions of immigrants have been profoundly affected by IRCA. Although the intent of the law was to limit illegal immigration, there is no substantial evidence that it has been successful in doing so, with the law possibly having the ironic consequence of promoting undocumented immigration of women. The interviews show that IRCA has also promoted the employment of immigrant Mexicanas in domestic service, where employment opportunities persist despite the law. Because IRCA has also limited the earnings and employment opportunities of immigrant men, it has also placed added indirect pressure on immigrant women to work, intensifying women’s need for jobs in domestic service. As long as IRCA is in place, immigrants working illegally in the United States will be faced with limited job opportunities and poor working conditions. In such a context, domestic service will continue to be a sought-after form of employment for immigrant women. Although rarely discussed as such, IRCA is an integral part of economic restructuring and labour discipline in the United States. It is, in addition, a key piece of legislation contributing to the downgrading of working conditions in occupations employing large numbers of immigrants (Mines and Avina 1992; Sassen and Smith 1992). By taking away the rights of a large pool of undocumented immigrants, and providing a motive for discrimination against documented immigrants, IRCA has divided the labour force and pushed countless workers into low-paying jobs in services and low-end manufacturing. Moreover, by channeling immigrant women into jobs as housekeepers and nannies, IRCA may well be the country’s most effective policy for supporting professional women. Yet, it is a policy that deepens the divide between women of different classes. The barriers to formal employment imposed by IRCA are transforming domestic service from a bridging occupation for immigrant women into a more permanent occupational ghetto. In the 1990s, changes on both sides of the border continue to fuel the migration of women from Mexico to work in domestic service in the United States Although


NAFTA was promoted as a means to end undocumented immigration through Mexican economic stabilisation, it has failed to either stabilise the economy or halt immigration. Indeed, some observers have been critical of the United States government’s insistence on restricting the agreement to flows of capital and goods, while neglecting the related labour flows between the two nations (e.g. Bustamante 1997). The devaluation of the Mexican peso in 1995 is a visible manifestation of the economic crisis in that country. With falling wages, increasing inflation and escalating business failure, it is likely that migration to the United States—both legal and undocumented—will continue. Mexico’s economic restructuring has also contributed to the expansion of women’s employment there (Oliveira and Garcia 1997). As women take on more economic responsibility and gain workforce experience, they have a greater likelihood of migrating for their own economic motives (rather than for those of male family members). At the same time, economic polarisation and the expansion of women’s professional employment in the United States, continue to generate demand for paid household workers: in southwestern cities like San Diego, immigrant Mexicans remain the dominant domestic labour force. Owing to the key role of domestic service in defining and entrenching differences among women, the occupational segregation of immigrant Mexicanas in domestic service may have numerous implications for the future construction of racial-ethnic identities and relations in Southern California. Notes 1 The research for this paper was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (SES 9304771). 2 For a full description of the research methodology, see Mattingly (1999). 3 IRCA contains two legalisation programs, a regular legalisation program (LAW) offering legal status to immigrants who could prove continuous residence in the U.S. between 1982 and 1986 (1.77 million applicants, 70 percent of whom are from Mexico, and roughly 11 percent of whom are from Central America), and a legalisation program for special agricultural workers (SAW) who had worked at least ninety days in U.S. agriculture the previous year (1.3 million applicants) (U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service 1989). 4 In Mexico, gata (cat) is a pejorative term for live-in maids. 5 Respondents were not asked this question directly, but were asked two questions that prompted them to make connections between IRCA and domestic work: 1) Do you think that more women are domestic workers now than ten years ago (or, for those who arrived after 1986, more than when they arrived), and 2) Do you think that employer sanctions have made it more difficult for immigrants to find jobs here?

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References Bean, F.D., Espenshade, T.J., White, M.J. and Dymowski, R. (1990) ‘Post IRCA changes in the composition of undocumented migration to the United States: an assessment based on apprehensions data’, in F.D.Bean, B.Edmonston and J.S.Passel (eds) Undocumented Migration to the United States: IRCA and the Experience of the 1980s, Washington DC: The Urban Institute Press. Briody, E.K. (1987) ‘Patterns of household immigration into south Texas’, International Migration Review 21, 1:27–47. Bustamante, J.A. (1990) ‘Undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States: Preliminary findings of the Zapata Canyon Project’, in F.D.Bean, B.Edmonston and J.S.Passel (eds) Undocumented Migration to the United States: IRCA and the Experience of the 1980s, Washington DC: The Urban Institute Press. Bustamante, J.A. (1997) ‘Mexico-United States Labour Migration Flows’, International Migration Review 31, 4:1112–21. Cárdenas, G., Shelton, B.A. and Pena, D. (1982) ‘Undocumented immigrant women in the Houston labour force’, California Sociologist 5, 2:98–118. Chavez, L.R., Flores, E.T. and López-Garza, M. (1989) ‘Migrants and settlers: a comparison of undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans in the United States’, Frontera Norte 1:49–75. Chavez, L.R., Flores, E.T. and López-Garza, M. (1990) ‘Here today, gone tomorrow? Undocumented settlers and immigration reform’, Human Organisation 49:193–205. CIRRS (1988) Alternative employment strategies for immigrants and refugees. San Francisco: Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Services. Cleeland, N. (1989) ‘Many more women decide to flee Mexico’, San Diego Union, August 27, 1989, A-12. Cornelius, W.A. (1989a) ‘Impacts of the 1986 immigration law on emigration from rural Mexican sending communities’, Population and Development Review 15:687–705. Cornelius, W.A. (1989b) ‘The United States’ demand for Mexican labour’, in W.Cornelius and J.A.Bustamante (eds) Mexican Migration to the United States: Origins, Consequences, and Policy Options, San Diego: UCSD, Center for United StatesMexican Studies. Cornelius, W.A. (1992) ‘From sojourners to settlers: The changing profile of Mexican migration to the United States’, in J.A.Bustamante, C.W.Reynolds, and R.A.Hinojosa Ojeda (eds) United States-Mexico Relations: Labour Market Interdependence, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Donato, K.M., Durand, J. and Massey, D.S. (1992a) ‘Changing conditions in the United States labour market: effects of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986’, Population Research and Policy Review 11, 2:93–115. Donato, K.M., Durand, J. and Massey, D.S. (1992b) ‘Stemming the tide? Assessing the deterrent effects of the Immigration Reform and Control Act’, Demography 29, 2: 139–57. Donato, K.M. and Massey, D.S. (1993) ‘Effect of the Immigration Reform and Control Act on the wages of Mexican migrants’, Social Sciences Quarterly 74, 3:523–41. Galarza, E. (1964) Merchants of Labour: The Mexican Bracero Story, San José, CA: The Rosicrucian Press.


Guendelmen, S. and Perez-Itriaga, A. (1987) ‘Double lives: the changing role of women in seasonal migration’, Women’s Studies 13:249–71. Herzog, L. (1990) Where North Meets South: Cities, Space, and Politics on the United States-Mexico Border, Austin: University of Texas, Center for Mexican-American Studies. Hogeland, C. and Rosen, K. (1990) Dreams Lost, Dreams Found: Undocumented Women in the Land of Opportunity, San Francisco: Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Services, Immigrant Women’s Task Force. Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (1994) Gendered Transitions: Mexican Experiences of Migration, Berkeley: University of California Press. Katzman, D.M. (1981) Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America, New York: Oxford University Press. Kossoudji, S.A. (1992) ‘Playing cat and mouse at the United States-Mexican border’, Demography 29:159–77. Kossoudji, S.A. and Ranney, S.I. (1984) ‘The labour market experience of female migrants: the case of temporary Mexican migration to the United States’, International Migration Review 23, 4:1120–43. Massey, D.S., Donato, K.M. and Liang, Z. (1990) ‘Effects of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986: preliminary data from Mexico’, in F.D.Bean, B.Edmonston and J.S.Passel (eds) Undocumented Migration to the United States: IRCA and the Experience of the 1980s, Washington DC: The Urban Institute Press. Mattingly, D.J. (1999) ‘Job search, social networks, and local labour market dynamics: the case of paid household work in San Diego, California’, Urban Geography, 20, 1: 46– 74 . Mattingly, D.J. (1997) ‘Working men and dependent wives: gender, race, and the regulation of migration from Mexico,’ in K.Jones, J.Tronto and C.Cohen (eds) Women Question Politics, New York: Routledge. Mines, R. and Avina, J. (1992) ‘Immigrants and labour standards: the case of the California janitors’, in J.A.Bustamante, C.W.Reynolds, and R.A.Hinojosa Ojeda (eds) United States-Mexico Relations: Labour Market Interdependence, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Oliveira, O.de and Garcia, B. (1997) ‘Socioeconomic transformation and labour markets in urban Mexico’, in R.Tardanico and R.M.Larín (eds) Global Restructuring, Employment, and Social Inequality in Urban Latin America, Miami, FL: University of Miami, North-South Center Press. Palmer, P. (1989) Domesticity and Dirt: Domestic Servants in the United States, 1920– 45. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rollins, J. (1985) Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Romero, M. (1992) Maid in the United States, New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall. Ruiz, V.L. (1991) ‘By the day or the week: Mexicana domestic workers in El Paso’, in V.L.Ruiz and S.Tiano (eds) Women on the United States Mexico Border: Responses to Change, Boulder: Westview Press. Sassen, S. and Smith, R.C. (1992) ‘Post-industrial growth and economic reorganisation: Their impact on immigrant employment’, in J.A.Bustamante, C.W.Reynolds and R.A. Hinojosa Ojeda (eds) United States-Mexico Relations: Labour Market Interdependence, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Segura, D. (1991) ‘Ambivalence or continuity? Motherhood and employment among Chicanas and Mexican immigrant women workers’, Aztlan 20, 1–2:119–50. Solórzano-Torres, R. (1991) ‘Female Mexican immigrants in San Diego County’, in V.L. Ruiz and S.Tiano (eds) Women on the United States Mexico Border: Responses to Change, Boulder: Westview Press. Sorensen, E. and Bean, F.D. (1994) ‘The Immigration, Reform, and Control Act and the wages of Mexican-origin workers: Evidence from current population surveys’, Social Sciences Quarterly 75, 1:1–17. Tunnell, L., Zimmerman, R.A. and Seipel, C. (1993) ‘Nannygate: An overview of payroll tax rules and immigration laws’, Journal of Accountancy, July. United States Department of Labour. (1991) Employer Sanctions and United States Labour Markets: Second Report, Washington DC: United States Department of Labour, Bureau of International Labour Affairs, Immigration Policy and Research, Report 3. United States General Accounting Office. (1990) Immigration Reform: Employer Sanctions and the Question of Discrimination, Report to the Congress. March. United States Immigration and Naturalisation Service. (1989) Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Woo, O.M. (1993) ‘Migracion internacional y movilidad transfronteriza: El caso de las mujeres mexicanas que cruzan hacia Estados Unidos’, Mujer y Frontera 8:115–46. Woodrow, K.A. and Passel, J.S. (1990) ‘Post-IRCA undocumented immigration to the United States: an assessment based on the June 1988 CPS’, in F.D.Bean, B.Edmonston and J.S.Passel (eds) Undocumented Migration to the United States: IRCA and the Experience of the 1980s, Washington DC: The Urban Institute Press.

Part II SOUTH AMERICA

In South America, more women than men move from rural areas to cities. This bias has been explained in terms of the gender division of labour, with urban areas offering more jobs for women than rural areas. Many of the women migrants are poorly educated, often ethnically different from the urban majority, and, in the Andean countries, speak little Spanish. Middle-class families in the largest cities have long turned to such women when they needed household help. In many cases, relationships develop between a particular urban employer and a village supplier of young domestic servants, with social networks becoming established that channel future migration flows. Traditionally, these young women have returned home to get married after a few years, during which they have become trained in household tasks. They may also have obtained some additional education, and at the very least have not been an economic drain on their families (Radcliffe 1986). Today, many of these rural migrants are rejecting the patriarchal society of rural areas, and are taking advantage of restructuring to graduate to other jobs in the city. Sometimes, after having children, they may go back to domestic work on a ‘live-out’ basis, as this allows them flexibility in schedules. Thus, domestic service can be seen as providing a reserve pool of female labour in many Latin American cities. Most migrant domestic servants in South America move within their own country, but women from the poorer countries sometimes move to richer ones. This is true for Argentina, where Paraguayan and Chilean women, and, to a lesser extent, Bolivians, work as maids in the capital city, Buenos Aires (Balàn 1995). Today, although the total number of domestic servants continues to rise, the occupation is declining in terms of the proportion of economically-active women it represents. In spite of this, it still accounts for one-fifth of women workers in most countries. References Balàn, Jorge (1995) ‘Household economy and gender in international migration: the case of Bolivians in Argentine’, in International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on

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International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, San Miniato, Italy, 28–31 March, 1990, New York: United Nations. Radcliffe, S. (1986) ‘Women’s lives and peasant livelihood strategies: a study of migration in the Peruvian Andes’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool.

5 RACE AND DOMESTIC SERVICE Migration and identity in Ecuador Sarah A.Radcliffe

Around one-fifth of economically-active women in Ecuacdor work in domestic services; many of those working in private homes are migrants from the impoverished countryside, the starting point for large-scale, rural-urban migration flows since the 1940s. Despite the concentration of Ecuadorian working women in paid domestic work, and the gender segregation of the homeworking sector, few studies exist of this employment.1 Through an ethnographic discussion of migration, gender and domestic service in Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, this chapter examines the dynamic, multi-faceted social relations embedded in paid homeworking, focusing particularly on the significance of race and nation. My work starts from an interest in identity constitution in hierarchical societies, in which race, gender, class and location intersect to constitute social subjects and spaces.2 Utilising a post-structuralist analysis, and feminist geography, the nature of gendered migration into domestic service is examined as an example of what Lawson (1998) has called the ‘narratives of gendered migration’. In order to examine the racialisation of domestic service arising from female migration, I outline the nature of Latin-American domestic service, where nine out of ten domestic servants are female, and where domestic service employs onefifth of all working women. Reviewing the theoretical material dealing with this type of employment reveals multi-faceted and complex questions. Arising from the intersection of gender ideologies of domesticity, in a highly class-divided and racialised society, the analysis of Latin-American domestic service gives an insight into the ways that these hierarchies are experienced and reproduced. Domestic service in Ecuador, as an institution and set of relationships, is covered in the following section before the discussion moves on to the ethnographic and interview material clarifying the viewpoints of Ecuadorian women currently employed as household workers.3 The embeddedness of domestic service in the racialisation of certain groups, and the personalisation of racialised hierarchies, provide the focus of the chapter, before I then move on to some conclusions. Conceptualising Andean gendered migration In the context of Latin American modernities, domestic service is discursively constructed as more than an urban job opportunity, and as a route into a ‘whitened’


urban identity. An early paper on the ‘servant class’ in Ecuador expresses this perfectly, describing domestic service as an institution functioning in the feudal and semi-feudal societies of Latin America as ‘stabilising’ (Nett 1966). While the restructuring of rural livelihoods continued rapidly during the 1960s and 1970s, female migration into (domestic service was also increasingly linked to the political economy of cheap rural labour turning to the cities for work in the overcrowded industrial sector. Female migration in Latin America thus arises out of the restructuring of rural livelihoods and the commodification of agriculture, in interaction with gendered assessments of the value of male and female labour in all sizes of agrarian enterprise (Rubbo and Taussig 1983; Bunster and Chaney 1985; Chaney and Garcia Castro 1989). With the institutional and social bias against rural women, limiting their insertion into agricultural development and land tenure security, women outnumbered men in the urban flows throughout Latin America (Crummett 1987). For example, in Ecuador, female-dominated migration into Quito resulted in ratios of 100 women to every 90 men in the mid-twentieth century (Orlansky and Dubrovsky 1978). Female migrants are also younger than men, as well as being single and traveling independently in Ecuador and elsewhere (Crummett 1987; León 1990). Women are having to move: research in Chile showed that while demand for servants is positively correlated with economic growth, its supply is not (Hojman 1987). Jobs available to migrants in the city include trade, administration, domestic service and manufacturing. Female and male migrants have higher participation rates in the manual labour market than residents, although gender segregation exists throughout the labour market, differentiating women’s insertion into paid work. The majority of female migrants have long been absorbed into domestic service in Latin-American cities (Crummett 1987). In Quito, in the early 1970s, 73 percent of rural women found work in domestic service, a figure comparable to other Latin-American major cities (Orlansky and Dubrovsky 1978:12). Domestic servants often move on to other types of work, as opportunities open up or their personal circumstances change. Independent, small-scale commerce and street vending, as well as factory work, are sectors with high numbers of former empleadas. In Quito, only one-third of female migrants were still in domestic service after 10 years in the city (Orlansky and Dubrovsky 1978:12). Domestic service is perceived as gender-appropriate, whereas factory work is often seen as threatening to gender norms policing women (French and James 1997). Factory opportunities have historically been limited in Ecuador, where only 6 percent of female migrants entered this sector directly, compared to 17 percent in Buenos Aires (Orlansky and Dubrovsky 1978:18). However, factory work is preferred by female migrants, who thereby avoid low-pay, sexual harassment from employers, and restricted social interactions. Male-dominated guild structures and gendered restrictions nevertheless limit women’s mobility into the formal sector, meaning that they are more likely to make lateral moves within the informal sector (Scott 1994:134–43).

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Within domestic service employment, informal characteristics are prevalent, although these have specific features associated with the particular function within domestic spaces. Wage rates are low: in Lima, in the 1970s, domestic servants were earning an average of 69 percent of average, male informalsector earnings, and this figure often included payment in kind (food, lodging, clothing) (Scott 1994:44). Domestic service—often involving the worker living in her place of employment—is highly personalised work, fraught by the inequalities in status, mobility, career paths, racial-ethnic difference, and seniority/generation which comprise empleada-patrona relations (for Latin America, see Chaney and Garcia Castro 1989; Gill 1990; for Western societies, see Pratt 1997; Stiell and England 1997). Employer-houseworker relations are often ambiguous and conflictual, playing on the familiarised relations predominant in the domesticated space of employment, and thereby linking what Rubbo and Taussig (1983:6) term the ‘macro-structure of political life and the microstructure of domestic and personal existence’. The resistances and dominations that this entails, are in turn, a reflection of a wider historical and politicised context in which these dwellings are embedded. In the mid-twentieth century, servants were being described as ‘child-like’ (Nett 1966), and as the target of socialisation into modern roles. With increasing emphasis on the power relations through which social relations (including domestic service) are made and re-made, recent analysis focuses on the ideological work effected by the infantalisation of domestics (Wade 1993; Radcliffe 1990). Racial ideologies of the childlike nature of indigenous populations (a large proportion of Andean rural populations) are understood to intersect with the patriarchal hierarchies of nuclear families. Inter-racial relations are central to an understanding of nationhood and identity in Latin America (Wade 1993). Ecuador, and other Andean countries, have attempted a process of mixing (the Spanish word is mestizaje) that is premised on ‘whitening’ a population comprising indigenous and black groups. To be mestizo/ a is to be a self-proclaimed part of that nation-building demographic discourse, and contrasts with the increasing political validity of calling oneself ‘indigenous’ (or, to a lesser extent ‘black’). As a relational rather than an essentialist identity, mestizaje is politicised, and subject to contests and constant negotiations (Williams 1989): in this context, mestizaje is achieved, not given. Mestizaje, in Ecuador, articulates the promise of a non-hierarchised national community, but one, which, by definition, obscures the diversity of racial-ethnic expression in the ‘race to nation across ethnic terrain’ (Williams 1989; Stutzman 1981). In public polls among urban Ecuadorians, the percentage identifying itself as mestizo is constantly rising, and currently stands at around 70 percent (Duran and Nieto 1994). The institutionalisation of female, rural-urban migration into Andean cities, constitutes an avenue through which rural restructuring, patriarchal hierarchies in state and household, and inter-ethnic relations intersect, to bring female domestic servants more directly into the institutionalised nation (Radcliffe 1999). The transition from a rural to an urban location is one facet, reflecting the primacy of Spanish-language use and urban culture in Andean nationalisms. Changing female


migrants’ clothing, and daily patterns of language use and social interaction, were explicitly gauged by employers in Peru to work toward incorporating indigenous women into ‘national’ spaces (Radcliffe 1990). By a process of inculcating normative, national representations and discourses, ‘non-national’ women are offered an (ambivalent) position in nationhood. In discourses of modernisation, domestic service is interpreted as a means to incorporate ‘marginal’ populations into the national project: this project is itself premised upon homogeneity, normative indicators of belonging, and powerful discursive and representational agendas. Ecuador: Andean migration and city employment During the early post-war years, domestic service was viewed as part of a feudal system of obligation, which served a stabilising function in Ecuadorian society, by socialising domestic employees into aspirations ‘to a different kind of life’ (Nett 1966:445). Certainly, the feudal system of huasicama (or ‘peons’) providing domestic labour for estate owners, was an historical precursor to the employment of young rural migrants by middle-class and élite households in the city. Many of the migrants were recruited through relationships of god-parenthood (compadrazgo) that link rural Andean districts with towns. Indeed, broader symbolic parallels can be drawn between the huasicama, and domestic service and military conscription, all of which involve nation-building incorporation into institutional relations of service. However, the nature of that incorporation varies with economic transformations, as with the reorganisation of domestic and paid work, and gender ideologies, over time. In Ecuador, misrepresentations of female contribution to agriculture, and the male-biased mechanisation of production during rural modernisation throughout the 1960s and 1970s, led to high rates of rural-urban migration throughout the country, especially in the highlands (Sierra) and coastal plains (Costa). During the period between 1974 and 1982, the rural female labour force increased in size, especially in the 20–34-year age group. Nevertheless, the opportunities for rural employment remained limited, not least because agrarian reforms failed to deal with female demand for land, a factor which led to female-dominated migration flows. In a 1977 survey of Andean cities in Ecuador, the majority of migrants (58 percent), were women and of these, over one-third were from rural areas (CEPLAES 1990:49). Once in the cities, the employment rate of female rural migrants was 24 percent higher than that of urban, non-migrant women (CEPLAES 1990:49). In the 1970s, oil-export-led growth in Ecuador resulted in increased rural-urban migration, as well as growing demand for domestic servants among the urban middle-class (Kovorkin 1997). Conditions for houseworkers remain poor.4 A recent survey in four Latin-American countries revealed that over half the women started paid domestic work when under 15 years old; two-fifths worked over 81 hours per week (including the youngest girls, aged between 11 and 17) and got no permission


to study. Many were illiterate, and salaries fluctuated around US $50–100 per month (Chaney 1998). In Bolivia (broadly comparable as an Andean country to Ecuador), Gill (1990) found that the average entry age for domestics was 13, and that two-thirds had under 3 years’ schooling. Unionisation rates remain extremely low, due both to women’s isolation, and to lack of knowledge about the institutes and centers that have been established in many countries to reduce isolation and improve legislative protection for these workers (Chaney and Garcia Castro 1989). Domestics working in Ecuador face similar conditions, with low wages, early entry into domestic service, and restrictions on social mobility—all of these factors are highlighted in the interviews in this chapter. Domestic service is a key entry point for migrant women entering Quito and other Ecuadorian cities. Despite the desperate search for work by women with rural, rural-urban migrant, and urban low-income backgrounds, there was a shortage of opportunities for the female workforce. In the 1987 labour force, women comprised under a quarter of the total, while only one out of every three women looking for work, found employment in the formal sector. While this meant that female unemployment rates were twice those of males in the three largest cities (Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca), it also drew women into informal-sector and service jobs, most of them low-paid. Of the women working in agriculture and domestic service in 1987, the overwhelming majority earned the equivalent of the official minimum wage or less, with 92.1 percent earning under 14,500 sucres (=approx. US$150) (CEPLAES 1990:63). By the 1980s and 1990s, concerns about the feminisation of poverty prompted a focus on the low productivity of domestic service and female-dominated service employment. The economic sectors of agriculture and services, between them, accounted for over half the female labour force in 1982, with 12 percent and 43. 6 percent of women respectively.5 The low wages in this sector thus confirmed the feminisation of poverty in the country, despite the recruitment of women into expanding agro-export sectors (e.g. shrimp, flowers and fruit) in the 1990s. The neoliberal agenda failed to respond to women’s political petitions for employment, decent salaries and lower prices (León 1990; Conger Lind 1992), while the state set up dispersed, limited and assistentialist programs in order to make women more employable and more ‘flexible’ in the labour market (see Radcliffe 1990). Paid household work has undergone restructuring, as neoliberal economic agendas have highlighted the ‘human capital’ dimension of domestic service. As part of broader development agendas, homeworking was targeted as an arena for raising productivity and developing human capital. Following UNICEF policy, DINAMU (the Ecuadorian National Women’s Directorate6) promoted a program to professionalise domestic work, in order to make it worth a wage and to create employment. The ‘home professionals’ were to know the basic household tasks (cooking, washing and ironing) and were also to be familiar with nutrition and administration of the household, in order to deal with child and adult problems. As Magdalena León points out, the aim of the program was technification of the work, without ridding it of its servile content, and it viewed ‘all poor women as


potential or semi-naturalised servants’ (León 1990). As part of a general policy under the neoliberal government, female poverty was to be addressed by the provision of training for women, who would thus become employable and earn money to pull themselves out of poverty.7 In other words, the policy aimed to reconfigure the spaces of domestic service, from the ‘feudal’ socialisation to the market-oriented modernisation (while of course serving to reconfigure the state towards neoliberal precepts around human capital); however, this remained an unevenly applied policy, and did not directly affect any of the women interviewed. As domestic service has undergone changes in its relation to the nation-state, so women working as empleadas have lived through the intersection of economicallydivided macrostructures with racialised, nationalist micro-structures. It is to the experiences of current homeworkers that we now turn. Experiencing homeworking: empleadas in Ecuador Speaking to paid homeworkers in Quito highlights individual lives shaped by the broader patterns outlined above. As poor rural immigrants to the city, they have taken up domestic service work—their lack of education restricting other options. In turn, women experience the structures of power working their way through nuclear households of a distinct class, background and ethnic-racial group from their own, and attempt to make sense of the room for manoeuver within them. Migrants from rural Andean Ecuador lived through agrarian restructuring— seeing parents struggling to put together a livelihood from paid work and small fields. Some grew up on hacienda estates, and were recruited into domestic service by the élite estate-owning family. As one young woman who had come into Quito with hacienda owners said: I am from the hacienda X… We left to work in the city so as not to stay there, because there’s no money there; sure, the countryside is pretty, but the city is also pretty and we work, but in the countryside we weren’t able to work. (Group 2:2) One empleada identified a shift in domestic-service employment, whereby it was becoming more difficult for middle-class households to find live-in homeworkers. Domestic-service work is relatively easy to obtain, although recognised by the female migrants to be a low-status, low-security job. On a more positive note, one woman explains: I didn’t prepare myself more to get any profession, but I am not ashamed of this…. I have always liked it,…and I think it’s better to be an empleada. Another woman differs:


The problem with making ourselves empleadas is that it’s a quick job to get, first thing. It doesn’t need a certificate, a curriculum, but yes, we have to show a paper about our honesty. But unfortunately, you don’t know who’s going to rob whom, if the empleada from the patron, or the patron from the empleada. (Group 1:16) Homeworkers are highly conscious of their lack of formal education, and the difficult position in which it places them in the labour market. As one Andean woman says: Because we are not educated, we haven’t finished school, university, to have a certificate to be able to work as a secretary, or accountant. Since our parents gave us only a primary education, we can’t do more than look for work as a maid. (Group 2:14) Migration was viewed by Andean women as a means to advance themselves. Migration into the city is presented as the first step in attaining a satisfactory status: Then we came [to Quito], leaving our parents—to be able to work, to be able to get ahead, to be able to be OK. (Group 2:1) The dichotomies between country/city and poverty/modernity are reworked through the migrants’ narratives of water and electricity provision. One migrant from Imbambura province said: In the country it’s very different, it’s not like in the city; we don’t have light or water, there aren’t houses [all together]. So that’s how it is, we don’t have light, we don’t have water to hand. Earning a wage means the possibility of taking these facilities to her mother’s rural home: A little while back we organised ourselves to put in electricity, to put in drinking water there, so now we have it. It cost me 300,000 sucres8 and now I have electricity, I have my radio and I put on music and I’m with my mother, laughing, chatting. (Tape 2:20) Moving to the city changes the migrants’ sense of self. Current domestic servants argued that they were now ‘more like misses’ than they were previously. Olimpia, now 24 years old, (who has worked as a domestic since she was 13) explains:


Then I began my new life, then I began to be more like a Miss (senorita), because my parents couldn’t give me what I wanted so I started to work. (Focus group 2:4–5) However, it is through constant negotiation—and, in some cases, conflict—with their employers, that homeworkers retain a sense of identity. Discussions about the appropriate clothing for work and leisure, as well as about pay rates, sickness benefits and so on, are points of contention (see Gill 1990). Questions about clothing get to the heart of issues concerning status, liberty and the patronising role of employers. As one black domestic explained: We can’t arrange ourselves nicely, because for them [female employers], it’s bad, but if we’re dishevelled, that’s better. We can’t dress as we want because that lowers the morals. (Group 1:23). From disempowered positions (correlated with youth, lack of education and rural origin), empleadas negotiate the terms and conditions of their work, by means of a number of strategies. For example, by discussing the issue of factory work with her patrons, Maria got a pay raise by threatening to leave for the factory, where her pay would be higher and the hours more regular. Although knowledge of their legal position varies among homeworkers, many migrants find that they refer to the state social security (seguro) or Ministry of Work, in disagreements over work conditions, termination of employment, health issues and so on. While some employers appeared reluctant to register their empleada for social security benefits, empleadas themselves used the state institutions to back up their claims for back pay, and retention of employment during pregnancy. Eliane, for example, went to the seguro when her employers refused to arrange for the birth of her child; she called the state officials to her employers’ home, pressuring them into providing health care during pregnancy and keeping her in paid work. However, a number of homeworkers were reluctant to be registered for state health care (despite their employers’ encouragement), arguing that the appointments were at inconvenient times and that they preferred attending a private health clinic. Racialisations, domestic service, and women’s lives9 What difference does race make to domestic service? In my previous work in Peru, it was clear that racial categorisations were crucial to the labeling and controlling of female migrants working as domestics. Moreover, the willingness to change an indigenous identity for a more urban, ‘white’ identity was an explanatory factor for the employer-domestic relation, as well as for expressions of migrants’ own identity (Radcliffe 1990). Ecuador demonstrates similar patterns, further revealing the gendering of racialised categories. Interviews with female migrants now working as domestics, as well as comparable urban populations of former


migrants, show how the category ‘white’ is constructed as female—within a nationalist discourse of movement, from indigenous, through mestizo, to white. Williams (1989) ‘race to the nation across ethnic terrain’, is thus profoundly ‘gendered’, a point explored by feminist and post-colonial writers (e.g. Alonso 1994; Radcliffe n.d., 1990). Female migrants—especially those with empleada experience—are more likely to identify as blanca or white-mestiza than comparable male migrants. Our research in Ecuador’s popular sector, showing the white identity of women, echoed what Alison Scott alluded to in the Lima of the 1970s. Scott found that domestic servants and former empleadas more frequently mentioned ethnicity and provincial origins in their discussion of identity, compared with other members of Lima’s popular sectors (Scott 1994:194). In our interviews with low-income groups in central Quito, nearly two-thirds of women identified as mestiza (compared with 80 percent of men), with 15 percent identifying as white, and 10 percent as white-mestiza, giving a total of about 25 percent identifying as white (compared with no men of similar background). In the city of Quito, as in other urban areas, whiteness is articulated as one facet of the progress, civilisation and incorporation expressed in the city, particularly by élites in their literary and visual representations of the capital city of Quito and its centrality in the nation (Radcliffe and Westwood 1996: Chapter 3). Public opinion polls reveal that a considerable number of urban populations project their own identity onto that screen. In an ongoing poll of Quito and Guayaquil residents, 21 percent of Quiteños and 23 percent of Guayaquileños self-identified as ‘white’ (Duran and Nieto 1994). The majority of those identifying as white were found in the lowest income groups in both cities, although the gendering of this racial-national identity was not explored in the public polls. In interviews with former houseworkers, whiteness was the pole identity around which women positioned themselves. What is it about domestic service that functions to promote a white identity among female migrants taking up this work? It is important here to make it clear that whiteness is not solely constituted within the major cities; as Weismantel documents, in rural Andean townships, whiteness is not phenotypical, but rather constituted through a combination of dress codes, possession of cash and Spanish-language use. In rural Cotopaxi, populations identified as ‘white’ are found inside offices or houses, whereas ethnically-distinct Indians are outside, in the fields (Weismantel 1988). The gendered nature of identities in domestic service is constituted around specific locations—spatially-constricted horizons of meaning—whose analysis contributes to an understanding of race, migration and domestic service. Women entering domestic service encounter élite and middle-class private spaces, often in the more exclusive neighbourhoods. In a previous paper on Peruvian domestic service, I highlighted the enclosed, ‘familial’ and patriarchal spaces of the private, nuclear-family home, into which young, rural, often indigenous women are slowly —and, in some cases, violently—incorporated (Radcliffe 1990). In Ecuador, female migrants have similarly constituted time-geographies of migration, which


are embedded within powerful narratives of migration relating to gender, race and status. In paid, homeworking employment, rural populations are identified as more gullible and therefore appropriate for the power relations involved in domestic service: If you want a live-in maid, it has to be a girl from the countryside, a girl who doesn’t know about city life, who doesn’t want to study, who doesn’t know anything and who can be robbed. (Group 2:18) In line with national discourses about mestizaje, female migrants working currently in domestic service, described themselves as mestiza or blancamestiza, configuring their national position in relation to politicised, domestic-national power relations. Recognising racial categories within the national space as relational, rather than essential, empleadas dissect the political nature of racial categories with a fine eye for difference. One current homeworker explained: They [the women employers] don’t like it when they are called mestizas. (Group 1:19)

Employers are seen to base their power on appearances, and the broader political sphere to which this gives access: No, as the child of the house is a little white boy [and] has blue eyes, he has the right to walk over the rest. (Group 1:21) Once having left domestic service, former homeworkers feel themselves more able to express a white (-mestiza) identity. One ex-empleada, when asked about her ethnic identity, said she was ‘mestiza, as I can’t say white’, although she clearly wished to do so. She voiced this more confidently when asked to respond to a quote from former President, General Lara (in which he said, ‘We all make ourselves white when we accept the goals of national culture.’). She enthusiastically replied: So now I have made myself white! That all the whites are more educated, and we can be too. That this woman (with her incomplete primary education, and born in a poor neighbourhood in Quito) can consider herself white, testifies to the power of discourses of ethnic-mobility and nationhood. The discursive power of whiteness is confirmed in another case of an ex-empleada who called herself’ white’, having been born over 65 years ago in rural Cotopaxi province, and having no formal


education. Such a personal history would make her, in the eyes of many Ecuadorians, an indigenous, or chola woman. To call oneself white/blanca, with this type of background, and in the context of Quito, is to define oneself as civilised, urbane and upwardly-mobile. Routes to blanque-amiento-whitening— are socially and economically-related, constituted through the market, and migration and social positioning (drawing on aspects of language, clothing, education etc.). Urban polls on ethnic identity are high-lighting this claim to whiteness, particularly among women, many of whom were formerly in domestic service. In general urban polls, only 6 percent of Quito respondents identified as indigenous, and 1 percent as black (Hoy 1994:6A). Research in a working-class district of Quito has shown that these racial categories are, again, highly gendered, with 13 percent of men identifying as indigenous or black, and no women. Among homeworkers, migrants’ self-identification as black or indigenous, was part of a broader engagement with employers (and élites generally) over the prioritisation of mestizaje as a national goal. Black and indigenous identities were presented as ‘purer’ compared with the mestiza employer. One self-identifying black empleada, Ermendina explained: After everything, she [the employer] has three colours, we the blacks and Indians have one colour and we are solid/pure (firmes), and she being mestiza has two or three colours, no-one tells her ‘you’re mestiza,’ but with us, yes, they highlight the colour, black and Indian as well. (Group 2:19) Here, the homeworker is highlighting the unmarked category of mestizo and whiteness, to which empleadas during their employment cannot aspire, but which is open to rural, indigenous and mestizo female migrants, once they leave domestic service to enter the urban economy. Having worked for several years as domestics with a number of different employers, current homeworkers identified their treatment at the hands of their employers as being related to their relative racial positioning, with blacks and Indians experiencing behavior that highlights the difference between employers and employees in a nationalised hierarchy of value. Conclusion Through a discussion of the migration experiences of female, rural-urban migrants, I have analysed female migrants’ engagement with work in domestic service, taking as a starting point the women’s observations about, and assessment of, this occupation. Alongside an ethnography of identity, I have interrogated the ideologies and practices surrounding gender and race-ethnicity through which (lower-middle class or skilled’ working-class urban) women position themselves in Ecuadorian national and racial hierarchies. At a structural level, the highly specific release of undervalued female labour into urban migration flows,


generates potential domestics. Movement into the city is perceived as an ambiguous experience of modernity, together with conflictual negotiation with employers from a subordinate position. As these facets come together, so female migrants’ experiences result in a specific racialised subjectivity. The ‘gendering’ of racialised categories is constitutive of domestic service, and its place within wider Ecuadorian society. Moreover, the inter-twined construction of race and gender works through spatial patterning in which subjects are embedded. From rural locations to the capital city, from a politicised domestic domain, domestic service continues to be just as much about wider racial and gender hierarchies, as about face-to-face interactions between patrona and empleada. In the daily constitution of racialised subjects, discursive repetition and reiteration of practices construct a naturalised group, while shaping their expressions of identity. Andean domestic service has long been analysed from the perspective of social mobility (Smith 1973; see also Rubbo and Taussig 1983): the case study of Quiteño domestic service suggests that any ‘social mobility’ experienced by empleadas is one that is channelled through the structured hierarchies of race, gender and location. Racial categorisations and the possibility of shifting ethnic identity in line with nationalist ideology, is a key indicator of this reinsertion of social subjects into social hierarchies. Yet, the limits of this are revealed by the life histories of black Ecuadorian women: these women reveal the limits of the process of ‘whitening’. Black domestics are faced with extensive racial discrimination that places clear boundaries around their repositioning in the nation; they cannot ‘make themselves white’, unlike indigenous, rural, Serrana women. Acknowledgments I am grateful to Nina Laurie, Becky Elmhirst, Maria-Dolors Garcia Ramón, Jo Rowlands, Zane Ma Rhea and Michelle Bigenho, for comments on much earlier versions of this paper. Notes 1 In a comprehensive literature review of domestic service in Latin America, Chaney and Garcia Castro (1989:453) argue that most attention has been paid to Peru, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. 2 The work presented here arises as part of a wider project, carried out in collaboration with Sallie Westwood (Department of Sociology, Leicester University) and Nicola Murray. The research project ‘Remaking the nation: a social geography of nationalisms in Ecuador’ was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (R000234321). Responsibility for the chapter remains my own. 3 Household worker is the preferred name for those working in domestic service; the Spanish term is empleada. I use the terms interchangeably.


4 It is likely that many Latin-American paid domestics have worse work conditions than their Indonesian counterparts, as they do not generally share work with other houseworkers (Elmhirst, personal communication). 5 Commerce accounted for a further 17.9 percent and manufacturing industry for 15 percent. 6 DINAMU was formed in 1986, after 16 years of feminist and administrative attempts to include women in the state structure. 7 Other components in this programme included ‘associated shops’ (reducing basic foodstuff costs) administered by underpaid women, and health programs oriented around the mother-child pair. 8 Approximately US $100. 9 Material on domestic service was collected in Ecuador between 1993 and 1994; this material comprised questionnaires with former and active domestic servants, among others (see Radcliffe and Westwood 1996, for methodological discussion). Two focus groups with women of diverse backgrounds currently employed in domestic service were set up; transcripts of discussions are drawn on. The focus group material was transcribed in Spanish, then translated into English.

References Alonso, A. (1994) ‘The politics of space, time and substance: state formation, nationalism and ethnicity’, Annual Review of Anthropology 23:379–405. Bunster, X. and Chaney, E. (1985) Sellers and Servants: Working Women in Lima, Peru, New York: Praeger Special Studies. CEPLAES-UNFPA (1990) Mujer y trabajo, Quito: CEPLAES-UNFPA. Chaney, E. (1998) ‘Ni muchacha ni criada: las trabajadoras del hogar y su lucha de organizarse’, in M.L.Tarres (ed.), Género y cultura en America Latina: cultura y participaci*ó politica, Vol. 1 (Mexico), Colegio de Mexico: Centro de Estudios Sociológicos, Programa Interdisciplinario de Estudios de la Mujer/UNESCO. Chaney, E. and Garcia Castro, G. (eds) (1989) Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Conger Lind, A. (1992) ‘Power, gender and development: popular women’s organisations and the politics of needs in Ecuador’, in S.Alvarez and A.Escobar (eds) The Making of Social Movements in Latin America, Boulder: Westview Press. Crummett, M. (1987) ‘Rural women and migration in Latin America’, in C.D.Deere and M.León (eds) Rural Women and State Policy: Feminist Perspectives on Latin American Agricultural Development, Boulder: Westview Press. Duran, J. and Nieto, S. (1994) ‘Crece conciencia del mestizaje’, Hoy (Quito), July 3, 1994, p. 6A. Elmhirst, R. (1998) Personal communication, February 6, 1998. French, J. and James, D. (eds) (1997) The Gendered Worlds of Latin American Women Workers, Durham: Duke University Press. Gill, L. (1990) ‘Painted faces: conflict and ambiguity in domestic servant-employer relations in La Paz, 1930–88’,Latin American Research Review 25, 2:119–36. Hojman, D. (1987) ‘Female migration and the market for domestic service in Chile’, unpublished manuscript. Liverpool: University of Liverpool.


Kovorkin, T. (1997) ‘Taming capitalism: the evolution of the indigenous peasant economy in Northern Ecuador’, Latin American Research Review 32, 3:89–110. Lawson, V. (1998) ‘Gendered migration and the problematisation of place’, paper presented to annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers, Boston MA. March 25–28, 1998. León, M. (1990) Políticas Neoliberales Frente al Trabajo Femenino en el Ecuador: Análisis del Periodo 1984–88, Quito: Instituto de Estudios Ecuatorianos. Nett, E. (1966) ‘The servant class in a developing country: Ecuador’, Journal of InterAmerican Studies 8, 3:437–52. Orlansky, D. and Dubrovsky, S. (1978) The Effects of Rural-urban Migration on Women ‘s Role and Status in Latin America, Paris: UNESCO. Pratt, G. (1997) ‘Stereotypes and ambivalence: the construction of domestic workers in Vancouver, British Colombia’, Gender, Place and Culture 4, 2:159–77. Radcliffe, S. (1990) ‘Ethnicity, patriarchy and incorporation into the nation: female migrants as domestic servants in Peru’, Environment and Planning D 8, 4:379–93. Radcliffe, S. (1999) ‘Latina labour: restructuring of work and renegotiations of gender relations in contemporary Latin America’, Environment and Planning A 30, 2:2–14. Radcliffe, S. (n.d.) ‘Mestizo masculinities and white women: mobile nations in Ecuador’, manuscript, available from author. Radcliffe, S. and Westwood, S. (1996) Remaking the Nation: Place, Politics and Identity in Latin America, London: Routledge. Rubbo, A. and Taussig, M. (1983) ‘Up off their knees: servanthood in Southwest Colombia’, Latin American Perspectives 39, 4:5–23. Scott, A.M. (1994) Divisions and Solidarities: Gender, Class and Employment in Latin America, New York: Routledge. Smith, M.L. (1973) ‘Domestic service as a channel of upward mobility for the lower-class woman: the Lima case’, in A.Pescatello (ed.) Female and male in Latin America, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Stiell, B. and England, K. (1997) ‘Domestic distinctions: constructing difference and paid domestic workers in Toronto’, Gender, Place and Culture 4, 3:339–59. Stutzman, R. (1981) ‘El mestizaje: an all-inclusive ideology of exclusion’, in N.Whitten (ed.) Cultural Transformation and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador, Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Wade, P. (1993) Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Weismantel, M. (1988) Food, Gender and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Williams, B. (1989) ‘A class act: anthropology and the race to nation across ethnic terrain’, Annual Review of Anthropology 18:401–44.

6 TRANSCENDING GENDERED BOUNDARIES Migration for domestic labour in Chile Katina Pappas-DeLuca

I started working very young on the land and in the houses where we lived, because we lived on somebody else’s land. I worked on the land there and it was very hard because you had to get up with the sun and work until the sun set. And sometimes we couldn’t eat. Life was hard there and I didn’t want to work there for my life. That’s why I wanted to leave. (38-year-old, live-in domestic worker) Employment in paid household labour sector has characterised much of the femaleled migration throughout Latin America over the last half century. Research on migration for domestic employment in Chile has traditionally highlighted sociodemographic characteristics of migrants, such as class, marital status and education (Orellana-Rojas 1989; Galvez and Todaro 1989; Feyisetan 1982; Herold 1979). Rural-to-urban migration has been explained primarily as a function of the lack of employment opportunities for women in rural areas (Lago 1992; Garrett 1992; Hojman 1989). These studies have contributed substantially to an understanding of how traditional sex-role ideology and the gender division of labour have led to women’s migration for employment in paid household labour. Inadvertently, however, by examining objective data almost exclusively, women’s migration experiences have been reduced to descriptions of the origins and destinations of migrants, and the interaction between the factors that influence their mobility. The meanings which women attach to their migration experiences, and the subsequent ways in which they negotiate the constraints and opportunities that characterise their mobility, have been largely overlooked. Research on factors that systematically define mobility on a daily or generational basis has characterised much of the field of time geography (Hagerstrand 1975; Pred 1981). However, the two-dimensional approach of the time-space scale used to objectively map a person’s daily activity space, was heavily criticised for its neglect of the personal perspective within the analyses of daily and life-paths (Hallin 1991). A feminist approach to geographic research during the late 1980s called for a ‘contextualisation’ of place, and an incorporation of the third dimension of lived experience, in research on mobility and daily/life paths (Mackenzie 1989; Dyck 1990). In an attempt to reintroduce the individual subject

96 TRANSCENDING GENDERED BOUNDARIES

in research on mobility and the feelings people attach to their daily activity spaces, feminist geographers cited the crucial role of context in understanding social relationships and human-environment relationships. According to Dyck (1989: 331): important omissions in research have been a consideration of the meanings women attach to their daily life (which reveal the complexity of their relationships to the environment) and investigation of the social linkages developed among women (which may modify constraints). In migration research, the process of exploring women’s personal migration experiences provides a broader understanding of how constraints, such as genderrole ideology and the gender division of labour, influence women’s lives. In addition to revealing the persistence of sex-role ideology and the systematic ways in which it defines women’s opportunities for mobility, it also reveals the ways in which women negotiate between gender roles and their own life circumstances, thus modifying the constraints. This study combined a traditional research focus on factors that influence migration for domestic labour in Chile, with a methodology designed to ‘give voice’ to study participants. This methodology was chosen in order to elicit an overall description of participants’ life-paths and daily-paths, as well as the personal experiences which they invested in them. Moving beyond the traditional, objective approach to migration studies provides contextualisation for the migrant experience. By thus doing, we see how many Chilean women, with few other alternatives, have used migration for domestic labour as a mechanism to physically and metaphorically transcend the economic and social constraints on their mobility. Rural-to-urban migration for domestic labour, one of the few paid employment options for women of lower socioeconomic status, provides many women with an opportunity to move out of their parents’ homes, remain single, earn their own income and, in some cases, pursue further educational training. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the historical relationship between paid household labour and the gender division of labour in Chile. This is followed by a description of the push-and-pull factors that characterise female-led migration in the household labour sector. Finally, the personal stories of domestic workers are highlighted in order to contextualise their migration experiences, thus revealing the effects of migration on women’s daily lives, and on Chilean society overall. Domestic workers and the gender division of labour In Chile, as in many Latino societies, gender-role stereotypes of machismo and marianismo serve as the foundation of the gender division of labour (Loach 1990). As elements of patriarchal ideology, they are based on power inequalities between women and men. Gender-role stereotypes define ideal behavior based on women’s


roles as mothers and wives, and men’s roles as fathers and husbands. While an increase in the number of employment opportunities available to women in Chile has been observed in recent years, sex-role ideology still has a tremendous impact on the employment sector in which women participate. This influence is observed through the type and number of jobs available to women, as well as in the wages they receive for their labour. An analysis of women’s employment in Chile in 1989, revealed that, across the spectrum, women’s jobs mirror their culturally-defined gender roles. In the ‘professional’ employment sector, most jobs were for nurses and teachers, while in the general category of ‘employees’, the majority of women worked as secretaries. Finally, in ‘personal services’, the largest sector, women predominated as domestic workers (Valdés and Gomáriz, n.d.; Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (CEM) 1988). In addition, although the gap has been decreasing since the 1960s, Chilean working women have consistently earned considerably less than men, regardless of occupation or education level (Valdés and Gomáriz, n.d.; Valdés, Gomáriz, and Servicio Nacional de la Mujer (SERNAM) 1992). Paid domestic labour is arguably the quintessential example of an occupation defined by the gender division of labour. It has existed in Chile, as well as the rest of Latin America, for centuries. According to the 1991 census, ‘personal service’ occupations remained the largest employment sector for women in Chile, and 20 percent of working women were employed specifically in paid household labour (Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (INE) 1992). Despite the growing number of women who are entering the workforce in other employment sectors, remunerated domestic work remains the most common job for women. Most Chilean domestic workers (las empleadas de casa) live and work in their employer’s household. Live-in workers (las puertas adentro) typically work between six or six and a half days a week in their employer’s homes, and have a legal, minimum daily rest period of ten hours. Live-out workers (las puertas afuera) normally work between five and six days a week, for approximately eight to ten hours a day, and return to a home other than their employer’s at the end of each work day. Although domestic workers’ daily responsibilities vary, they usually include cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing and caring for children, plus any other activity associated with the smooth functioning of the home. Migrating for domestic labour Paid household labour exists in all regions of Chile but is overwhelmingly concentrated in urban areas. Over half of all domestic workers are employed in the Metropolitan Region, the most populated region, which includes the capital of Santiago. Although primarily employed in urban areas, the majority of domestic workers originate from rural areas, in particular from south of Santiago (Sindicato de Trabajadoras de Casas Particulares (SINTRACAP) 1992; Galvez and Todaro 1989). From Maule to Los Lagos is predominantly a rural, agricultural area and Araucanía is considered the cultural hearth of Chile, home to the majority of


indigenous Mapuches. Migration to the capital from outside of the Metropolitan Region typically involves long distances, making travel to and from Santiago inconvenient and infrequent. Women’s rural-to-urban migration for domestic labour is triggered by a combination of push-and-pull factors, many of which are grounded in gender-role stereotypes and their impact on social and economic opportunities. Pushing women out of rural areas Past studies of women and migration in Chile have illustrated the profound effects that characteristics of age, education and marital status have on women’s decisions to migrate (Orellana-Rojas 1989; Galvez and Todaro 1989; Feyisetan 1982; Herold 1979). These characteristics also significantly reduce women’s opportunities for paid employment outside of the household labour sector. For example, despite improvements in educational levels for women in Chile overall, nearly 70 percent of domestic workers in 1990 had no more than primary schooling (SINTRACAP 1990). Low education levels among women in rural areas primarily reflect poor accessibility to educational facilities and traditional gender roles that do not place an emphasis on education for women. Domestic labour is considered to require little or no formal education or training, as it is defined as a natural extension of female gender roles. Young women, particularly those from rural areas, are socialised from an early age to take care of the house and raise a family. In much the same way that sociodemographic factors influence opportunities for women to migrate and work in domestic labour, economic policies reflect patriarchy and traditional sex-role ideology. A neoliberal interpretation of women’s rural-to-urban migration patterns in Chile, focuses on the imbalance between a supply of female workers in rural areas and a demand for them in urban areas (Hojman 1989). Unemployment of women in rural areas reflects both poor educational training and lack of employment options for women in particular. In rural areas, where owning land is often the key to economic opportunity, women have been virtually excluded from land tenure policies. During land reform from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, women were given benefits almost exclusively through their relationships to men (i.e. as daughters and wives), rather than through their contributions as independent productive labourers (Lago 1992; Garrett 1992; Hojman 1989). Land reform policies directly supported and perpetuated the traditional assumptions of sex roles and the gender division of labour. Thus, women of lower socioeconomic backgrounds who wanted or needed economic independence, have been encouraged to move to cities in the hope of finding employment. In addition to the influence of gender stereotypes on job opportunities for women in rural areas, sex-role ideology within households also plays a role in deciding who migrates. According to the household strategies theory, household divisions of labour do as much as economics to influence who migrates for employment from rural areas in developing countries (Radcliffe 1991). By


defining who is eligible for what type of work and why, the household division of labour determines how each member will contribute to the family, including who will leave the household and who will stay. For the single rural woman living with her family, migration offers one of the few ways for her to gain social and economic independence. A system of socialisation that perpetuates traditional gender roles and gender expectations in society, coupled with limited economic opportunities, offers few alternative avenues for women. This combination encourages women to migrate to urban areas, where low-paid domestic work awaits. Pulling women to cities Urban areas of Chile, with large populations and relatively high expendable incomes, eagerly welcome the inexpensive services of migrant women. In fact, more women are employed in urban areas than rural areas throughout every region of Chile. In contrast, the majority of men employed in rural and urban areas varies from region to region. Differences between rural and urban employment opportunities for men and women, underscore the differential opportunity for women’s employment in urban areas (Lago 1992; Garrett 1977, 1978, 1992; Hojman 1989). Labour force participation rates for women are highest in the Metropolitan Region, the most populous and the richest region of the country. The rural-to-urban pull for domestic workers is observed most Strongly in Santiago, and is reflected by its high ratio of domestic labourers to overall population. A comparison of the percentage of total national population located in Santiago in 1991 (40 percent), to the percentage of the total national population of household workers in Santiago (50 percent) during the same time period, illustrates the over-representation of domestics in the capital city (INE 1992; n.d.). This suggests that many households in Santiago employ more than one domestic worker, creating a strong demand for domestics, so that the city continues to attract women immigrants. The presence of large numbers of migrants from southern regions in particular, may be attributed to direct solicitation by employers. Advertisements indicating a preference for women from the South as domestic workers, suggest a force beyond economics perpetuating migration from southern regions to Santiago. In El Mercurio, a national newspaper, advertisements from prospective employers often seek women from the South (las Sureñas) for jobs in domestic labour. In addition to advertisements in newspapers, las Sureñas are sought by informal methods, such as word of mouth, and advertisements in store windows and on community information boards. For example, an advertisement on a supermarket bulletin board in Santiago, in 1993, read: ‘Se necesita sra o srta, Buena presencia, responsable. Ojalá Sureña’—(A señora or señorita is needed. Good presence, responsible. Hopefully a Southerner). Advertisements for domestic workers from the South, posted in public places in Santiago, indicate that many employers are interested in women who originate


from this region, regardless of whether or not they are already living and working in Santiago. Targeting women from southern regions for domestic labour illustrates a migration pull that extends beyond economics. Throughout this research, employers’ verbal descriptions of domestic workers from southern regions frequently included characterisations of their innocence, trustworthiness, and general pleasant ways, in addition to their perceived competence as houseworkers. These images may reflect prospective employers’ awareness of the social conditioning and lack of opportunities available for women in the South, as well as a potential desire to hire women who conform to a certain image of dependence and subordination. Underlying the demographic, economic, and sociocultural factors associated with women’s decisions to migrate, is the influence of patriarchy. Examining gender-role constraints that precipitate women’s migration for jobs in domestic work, without understanding how leaving or staying impact on women’s personal lives, provides an incomplete understanding of the migration phenomena. Focusing solely on external factors illustrates the constraints on women’s mobility, but obscures their negotiation and modification of the constraints. Personalising migration Rather than quantifying the experiences of women who migrate for domestic work in Chile, this research sought to qualify their experiences through insight from their personal perspectives. While the experience of each woman was unique, common themes emerged across the interviews. Embedded within the stories of hardship and sacrifice associated with their gender and class, lesser-known stories of negotiation often emerged, offering a glimpse into some of the ways women circumnavigate constraints on their mobility. Primarily, women described ways in which migration for domestic labour satisfied desires for economic and social mobility, and for independence. To elicit a contextualised understanding of the role of migration on women’s lives, semi-structured interviews were conducted with forty domestic workers in Santiago, Chile. Participants were selected through the ‘snowball technique’ involving personal referral. The migrants interviewed reflect a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. All interviews were conducted in Spanish and took place in private settings, lasting approximately one to two hours. Participants were asked to describe their background in detail, including information on their birthplace, how they first became employed in domestic labour, their present daily work, and their feelings regarding their migration and work experiences. Participants originated from Atacama to Los Lagos, with the exception of one woman, who was born in Argentina. An overwhelming majority (92 percent) of participants originated from south of Santiago. Similarities in background, including rural birthplaces, low socioeconomic status and low educational attainment, are some of the characteristics shared by women in this study.


All of the participants initially migrated for employment in the domestic labour sector, and all had obtained their first jobs in Santiago as live-in domestic workers. With employment as their objective, and, in many cases, domestic labour as their only option, participants moved to Santiago in search of jobs in private homes, which most had secured before the age of twenty. Just over half of all participants (twenty-three) were working as live-in maids at the time of the interview. These interviewees were more recent migrants, the majority of whom were less than thirty years old and single. In contrast, most participants living out were aged between thirty and fifty and had lived in Santiago for many years; nearly half were married. These demographic characteristics reflect a pattern of younger, single women migrating for employment as live-in workers, who, when they get older, often get married and shift to live-out employment. Given that live-in domestic workers in this sample were the more recent migrants, much of the discussion in this chapter will focus on this type of domestic work. Motivation for migration Economic mobility Descriptions of poor families, difficult workloads and minimal compensation in rural areas were common, as were perceptions of numerous job opportunities and good pay in the domestic labour sector in Santiago. Through their personal stories, women recounted economic pressures to leave their rural homes and migrate to Santiago for employment. Seeking employment as a live-in domestic worker is often the only option for migrant women. Working and living in private homes simultaneously provides food, income and shelter to young women arriving in Santiago, who typically are without connections, money, or places to live. The following excerpt characterises many women’s experiences of migrating to Santiago for employment in private homes. After recalling the difficulty of finding work in her home town many years earlier, this participant added: I then made plans to leave (my home in the South) and I didn’t have any family here (in Santiago). No friends or acquaintances and it is very difficult. So, you have to find a relationship through a job. At least I could come here and work in a home. (38–year-old, live-in worker, single mother) The high demand for domestic workers in Santiago gave many participants confidence that it would be easy to change jobs, if this became necessary. For example, this young participant considered the number of jobs available in Santiago, in her decision to migrate:


At first I did things to help my mother. But, because we had so many girls, it was better to do something else. So after that I decided to get a profession and everyone knows there are more jobs in Santiago, so I left. (25–year-old, live-in domestic worker) In addition to having a job and a place to live, as a live-in domestic worker, the high labour demand in Santiago was a contrast to the lack of options in rural areas. Multiple job openings offer feelings of power and independence, as shown in the following excerpt from an interview with a 34-year-old single mother, working live-in. She stated: ‘If there is a problem, I say to [my employers], I’ll leave. And I’ll have somewhere to go.’ Social mobility In addition to increased economic mobility through employment, many women openly expressed the fact that a desire for independence, primarily from their parents, played an integral role in their decision to migrate to work in Santiago. These descriptions reflect similar findings by Hojman (1989). The following excerpt describes many participants’ feelings: I stayed (working live-in in my home town) for two years. And I left at nineteen because I was bored. I was almost twenty. I was bored because I couldn’t go out. I wanted to go somewhere which was far away. Plus, I was still under the authority of my parents. I had to get their permission because they lived close by. It was complicated and I got bored, so I left. (24-year-old, live-in domestic worker) Feelings of boredom, and wanting liberation from parents and life in home towns, suggest that excitement and freedom are associated with moving to Santiago. Single, young women working live-in, in particular, were most likely to describe boredom and a desire for independence as motivation for their migration. On one level, choosing to move to Santiago to work as a live-in domestic worker, in an effort to improve social independence, may seem counter-intuitive. Long work hours and few opportunities to leave employers’ homes during the work week, often create an isolating experience for young migrants working livein. Feelings of isolation may be further exaggerated for young women, who, at least initially, are without any friends or family. In fact, feelings of isolation as a result of their jobs were frequently expressed by many women. However, the social opportunities available in Santiago, albeit somewhat limited for some domestic workers, counteracted those feelings to some degree for many participants. One young migrant who expressed feelings of isolation at work, and a lack of free time, also described living in Santiago in this way:


Here it is more fun because you can go out and meet a lot of people. Whereas in [my home town] no. Because I don’t have any desire to go out [there]. I know all about it. But here, it’s exciting. I don’t know it. I can go out to all different places, I can take any bus. I learn a little more. But not in [my home town]. (19–year-old live-in) Recognising opportunities to explore a new area and to get to know new things, reflects an attempt to improve her access to experiences unavailable in her home town, and ‘getting to know’ Santiago represents an opportunity for social mobility. Perhaps most important in terms of social mobility, were descriptions by domestic workers of getting together in informal places, such as public parks and plazas in Santiago, during their days off. It is there that many young migrants spend their free days socialising with one another and, in essence, forming their own peer community. This community, in contrast to their jobs in private homes, exists in the most visible of public spaces: parks and plazas. Informal networks provide women with increased mobility, primarily through their access to friendships, as well as information on job and educational opportunities, and their rights as domestic workers. In addition to informal social networks, opportunities for social interaction in Santiago include several formal facilities for houseworkers, provided by such organisations as the National Association for Houseworkers (Asociación Nacional de Empleadas de Casa Particular or ANECAP) and a church-based organisation (La Casa Pastoral). Increased independence for young migrant women may be facilitated by being a live-in. Working as a live-in domestic is one of the few culturally sanctioned options for poor single women, allowing them to move away from their homes without being married. Even today, in many areas of Chile, especially rural areas, it is normal for women to live with their parents until they are married, regardless of their age or employment status. Moving to Santiago to work as a live-in domestic worker, however, is a culturally acceptable alternative, primarily because the young, single migrant is not considered to be moving out on her own. Rather, it is understood that she is moving to live under the authority of a new household: moving from one patriarchal household (her family’s) to another (her employer’s). This is illustrated by the fact that all of the participants working as live-in domestic workers were either single, widowed or separated, in contrast to nearly half of the women working live-out, who were married. Although women working live-in are not entirely ‘on their own’, they are able to move away from their own families and are seen somewhat as outsiders by the employing family. This ‘outsider’ status provides many women with autonomy they would not otherwise have. In addition to providing women with a culturally acceptable way to live on their own, working in private homes also facilitates social mobility by providing women with economic independence. Living completely on their own is financially out of reach for most women, especially those from rural areas who are without


resources and earning a houseworker’s salary. However, live-in domestic work provides women with a ‘free’ place to live, an income and job security, all of which increase the likelihood for social and economic independence. Escaping parental control and patriarchal social situations, coupled with improved economic mobility, has provided many women with significant motivation to move into, and stay in Santiago, working in private homes. Transcending gender-role constraints The social and economic mobility gained through migration to Santiago for work in the domestic labour sector, ironically provided many women with the ability to transcend some of the same gender-based social and economic constraints that originally limited their opportunities in rural areas. This may be observed through a review of the ways in which participants negotiated marital status, single parenthood and education. Negotiating marital status Young, single women in rural areas, often migrate to jobs as domestics in order to increase their economic and social mobility. Providing women with the cultural and economic support to leave their homes before marriage, offers women an opportunity to negotiate marital status. This negotiation can continue long after their initial migration. Some women described domestic work as a temporary situation that would change as soon as they married. Several participants specifically wanted to get married so they could stop working in paid domestic labour. However, comments from many other houseworkers also suggested that the relationship between migration for domestic employment and marriage, may reflect a conscious decision to delay or even permanently avoid marriage. For example, one recent young migrant clearly recognised the economic advantages of her job. She said It scares me because all day I wash and do dishes and iron. (If I were married) I would be doing the same thing. Getting up early to take care of my children and my husband. Making meals for my husband. Ironing. It would be the same with the exception that I wouldn’t be earning money. My husband wouldn’t pay me. But otherwise it would be the same. (19-year-old, live-in domestic worker) This participant’s description of marriage, as being essentially the same as working as a domestic without the pay, reflects her view that marriage represents the economically inferior choice. Implicit in her remarks is a clear rejection of the notion of domestic duties as her unpaid gender-role responsibility. Working as a live-in domestic arguably provided her with an opportunity to support herself as a single woman, despite strong cultural norms for marriage.


While it is uncertain whether avoiding marriage is a temporary or permanent choice for the aforementioned young migrant, the following 33-year-old single mother, working live-in, openly expressed comfort in, and a preference for remaining single, perhaps permanently. She stated: ‘I don’t want to get married because it is another responsibility and I am used to it [the way it is].’ Both excerpts suggest that some women may value marriage less, given the economic and social independence possible through employment in domestic work. In much the same way that migration provides single women with a chance to live away from home without being married, working live-in also offers women an alternative to remaining in a bad marriage, or returning home when a marriage dissolves, either by separation (annulment) or by the death of a spouse. In these situations, an employer’s home may once again facilitate women’s independence by providing them with a job and a place to live. According to one participant If I left him, I would work live-in. I would not work live-out anymore. I would work live-in because I would earn more, and I would be safer, not to have to leave late at night, or in the morning, when it’s very cold. I think I’ll work live-in when I separate from my husband. (46-year-old, live-out worker, married) Describing her dissatisfaction with her marriage, this participant considers how the housing available through live-in work would offer her an alternative to remaining with her husband. Evidence of working live-in as a way to negotiate marital status is further illustrated through a review of the overall marital status of participants: all live-in participants were single (they had either never been married, or were widowed or separated), compared to just under half of all liveout workers. Negotiating single parenthood Migration for employment in domestic labour postponed marriage for many women. However, delaying marriage did not necessarily delay motherhood. Overall, the majority of interviewees were mothers, including all but one working live-out, and just over half of those who worked live-in. Women who worked livein, were nearly twice as likely to be single mothers than their counterparts who worked live-out. Most of the single mothers working live-in had never been married, in contrast to single mothers working live-out, who were primarily widowed or separated. Some children of single domestic workers actually lived with their mothers in the homes in which they were employed. Occasionally, children lived in their own home with their mother employed as a live-out domestic worker. However, both of these situations are the exception rather than the rule. The majority of single mothers interviewed had children being raised by family members, typically grandparents, in the rural areas from where they originated. Participants working live-in were more likely to have the responsibility of raising


children alone as single mothers and, therefore, were more likely to employ ‘granny fostering’ (Brydon and Chant 1989). Working as live-in domestic workers in Santiago, where wages are higher than in rural areas, was often the only option for single mothers to provide for their children financially. Participants described living apart from their children, and sending them to their parents’ homes to be raised, as a difficult sacrifice, especially as long distances and limited free time prevented frequent visits to their children. Many women justified this sacrifice, and believed that through their jobs as domestic workers, they were able to provide their children with more opportunities than they themselves had had. For example, one woman proudly stated: I raised [all my children] while I was working. And I sent them to school above all else. When they were supposed to start school, they started. Because I didn’t want them to have the same experience I had. (66-year-old, live-in single mother with grown children) ‘Granny fostering’ enabled many women to give their children an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty. Strategising educational mobility In addition to providing women with a way to strategise marital status and negotiate single motherhood, women’s rural-to-urban migration for domestic labour, also increased their access to education. Many participants were acutely aware of the relationship between their own lack of education and job opportunities. For example, one participant said: I had to leave (school) to earn money. Because in the south, the parents don’t have enough to support you. So you have to leave school to support yourself. And the only clean work you can do is domestic work. (19–year-old, live-in domestic worker) Another woman recalled: I left school because I had to work. My mother wouldn’t let me study. She told me that it didn’t serve a purpose for a woman to go to school: she gets married and has kids. That’s what she told me…but I feel its absence. (46–year-old, live-out worker, married) References to growing up in rural areas which were geographically isolated, with a lack of emphasis on education for women, were cited as reasons for not finishing school, and, consequently, for seeking work in domestic labour. Domestic workers in this sample had educational levels lower than the national average. However, women working as live-in domestic workers had substantially


more education than women who live out. All live-in participants had completed primary school, and approximately one-fifth had received some training beyond high school. In contrast, nearly 10 percent of women who were live-out domestics had not finished primary school, and none had received education beyond high school. These differences in the educational level of live-in and live-out workers may reflect age differences, with younger, migrant live-in workers having benefited from recent improvements in the quality and/ or accessibility of primary education for women in rural areas. While lack of educational opportunities characterised their regions of origin, migrating to Santiago immediately improved access to education for many women. Formal educational opportunities for domestic workers in Santiago, include classes at houseworkers’ organisations: ANECAP (the national association of houseworkers), SINTRACAP (the national union of domestic workers), and La Casa Pastoral (a church-based program for houseworkers). In addition to primary and secondary education classes, a variety of training classes are also available, including professional training for other jobs such as hairdressers and secretaries. Anecdotes, as well as perceptions, of opportunities for furthering their education occurred commonly during interviews, as did descriptions of efforts to take advantage of them. According to one woman: Now, many live-in housekeepers are taking courses. Now there are many girls who study. Others are taking courses to be nurses, etc. Now people are much more interested in their work and their studies. My sister studied only up to second grade and then started to work as an domestic worker. Very young. Now she’s working in a hospital because she studied while she was working. Her employers helped her. (46–year-old, live-out worker) Another young woman described her experience: I am studying because I have the possibility of bettering myself. I know that if I have more education, I can have more. And I would like to get another career. (25–year-old, live-in worker, single) Overall, participants recognised that gaining additional education while working as a domestic may eventually lead to greater professional mobility. While opportunities for furthering their education were available, in principle, to both live-in and live-out workers, the additional responsibilities of live-out workers, who have their own homes and families, often further restricted their already limited free time, making it difficult for them to participate in additional formal schooling. Thus, live-in workers may have better opportunities to further their formal educational training.


Summary Women’s migration to Santiago for employment as domestic workers, derives in part from a lack of social and economic opportunity in rural areas. Migration for domestic work is associated with an increase in women’s social and economic position, by providing them with a place to live, job security and an income; in addition, it allows them to leave the homes and authority of their parents, provide for their children as single mothers, and further their education. Migrating to become a live-in domestic worker offers a way for women to become independent, and, ironically, also provides many women with an ability to transcend the genderrole constraints that influenced their decisions to move in the first place. The aim of this research was not to romanticise the lives of domestic workers, but to illustrate, through their testimony, the complexity of their experiences, thus highlighting the ways in which they negotiated constraints on their physical, social and economic mobility. A traditional time-space analysis of domestic workers reveals the economic and cultural constraints that limit mobility. However, incorporating the personal perspectives of domestic workers, provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between migration and domestic labour. This may be best illustrated through the following excerpt from an interview: My aunt always told us that [her daughter] had the education, and that me, from the country, I didn’t. Because I didn’t have the opportunity. But we were taught to move forward in life…. She made fun of [my sister and I] because we were working as live-in housekeepers. But we continue to move forward. (25–year-old, live-in domestic worker) The participant’s reference to her aunt’s inability to see beyond the objective constraints that brought her to work in private homes, is somewhat analogous to the way in which research often fails to contextualise the personal perspectives of research subjects. Only by incorporating these perspectives in our research, may we observe the ways in which migrating for work in the household labour sector gives women an opportunity to challenge societal constraints on their mobility, and, as the participant above describes it, to ‘continue moving forward’. References Brydon, L. and Chant, S. (eds) (1989) Women in the Third World: Gender Issues in Rural and Urban Areas, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (CEM) (1988) Mundo de Mujer: Continuidad y Cambio, Santiago, Chile: CEM. Dyck, I. (1989) ‘Integrating home and wage workplace: women’s daily lives in a Canadian suburb’, The Canadian Geographer 334:329–41.


Dyck, I. (1990) ‘Space, time, and renegotiating motherhood: an exploration of the domestic workplace’, Environment and Planning D 8:459–83. Feyisetan, B.J. (1982) The determinants of female labour force participation’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Galvez, T. and Todaro, R. (1989) ‘Housework for pay in Chile: not just another job’, in E.M.Chaney, and M.G.Castro (eds) Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Garrett, P. (1977) ‘Programs to benefit working women: Chile during the Popular Unity Government’, Manpower and Unemployment Research 10:63–86. Garrett, P. (1978) ‘Growing apart: the experiences of rural men and women in the Central Valley of Chile’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Madison. Garrett, P. (1992) ‘Women and agrarian reform’, in. C.Kay and P.Silva (eds) Development and Social Change in the Chilean Countryside: From the Pre-land Reform Period to the Democratic Transition, Amsterdam: Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation. Hagerstrand, T. (1975) ‘Space, time and human conditions’, in A.Karlquvist, L.Undquvst, and F. Snickars (eds) Dynamic Allocation of Urban Space, England: Saxon House/ Lexington Books. Hallin, P.O. (1991) ‘New paths for time-geography?’, Geografiska Annaler 73B, 3:199– 207. Herold, J.M. (1979) ‘Female migration in Chile: types of moves and socioeconomic characteristics’, Demography 16, 2:257–77. Hojman, D.E. (1989) ‘Land reform, female migration and the market for domestic service in Chile’, Journal of Latin American Studies 21, 1:105–32. Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (INE) (1992) ‘Total pais’, Empleo Encuesta Nacional 1986–91, Santiago, Chile: Instituto Nacional De Estadisticas. Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (INE) (n.d.) ‘Personal de servicio por regiones. JuneAugust 1991’, Encuesta Nacional del Empleo, Santiago, Chile: Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas. Lago, M.S. (1992) ‘Rural women and the neo-liberal model’, in C.Kay and P.Silva (eds) Development and Social Change in the Chilean Countryside: From the Pre-land Reform Period to the Democratic Transition, Amsterdam: Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation. Loach, B.L. (1990) ‘Power and women’s writing in Chile: 1973–88’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University. Mackenzie, S. (1989) ‘Restructuring the relations of work and life: women as environmental actors, feminism as geographic analysis’, in A.Kobayashi and S.Mackenzie (eds) Remaking Human Geography, Boston: Unwin Hyman. Orellana-Rojas, C. (1989) ‘Migration patterns of Mapuche Indian women in Chile’, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of New Mexico. Pred, A. (1981) ‘Social reproduction and the time-geography of everyday life’, Geografiska Annaler 63B: 5–22. Radcliffe, S.A. (1991) The role of gender in peasant migration: conceptual issues from the Peruvian Andes’, Review of Radical Political Economics 23, 3–4:129–47. Sindicato de Trabajadoras de Casas Particulares (SINTRACAP) (1990) Trabajadoras de Casa Particular. Distribucion segun Edad y Estado Civil, photocopy, Santiago, Chile.


Sindicato de Trabajadoras de Casas Particulares (SINTRACAP) (1992) Realidad de las Trabajadoras de Casa Particular en Chile, Santiago, Chile: Servicios Investigaciones y Estudios Economico-Sociales, SIETE, photocopy. Valdés, T. and Gomáriz. E. (n.d.) Trabajo (Empleo). Mujeres Latinoamericanas en Cifras: Avances de Investigacion, no. 5, photocopy, Santiago, Chile: SERNAM. Valdés, T., Gomáriz, E. and SERNAM (1992) Sistematizacion de Antecedentes Estadisticos de la Mujer a Nivel Regional, photocopy, Santiago, Chile: FLACSO.

Part III EUROPE

Few European women want to work as domestics within their own countries, unless it is in specialist fields such as that of professionally-trained nannies. Although many young people will work for short periods, often between school and college, as an au pair in an another European country in order to improve their languages, few see it as a long-term job. As dual-career families increase in number, the demand for live-in household help grows, and foreign migrants are becoming a major source of labour. At first, this need was met by migrant women from former colonies: Algerians in France; Irish and West Indians in Britain. Women from the poorer parts of Europe also took on domestic work. Thus, southern Europeans from Spain, Italy and Portugal have been followed more recently by those from Eastern and Central Europe. Today, colonial links are still important because of common languages: women from the Dominican Republic and the Philippines work in Spain; Australians, New Zealanders and Cypriots work in Britain; Surinamese work in the Netherlands; women from the Overseas Departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe work in France. Domestic service is increasingly a job for the immigrant, especially low-skilled, illegal immigrants. Consequently, in Europe, as in North America, racial hierarchies and stereotyping are developing and becoming institutionalised, as described by Cox and Narula in this section. In each European country, there are specific immigration and employment rules for domestic servants, as shown by Anderson. Only citizens of countries belonging to the European Union can move freely, and even the entry of refugees is being increasingly restricted. Domestic service disappeared in the centrally planned countries under communism, but is now returning, with Bosnian refugees cleaning houses in Slovenia, and illegal Romanian migrants working in eastern Hungary. One hundred years ago, Slovenian wetnurses paved the way for the eventual entry into the labour force of women from all walks of life, as described by Miklavčič-Brezigar and Barbič in Chapter 10. Many of today’s migrants had not been in the labour force before migration, but are often spearheading change and bearing the brunt of its implications for each national group, especially North Africans and South Asians. As in North America, migrants to Europe usually plan to stay, but continue to send remittances home and provide a supportive network for new immigrants coming from their countries.

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After 1974, when the main receiving countries in Europe decided to stop the inflow of migrant workers, many guest workers returned home. Women often found it difficult to become reintegrated. Gender roles within the family had changed during the sojourn overseas, with the authority of fathers being reduced, and the role of mothers in the decision-making process becoming more egalitarian. Greek-Cypriot women returnees tended to be more in favour of abolition of dowries, the longer they had been overseas (Emke-Poulopoulos 1995), and the proportion of economically active women amongst returnees was higher than among non-migrants (ibid.). Thus, returning migrants can be seen as agents of change, especially for women, in their home countries. References Emke-Poulopoulos, I. (1995) ‘Analysis of changes in the status of female returnees in Greece’, in International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, San Miniato, Italy, 28–31 March, 1990, New York: United Nations.

7 OVERSEAS DOMESTIC WORKERS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION Invisible women Bridget Anderson

Throughout Europe there has been a significant increase in demand for private domestic services, including childcare and care of the elderly. Demographic changes, women’s changing social and economic roles, the decline of the extended family in southern Europe, and the shrinking welfare state in northern Europe mean this demand is likely to continue. The importance of domestic work, paid and unpaid is, at last, beginning to receive some attention, particularly since concerns over care of an increasingly elderly population are rapidly becoming the concerns of those currently in the labour force over who will care for them in their old age (Economist 1996). What is passing unnoticed is the racialisation of paid domestic work in Europe, and in particular, the important role played by noncitizens in sustaining the European family as a viable social, economic and reproductive unit. Writings on migrant women confirm that domestic work is an extremely important source of employment in the European Union. Domestic work in private households is routinely mentioned in passing: Black and migrant women’s organisations point out that as white women improve their situation through campaigning and social change, some of the roles that they are leaving behind are being filled by black and migrant women—instead of being taken up by publicly funded services. As a result, many white women across a range of EC member states, have black and immigrant women as nannies, maid servants, cleaners and domestics. (European Forum of Left Feminists 1993: iii) Domestic work as an area of employment for migrant women is, in a similar way, singled out in individual country studies with reference to women migrants (for Greece, see Black 1992 and Psimmenos 1996; for France, see Leonetti and Levy 1978; for Germany, see Abadan-Unat 1984). The importance of domestic work as a sector in legalisation data is notable (see, for example, French Ministry of Social Affairs 1984), suggesting that it is an important employer of undocumented female labour (see also Chapter 4). There are also intimations of low pay, abuse and exploitation: The most humiliated and illtreated are foreign domestics’ (Morokvasic 1984).


However, despite its obvious importance, studies on the living and working conditions of migrants working in private households in Europe are extremely limited. In Greece and Germany, for example, there are no studies on migrant domestic workers as such, though the Filipino organisation, Kasapi, has been trying to draw attention to the dire conditions endured by Filipina domestic workers in Athens. The subject has received some attention in Italy and Spain (Campani 1997, 1995a, 1995b, 1993, 1992; Andall 1996, 1992; Colectivo Ioe 1991, 1990, 1987). In 1995, the Equal Opportunities Unit of Directorate-General 5 (DGV) of the European Commission, and the University of Leicester, funded a research project to examine the living and working conditions of migrant domestic workers in five cities of the European Union—Barcelona, Athens, Berlin, Paris and Bologna. This followed on from a UK research project carried out for Anti-Slavery International and Kalayaan, the organisation campaigning for the rights of overseas domestic workers in the UK (Anderson 1993). Group interviews were held in each of the cities (with the exception, for funding reasons, of Berlin), and they were attended by over 120 women and men from Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern Europe, (documented and undocumented workers), eager to share their experiences and learn of the situation of others. Owing to the fact that they were self-moderated and taped, these interviews could be held in workers’ mother tongues, and were supplemented by larger consultation sessions with translators which brought together workers of all nationalities, and by 24 in-depth interviews. It became clear that, while workers’ experiences were mediated by their country of origin, immigration status and type of work (live-in or live-out), they faced many common problems, including low wages (in some cases no wages at all), long hours, unreasonable demands and deliberate denigration by employers. The following paper is based on this research. Domestic work—jobs for the girls? Domestic work is extremely difficult to define. It involves managing and undertaking processes essential to the maintenance and reproduction of human life (e.g. caring for babies and small children), and the servicing of ‘productive work’. In this sense, it is ‘necessary work’. However, reproductive work is not confined to the maintenance of physical bodies nor to the maintenance and reproduction of some abstracted labour power: people are social, cultural and ideological beings. Reproductive work, mental, physical and emotional labour, create not simply labour units, but people (Brenner and Laslett 1989; Glenn 1992). However, it is important to recognise the different kinds of ‘need’ attended to by domestic work in order to unpack the European demand for migrant domestic workers. Much of the demand for domestic work in Europe is for live-in carers. There are clear social, economic and demographic reasons for this demand. Caught between a declining Welfare State and growth in middle-class female employment

OVERSEAS DOMESTIC WORKERS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION 115

outside the home, it is scarcely surprising that the employment of a migrant domestic worker is regarded as a suitable strategy for families who need full-time carers. However, the employment of a domestic worker is not only a coping strategy. As reproductive work is concerned with the social and cultural reproduction of human beings, the actual doing of the work, who does it, when and where, is a crucial part of its meaning (Romero 1992). More than a reflection, it is an expression and reproduction of social relations, and in particular of relations between genders. So, in contemporary Britain, middle-class women may choose to free themselves of domestic chores in order to be able to spend time on the physical and emotional development of children (and male partners), thereby maintaining themselves as ‘proper wives’ and ‘proper mothers’. Men prove that they are ‘proper men’ by never having to consider domestic drudgery, and enjoy the home as a refuge, offering a well-deserved rest from the stresses and strains of productive work. The issue is often one of gender relations: the woman is unwilling or unable to argue with a male partner and children over sharing domestic chores, and yet is unable to manage the house to everybody’s satisfaction, so the household employs a domestic worker. Thus, gender and generational conflict over domestic work is averted (or, as is often the case, transferred to relations between female employer and female worker). It is not only gender but also ‘racial’ identities that are reproduced through household labour. Domestic work is naturalised as an extension of women’s reproductive work. Women who are defined as ‘other’ in relation to European women, being closer to nature, are ‘naturally’ good at domestic work. As different meanings are assigned to different jobs, so notions of what is appropriate in terms of gender and race are played out, and the ‘identities’ of workers and employers are confirmed in relation to one another. As one Ghanaian woman put it: ‘they give every shit work to you as the black in the house’. Therefore, the employment of a non-European Union domestic worker enables the expression and reproduction of the ‘proper’ role of women and men of color, and their ‘proper’ relations to European households—as servers, doers of dirty work that citizens are too important to do. When the worker is charged with looking after children, these ‘identities’ are quite literally reproduced. As a Filipina in Athens described: I heard children playing, they are playing house. The other child said, ‘I am a Daddy’, the other child said, ‘I am a Mummy’, and then ‘She is a Filipina’. So what does the child mean, even the child knows or it’s already learning, that if you are a Filipina you are a servant inside the house. While there are economic and demographic reasons for the demand for cheap domestic workers to perform ‘necessary work’, migrant domestic workers also reproduce and confirm the status hierarchy (see also Chapter 14). Much of the work of migrant domestic workers, both carers and cleaners, is taken up with


sustaining otherwise unsustainable life-styles. Take Irene’s employers, for example: They have a very big house, and everywhere, white carpet. They have three dogs. I hate those dogs, with long, long hair. Even one hair will show on the white carpet…. There is only one carpet that is easy to clean, it is a brown carpet in the kitchen. Paradoxically, while domestic work is commonly described as invisible, it is in fact highly visible, involving, among other things, the maintenance of accoutrements for display purposes: were it not for Irene’s work, her employers would have to be rid of either the dogs or the carpet. It also raises the question, would her employers have both white carpet and dogs if they (or, most likely, the female employer) had to clean the house themselves? The servicing of European lifestyles forms an important component of migrant domestic work, and this was reflected in the sense workers had that they were being required to do work that employers themselves would never consider doing. Indeed, the very employment of a domestic worker is a status symbol, and the servicing of unsustainable lifestyles shades into the reinforcement of privileged status by debasing and disrespecting the worker. This was clearly apparent in Athenian employers’ practice of not flushing the toilet but of leaving it to the ‘maid’, who also had to pick out the toilet paper so it did not block the drains. Thus, it would seem that a domestic worker is not just a person who performs a job, but like ‘mother’ and ‘wife’, she is fulfilling a role within the family. As fulfilling wife and mother roles is immensely time-consuming and exhausting, but is not considered to be work (Romero 1992), neither is the role of a domestic worker. So, in the final analysis, domestic work is not definable in terms of tasks, nor permanent availability, but in terms of a role which constructs and situates the worker within a certain set of social and economic relationships. Domestic workers and European states European reports on aging and childcare have drawn attention to the importance of private domestic work, particularly in countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy, where, despite feminisation of the labour force and consequent draining of available female kin labour, there has been no comparable extension in public services or state financial support. In France and Germany, there is a more formal recognition of the importance of domestic work, particularly in France, where there are special taxation regimes and simplified procedures for private employers. In 1987, partly in an attempt to create petits boulots (casual work) for the unemployed, those aged over seventy, and parents of children under three, were exempted from employment charges accruing to hiring a household worker, and private individuals were encouraged to employ workers in an attempt to develop the domestic work sector. In 1992, tax incentives were introduced across-the-


board, and employers of domestic workers were allowed a ceiling of 12,000F a year tax-free, raised in 1994 to 45,000F, to spend on the wages of their employee. The check-service system was introduced at the end of 1994 for jobs of 8 hours or under a week. This system simplifies the employment of domestic workers: the employer pays the worker on a special check book, and sends off a corresponding slip to the national Social Security Office; this center works out the employer deductions, takes them directly from the employer’s account, and sends to the worker a certificate of employment equivalent to a pay slip. Clearly, this procedure is intended to encourage those who would otherwise be put off declaring workers by administrative procedures (see Chapter 9). In Germany, in 1993, according to the Microzensus, only 120,000 National Insurance-paying employees were registered in private households. The gap between those officially registered and those estimated to work in this area seriously concerns the German federal government, which is anxious to tap into this source of potential tax and National Insurance revenue. Since 1990, parents of two children or more (or one child if it is a single-parent family) have been able to claim 12,000 DMs a year; tax deductible, for a legally employed childminder. Clearly, this is not enough. Indeed, it seems that, as in France, many people pay their employee up to the official amount that is tax deductible, and make up the rest with a ‘cheating supplement’, thereby avoiding additional National Insurance contributions for the employer, and taxation for the employee. So, even those registered as legally employed may well be working for and earning more than is officially apparent. The matter is further complicated by the fact that those working for under twenty hours a week count as working in geringfügige Beschäftigung or ‘minor employment’. This means that they are exempt from National Insurance, not entitled to unemployment benefit, and not registered with the Federal Employment Office. Domestic work accounts for a large proportion of this employment—although obviously no statistics are available. Because domestic workers are likely to be working for several employers at once, they may well be working full time, in fact, but falling into the minor employment category. However, while the crucial role of this sector of work (paid and unpaid) is at least not completely unnoticed—although much more work needs to be done to centralise it—what continues unrecognised is the racialisation of paid domestic work in Europe. When one writes of the ‘racialisation’ of domestic work, it is important to stress that this is not a new phenomenon. Black women and men have been both status symbol and the doers of dirty work in the UK since the days of Queen Elizabeth I. By the eighteenth century, there were some 10,000 black household servants: Associated in many English people’s minds with the immense riches of Africa and India…black servants conferred on their masters and mistresses ‘an air of luxurious well-being’. They were at once charming, exotic ornaments, objects of curiosity, talking points, and, above all, symbols of prestige. (Fryer 1984:72–4)


In the nineteenth century, Arthur Munby, an upper-middle-class man who had a relationship with Hannah Cullwick, a working class maid of all work, which was charted in their respective diaries, photographed her with ‘black’ skin dressed as a slave: Hannah’s pet name for Munby was ‘Massa’, that is, what they took to be the Negro slave’s word for Master. Three years after they met, she began to wear a leather strap around her wrist and a chained collar with lock around her neck to which Munby held the key. He particularly enjoyed seeing her face and arms blackened—in his phrase ‘in her dirt’. (Davidoff 1983:44) The association between black people, slavery, domestic work and power, was clearly well entrenched in the English general consciousness. The racialisation of domestic work is not a new phenomenon, but it is attaining new dimensions in the European Union, and the intersection of issues around employment, migration, citizenship and women’s rights, are resulting in the gross exploitation of non-EU migrant domestic workers. European immigration legislation plays a crucial part in this, although its role varies from state to state. In Germany, Greece and France, the demand for non-EU domestic workers is not reflected in immigration laws, meaning that many domestic workers are undocumented, illegal entrants or overstayers. Moreover, in Germany, for example, the legal means of entry for labour migrants are all for areas of work dominated by men, and the majority of migrants taking them up are male.1 So, as with the earlier Gastarbeiter system, Germany’s attempts to regulate foreign labour are principally directed at male migration. This does not, of course, mean that women do not migrate, but it does mean that current female labour migration is more likely to be unregulated, i.e. undocumented, and therefore likely to be channeled into unregulated sectors such as domestic labour (see also Chapter 4). In Spain, the continuing demand for migrant labour in certain sectors of the economy—notably agriculture and domestic work—was acknowledged by the introduction of a quota system in 1993. A maximum of 20,000 work permits for non-EU nationals was to be granted annually. Work permits for domestic service were available to Filipinas, Dominicans and Peruvians, and for agriculture to Moroccans. This occupation by nationality was much criticised by community groups on racist grounds, and has since been abolished, although, in reality, those entering under the system continue to be Filipinas, Dominicans and Peruvians. Migrant domestic workers in Spain who have a work permit for domestic work, are dependent on their employer for its renewal. This is extremely problematic: live-in domestic workers are already overly dependent on their employers, who control their private life as well as their employment. In the UK, a similar immigration ‘concession’, which allows domestic workers to accompany their


employers but ties them to a named employer, has been proven to result in gross abuses, including imprisonment, rape, and beatings (see Anderson 1993). In general, among domestic workers interviewed, those who experienced extremes of abuse and exploitation were almost invariably undocumented or tied by immigration status to their employer: But the problem with me, I don’t have my paper, and the first thing where am I supposed to go if I don’t have my work. So I have to take care…. I was sleeping at 2 a.m. I wake up at 5 o’clock a.m…they are going to have a dinner for 24 persons without a waiter and the dinner is at the 5th floor and all the foods is coming from the sixth floor, and there is no machine for washing, you have to wash by hand everything you still have to finish everything before you go to sleep. And what time are you going to sleep when they finish at three o’clock…. I stayed until one year…where am I going? I don’t know anybody here…. Where am I going? France? I don’t trust people here. Being undocumented means that workers and employers are unequal before the law, confirming the dependency, inequality and de-humanisation that are encouraged in the domestic worker-employer relationship: We are living in a big prison. Nowhere to go. We stay here in this country simply, no recognition. We don’t have a chance to go to school, a chance to work, or a chance to have medical care. We are living in a big prison, a big prison. Ignoring the importance of migrant women in domestic work significantly worsens their situation in other, more indirect ways. While domestic work and the need for domestic workers is gaining some recognition because of the economic, demographic and social factors mentioned above, the result is the creation of a ‘professionalised’ sector of domestic workers. Some types of work, particularly caring for children, are regarded as suitable employment for European female citizens, while migrants continue to be confined to the lowest-paid and most demanding jobs. This process is most advanced in France, where domestic work has been professionalised by refining definitions and specialisms, and classifying the work into a hierarchy of tasks and skills. Training and qualifications are encouraged, with the intention of offering a better service for employers and thereby increasing wages and improving conditions for workers. As the employers’ organisation, FEPEM (Fédération Nationale des Groupements de Particuliers Employeurs) puts it: You want a skilled worker with a sense of responsibility, and she wants a proper career…. Look after your rights by respecting hers. (FEPEM leaflet, 1996)


FEPEM and the trades unions CFTC, CGT, CFDT and FGTA-FO, have negotiated a Convention Collective Nationale de Travail du Personnel Employé de Maison’, which sets some basic employment conditions and guarantees for workers. From October 1, 1995, workers were divided into different levels, from débutant (‘beginner’) to level 5. Minimum salary for the débutant was 36.98F an hour, and for level 5, 42.56F an hour. The classification, however, represents a basic twotier system, with beginners and level 1 being unqualified workers sous responsabilité de l ‘employeur (under the employer’s supervision), and levels 2– 5, qualified employees with employeur present ou non (with employer present or not). Caring responsibilities are taken on only by level-2 workers upwards. At this stage, workers are said to occupy Postes d’emploi a caractère familial when, as well as working, they provide a presence responsable (i.e. they are available for caring work, but not necessarily carrying it out, for example, when a child is asleep). Payment for this time is set at two-thirds of the minimum wage. There are various problems that are intrinsic to domestic work enshrined in the Convention Collective. The distinction between presence responsable and travail effectif is not hard and fast, as anyone with experience of working in a house, paid or unpaid, knows. Presence responsable often equates to the time used to finish household chores. Even if it is not used in this way, it is not free time, nor is it rest time, because one can always be interrupted by something that must take priority. Indeed, it is precisely the element of présence responsable that accounts for much of the bind of domestic work, with one’s own freedom and time being completely subsumed to another’s. The Convention Collective also enshrines the contradiction that one’s work becomes more specialised and defined as one’s status and salary increases—chauffeurs, chefs, etc are at level 5, but it is those who are at the bottom of the hierarchy who have to do everything, and who in reality often have the greatest responsibility, being only rarely supervised by their employer. Professionalised domestic workers are extremely expensive: not only are their wages higher than those of non-professionalised workers, but they are also likely to be declared, meaning the employer must pay tax, national insurance, etc, and give them certain employment rights such as sick pay. Professional workers are less ‘flexible’: so, for example, a person who employs a professionalised carer will not get the cleaning thrown in, and may well employ a cleaner in addition. An unprofessionalised carer, on the other hand, will combine care and the household chores, which are in reality a daily part of care. Professionalised domestic workers may be financially out of reach for many middle-class families, particularly those needing a full-time carer for children or the elderly. Yet, this is precisely the sector that is growing. Thus, while citizens may take advantage of training and professionalisation, to enable them to take up better-paying and higher-status jobs, migrants continue to fill the main area of need. The professionalising of domestic work often ends up as a process of ‘whitening’— and this is not confined to France, as workers in Athens explained:


we do all kinds of household chores…unlike the European like the British that come here. If they hire a babysitter, they just do the baby-sitting and not even wash their plate that they are eating. They don’t even know how to wash their spoons. Migrant domestic workers: networks and hierarchies Recently-arrived migrants who were interviewed said that domestic work was the only employment available to them, apart from prostitution, and this was confirmed by migrants’ organisations and support groups. Migrants from all continents work in private households in the EU, with some nationalities predominating in certain countries, for historical, cultural and geographical reasons: Albanians in Greece; Peruvian, Dominicans and Moroccans in Spain; Eastern Europeans in Germany. Throughout Europe, Polish and Filipina workers were extremely visible—although that does not necessarily mean that they are the most numerous, it does indicate that they are well-organised and have carved a niche for themselves in the domestic labour market. Migrants are concentrated in live-in work, although those who have lived in Europe for longer have often changed to ‘live-out’, working by the hour for a number of employers. However, in all cities that were visited, it became clear that it was increasingly difficult to make this transition. Competition for live-out jobs was fierce, particularly since it is the sector where European citizens are employed. ‘Live out’ is the preferred form of employment for all but newly-arrived undocumented workers, for whom live-in employment solves problems of accommodation compounded by the vulnerability of the homeless to being picked up by the police, and who often need to earn as quickly as possible in order to pay off migratory debts. Live-in work predominates more in Southern Europe (Athens, Barcelona and Bologna) than in Northern Europe (Berlin and Paris), and some nationalities were more likely to live in than others—thus, in Paris, Filipinas are likely to live in, and in Athens, Polish workers are likely to live out. This was often related to issues of legal status, the history of the community within the city, and whether certain nationalities were regarded as suitable carers. The importance of networks to migrant domestic workers, both for employment and social life, cannot be overstated. Many workers entered Europe to work for a specific employer, having been recommended by a relative already in the European Union: My sister said, if you want to come to Barcelona, come to Spain and I have got a job for you. So, I came and the next day I was working…. I came with a friend as well…. Then came the sister of my friend and then came my husband, her husband and her mother…and we had another house, a bigger one. Then I called everybody and my sister and my cousin, she was a secretary, and we found her some job,—it was easy to find work very


quickly, then my son came and then my other sister and so the same with others. In nine months, everybody was here. Even if they are not given a job, workers may well be supported by contacts from home until they find employment. Those who arrive alone, or who do not have access to these networks, often turn to non-governmental organisations and, in particular, to churches, for support and access to citizens offering employment. Indeed, the role of Christian churches in acting as informal employment agencies in Europe, is worthy of more attention. In Athens, for example, Protestant evangelical churches were important access points for Protestant workers and employers. In 1995, the Missionaries of Charity were beginning to work with Sri Lankan women, one of the most marginalised of migrant groups in Athens, and were already being contacted by potential employers. As one of the sisters told me: I have three jobs at the moment. They might not pay more, but at least there is some connection and they won’t maltreat them…the people are related to us so we know they will not abuse. The Catholic organisation, CARITAS, also works with domestic workers-indeed their main focus is on placing workers with employers. In 1990 alone, it dealt with 4,017 requests to find work. Among the domestic workers interviewed, it was regarded as offering very low-paid jobs, and only to be visited if desperate. For new arrivals, however, and people with no network of friends to pass on jobs, it is clearly an important employment clearing house, and deals with a wide range of nationalities, including Albanian, Zairean, Rumanian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, Iraqi and Ethiopian. More informally, women of all nationalities and religions attended Mass in large Catholic churches in downtown Athens, as a way of meeting with each other and potential employers. Interestingly, there was a certain hostility to the Greek Orthodox Church because of its association with Greek nationalism. Once workers are part of employment networks, it becomes easier for them to find other work, since employers often recommend them to friends and relatives. For both workers and employers, female networks are extremely important in organising employment, although employers are in more of a position to use them as a system of references. For workers, an employer’s recommendation of a friend/ relative is an opportunity for employment rather than a recommendation as a good employer: I came with my sister. She found me a job. She had come through a friend… I was maltreated there: no food… I ran away. Were you angry with your sister? No, because her employer was a friend of my employer and she was very upset. She said she hadn’t seen the house and she didn’t know it was so big.


In addition to informal networks and contacts, employment agencies also exist for domestic work. These covered a broad range from the upmarket and professionalised to the downright illegal. As Canadian studies have found (Bakan and Stasiulis 1995), agencies perpetuate, and, to an extent, generate certain stereotypes. Moroccans are difficult to place…. Their religion is very different, they observe Ramadan…. They are very different, though like Peruvians they are brought up to be servile. Filipinas are easiest to place. They are cold (an advantage), efficient (but not affectionate, they don’t care about anything), hardworking, they speak English, are discreet, they have integrated to some extent. But they are disloyal…. They only care about money. (Agency R.Barcelona) These stereotypes were not restricted to employment agencies, but were also a feature of the voluntary sector. The Caritas volunteer in Athens, for example, claimed: Black means without light, and if the old woman does not see so well, if she has mental problems, then that person, like that color, can cause psychological problems. In Paris a volunteer with a local family support agency explained: You know the black people are used to being under the sun, and the people in France think they are very lazy, they are not going very quick, and you know, another breed. But they are very good with children, very maternal. In the European cities visited, it was clear that, not only were non-EU women, as a group, regarded as naturally suitable for domestic work, but that different nationalities were regarded as different ‘types’, who were therefore naturally suited to different kinds of work. A recognised hierarchy existed among both employers and workers, with Filipinas generally at the top, and black Africans at the bottom: One African woman I met, her fingers were very scratched and raw. She said her woman didn’t let her have gloves. She was working for an old lady. When she dirtied herself she had to clean her and she had to pick the dirt with her hand. I said, ‘but why don’t you leave her after she did that to you?’ She said to me, ‘You are lucky you are light skinned, it is easier for you to find employer’. Each city had its own peculiarities, however,—so, for example, Haitian women in Paris had a good reputation, while Albanians in Greece, though lighter skinned


than many, had a bad reputation. Within these hierarchies, employers expressed their own preferences. Household myths about different nationalities assumed an almost folkloric character: a ‘bad’ experience with a domestic worker would be used to extrapolate the ‘bad’ characteristics of her nationality. Moreover, the worker is doing the work in a style (allegedly) that the employer attributes to some perceived racial identity whereby ‘racial characteristics’ become self-fulfilling prophecies: my domestic worker is smiley because Haitians are smiley, and I know Haitians are smiley because my domestic worker is a smiley Haitian. The employment of migrant domestic workers promotes both the perpetuation, at a household level, of the myth of racial characteristics, and expresses and reproduces the subordination of non-Europeans to European households: I would have a Haitian again if I lost her…. If I couldn’t get a Haitian, I’d go for a Portuguese, but she’d have to have very good references and I’d have to be sure that there wasn’t a problem with them talking. These racist hierarchies can result in direct competition between different national groups. In one voluntary placement agency in France, I witnessed a Portuguese woman who was coming to be interviewed as a domestic worker, shouting racist insults at other people in the queue and demanding to come to the front, since she was a European Union citizen and should be given preferential treatment over African workers. Some employers attempt to enforce social divisions in other ways, for example by insisting that their workers use their own cutlery, or by making them wear uniforms and wash their clothes separately etc. Racism both reinforces, and gives a new aspect to social divisions and denigration of the worker. In Athens, African women routinely had to undergo AIDS tests (at their own expense) when they took new jobs. Employment as favour There is a postmodern twist to the racism that structures the employment relationship: the employer can confirm what a good woman she is, by the very fact that she employs a needy migrant. One woman employed ten domestic workers from Ethiopia, one after another for 2–3 months: When there was a war in Ethiopia, I pitied them. They were living in. I gave them one and a half days off. But if there were a problem, I would ask them to stay. But no it was impossible. Even if I paid them they did not understand. Offering the work can demonstrate the employers’ benevolence and the workers’ low status. This notion of employment as favour can be reinforced by the churches’ involvement in employment placement—employment as Christian duty. Indeed both, Kalayaan in London and Caritas in Barcelona, commented that it is not


unusual for employers to offer bed and board in return for full-time, live-in work. This is presented as a favour, as allowing a woman to live as ‘part of the family’, and does not take account of the fact that the woman has her own family, and, indeed, usually only left them to earn cash for remittances. Certainly, the motive for migration was not to gain access to a kindly, non-paying European family. Workers responded angrily to the ignorance manifested by such ‘pity’: They thought I came from the jungle, that I had nothing, that I knew nothing, and so I came from the jungle to take care of them. Employment as favour is partially formalised in France. In addition to having the informal networks that have been described in other European cities, France is unique in that it has a government-promoted system for putting prospective workers and employers in touch with one another. The promotion of associations intermédiares began in 1987. These are voluntary associations, often locally based, which liase between unemployed people and those needing household workers, not only putting them in touch with each other, but also acting also as the employer. Therefore, the individual employer pays, not the worker, but the association. In 1994, the government estimated that such agencies dealt with 27 percent of all employers (41 percent of those employers were aged over 70), disposing of 35–40 million working hours. One such association is the Emploi Daubigny, based in the premises of the Parish Church of Saint Françoise Salle in the 17th arrondissement, in Paris. It belongs to Secours Catholique, a national Catholic organisation. According to the Emploi Daubigny 1994 report, 56 percent of those asking for work (273 out of a total of 489) were foreigners, and 44 percent were French. This, however, does not distinguish between those who are Frenchborn and those who have acquired French citizenship. As one of the volunteers revealingly put it, when asked how many applicants were French-born: The real French people? Very small. It’s difficult to know, but very, very small.’ The leaflet issued by the Emploi Daubigny in October, 1995, very much encourages the perception that employers are ‘helping’ workers. It is not just employment that is offered, but a kindness, and this is exacerbated by the voluntary nature of the association: En procurant des heures de travail aux demandeurs d’emploi, vous leur redonnez confiance, vous les aidez a se réinsérer, et en échange vous recevez un réel service. When you get some hours to work for people asking for employment, you are giving them back their hope, you help them to get back into the labour market, and in exchange you get a real service. (the Emploi Daubigny, October 1995, advertising their services to potential employers)


In fact the living and working conditions of domestic workers in Europe reveal that employment is anything but a favour. Indeed, in all cities visited, I found evidence of workers who were being sexually, physically and psychologically abused. In Athens, one woman claimed to have been raped by her employer, until she became pregnant, at which time she was thrown out. She delivered her baby on the streets, and some weeks later, while still homeless, the child was taken from her by some officials, whose identity she did not know. When I met her, she was clearly mentally ill—living on the streets and still unemployed. In Berlin, another woman was brought without documents from Rumania to be a domestic worker for a couple. She lived in their flat, did all their domestic chores, and was regularly beaten and sexually abused by both the man and the woman. They also forced her to have sexual intercourse with their friends, and finally forced her to work as a prostitute so that they could ‘earn’ money to pay for their apartment. Another worker accompanied her Saudi Arabian employers to Paris: Dix huit heures de travail par jour, sept jours sur sept; mal nourrie, maltraitée, injuriée, gifllée, bouclée…. Maria supplie sans succès sa maitresse de la laisser rentrer a Manille. Au bout de sept mois, elle s’enfuit. Seule, sans papiers, sans argent, dans une capitale inconnue. Working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week: badly fed, badly treated, abused, slapped, locked up…. Maria begged her mistress to let her go back to Manila, to no avail. After seven months she ran away. Alone, without papers, without money, in an unknown city. (O’Dy 1995:12) The case of Veronique Akobe, a woman from the Ivory Coast working for a wealthy French family in Nice, shows that this abuse is not restricted to wealthy foreigners. She was raped and sexually abused by the male employer and his son repeatedly, and finally killed the father and injured the son. She was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. A way forward? Isolation, personalised relations with the employer, and atomisation make domestic work one of the most difficult labour sectors to organise. In fact, organisations of domestic workers, both on an international scale and within Europe, are often unacknowledged. Dominican women in Barcelona, for example, were described as unorganised by their male compatriots, but they often rent flats so that ten or more of them can meet on their days off, and using this base, share information on employment, support each other, and even provide childcare for each other. I would argue that this is simply a different way of organising, more effective for them, perhaps, than the standard trades union model. Building on formal associations and informal meetings, workers are establishing the European


Network of Domestic Workers which issued the following founding statement in January 1998: Domestic work in private households is crucial to European family life and social support systems, yet it is invaluable and invisible. It is work demanding a variety of skills and is often done by people who have migrated to Europe. Migrant domestic workers are part of the fabric of European society, and yet in many European States their dignity and integrity, and their rights as people and workers are violated. We call for justice and equity for all migrant domestic workers, whether they are live-in or live-out; whether they are documented or undocumented; whether first or second generation; whether they are born in Africa, Asia, South America, or Europe. Domestic work is a mainstream issue, and the efficient and just organisation of this work is fundamental to all of us. It remains to be seen how the people of Europe will respond to the challenge. Notes 1 Werkvertragsarbeitnehmer, project-linked employment, mainly in the construction industry; Gastarbeitnehmerbeschäftigung, guestworker contracts, 80 percent of the workers are male; Saisonarbeit, seasonal workers, mainly in agriculture, forestry, construction and vineyards; Grenzgangerbeschäftigung, commuters, mainly male Czech workers in Bavaria. The single exception to this ‘masculinisation’ is the employment of nursing staff for the sick and elderly. However, in 1994, these accounted for only 412 people, 390 from Croatia and 22 from Slovenia.

References Abadan-Unat, N. (1984) ‘International labour migration and women’s roles: a Turkish view’, in Women on the Move: Contemporary Changes in Family and Society Paris: UNESCO. Andall, J. (1996) ‘Catholic and state construction of domestic workers: the case of Cape Verdean women in Rome in the 1970s’, paper delivered to the Conference on Social Constructions and Social Realities, ERCOMER Utrecht University, 18–20 April, 1996. Andall, J. (1992) ‘Women migrant workers in Italy’, Women’s Studies International Forum 15, 1:4–48. Anderson, B. (1993) Britain’s Secret Slaves: An Investigation into the Plight of Overseas Domestic Workers in the United Kingdom, London: Anti-Slavery International and Kalayaan.


Bakan, A. and Stasiulis, D. (1995) ‘Making the match: domestic placement agencies and the racialisation of women’s household work’, Signs, 20:303–35. Black, R. (1992) Livelihood and Vulnerability of Foreign Refugees in Greece: A Preliminary Report of Research on Iranian and Iraqi Refugees in Greater Athens, Occasional Paper no. 33, Department of Geography, King’s College, London. Brenner, J. and Laslett, B. (1989) ‘Gender and social reproduction: historical perspectives’, Annual Review of Sociology, 15:381–404. Campani, G. (1992) ‘International perspectives on migrant women’s employment: the example of self-employment and of domestic work’, paper delivered to the International Seminar on Migrant Women in the 1990s, Barcelona, Spain, 26–29 January 1992. Campani, G. (1993) ‘Labour markets and family networks: Filipino women in Italy’, in H.Rudolph and M.Morokvasic (eds) Bridging States and Markets, Berlin: Sigma. Campani, G. (1995a) ‘Immigrant Women as Social Actors’, paper delivered to the UNESCO Conference on New Trends in Migration, University of Warwick, England, November 1995. Campani, G. (1995b) ‘Women migrants: from marginal subjects to social actors’, in R. Cohen (ed.) Cambridge Survey of World Migrations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Campani, G. (1997) ‘Immigrant women in Southern Europe: social exclusion and gender’, paper delivered to the Conference of Institute of International Economic Relations and Regional Network on Southern European Societies, 19–21 September 1997, Santorini, Greece. Colectivo Ioe (1991) Foreign Women in Domestic Service in Madrid Spain, Geneva: ILO. Colectivo Ioe (1990) El Servicio Domestico en Espana entre el Trabajo Invisible y la economia sumergida, Informa de investigacion, Madrid: JOC-E. Colectivo Ioe (1987) ‘Las Empleadas de Hogar en Espana’, unpublished monograph, Colectivo Ioe, Madrid. Davidoff, L. (1983) ‘Class and gender in Victorian England’, in J.Newton, M.Ryan and J.Walkowitz (eds), Sex and Class in Women’s History, London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul. Economist (1996) ‘All our tomorrows: a survey of the economics of ageing’, January 27, 1996, special supplement. European Forum of Left Feminists (1993) Confronting the Fortress: Black and Migrant Women in the European Community, Brussels: European Women’s Lobby. European Network of Domestic Workers (1998) Full text of statement issued at First European seminar of the European Network of Domestic Workers, London, 30 Jan-1 Feb, 1998. FEPEM (1996) Sachez Vous Faire Aider, Paris: FEPEM. French Ministry of Social Affairs (1984) The employment market and immigrants in an irregular situation: lessons from the recent legalisation in France’, International Migration Review, 18, 3:558–78. Fryer, P. (1984) Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain, London: Pluto Press. Glenn, E.N. (1992) ‘From servitude to service work: historical continuities in the racial division of paid reproductive labour’, Signs, 18, 1:1–43. Leonetti, I. and Levy, F. (1978) Femmes et Immigrées: L’insertion des femmes immigrées en France, Paris: La Documentation Française.


Morokvasic, M. (1984) ‘Migrant women in Europe: a comparative perspective’, in Women on the Move, Paris: UNESCO. O’Dy, S. (1995) ‘Les sœurs de Sarah’, L’Express, October 12, 1995, p.12. Psimmenos, I. (1996) ‘The making of perphratic spaces: the case of Albanian undocumented immigrants in Athens City’, paper delivered to the ERCOMER Conference, 18–20 April, 1996, University of Utrecht, Netherlands. Romero, M. (1992) Maid in the USA, London: Routledge

130

8 THE ROLE OF ETHNICITY IN SHAPING THE DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENT SECTOR IN BRITAIN Rosie Cox

Paid domestic labour in Britain has expanded in the last decade. In 1995/6, £3.89 billion was spent on help in the home, nearly twice what had been spent a decade before (Garner 1996). It is estimated that there are now over 100,000 nannies in the country (Toynbee 1997), ten times the number of coal-miners (Wisniewski 1997). However, there are no official measures of involvement in the sector, and little is known about its true scale and nature. Many domestic workers are employed informally, either because they are benefit-dependent or because their immigration status precludes formal-sector employment. Paid domestic labour attracts migrant women and becomes an occupational ghetto for certain ethnic groups. People of different gender and nationality are recruited to different types of domestic labour. This chapter examines how recruitment processes enhance this ghettoisation, and how employers’ interests in the personal characteristics of their employees, again reinforces these patterns. The chapter draws on research carried out in London between 1995 and 1997. It is based on a survey of advertised demand for paid domestic workers, and interviews with domestic employment agencies, domestic workers and their employers. Advertisements for paid domestic workers placed in The Lady magazine were counted and mapped to gain background information on the size of the sector, the variety of jobs done, and where in London they are. The Lady is the single most important source of advertisements for domestic workers in Britain (Gregson and Lowe 1994). This was followed by a survey of domestic employment agencies. Nine agencies in London were interviewed about the domestic labour force. After this, in-depth interviews were carried out with a small sample of employers and employees from Hampstead. Hampstead is a wealthy area of northwest London that has very high rates of domestic employment. The sample included domestic workers from eight different countries and/or their employers. Paid domestic labour in Britain For most of the twentieth century, Britain has had lower levels of paid domestic employment than its European neighbours (McBride 1976; Anderson 1993). Most notably, the practice of having a live-in ‘maid of all work,’ that is popular with

132 DOMESTIC EMPLOYMENT IN BRITAIN

middle-class households in southern Europe, largely died out during World War One in Britain, as alternative employment opportunities were created for young, working-class women (McBride 1976). However, the richest households have alway s employed a number of servants with precisely defined roles within a domestic hierarchy (Davidson 1982). The most common forms of paid domestic work in contemporary Britain are the part-time cleaner, the live-in au pair, the mother’s help and the nanny. Demand for these workers, particularly those involved in childcare, has grown in recent years, and these jobs are filled by women from all over the world. In addition to this, Britain also has a very formal, professionalised domestic labour market, quite separate from the larger one. This includes multi-staff households with very highlytrained, uniformed servants managed by a butler or executive housekeeper. Although this part of the domestic labour market is relatively small, it still involves thousands of people. This has created a situation whereby Britain imports people to carry out certain domestic tasks, in particular those that are seen to be unskilled and that have low status. Simultaneously, Britain offers professional training for skilled, high-status domestic workers such as butlers and nannies, and the ‘Britishness’ of this formal training is one of the things that makes it valuable to overseas employers. Migration of domestic labour to Britain As this book demonstrates, and as many authors have noted already (see, for example, Ibarra 1979; Chaney and Garcia Castro 1989; Enloe 1989; Radcliffe 1990; Gill 1994), paid domestic labour is attractive to (im)migrants. This is because, as low-status work, it has low barriers to entry and often includes housing. The pattern of immigration of domestic workers to Britain is complex, being a product of both its position within the European Union (EU) and its colonial history. European law allows people from member states to live and work anywhere within the EU. This law has encouraged the movement of women from Spain and Portugal to Britain to take work as housekeepers, Relatively high wages in Britain make this migration worthwhile. Younger women (aged 17–27) have been able to take on domestic work under the ‘au pair’ scheme for many years. This scheme allows women to spend up to two years living in the home of, and working for, a family. The au pair should not work more than 25 hours a week, should be treated as a family member, and must also be studying English. In return for this, she is paid £35 per week (US$57). The au pair scheme is a reciprocal arrangement between a group of European countries. It includes all the EU states and others in Western Europe, but only Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia from Eastern Europe. Many au pairs, however, are employed outside these rules: some, because they work longer hours; others, because they are not studying English; or, in other cases, because they are not from participating countries and are working illegally. Since the early 1990s, large numbers of eastern


European women, particularly from Poland, have taken up domestic work illegally in Britain. Prior to 1962, citizens of countries belonging to the British Commonwealth were allowed unrestricted rights to live and work in Britain, and, until the implementation of the 1971 Immigration Act, did not have the legal status of alien. Today citizens of the ‘white’ Commonwealth are allowed to work for a period of two years in Britain. Many young women from Australia and New Zealand take positions as domestics under this ‘Working Holiday’ scheme. Migrant labour from Ireland is not subject to legal restrictions, and in the nineteenth century, many Irish women came to work as maids in households in Britain. Later, came state recruitment of Irish women for domestic work in homes and hospitals, supplemented in the immediate postwar period by Italian women and other Europeans entering on work permits (Phizacklea 1983:97). By 1947, 65 percent of work permits issued were for domestic servants (ibid. 1983:97). The continuing need for workers in this low-paid sector led to special quotas being set aside for domestic-worker immigrants until 1979, with Filipinas and Malaysians taking up the major share of these visas in the 1970s (Phizacklea 1983:98). The accession of the United Kingdom to the European Common Market in 1973, changed the special status of Commonwealth immigrants and privileged immigrants from other European member countries. Today, the only non-European domestic workers who are able to enter Britain legally (other than those joining resident family members) are live-in domestics who arrive with their employers. About 500 (mainly Filipina) workers, enter the United Kingdom each year in this way. They are not allowed to change jobs while in Britain, so may have to tolerate abusive employers, and, if their employment is terminated, they have to leave the country (Anderson 1993).1 Emigration of domestic labour from Britain Whilst Britain is importing housekeepers and au pairs, it is exporting au pairs, nannies and butlers to other parts of the world. Stiell and England (1997) and England and Stiell (1997) have demonstrated that, for domestic workers, ‘Britishness’ is a tradable commodity. British nannies are considered to be welltrained and professional. Many British nannies have a recognised qualification (the NNEB certificate); even those who do not have this training, benefit from the reputation of those that do. There is also a small group of British nannies, known as ‘Norlanders,’ who have been trained at specialised private colleges (Norland is one of these colleges). Typically, these are women from ‘good’ families who are ‘well-spoken’ well-educated, and are working in what is considered to be a suitable profession before they marry. It is worth remembering that Princess Diana worked in a nursery before she became engaged. This élite group represents a certain, very formal attitude towards childcare that cannot be easily separated from their nationality or class. Employers wanting this type of childcare cannot obtain it from nannies with a different background.


British, or more precisely, English, butlers are another élite group of domestic workers. Butlers are highly paid, earning £45,000 per year in the United Kingdom, and over $100,000 per year in the United States (Economist 1998), they have good living conditions and manage other staff. Butlers are trained at specialist ‘household management’ schools, or in-service, in large formal households such as the royal palaces. The unflappable English butler, immortalised by fictional characters such as P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves, is a well-known stereotype. The image trades on characteristics that are thought to be typically English, such as discretion, calmness and a respect for hierarchy. A perfectly trained English butler or nanny is a status symbol for employers both in Britain and abroad. The largest training centre in London has its own placement agency in the United States, and other employment agencies specialise in placing formally trained British staff in other countries. Every week, The Lady magazine publishes about 300 advertisements for paid domestic workers. Of these, about 50 (17 percent) are for positions abroad. Generally, these positions are for child-care workers, either untrained au pairs and mother’s helps, or trained nannies. Most of the positions are in Europe or Canada. American employers have to use specialist agencies because of complicated visa restrictions (see Chapter 1). Britain acts as both a sending and receiving country for domestic workers. The British domestic employment situation is complex. Within the United Kingdom labour market, workers from many different countries have entered domestic work at different times, for different reasons, and to do different jobs. Alongside this migrant group, there is a sizeable British domestic workforce concentrated in particular jobs and places. The next section looks in detail at paid domestic labour in London, the part of Britain that has the largest number of domestic workers and the most cosmopolitan population. The London context London is a global city (Sassen 1991), with vast inequalities in income—growth in highly-paid specialist business services, and increasing numbers of people in low-paid service jobs. Sassen (1991) identified London, New York and Tokyo as showing similar patterns of occupational ghettoisation, as they became global finance centres. They are global cities, both because they serve as centres of the global economy and because they have global workforces, acting as poles of attraction to migrants from all over the world. Income polarisation has characterised London during the last 15 years. Throughout Britain, the 1980s saw a widening of the divide between those on the highest and lowest incomes. Between 1979 and 1991, the real disposable incomes of the richest tenth of the population increased by 62 percent, while the poorest one-tenth saw their incomes fall by 17 percent in real terms (Pond 1995). Within London, polarisation was even more pronounced during this period: Hamnett (1995) argues that during the 1980s, differences between those on the lowest and highest incomes were twice as large in London as in the rest of the UK. The average


salary of the top 1 percent of earners in London and the South East, in 1991 was £164,000, while that of the bottom 50 percent in work was £7,994 (Pond 1995). On top of this, almost 2 million people in London are classified as economically inactive, half of whom claim income support, the lowest level of state benefit (Association of London Authorities 1995). Sassen (1991) has argued that polarisation has been a feature of all global cities during the 1980s, and is a product of the growth of the service sector, particularly advanced business services. The well-paid jobs created by this growth, increase demand for low-paid jobs in personal services. These jobs are filled by a global workforce, and migrants from other parts of the world are drawn to booming cities (Sassen 1988). Migrant workers fill the worst-paid jobs, with migrant women concentrated in traditional ‘female’ tasks that are commercialised forms of reproductive labour (Rees 1992), such as paid domestic work or contract commercial cleaning. Paid domestic labour in London Paid domestic labour has grown simultaneously with income polarisation in London. There is now a wide variety of different forms of paid domestic employment in London, ranging from the part-time, live-out cleaner to the highly formal (and highly paid) live-in butler. There are still a number of large multi-staff households employing specialist domestic workers. Demand for paid domestic work is not only a product of the increase in the number of women in paid work (cf. Gregson and Lowe 1994, England and Stiell 1997); in London, it is also a result of vast income inequalities and the increasing wealth of the richest people. It is impossible to gauge precisely the number of people involved in the domestic labour sector in London, but some estimates can be made. Interviews with domestic employment agencies reveal that there are about 3,000 butlers in Britain, an equal number of cooks, and perhaps three times as many full-time housekeepers: about half of these are in London. The numbers are boosted by the existence of the royal palaces. Most butlers work in one of the palaces in a junior capacity before moving on to another household. Other live-in domestic workers include those involved in childcare, such as nannies, mother’s helps and au pairs. Nannies may be employed to care for pre-school age children full-time, but mother’s helps and au pairs are not expected to provide full-time childcare. Interviews with agencies and examination of advertisements suggest that there are well over 10,000 people working in these jobs in London. The most common form of paid domestic labour is the part-time, live-out cleaner who works for a number of households for a few hours a week. There are probably as many cleaners in London as workers in all other forms of domestic employment put together.


Gender, ethnicity and paid domestic workers in London The domestic workforce of London is international in origin and includes both men and women. However, people of different gender and nationality are not involved in the same jobs. Table 8.1 summarises agency opinions on the nationality of different groups of paid domestic workers, and findings from interviews in Hampstead. Butlers and chauffeurs are the only domestic workers that are overwhelmingly male. Butlers are generally English men, some of whom have had careers in the army or the police. Cooks, housekeepers, maids and full-time cleaners placed by the interviewed agencies, were almost exclusively from the Philippines, Portugal and Spain. Filipinas were the largest group, but it was thought that Portuguese women were the most sought after, particularly as housekeepers. All agencies placing workers in these jobs commented that women from these countries were considered to be the best domestic workers. Table 8.1 Nationality of paid domestic workers in London

Source: Personal Interviews

One agent even said that she could not place British people in these situations unless they had years of experience and excellent references: Well, Filipinas, they just know how to do it. They know how to clean everything properly…. And you should see their ironing! It’s just great, just perfect. English women just can’t do that, they don’t do it right. British people were more likely to be placed as housekeepers in charge of other staff, or as couples. Couples are employed to cover a range of domestic jobs. Often, the woman will be a cook/housekeeper and the man will be a butler/chauffeur. In households with no other help, the woman will also do cleaning and the man will


do gardening and odd jobs. Older British people are recruited for this work. One agent commented that British people are ‘not subservient enough’ to be good domestic workers in many situations, and it is perhaps because of this that they are favoured for the most senior posts, particularly those involving the management of other staff. The origin of au pairs is controlled by law, as explained earlier. The largest single source quoted was France, but Spain, Italy and Germany are also important. All of the agencies interviewed placed only people who were legally on the scheme, but all were aware of practices employed by other agencies. It was noticed that some Eastern European countries are becoming increasingly important sources of supply for au pairs, but many of the Eastern European women are working illegally and are very poorly paid. Agencies stated that nannies and mother’s helps were often British, although many South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders also worked in these jobs. One agent mentioned that they were not always working in the same labour market, as the households she dealt with generally requested either a very formal English nanny, trained at Norland or the equivalent, or an informal nanny to be a part of the family. Australians and New Zealanders were particularly requested by these employers. People of different nationalities were perceived by employers to have different personalities even when applying for the same job. Ethnic segregation and recruitment techniques The strategies used by employers to find domestic help, and by domestic workers to find jobs, can be important in drawing particular groups into the domestic labour force and restricting access to others. The first stage of this study examined advertisements placed by prospective employers in the national weekly publication, The Lady, and investigated how agencies that place domestic workers operate. There are also many other important ways in which paid domestic work is found, including advertisements in local papers, shop windows and ‘mail order’ publications. Informal networks of friends, family and neighbours also play a role in matching up those who want to employ help in their homes and those that are available to do this work. Agencies The first stage of this study found that many employers use formal methods to recruit domestic workers. These methods have their own benefits and pitfalls. Despite ensuring minimum standards of fairness in the employer-employee relationship, recruitment through agencies brings its own problems. Once an agent is involved, a filter is introduced which draws in particular groups of people and keeps out others. Interviews with agents revealed that they had strong ideas about who were the best and worst domestic workers. Agencies collected the opinions of their clients, and their own experiences, to produce a framework within which


they operated. Different people were steered towards particular types of work, based on their age, gender, and, most importantly, nationality. Agencies were asked what employers most often requested when looking for a new domestic worker. The majority of agencies stated that nationality was the most important consideration. Employers would request people of a specific nationality for a particular post, rather than always wanting people from the same countries. Nationality was perceived to be the best guide to personality and skilllevel of a domestic worker. As Table 8.1 shows, people from different countries are seen as being suited to different types of work. Nationality is even perceived to be the control on ability to perform certain domestic tasks. Stereotypes are perpetuated and come to be self-reinforcing. In this way, for example, Portuguese and Filipina women are thought to be good at ironing, and New Zealanders good with children. Women from these countries then find that this work is accessible, and so enter the sector. This hierarchy of desired nationalities resulted in a situation whereby domestic workers who fell outside these groups were not taken on the books of the agencies, as it was presumed they could not be placed. This, in turn, perpetuated the idea that only particular groups could do certain jobs, and so employers never gained experience of domestic workers of other nationalities. This hierarchy showed itself to be very finely tuned. People were divided precisely according to the country they came from. The division was not simply according to whether workers were black or white (some British domestic workers are black), or First World and Third World. Portuguese women were differentiated from their Spanish neighbours, and only Australians and New Zealanders were considered to be the same. Generally speaking, as Stiell and England (1997) found in Toronto, First World women were more likely to be involved in childcare, while women from the Third World did more housework. However, professional housekeepers in London were better paid than nannies or mother’s helps. Informal networks Different recruitment techniques have inherent characteristics that attract or discourage different groups of employees. The use of informal networks to find domestic help, or to find a new domestic job, can be instrumental in the ghettoisation of particular groups within particular occupations. Informal networks limit the scope of the search, and cause employers to take on domestic workers who are like those they have already employed, or similar to those who are employed by others locally. The practice by cleaners of recommending and introducing their friends or relatives to employers, draws women of the same ethnicity into the same segment of the labour force. Employers’ views of what makes a good domestic worker also encourage them to take on workers who are personally recommended, or similar in some way to other employees that they have trusted. The tendency shown by some employers to conflate personal


characteristics with nationality, increases their desire to employ domestic workers of the same nationality as someone else they have successfully employed. The employers interviewed in Hampstead had used a wide variety of methods to recruit domestic workers. Au pair employers had all started off by using agencies to find au pairs from abroad. One employer commented that she did this initially so that she could find out about pay and hours, and then changed to using mailorder magazines. These employers subsequently preferred to use less formal methods. The informal networks used appeared to be ‘hit or miss,’ but were considered by employers to be successful. Two au pair employers that were interviewed had swapped au pairs with friends when things were not working out, and thereby found an au pair much better suited to their household. One family successfully found an au pair through somebody the mother met on a train. Employer 1 explains: And then, when I was on the train, when I was on the train one day, I met this nice girl who was Spanish who was looking after these two absolute little brats…. We got chatting. She was a really, really nice girl. And I said, she happened to live in Queens Park, and I said we were looking for an au pair for September and did she know anybody. And she said ‘well I won’t, I won’t be available because I’m going back to Spain.’ She was called Elana. Anyway, at the end of the summer…a friend of Elana’s contacted us, called Natasha, she moved in with us in the beginning of September. Informal networks were very important in the recruitment of cleaners, with the friends of employers and the friends of the cleaners helping each other out. Informal networks ranged from asking neighbours for recommendations, to taking on someone found by their old cleaner. Three of the employers had been found a new cleaner when their old one had left. The first case was unusual in that the cleaners were not old friends, and were of different nationalities, but had met walking on Hampstead Heath. In the other two cases, the cleaners were of the same nationality and had known each other for some time. Employer 6 explained to me how this happened to her: I teamed up with this doctor who was always having problems with cleaners, and we got the Colombians through him. And have they all known each other? Yes they do. They’re a network, they hand each other around. I started with Maria, who I got through Dr. Brown, and she was coming three hours a week and she was good. Well I started out with her and she was good…. She was fine but she then got, well she really wanted people who wanted her for longer hours basically, because she wanted to do more than three hours a week and they moved in [next door] and took her for six hours. And she handed me on to Diana, which I was not very pleased about because Diana is not in the same category at all.


This employer describes the Colombian cleaners as ‘a network.’ The term implies that they operate as a group and manage to exercise collective power in some form. This informal recruitment route appears to have developed so that it now operates in the interests of the employees. The cleaners are able to ensure that they get enough hours and always get work by operating as a group. They pass jobs on to each other, thus ensuring that those who need work have it, but also that the work stays with Colombian women rather than drawing other groups in. Employers appeared to be keen to exercise informal links and to avoid advertising for domestic help. All the employers put great emphasis on having someone they could trust, and whom they liked. They found it easier to trust domestic workers who came to them through personal recommendations of friends, neighbours, or their existing cleaners. However, the operation of these informal networks tended to reinforce the ghettoisation of particular nationalities in particular jobs. A cleaner may ask a friend or relation who is not a cleaner to take over a current employer for her, thus drawing someone of the same nationality into the sector. Employers tend to trust people who resemble in some way those they have employed before, and are happier to employ someone of the same nationality as an employee they have liked in the past. When employers were unhappy with a cleaner, they attributed the negative traits to her nationality. The extract below from interviews between myself, Employer 9 and Employer 6 shows the elision between the personal and the ethnic in employers’ minds: So your cleaner that you’ve got at the moment, you tell her what to do? She is Colombian. The Portuguese are really kind of business-like about what they do. Each of these employers is expressing the view that cleaners of different nationalities have different approaches to their work. Employer 9 is attributing a positive characteristic to all Portuguese cleaners, based on his experience with just two. Employer 6 believes that she has to tell her cleaner what to do because she is Colombian, rather than because of some individual characteristic. These attitudes inform employers’ recruitment methods as employees of particular groups are sought out or avoided. Networks are particularly important in the domain of cleaning, due to its largely informal nature. People working as cleaners are often benefit-dependent,2 or do not have work permits. Networking can put them in touch with potential employers without the need to reply to advertisements or meet strangers. Cleaners we interviewed had used informal networks to find their current jobs. One had been recommended to her current employer by a former employer who had moved house, and another had found all her present cleaning jobs through friends. Informal networks reinforce the ethnic segregation within paid domestic labour, and, in addition, can also aid its gendered nature. Networks rely on personal recommendations and friendship, rather than proof of skill. Those who know of available domestic employment, be they employers, existing domestic workers,


or their friends, will suggest to someone whom they consider suitable that they join the sector. Perceptions of who is suited to domestic work are therefore very important, and these assumptions are overwhelmingly engendered by the traditional responsibility women have for the performance of reproductive work. Interviews with employment agencies, and domestic workers and their employers in northwest London, illustrated the ways in which recruitment strategies can predetermine the characteristics of the labour force. Informal networks used to place domestic workers with employers were seen to produce localised ghettos of particular nationalities. The emphasis which employers place on trust and reliability also causes them to look for personal recommendations, and reinforces the importance of informal networks. Gender, ethnicity and image The importance of domestic workers’ nationality in terms of their employment opportunities, illustrates the emphasis put by employers on employees’ personal characteristics, as well as the potency of stereotypes in shaping employers’ views of these characteristics. Employers favour specific national groups for certain situations because they believe that people of that nationality will display the personality traits they desire. These stereotypes are reinforced by agencies that rarely challenge employers’ requests for an employee of a particular nationality. Stereotypes are also absorbed by the agents, who will then be an active force in placing domestic workers according to their nationality. Pratt (1997) and Stiell and England (1997) find a similar situation in Canada. Employers were asked to identify what made a good cleaner or au pair and what their idea of the ‘perfect’ cleaner or au pair was. This study found that some employers of cleaners did have an idealised employee in their minds, and that this image was based in class, gender and ethnic stereotypes. These employers said they had always wanted a ‘typical’ English cleaner who was older and professional. The qualities which were said to make a good cleaner, were reliability and honesty. Au pair employers wanted to employ someone whom they liked and who had a lively personality. As interviews with agencies also revealed, the ‘image’ of the domestic worker was bought along with her labour power. The idea that a cleaner should be a middle-aged, working-class white woman in an apron, appeared to be alive and well in central London. A number of employers commented that they had always imagined that this type of cleaner would be problem-free, trustworthy, easy to talk to and good at cleaning. These employers were aware that this was an idealised view, and put the lack of this type of worker down to either modern life or the fact that they live in London. The following extracts give two versions of this idealised view: Umm, with the cleaner, I have this sort of fantasy of the sort of cleaner I think you get if you live in villages, who is somebody who has lived there


and knows everybody and comes in and cleans, and could bring you the gossip, and I think that would be awfully nice. I think, generally speaking, if I had a preference, I would rather, what I would probably really rather have if I actually had a choice, would be an older English woman who, you know, typical old sort of English char would be my preference. This ideal is expressed in opposition to the reality of the situation, where the cleaners who are employed do not come from the area, often do not speak English confidently, and are not professional cleaners (i.e. they may have other jobs as well, and will probably do different work in the future). The ‘ideal cleaner’ was the English char who is subservient and accepts her place in life. The actual cleaners in Hampstead were not always like this: many of them were openly dissatisfied with their work and made demands of their employers. Once employers had found a cleaner they were happy with, they would look for others like her, perhaps by using her as a contact or by looking for others of the same nationality. Interviews with employment agencies highlighted the importance of the image of the domestic worker. A particular age, gender and ethnicity were all specified by employers looking for a new domestic worker. Other personal characteristics, such as accent or temperament, were also important to employers. Employers wanted an ‘outgoing Australian nanny,’ a ‘hard-working Portuguese housekeeper’ or a ‘highly professional English butler.’ For all these domestic workers, the image associated with their ethnicity was as important an element of their employability as their real skill. However, it is not the case that employers are mistakenly focusing on personality where the ‘real’ skills of the job would actually be more important. McDowell and Court (1994a, 1994b) have discussed the increasing importance of body image to service-sector work, and argue that appearance and perceived personality are new job skills. For employers of domestic workers, image is obviously an important element of workers’ suitability. A nanny should be seen to be fun, and a butler should be seen to be cool. What is interesting is that these personality traits have become conflated with ethnicity. Whole groups of people are assumed to be endowed with them, whilst others are excluded from domestic jobs because it is supposed that they do not possess them. Conclusion Domestic employment is increasingly important in Britain. In London, tens of thousands of people are engaged in a wide variety of types of paid domestic labour. The domestic labour market is complex and segregated, with people of different genders and ethnicities involved in different types of domestic work. The operation of the labour market reinforces this segregation. Formal methods of recruitment, such as the use of agencies, can introduce prejudice into the selection process


through the stereotyping of certain groups that are considered by agents for jobs. Informal methods, important for recruiting part-time domestic workers, can draw the friends or relatives of existing domestic workers into the sector. The importance of image and personal characteristics in terms of the employability of domestic workers is not unique. However, many employers have a tendency to subsume character under nationality, thus reinforcing stereotypes. Notes 1 There is a similar arrangement in the United States (see Chapter 14). 2 Recipients of welfare payments related to unemployment or low income. Such payments are reduced if the beneficiaries increases their earnings.

References Anderson, B. (1993) Britain’s Secret Slaves: An Investigation into the Plight of Overseas Domestic Workers, London: Anti-Slavery International and Kalyaan. Association of London Authorities. (ed.) (1995) Poor Prospects: An Audit of Poverty in London, London: Association of London Authorities. Chaney, E.M. and Garcia Castro, M. (eds) (1989) Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Davidson, C. (1982) A Woman’s Work is Never Done: A History of Housework in the British Isles 1650–1950, London: Chatto and Windus. Economist (1998) ‘Jeeves strikes it rich’, 26 September, 1998:20. England, K. and Stiell, B. (1997) “They think you’re as stupid as your English is”: constructing foreign domestic workers in Toronto’, Environment and Planning A 29: 195–215. Enloe, C. (1989) ‘Maid for export’, New Statesman and Society 2, 78:29–31. Garner, C. (1996) ‘These days you can get the staff (and you are)’, Independent on Sunday, London, December 25, 1996, 358:10: Gill, L. (1994) Precarious Dependencies: Gender, Class and Domestic Service in Bolivia, New York: Columbia University Press. Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (1994) Servicing the Middle Classes: Class, Gender and Waged Domestic Labour in Contemporary Britain, London: Routledge. Hamnett, C. (1995) ‘Social polarisation, economic restructuring and welfare state regimes’, paper presented to the tenth Urban Change and Conflict Conference, September 5, 1995, Royal Holloway and Bedford College, London. Ibarra, T. (1979) ‘Women migrants: focus on domestic helpers’, Philippine Sociological Review 2, 2:77–92. McBride, T. (1976) The Domestic Revolution: The Modernisation of Household Service in England and France 1820–1920, London: Croom Helm. McDowell, L. and Court, G. (1994a) ‘Missing subjects: gender, power and sexuality in merchant banking’, Economic Geography 70, 3:229–51. McDowell, L. and Court, G. (1994b) ‘Terforming work: bodily representations in merchant banks’, Environment and Planning D 12, 6:727–50.


Phizacklea, A. (ed.) (1983) One Way Ticket: Migration and Female Labour, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Pond, C. (1995) ‘Poverty and low pay in London’, in Association of London Authorities (ed.) Poor Prospects: An Audit of Poverty in London, London: Association of London Authorities. Pratt, G. (1997) ‘Stereotypes and ambivalence: the construction of domestic workers in Vancouver, British Columbia’, Gender, Place and Culture, 4:159–77. Radcliffe, S. (1990) ‘Ethnicity, patriarchy and incorporation into the nation: female migrants as domestic servants in Peru’, Environment and Planning D: 8:379–93. Rees, T. (1992) Women and the Labour Market, London: Routledge. Sassen, S. (1988) The Mobility of Labour and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sassen, S. (1991) The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stiell, B. and England, K. (1997) ‘Domestic distinctions: constructing difference among paid domestic workers in Toronto’, Gender, Place and Culture 4, 3:195–215. Toynbee, P. (1997) ‘The strangest relationship: nannies and working mothers’, Independent on Sunday, London, November 1, 1997, 3443:23. Wisniewski, D. (1997) Annual Abstract of Statistics, London: Office for National Statistics.

9 CINDERELLA NEED NOT APPLY A study of paid domestic work in Paris Rekha Narula

‘But my dear, everyone in Paris has a maidservant, why on earth do you want to study them?’1 As an introduction to my research on women employed as paid domestic workers in Paris, this was not a very positive start. When talking to people who might have been able to help me in some way, more often than not I came across a similar incredulity to that expressed by the woman above. To many people, it seemed quite perplexing that I should actually choose to do research on such a topic, because it was not seen to be a subject of sufficient importance to warrant any attention. As I was to discover, however, it was, and is, a subject that is very much in need of study. Paris, is a city which evokes images of romance, fashionable people and beautiful, historic buildings, but scratch beneath the glossy exterior and the fine living and something quite different emerges. We see all the trappings of success around us, but what is sometimes forgotten is that it is all dependent on a veritable ‘army’ of workers who are as vulnerable as their employers are economically stable. This army of workers is to be found in several occupations, but the one that interests us here is paid domestic service work. Although for some women, this work may be a stepping stone to another, better-paid and more secure, occupation, for too many others it is their only hope of surviving, albeit at the very lowest social and economic levels. Not only is the job’s insecure nature a disadvantage, but there is a marked racial hierarchy within domestic service. This hierarchy determines the level of exploitation suffered by women domestics with regard to wages, contracts, working hours and extra benefits. Every where, paid domestic labour is dominated by women. Their work is vastly undervalued and underpaid, and it remains an invisible occupation to the rest of society (Windebank 1991). It has been argued that domestic work, as a form of paid labour, is no longer a viable occupation in developed countries, since the changing nature of women’s work and the introduction of labour-saving devices, has made the need for such workers redundant (Coser 1973; Matthaei 1982). However, the occupation itself, never did die a ‘natural’ death, and over the last ten to fifteen years, there has been a gradual increase in the number of women working in this form of employment,

146 CINDERELLA NEED NOT APPLY

especially women from visible ethnic minorities, whether officially migrant or not. This increase has been attributed to the changing role of women in society, with more middle-class women working outside the home. These women, and their partners, are more likely to employ a domestic service worker, so that the female employer can escape the ‘dual’ or ‘triple’ burden of being a worker outside the home, and a housewife and/or mother in the private sphere (Lego ItaloFilippina Filippini Emigrati (LIFE) 1991). The purpose of this chapter is twofold: in the first instance, I aim to illustrate how, in spite of state regulation and the existence of trade unions representing the interests of paid domestic workers at a specific and general level, the position of such workers remains precarious. The second objective, is to provide a perspective into the working strategies and conditions of these women, and of their relationships with their employers, showing that it is not only employment laws that create, and sustain, inequalities within the employer-worker dynamic. In this study, I deal with domestic service workers working on a daily, live-out basis, rather than as live-in servants. Before discussing the research carried out in Paris, I shall outline the growth and nature of immigration to France since the Second World War, in order to understand the historical evolution of domestic service work in France. Historical perspective After the Second World War, in an active pro-immigration policy to replace heavy losses, France accepted and recruited substantial numbers of foreigners (Hargreaves 1995; Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) (INSEE) 1996; Le Moigne 1995). These immigrants came for different reasons—mainly economic but also political—in order to escape persecution in their country of origin. Although France accepted workers from any country, as Hargreaves states ‘the majority of the foreign population in France came from neighbouring countries’ (1995:9). Italians, Spanish and Portuguese arrived in substantial numbers, albeit at different times (Lapeyronnie et al. 1990). Tables 9.1 and 9.2 below show the number of migrant workers entering France from the postwar period until 1973, when the French government imposed restrictions on the entry of workers. The Algerians arrived in substantial numbers, followed by the Italians, during the immediate postwar period. Algeria was a French colony until 1962, so its citizens arriving in France were not considered immigrants. It was not until the 1950s that the Spanish and Portuguese started to arrive in significant numbers, and while there was a constant increase in their numbers, as well as in the number of Moroccans, the Italian influx is characterised by strong fluctuations, reaching a peak in 1957. Initially, only men were recruited by the ONI (Office National d’Immigration —National Immigration Office; later to become the OMI [Office des Migrations Internationales]), which was established in 1945 to oversee the recruitment of


Table 9.1 Migrant flows into France, 1946–60

Source: Lapeyronnie et al (1990:31) taken from ONI Rapport Hessel Table 9.2 Migrant flows into France, 1961–73

Source: Lapeyronnie et al. (1990:31) taken from ONI Rapport Hessel

workers, as well as accepting families (INSEE 1997a; Le Moigne 1995). French migration statistics consider female migrants only in relation to men (i.e. as spouses joining their husbands, whether they are accompanied by children or not). Migrant women, notably from Portugal and Spain, having come to join their husbands, worked as paid domestic workers. According to a study among women of various nationalities aged between 20 and 59 years, which was carried out by


INED (Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques)—National Demography Institute) and INSEE in 1992, these women came to escape the rampant unemployment in their countries of origin (INSEE 1997a); they were also leaving behind oppressive societies where women were expected to be homemakers only. Although some came to join their husbands already working in France, others came ‘on holiday’ and simply never left the country (Arondo 1975). It is notable that, of the women emigrating from neighbouring European countries (i.e. Italy, Spain and Portugal) only those from Portugal were in a minority, in relation to the men who had migrated from the same countries. The total number of immigrant women in 1946 stood at 45.4 percent (INSEE 1997a). One can therefore notice the beginnings of the feminisation of the migration process, which would grow in importance from the 1970s onwards. Table 9.3 below gives an indication of the national origins of female migrants to France between 1946 and 1990. For all countries, except Italy, there is a steady increase in the proportion of women. More noticeable, however, is the dramatic growth in the proportion of women among immigrants from the Maghreb. Table 9.4 shows the proportion of women immigrants from 1911 to 1990. Many of these migrant women found employment in France as domestic servants, either in private homes or in hotels (Hargreaves 1995). However, their situation as migrants was never properly studied, and in the rare cases where it was, they were considered as dependent family members, not as a separate migrant group. From the 1970s onwards, there was a noticeable trend towards family reunification, because of stringent measures introduced by the French government making it virtually impossible for new, especially male, migrants to enter the country, due to the economic recession induced by the oil crisis. Nevertheless, a growing number of women took the initiative in migrating, adding to the increasing feminisation of the migration process, a trend which continues to this day (Simon and Brettell 1986). Women from former colonies such as Algeria, Morocco, Vietnam and Laos, entered France in increasing numbers from the late 1960s onwards. The main differences between the countries are the causes of migration: in the case of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), the cause was economic, with males predominantly migrating, and women entering when family reunification laws allowed, especially in the 1970s. The cause was the same for those coming from Turkey and French-speaking Africa, where men outnumbered women in the journey to France. However, in the case of South East Asia, events in countries such Laos and Vietnam meant that the majority of migrants to France were political refugees, with men and women arriving in equal numbers (see Table 9.5). Nevertheless, male migration was still the yardstick used to measure the numbers of women migrants, either in joining their husbands (with or without children), or as refugees. They were still not considered as migrants in their own right, although this, indeed, was what they were (Chaib and Chaib 1994). Within this context of internationalisation of migration from former colonies and neighbouring countries, one must not forget that there were also significant


Table 9.3 Women as a percentage of certain nationalities in France, 1946–90

Source: Hargreaves, 1995; INSEE 1986; INSEE 1992 Table 9.4 Percentage of immigrant women within the population of France, 1911–90

Source: INSEE 1997a

numbers of French nationals from existing colonies or overseas departments (e.g. Guadeloupe, Martinique and New Caledonia) who were entering the country in order to find work and improve their way of life. There has been a general decline in the numbers from Eastern Europe and other non-European Union countries (INSEE 1997a), mainly due to the collapse of communism and the improvement in the economies of those countries. According to the 1990 census, 4.2 million people born abroad were living in Metropolitan France; they constituted 7.4 percent of the total population, or 6.9 percent of the total female and 7.5 percent of the total male population (INSEE 1997a). This shows only a slight increase since 1931, when foreign-born residents made up 6.6 percent of the total population. However, the number of political refugees and asylum seekers fell from 250,000, in 1952, to 100,000, in 1972, and has continued to decline ever since (INSEE 1995; Legoux 1995). Generally speaking, any foreigner living in France who has asked for permanent residency in the country, gets family benefit, but not housing benefit (Le Moigne 1995). There are also other grants, such as post-natal grants, which are only paid to a mother in possession of a valid stay/residency permit. Legal residents are able to


Table 9.5 Migrant women in France as a percentage of all migrants, by country of origin, 1996

Source: INSEE 1997a

obtain most, if not all, social benefits. Those without residence papers can only receive child benefit (although they may receive social benefit if they need to be housed in a refuge or similar establishment), and medical assistance for hospital treatment or visits to a doctor. They are also able to receive home visits from a doctor, providing they have been living in France for at least three years (Le Moigne 1995). Much is made of the ‘fact’ that the government spends too much on social security benefits for foreigners living in France, who are thought to be sponging off the state. Of course, this is not set down on paper, except in the fliers of the National Front, and, indeed, these statements are not true. As Le Moigne states: …the volume of social expenditure is greater than the volume of payments made into the social security scheme; this is true for all persons living in France, regardless of their nationality. For persons of foreign nationality… analysis shows that the balance of social income versus expenditure was slightly negative in 1989. (translation of Le Moigne 1995:76) Many immigrant women, especially those without legal resident status, work as domestic servants. Legal structure for domestic workers in France There are various forms of domestic work in France. The terms used to describe the different types of domestic employment are distinctive: employee de maison;


femme de ménage, aide ménagère; assistante maternelle. The first of these is often used interchangeably with the second, but, in effect, it implies a situation where the employee lives in. The second term, femme de ménage, refers to a cleaning lady who comes in for a few hours a day, or week. The term aide ménagère is used for those workers recruited by local social services to carry out domestic tasks in the homes of elderly or infirm people. The ‘employers’ need neither recruit the workers nor pay them, since this is done by the local authorities. Approximately 2 percent of households depend on this form of help, according to a report by INSEE (INSEE 1995). The last term, assistante maternelle is used for those workers who help mothers with children below the age of six. In 1995, according to the same report by INSEE, 4 to 5 percent of households employed a childminder —the children being looked after in the childminder’s home—and 1 percent employed an assistante maternelle (mother’s help) to look after the children in the employer’s home. According to a report by INSEE in November 1995, 170,000 women were employed as femmes de ménage (domestic service personnel) (INSEE 1995). However, there is currently no system of showing the regional distribution of these workers, or of comparing numbers of domestic service workers in Paris and the provinces. Nevertheless, the general consensus, as in the case of London (see Cox 1997 and in Chapter 8 of this book; Gregson and Lowe 1994), is that the majority of domestics are employed in the capital city. In 1995, the government introduced a scheme to make it easier for employers and employees alike to declare, and be declared to, the tax and social security offices (see also Anderson in Chapter 7 of this book). This scheme is called the chèque emploi service, and an information booklet and first contract are available at any post office for those employers wishing to take advantage of the arrangement. In contrast to many bureaucratic documents, the information booklet is written in straightforward language. It sets out the benefits for both parties, stressing that the employer can take advantage of tax deductions by using this scheme, and that the employee is automatically and immediately covered as far as social security contributions, unemployment, pensions and accidents at work are concerned. All in all, peace of mind for worker and employer alike, or so it would seem. Other organisations have been set up to help employers, especially with the legal and administrative aspects relating to employing une employée de maison/ femme de ménage. Two of these organisations are the FEPEM (Fédération des Particuliers Employeurs) and the ASSERDOM (Association de Services a Domicile). Domestic service workers can belong to one of several trade unions that have sections specifically for them: the Centrale Syndicale Chrétienne des Employés de Maison,2 part of the Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC);3 the Fédération des Personnels du Commerce de Distribution et des Services,4 part of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT)5 (the largest and most important trade union in France, which is affiliated to the French Communist Party); the Fédération Générale des Travailleurs de l’Agriculture, de


l’Alimentation et des Secteurs Connexes [FGTA],6 part of the Force Ouvrière7 (abreakaway union from the CGT); and the Fédération Générale Services-Libre,8 part of the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail,9 affiliated to the French Socialist Party. In addition to the above measures, all domestic service workers who are employed according to formal regulations are to be considered the same as any other employee in a bank, office or factory. This means that they are covered under the terms of the Code du Travail, which sets down the basic laws and rights to which all such employees have access. Articles L772–1 to L772–3 of the Code refer specifically to domestic service employees (Liaisons Sociales 1994). These articles, and others, cover aspects such as the right to certain public holidays, days off for special family occasions, medical assistance, or what to do if sexually harassed (see also Torrealba 1992, for a study of domestics in Venezuela). All employers must show their employees a copy of the Convention Collective, which sets out the obligations of employers with regard to their domestic service employees, but only if the former are registered with the FEPEM (see above). The Convention Collective is signed by all categories of employees and trade unions. In the case of domestic service workers, the trade unions which have signed the Convention Collective for their category are: CFTC, the CGT, the FGTA-FO. However, these services and rights exist only for those who are legally employed and registered, and there is no help at all for those whose employers do not declare them to the employment and social security departments. In some cases, women preferred not to be registered if their working papers were not in order. Nevertheless, there are moves at present to ‘regularise’ the position of those without the proper papers (les sans papiers). This precarious legal status adds to the overall negative situation faced by domestic servants who cannot rely on the formal agencies to assist them if they need help. With regard to the recently introduced payment scheme using the cheque emploi service (see Anderson in Chapter 7 of this book), only four of the workers interviewed were aware of this system. The others had not only not heard of, nor been told of, its existence, but also stated that even if they were to make their employers aware of it, nothing would be done, because ‘it’s not to their advantage, they don’t tell me anything about such things’.10 Clearly, it was not worthwhile for the employers to use this scheme even if they could claim a tax rebate; the social security payments are quite high and were often considered enough to warrant non-declaration of an employee. In addition to not knowing about the cheque payment system, only two domestics belonged to any trade union. Having no formal contract or payment scheme, they were undeclared workers, and so could not benefit from union membership which might provide some form of buffer between them and their employers were anything to go wrong. This is where the insecurity of the occupation exposes them to most risk; they have no one to turn to in case of complaint against the employer, and no access to public funds should they fall ill or be made redundant.


Paid domestic service in Paris, notably live-out work, has increased, while there has been a general decline in live-in work. As Anderson and Phizacklea (1997: 106) put it: there are large numbers of people who want to employ full-time workers. Nevertheless, very few of these were asking for people to live in and most of the workers…did not consider live-in work as an option It is impossible to calculate the precise figures connected with this decline, since no national statistics exist that give a breakdown between live-in and live-out work. However, the trend is indicated by interviews with workers, employers and organisations dealing with both types of work. One reason for this trend, is that, given France’s current high unemployment rate, paid domestic workers prefer to work part-time for various employers rather than be tied down to just one, with the considerably reduced salary that this involves. This is especially true given the fact that in the last decade or so, wages have declined (INSEE 1997b; INSEE 1996), thus making it all the more impossible for this category of worker to rely on just one employer. Respondents and interviews As part of my research, I used both quantitative and qualitative methods: an initial questionnaire was followed by in-depth interviews, which as well as expanding on the questionnaire. also included other questions necessitating fuller answers from the interviewee. The study was conducted between September and midNovember, 1996. I made initial contact with potential respondents by word of mouth, via friends, acquaintances, or organisations frequented by these women, such as the Aumônerie Mauricienne in the 17th arrondissement. The latter organises masses, as well as a general get-together, every first and third Sunday of every month, for the Mauritian community in Paris. It was through this organisation that I made contact with most of my respondents. The size of my sample is relatively small, contains wide variations within it, and the reported results are based mainly on the qualitative aspect of the study. I was acutely aware of the fact that this was, and is, a very sensitive subject— that is why I made contact through friends, or people to whom I had been recommended. Workers and their employers were given an assurance of total anonymity and confidentiality. However, some potential interviewees had second thoughts and pulled out of the interview. After some time had elapsed, I asked them again if they wanted to talk to me, but if they still refused, then I did not insist further. I brought a small dictaphone to the interview, but only used it if the interviewee agreed, and, in most cases, they asked for the machine to be switched off. The interviews lasted between forty-five minutes and one and a half hours, with the average duration being roughly one hour. The location of the interview was decided upon by the respondent. Three of the workers did not mind being


interviewed at work (their employer not being present at the time) while the others preferred either their own home or a neutral place, such as the meeting hall of a church. All employers were interviewed in their homes. In all, I interviewed ten employees and five employers. All but three of the domestic workers were from visible ethnic minorities, the exceptions being white French, Portuguese and Spanish women; the latter two had kept their nationality of origin. The other workers came from Morocco, Mauritius, Guadeloupe and Senegal. All of the employers were white and French. When I asked the employees why they had taken on this form of work, they gave two main reasons: first, because they needed to supplement their husband’s income, or, second, because they were separated or divorced and needed to earn their living, since they were not entitled to social security benefits. In two cases, the husbands did not work, so domestic work was a means of supplementing the unemployment benefit, if the spouse was entitled to it. In other words, the economic needs of these women overrode any need of security of employment or, indeed, of choice of occupation. Knowing that their chances of finding work within the formal sector were limited, even as domestics, they had to undertake what was offered to them within the informal sector. The tasks carried out by the domestic service workers in all cases were related to the cleaning of their employers’ house, with ironing included. None of them did any childcare, mainly because the employers did not have any children, or, if they did, they were not expected to care for them. This stems from the fact that, in France a much higher level of childcare is provided by the state than in Britain or North America, with the number of children a woman has not affecting her decision to remain at home (Blöss and Frickey 1994). It must be noted, that even if my respondents did no childcare tasks, a 1995 report by INSEE stated that domestic service workers also found themselves ‘recruited’ as baby-sitters, where 5 percent did this in addition to their regular cleaning duties; 4 percent did the household shopping, and 3 percent were asked to do ancillary tasks such as gardening (INSEE 1995). In spite of the many obstacles linked to their working conditions, the domestic service workers tried as far as possible to negotiate their way around them. For example, in spite of requests by the employers to remain within their (the employers’) home, I found only one woman who ‘lived in’, but not in the proper sense. She and her husband were housed in a basement flat in the same building as her employer. She did not enjoy being in such close proximity to the employers, but, since she and her husband lived there rent-free, and the building was in a good area, and also because they did not earn much, they decided they were better off remaining in the flat. I spoke to two other women who had been live-in in the proper sense: that is, living in the employers’ home with all the special (mainly negative) working conditions this type of domestic service work involves. They had decided to move out over five years ago, due to impositions on their time by their employers, such as asking them to do extra tasks if the employer felt they (the worker) were at a loose end, or canceling their day off without warning


because something ‘urgent’ needed doing, without giving them another day off in compensation. By no longer being present twenty-four hours a day in the employers’ home, these women had worked out a strategy to regain their sense of self-worth and independence, thereby eliminating the constant ‘need’ on the part of the employers to have the domestic at their beck and call. The workers I interviewed in Paris had left school with no formal qualifications, except for the white French and Spanish women who had the equivalent of highschool diplomas. In one case, a worker was unable to read or write. The explanation for this lay in her cultural background, as she is Muslim, and the custom among her Berber family was for the girls to remain at home in order to learn ‘womanly’ tasks from their mother;11 consequently, she had never been to school. She had lived in France since the time of her marriage, sixteen years ago, but could not speak French very well (this was the sole occasion on which R used an interpreter)’, and was unaware she could attend lessons for literacy, and to improve her French. She did not have much contact with the outside world apart from her immediate family. The only other person she talked to, apart from her family, was the caretaker of the building where she lived, who was also a Muslim woman, and so it was acceptable for them to communicate. It was this caretaker who acted as interpreter during our interview. Working as cleaners was seen by the women interviewed as an extension of what they did at home. They regarded their work as something in which they took pride, although it was not the chosen profession for most of them. When pressed further, most declared that they did it for economic reasons and nothing else. In fact, since most of them had no formal qualifications, it was the only job they could find in Paris, whether coming from abroad or not. In most cases, they had every legal right to work, but could not find anything they would have liked such as administrative work, hairdressing or even nursing. It is interesting to note that their first choices were also jobs done traditionally by women, so there was no breaking of the mold here. Nevertheless, for those who came from obvious ethnic minorities, their racial origins were what they perceived as being the overriding reason preventing them from obtaining jobs in the formal sector. More than once, they said things like, ‘I’m not the right “sort” for that job’—one woman’s way of saying the color of her skin was wrong.12 I detected a kind of resignation on the part of those women whose career ambitions had never included being a domestic; they had become inured to the system and set of circumstances which had led them to taking on this form of employment. As far as the employers (all white) were concerned, I observed a tendency for some of them to call their employees ma fille (‘my girl’), even when some of the domestics were in their fifties, and therefore roughly the same age as the employer! This patronizing attitude was by no means uncommon. Even among those workers who declined to be interviewed in depth, one common feature commented upon by all, was the racist nature of their employers’ attitudes. It is interesting to note that the Portuguese and Spanish women had found similar attitudes upon their arrival in the country, but that this had gradually disappeared when migrants from


former colonies in North and West Africa arrived. They acknowledged that it was women from the visible ethnic minorities who now suffered the racism they had initially encountered, and which they said was an inherent part of French society. 13 Obviously, I cannot comment upon such a sweeping statement, but something may be deduced from the accounts of the workers, and the racist and sexist comments of the employers. As for the notion of a ‘hierarchy’ of workers, the consensus among employers was that Spanish and Portuguese women, who had traditionally filled this occupation in France, were the best workers. More than once, I was told that the current domestic worker was no good because ‘she is an African, you know’.14 However, as more of the Portuguese and Spanish women became integrated into French society and left paid domestic service, it was generally considered that Filipina women were the ‘best’ workers, followed by those from the overseas territories. Women from the Maghreb were considered to be ‘sly’, and those from French-speaking Africa ‘too dirty’.15 This hierarchy of domestics is not limited to a judgment of them as good or bad workers, but is a result of their racial origin, where lighter-skinned women are seen to be good workers and darker-skinned ones are not.16 The employer who made some of the comments above, did not feel that she was making generalisations about domestics from different countries, nor did she feel that her comments were racist in any way. She stated that this was what her friends and acquaintances who employed domestics perceived to be true. These perceptions formed the basis of discussions at parties or gatherings, where they invariably swapped stories about their domestics and their shortcomings. Worker-employer dynamics The workers’ relationship with their employers was not always good, and the negative working conditions imposed on many domestic workers had to be surmounted by using certain strategies. Two of the domestics I spoke to, however, stated that they were happy with their present employers, and had never had any problems with them regarding working conditions or the breakdown of tasks. The strategies most often used by those who felt some degree of conflict, included stating that they would do tasks which they felt needed seeing to, rather than having a whole series of tasks imposed by the employers. They negotiated the tasks to be carried out, in order to control the work, and in this way to establish a semblance of a contract—albeit a verbal one—where they could have a say in the situation. This negotiation was done either at the start of employment, or shortly after, if the workers felt too much was being asked of them. It was not only a way of gaining control of a situation, but also served to remind the employers that the worker was not in a position of inferiority.17 All but one of the workers had asserted her independence over the job in this way. If this were not done at the outset, it was felt that the work undertaken would also be out of their control, just as their working conditions were:


If I don’t tell them that F m prepared to do only some things, then they would expect me to do everything in the time I’m in their house. They don’t realise it is impossible to dust, sweep, and mop a three-bedroom flat, as well as doing the dishes and making the beds, and a mountain of ironing, in three hours.18 The worker-employer relationship mainly existed between the female employer and the domestic. It must be noted at this point that all but one of the domestic service workers were employed by couples. Most of these couples went out to work, leaving the worker on her own in the house. In this way, domestics were not only able to negotiate the tasks to be carried out, but the situation also ensured that there was no overt interference by the female employer with whom they had most contact from the beginning of their employment. This is an atypical relationship, as compared to the conventional working world, because it is not a strict ‘boss-employee’ association, nor is the household a ‘company’ in the conventional sense of the term (Torrealba 1992). Domestic work has also been referred to as le travail ambigu (ambiguous employment) (Paperman 1981), because of its lack of a formal structure, with no set rules or guidelines, nor recognition as a formal occupation. This is not to suggest, of course, that this is an ideal situation, least of all when the worker is all the more vulnerable to exploitation in the invisible and hidden world of private domestic service work. Conclusion From this brief discussion of paid domestic service in Paris, it can be seen that this form of employment is a very complex one, both in terms of the legal aspects connected with employing a domestic service worker, and the relationships between worker and employee. The stereotyping of workers by race, ethnicity and nationality are all part of this occupation. One cannot ignore the fact that the white employers to whom I talked openly stated their preference for someone with a lighter skin, because of perceived attributes such as submissiveness, ability to carry out the work, educational attainment and linguistic ability.19 Paris, being one of the newer global cities,20 attracts many people to the growing domestic-service sector, notably those at the bottom end of the ladder, who offer their services as cleaners to the increasing numbers of dual-career households. We have seen that it is generally migrant women (either recent arrivals or of longstanding) residing in the city, who are employed as paid domestic workers. According to Le Moigne (1995),21 more than a third of the migrant population of France lives in the Ile-de-France area, an area made up of Paris and the seven départements surrounding the city. Since most migrants live in the area around the capital, it can be assumed that a large number of migrant women employed in paid domestic work live and work in the Paris/ Ile-de-France area. These women use a series of strategies to avoid being exploited, or over-exploited, by their employer. Notably, they negotiate their way around the duties imposed on them


in order to ensure that the situation becomes one, not of servility, but of cooperation between employer and employee. Despite attempts by recent French governments to integrate this form of work properly into the formal economy, it remains firmly rooted in the peripheral labour force, to the detriment of those women who choose the occupation. The state has some control over the employment conditions of such workers, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the employer, who chooses whether or not to register the worker. The incentives for declaring a paid domestic worker exist in the form of tax rebates of up to FF 45,000 per year, with the worker also gaining, by being registered with the social security authorities for future social benefits, such as unemployment or pension rights. However, since only a small percentage of employers has taken up formal declaration, one can only guess that there must be a larger, hidden number of workers, not only being exploited in relation to their working conditions, but also being discriminated against in terms of wages and social benefits to which they have a right as paid workers performing productive tasks. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Interview with Mme C on September 10, 1996. National Christian Union of Domestic Service Employees. French Confederation of Christian Workers. Federation of Commercial Distribution and Services Personnel. General Employment Confederation. General Federation of Agricultural, Food and Associated Sector Workers. Literally, ‘workforce’. General Federation of Services. Democratic French Employment Confederation. Interview with Jeannette on October 21, 1996. Interview with Leila on November 5, 1996. Interview with Gladys on November 3, 1996. Cohen (1987) also discusses the racial division of labour as well as discrimination within this form of employment. Interview with Employer D on November 8, 1996. Interview with Employer B on November 4, 1996. See also Cohen (1987) and Anderson and Phizacklea (1997) on this point. A similar aspect of domestic service workers’ strategies is also examined by Romero in her work on Chicanas in America (in Giles and Arat-Koç 1994). Interview with Lysiane on November 9, 1996. Despite the great contribution of non-white Frenchmen to France’s success in the World Cup in 1998, with a winning team in which, of the 22-man squad, eight were black or brown-skinned and another four were of recent Armenian, Argentine, Kalmyk or Spanish descent, the social reality of contemporary France did not change. A European survey in 1997 revealed that France was the most bigoted country in


Europe, after Belgium, with over 40 percent of those interviewed saying they felt racist. See The Economist (1998) ‘How racist is France?’ July 18:43. 20 See Body-Gendrot (1996) on this point.

References Anderson, B. and Phizacklea, A. (1997) Migrant Domestic Workers: A European Perspective, Leicester: University of Leicester. Arondo, M. (1975) Moi, La Bonne, Paris: Editions Stock. Blöss, T. and Frickey, A. (1994) La femme dans la société française, Collection que saisje, Paris: PUF. Body-Gendrot, S. (1996) ‘Paris: a “soft” global city?’, New Community 22, 4:595–605. Chaib, S. and Chaib, Y. (1994) L’insertion Socio-Professionnnelle des Femmes d’Origine Étrangère, Paris: ADRI. Cohen, R.(1987) ‘The work conditions of immigrant women live-in domestics: Racism, sexual abuse and invisibility’ Resources for Feminist Research/Documentation sur la Recherche Coser, L. (1973) ‘Servants: the obsolescence of an occupational role’, Social Forces 52, 1: 31–40. Cox, R. (1997) ‘Invisible labour: perceptions of paid domestic work in London’, Journal of Occupational Science Australia, Special British Issue. 4, 2:62–8. Economist (1998) ‘How racist is France?’ July 18:43. Giles, W. and Arat-Koç, S. (eds) (1994) Maid in the Market Halifax: Fernwood. Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (1994) Servicing in the Middle Classes: class, gender and waged domestic labour in contemporary Britain, London: Routledge. Hargreaves, A. (1995) Immigration, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity in Contemporary France, London: Routledge. INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques) (1986) Les Etrangers en France, Contours et caractères, Paris: INSEE. INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques) (1992) ‘Recensement de la population de 1990: nationalités, résultats du sondage au quart’, Paris: INSEE. INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques) (1995) INSEE Première: Recourir a une femme de ménage, No. 411, Paris: INSEE. INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques) (1996) Données Sociales 1996, Paris: INSEE. INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques) (1997a) Les Immigrés en France, Contours et Caractères, Paris: INSEE. INSEE (Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques) (1997b) L’Économie Française: Edition 1997–98, Paris: INSEE. Lapeyronnie, D. and Frybes, M. with K.Couper and D.Joly. (1990) L’Intégration des Minorités Immigrées. Etude comparative: France-Grande Bretagne, Paris: ADRI. Le Moigne, G. (1995) L’immigration en France, Paris: PUF. Liaisons Sociales (1994) Employés de maison, Assistantes maternelles, Concierges, Supplement au numéro 11658 du 31 mars 1994, Paris: Liaison et Convergence.


Lega Italo-Filippina Filippini Emigrati (LIFE), (1991) Filipino Migrant Women in Domestic Work in Italy, Migration Working Paper 53, July, Geneva: International Labour Office. Legoux, L. (1995) ‘La crise de l’asile politique en France’, Les Etudes de CEPED No. 8, Paris: CEPED. Matthaei, J. (1982) An Economic History of Women in America: Women ‘s Work, the Sexual Division of Labor and the Development of Capitalism, New York: Schocken. Paperman, P. (1981) Le travail ambigu, Paris: Rapports CORDES. Simon, R.J. and Brettell, C.B. (eds) (1986) International Migration: The Female Experience, New Jersey: Rowman and Allanheld. Torrealba, R. (1992) Trabajadores migrantes en el servicio doméstico en Venezuela. Migration Working Paper 71: S, Geneva: International Labour Office. Windebank, J. (1991) The Informal Economy in France, Aldershot: Avebury.

10 DOMESTIC WORK ABROAD A necessity and an opportunity for rural women from the Goriška borderland region of Slovenia Ana Barbič and Inga Miklavčič-Brezigar

Slovenia became an independent state in 1991 after withdrawing from the socialist federal republic of Yugoslavia. It shares borders with Hungary, Austria, Italy and Croatia, and has the highest per capita Gross Domestic Product among the countries in transition applying for membership in the European Union. Slovenia has a marked female sex ratio with only 93.8 men per 100 women, a very low marriage rate, and the sixth lowest fertility rate in the world. There is a high level of labour force participation among women, at 46.7 percent in 1995. These demographic characteristics may be related to some extent to the long tradition of female migrant labour examined in this paper. The focus of this paper is the earlier tradition of employment of rural Slovenian women from the borderland region of Goriška, as maids and wet-nurses in Egypt, and the contemporary labour migration of women from Goriška to work as domestics for middle-class families in Slovenian and Italian cities (Figure 10.1). Slovenian immigrant workers in Egypt The tradition of giving small children away to be fostered, or of hiring a wet nurse for a new-born baby, goes back many centuries. In ancient Rome, women who sought employment as wet-nurses gathered at a special place called the colonna lactaria (Puhar 1982:320). The custom of giving babies to wet nurses led to the development of a religious cult of ‘honorable wet nurses’—(Nutrices Augustae), with temples and chapels dedicated to them. The cult was active in the territory of Slovenia in the second and third centuries AD, and altar tablets from a chapel of this Roman cult were found at Ptuj in the Eastern part of Slovenia. At this site, the grave of a rich Roman citizen was covered by the altar tablets from the abandoned chapel (Tušek 1986). The mass emigration of women from Goriška to Egypt, where they were employed as wet-nurses, nannies and maids, began in the second half of the nineteenth century. During the building of the Suez Canal, and after its inauguration in 1869, the number of rich European businessmen living with their families in Egypt increased, especially in the cities of Alexandria and Cairo. Slovenian rural women, as well as some middle-class urban ones, were employed by rich European families as servants of various kinds: cooks, housemaids, nannies

162 DOMESTIC WORK ABROAD

Figure 10.1 The Goriška region of Slovenia

and wet nurses. For many single women, working as a domestic was a life-long profession. They were able to visit their home villages regularly, but returned to Slovenia for good only when they retired. Much more difficult was the emigration of married women, who often left their young babies and went to Egypt to get well-paid jobs as wet nurses. The massive migration of these women from this rural area of Slovenia led to the introduction of a special term in the common language of the Goriška region to describe such migrants: alexandrinke (from the city of Alexandria where the majority of them worked) (Makuc 1993). The reasons for this labour migration were almost exclusively economic, and it was usually meant to be short-term. However, fate kept many women in Egypt for decades, as, for example, during the First and the Second World Wars, when all connections with the home country were broken. Sometimes, although rarely, a husband and family joined the mother, and quite often a mother took a daughter with her to Egypt, where the girl was able to finish elementary school and get a


job as a maid. Olga Špacapan from Bilje went with her mother after the First World War: Our family had to rebuild the house, which was in ruins after the First World War. In order to pay off the loan, my mother went to Egypt in 1926. But our family was a big one, and her earnings were meagre, so my mother went to Egypt once again in 1936. It was then that I went with her. I was only thirteen. At the beginning she placed me in an educational institution in Alexandria, then I stayed with some relatives. I had to use all her earnings for the training. (Makuc 1993:144) The last women from the Goriška region who worked as domestics in Egypt, returned home with ‘callouses in their soul’ (Dumančič 1994) in the 1960s and early 1970s. Mery Koren, from Prvačina, born in 1908, went to Egypt for the first time in 1935. She left her 4-year-old daughter with her sister-in-law. Two years later, in 1937, she returned home, and with the money earned in Egypt, bought a vineyard and enlarged the family property. In 1939, she gave birth to a son, and seven months later left once more for Egypt, as her husband pressed her to go there and earn some more money for the further enlargement of the family property. She returned for good in 1972, after a total of 37 years working as a maid or as a nanny in Egypt. Now, she is living with her son and his family. She still keeps in contact with her employers, for there is mutual affection between her and the children she took care of, even though her memories of that period of her life are bittersweet. As already mentioned, the reasons for this kind of migration were mostly economic, as the average farm of the region has only five to ten hectares of cultivated land, which is not enough to maintain a family. Jobs were scarce and families incurred debts rebuilding houses destroyed during the First World War, so that migration was sometimes the only solution. Marija Mozetič’s family returned from exile after the First World War and got into debt. Marija’s husband wanted to migrate to South America but Marija would not let him go as she felt that he was needed on the farm. Instead, she chose to depart herself to be a wet nurse in Egypt and did not return for seven years. She recalls that time: I left my six-month-old nurseling, Drago, at home and my sister trained him to suck the bottle; my three-year-old daughter, Bojana, stayed with my husband, and my mother-in-law took care of them and later also of my baby son. (Makuc 1993:118–9)

Women from Goriška, as well as from other parts of Slovenia, found it easy to get jobs in Egypt, and often became high-status servants such as lady’s maids and governesses. Milena Faganelli, from Miren, worked as a governess educating the


children of rich Egyptian families for 35 years. Before the First World War, she finished high school in Ljubljana, and she left for Alexandria in 1927. She returned to Miren in 1963. Mademoiselle Milena was the governess of the former president of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros Ghali, and his brother, for four years. She was also employed by the family of Albanaina King Zog, by the owner of one of the greatest newspaper publishing houses in Cairo, and by the owner of a large cotton plantation (Makuc 1993: 161). Local reactions to female labour migration The large-scale, female labour migration from Goriška to Egypt provoked much concern among Church as well as civil authorities, primarily from the point of view of ‘public morals’. The first records of Church authorities’ concern about the morality of women migrants, appear in the 1870s. A curate from Bilje complained in a letter of 1871 to the archbishop’s office in Gorica about the large numbers of mothers and daughters from the village, serving as wet nurses and maids in Egypt. A list, with the names of 27 married, and 26 single women, was attached to the letter (Makuc 1993:26–7). The village of Bilje had 760 residents, living in some 200 families at that time. The curate of the village was scandalised, mostly because ‘their physical and moral life is endangered and also their future life ruined’, and therefore he wanted a ban on women’s emigration. It is quite clear from the tone of his letter that the curate had very little trust in the honesty and good intentions of the women in question. He totally ignored the economic problems of their families, and did not even think of the sacrifices and inner sufferings of the women who were brutally separated from their children and husbands. In the period between 1850 and 1950, the attitudes of male writers toward female migration, in official documents, newspaper articles and literature, were mostly disapproving, as in the ‘physical and moral bankruptcy’ of these women can only result in ‘a well-merited punishment’ and bitter repentance. This kind of male attitude appears in the two best-known Slovenian poems on this subject: these poems give a hint of the social and cultural environment of the time. The popular folk song, ‘Beautiful Vida’, written in 1831 by the great Slovenian poet, France Prešeren, is the story of a young woman who listened to ‘foolish advice’ and married an old man (probably forced by her parents to marry him for his property). She had a baby, lived morosely with her ailing husband and baby, and then went with a ‘black Moor’ across the sea to be a wet nurse to the son of the ‘Spanish queen’. The song shows her departure in terms of a longing for a better life through the words of the ‘black Moor’: If home is no good for them, they spread their wings like the cranes, and off across the sea they go. (free translation by the authors)


The punishment for Vida was her constant memory of her ill baby son and her suffering husband, the eternal feeling of guilt, and the tears forbidden by the new mistress. A similar cruel destiny awaited the girl, Malika, from Goriška, who, in the poem of another Slovenian poet, Anton Aškerc, took a job as a maid in Egypt, ended up in an Egyptian harem, fell ill and returned to die. At the end of the poem, the poet warns other girls not to follow Malika’s example. Migrant organisations The migration of Slovenian women and girls to Egypt for domestic service peaked at the end of the nineteenth century. According to an estimate made by a writer and doctor, Karel Pečko, there were over 5000 Slovenian maids in Egypt—mostly from the villages of Goriška, especially from Prvačina, Dornberk, Bilje, Gradišče, and Šempas. Until the beginning of the Second World War, almost every family from these villages had at least one female relative working in Egypt. The Slovenian women migrants in Egypt founded a cultural society, called Sloga (Unity) and established the Franz-Joseph Asylum (later called St. Francis Asylum) for Slovenian maids. The Asylum was managed by Slovenian nuns, sisters of the Order of St. Francis and of Christ the King. Thus, in practice, the concern of priests and secular writers for the morality of the Slovenian girls and wives, materialised in the readiness of the Church, as well as of the civilian authorities, to help Slovenian maid-servants. The Asylum and other associations organised receptions for Slovenian women when ships landed, and nuns from the Asylum, or relatives, came to welcome the new arrivals. These organisations found jobs for the migrants with families requiring servants, ensured the maid-servants places for social and cultural meetings, and organised clergymen and nuns for liturgical services in the Slovenian language. Social and cultural life was organised through various Slovenian emigrants’ associations: Slovenian Palm, Union of Slovenian Women, the Catholic Association of St. Cyril and Metod, and later, the Unity Association. The sisters from the Asylum in Alexandria also ran a primary school for the children of the Slovenian migrants. As migration for economic reasons could not be stopped, the support of the Slovenian associations helped the women to cope with the long absence from home and life in an unfamiliar environment, and to maintain their links with their families left behind. Women’s views of migration The masculine disapproval of female migration is challenged by the feminine view. Documents and letters, as well as interviews with the migrants, reveal the emotional strain on the women, torn between their job and their concern for their family, and the sadness caused by the separation from their children and husbands. Indignation at the situation of these migrant domestics is shown in the description


by sister Franka Martelanc, of the Order of St. Francis, who was a manager of the St. Francis Asylum in Alexandria and Cairo from 1929 until 1981: One can not imagine, how many tears were shed here on Sunday afternoons when our wet nurses came with the children of their lords and masters and they talked to each other. They kept asking what was happening to their own children, what were the husbands doing, how long would grandmothers endure the pressure of taking care of their families. We witnessed the suffering of these young mothers on those Sunday afternoons, as they were giving their own body and milk to the child that was not their own, for the sake of their family. In spite of their suffering, they returned to Egypt as wetnurses after each baby, for they were well paid, and the family property was enlarged—but their suffering was high too…. Let not this situation happen again, never more. (Makuc 1993:91) Only after the Second World War, did the economic situation in Slovenia improve to the point that poverty no longer drove women to emigrate, and growth and industrialisation gave women the opportunity to get professional education and employment near their homes. Paid domestic work in Italy by rural women from Goriška Women from Goriška, as well as from other parts of Slovenia, in the second half of the nineteenth, and the first half of the twentieth century, worked as maids, not only in Egypt but also in big Italian cities across the Slovenian-Italian border. In Trieste, there were several Slovenian maids, so that the women founded a special refuge, known as The Home of St. Nicholas. Many Slovenian women worked also in Gorica and Milan. Exact figures are not known, but as a large-scale phenomenon, female migration for work was confirmed by field work among rural women in the Goriška region. In an interview, an elderly farm woman stated that it was almost a rule for rural young women to get employment as maids after finishing grammar school, in order to earn their own money for their trousseau and partly also to support their families. Compared with the situation in Egypt, there were almost no married women amongst those who went to work in Italian cities. Mainly, it was young girls who started to work at about the age of fifteen, worked as servants for a few years, and then between the ages of twenty to twentyfive, returned to their home village with the money they had earned, got married and settled down. Some of them, instead of returning home, got jobs as waitresses, shop-assistants or industrial workers. Their own income assured them of not only economic, but also-social, independence. They took their life into their own hands, be it in the matter of finding a job, or deciding whom they wanted to marry. The longing for social independence was the motivation that encouraged more girls to get a job


away from the family. Being a maid was usually a first step to their economic and social emancipation as well as to building their own professional career. Daily commuting of rural women from Goriška The drive for economic independence and the urge to decide for themselves about their own lives, became fully evident after the Second World War. The industrialisation of Socialist Yugoslavia and of Slovenia, as one of the six republics of the federal state, resulted in the transformation of the traditional lifestyle based on folk culture, into a modern working-class way of life accompanied by the related value system (Barbič 1991; Miklavčič-Brezigar 1997– 98). The availability of numerous new jobs in industry represented an opportunity for the employment of the rural population, especially for men. At that time, the majority of farm women stayed at home to manage the farm and take care of the children. Full-time farms became part-time ones, on which women played the role of the farmer although they were seldom formally recognised as such.1 The income derived from the off-farm jobs of farm family members represented an important contribution to the increased standard of living of the rural population in Slovenia. Furthermore, daily commuters brought back new information, values and an urban way of life, from the cities where they worked to the rural environment where they lived. Thus, they formed a bridge between the cities and countryside (Barbič 1983). With the greater development of industry and the second wave of extended employment in the 1960s, rural women got jobs as well. Regular employment and related economic independence opened the door to education and professional training, contributing a great deal to the economic and social emancipation of rural women in Slovenia. In the 1960s and 1970s, the profession of maid became almost extinct in socialist Yugoslavia. However, some young rural women were ready to take this kind of job, either abroad or in diplomatic families from the upper political classes, if this was the only way for them to escape from the countryside. In the new socialist regime, the domestic worker was not considered as a ‘servant’ but as a ‘household worker’, and the traditional term of ‘maid’ was replaced with that of ‘household helper’. Girls usually took a job as ‘household helper’ as the first step to getting a respectable, well-paid job. The employment of rural women led to a dramatic change in the traditional way of thinking, which had seen getting married and raising a family as the only option for rural women. The new opportunities for employment led to modern ways of thinking, according to which having a job was considered as important as raising a family. Employment of rural women after the Second World War was, in many cases, combined with the permanent emigration of women from their home villages, contributing to the depopulation of villages, especially in the mountainous regions. Sonja Cencič (1949), from Robidišče, a village, 673 metres above sea-level in the mountains on the Slovenian-Italian border, left her village at the age of 15, going


first to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and afterwards to Italy. She worked as a household helper (i.e. as a maid), as her relatives and neighbours had done for years. When asked if she intended to return and marry in her home village, according to the tradition that was formally acknowledged by most of her relatives and neighbours, she categorically said: ‘No, by no means, I would never marry in my home village.’ She obtained a professional education in Italy, got a job, married, and has a family in Trieste, where she is still living. Sonja loves her home village, and she and her family spend weekends in their house in Robidišče. Her refusal to return and marry in her home village thus seemed hard to understand, until we discovered that almost every family in Robidišče was related—some, even very closely related. The long tradition of marrying within the village or neighbouring villages, partly because of the land and property, partly because of the emotional ties, had led to a situation where the possibilities for partners were limited to relatives. Sonja, perhaps unconsciously, was aware of the problem. Obviously, she was not the only one opposed to life in a distant mountainous village and a possible marriage to a relative. Breaking with this tradition caused the demographic collapse of the village. Robidišče was quite a rich habitation at the beginning of the twentieth century, with 41 houses and 228 residents. In 1997, only 10 people lived there permanently. Although the migration of women was not the only cause of the village’s depopulation, it was certainly an important one. After the 1970s, women only rarely took a job as a household helper immediately after finishing primary school, which occurred at the age of 15. Most of them continued their education in secondary school, or got jobs as unqualified workers in nearby industrial plants set up by the state, in order to avoid genderimbalanced job possibilities in remote rural areas of the country. In the 1960s and 1970s, the state encouraged the full employment of women in industry by providing state-managed kindergartens, and meals prepared in factories and in schools. Working-class women in the socialist society of the 1970s and 1980s were, in the majority of cases the descendants of rural families. Their mothers had at least some experience of working as maids. Thus, women workers, in their childhood and adolescent years were trained for domestic work at home. Having stateorganised care for children, modern household equipment (washing machines, refrigerators, dish-washers, etc.), and understanding husbands who helped them with the domestic work when necessary, working women could quite effectively cope with motherhood and housework, while, at the same time, maintaining their career. The employed ‘house helpers’ of the socialist society disappeared. It was ‘shameful’ to work as a servant or maid, as well as to employ a ‘domestic helper’. The words ‘lady’ as well as ‘servant’ were held in contempt. There was one additional reason that ended the migration of women from Goriška to the nearby Italian cities. This was the new border between Yugoslavia and Italy, established after the Second World War by the 1947 peace treaty, which dramatically separated the two neighbouring states with different political and economic systems. Thus, the Slovenian countryside was cut off from its functional,


neighbouring Italian urban centers of Udine, Gorizia and Trieste, as well as from distant, metropolitan Milan. The tradition of Slovenian girls working as maids in Italy, continued only to a limited extent. Although the motives for migration had changed (women no longer went to Italy just to earn money and return, but to get a ‘better social position’, that is to say, to get educated in order to get a better job), still, some elderly rural women maintained the habit of going daily to neighbouring, capitalist Italy in order to clean the houses of the Italian middle class. The terms ‘clean the house’ or ‘help the family’ came to be used for paid domestic work, and slowly replaced the traditional term ‘maid-servant’. In fact, this term did not correspond to the work of women who were employed by Italian families on a daily basis. They departed in the morning and returned home in the early afternoon. Sometimes, their daughters helped them, in order to earn some money for themselves. A graduate language teacher, for example, earned some money to pay for a language course in this way. After Slovenian independence in 1991, the transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy with a free market, dramatically changed the system of employment. Many factories closed in Slovenia and unemployment increased. In this way, domestic work in neighbouring Italy, again came to represent a vital, money-earning opportunity for rural women from Goriška. Domestic service as legal and illegal work in Italy Women and girls who continued to work as maids in Italy after the Second World War, worked either legally or illegally. In the case of illegal work, their employers did not report them as workers to the state ,and did not pay any social security contributions for them. Slovenian women working legally as regularly employed workers, had all the rights of employees (social and old-age pension insurance, annual holidays and limited working hours). In the first case, the women mostly worked for an Italian family once a week but had several families as their ‘clients’. The total number of work days equaled the normal length of a working week. For young girls employed for the first time as housemaids, this kind of job was usually only considered as the first step to a better social position, or to marriage with a man who would be able to give them economic security. The attitude of the ‘employers’ to their maids was either traditional or modern. In the traditional relationship, the ‘master’ and ‘madam’ are strictly distinguished from ‘the maid’. In the modern relationship, maids are regarded as members of the family. The traditional hierarchical arrangement is still found in middle-class Italian families, while in working-class families, maids are normally considered as family members. The following personal history illustrates both types of relationships. Vera Štrukelj, born in 1951 in a tiny village Hoje-Levpa, situated 730 metres above sea-level in a mountainous part of the Soča river valley, went to work as a maid in Italy after finishing primary school at the age of 15. She was a baby-sitter to a 9-month-old baby in Sovodnje, a Slovenian village in Italy, with an Italian


working-class family. The husband was employed as a car mechanic in a car-repair shop, and his wife worked in a factory for six days a week. Both treated Vera as if she was their daughter. Vera’s duty was to take care of the child in the mornings when the ‘lady’ worked, but she was free in the afternoons, so that she could meet with her friends from the village. She had to dress and feed the child (the wife prepared the day’s meals), take him for a walk, and put him to bed. She did not need to do any housework unless she herself chose to do some ironing, wash the dishes or do some light domestic chores. They addressed each other by first name. Vera experienced a totally different relationship in her second job in Milan, which she took when the baby she looked after in the first family was old enough to go to a kindergarten. In Milan, Vera worked for a middle-class Italian family. The ‘master’, a 52-year-old entrepreneur and his wife, the ‘madam’, a 27-year-old unemployed graduate economist, had to be addressed as il signore and la signora. Vera lived in their apartment, but when ‘on the job’, she had to wear a uniform. She worked as a cook and a maid, while the governess took care of the two children. Vera described the family she worked for, as follows: La signora did not have to do anything. She went out to visit her friends, after lunch she lay down to rest. She supervised the household and took care of the children when the governess had her days off. Sometimes, she helped her husband as a secretary, and she went out with him to business dinner parties and trips. At that time, maids in Milan had two free afternoons a week (from 2 p.m. until 7 p.m.). Twice a year, at Christmas and New Year, they had a week’s holiday, plus two weeks in the summer, when they usually visited their families. While Vera worked in the first family illegally, in order to do them a favour, she was employed regularly with the second family and insured as a worker. She returned to her home village for good in 1970: ‘I came home because I had terrible headaches. The doctor said that perhaps the city air is not for me.’ She returned from the city, where, in her own words ‘there was nothing to see but the walls…’ to her home village, with its splendid view over the Julian Alps. Motives for the migration of Slovenian rural women. The documents of church and civil authorities written exclusively by male-writers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, suggest that greed was the motive for the mass female labour migration from the Goriška region, and insinuate that these women were in moral peril. However, in 1913, the archbishop’s office at Gorica cited the following reasons: poverty, lack of food and scarce job possibilities in the infertile parts of the country, as well as a desire to earn money, get educated and become independent and live an easy life (Makuc 1993:71). Although the church authorities associated the ‘tendency for independence’ with the generally spurious claim that girls ‘are inclined to an easy life’, their


deduction about the girls’ desire to be independent put the phenomenon of female labour migration into an entirely new perspective. Economic self-sufficiency— earning ‘good money for good work’—gave women a certain psychological independence as well. With the money they earned, they were also able to support their families, who, without their help, would have been condemned to misery. In becoming economically independent and family bread-winners, rural women gained the self-confidence and courage needed to make their own decisions about their present and future life, which, in turn, gave them the strength to take physically and psychologically difficult jobs as maids in a foreign country. Young rural girls took employment as maids with families in Milan, Trieste and Gorizia in the interwar years, partly because of economic concerns, but also because they saw the potential for a better life than their mothers had had. The employment of rural women also challenged the prevailing socialisation pattern, in which girls were trained to be obedient and to perform hard physical work. It was understood that working on the family farm was remunerated by a roof over the head, food, clothes and the right to get an elementary education. From the second half of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Second World War, women began to earn their own money as early as they could after they outgrew their childhood. The family was thus relieved of the obligation to provide for them. Even more importantly, employed girls could help their families by sending some money back home (Chapter 5 describes a similar pattern in Ecuador). However, the most important aim for them was to earn their trousseau and save some money to start a new family after returning to their village. By leaving home and working abroad with a foreign family and in a city, the women gained an informal education: they learned Italian, sometimes even German or some other language, and, in addition, learned new habits from their middle-class employers, habits they brought back to their original rural environment. Motives for the contemporary employment of rural women abroad are numerous and diverse. Economic motives are still important, but they are not as pressing as they were in the past, for families today are not normally on the brink of survival. Yet, still, it is the desire for a decent standard of living that motivates women to take a job in domestic service and, with the money they earn, to contribute to family income. In addition to these kinds of motives, there are also personal reasons of an economic, social and emotional nature, which draw rural women to search for domestic work as a paid job. From the economic point of view, the personal reasons coincide with the desire to earn their own money. From the social and emotional point of view, the personal reasons concern the need to feel secure by having some savings for their old age, or in the case of an illness, as well as the need to have contact with other people and to have new experiences. The social and emotional reasons are in some cases quite important for rural women who are still ‘closed’ in the circle of their family and have few opportunities to be active outside. By taking a temporary job, they obtain some privacy by distancing themselves, at least for a short time, from children, a husband or other members of the family.


One advantage of domestic work is that it can be organised flexibly. Rural women can work in the afternoons or at the weekends, when they can leave the children in the care of husbands, older children or other family members. Temporary work outside the household therefore represents a chance for women to escape from the monotony of everyday life, with its day-after-day servicing of children, husbands and elderly family members. The story of a young woman (who wished to remain anonymous) from a village in the mountains above the Soča valley, serves as an example of such motives. She worked in a nearby factory until she married, but stayed at home after she had a baby. She could not go back to work, because there was no possibility of leaving the baby in someone else’s care. Her husband worked until late afternoon, as did other members of the family. However, in the afternoon, her husband, mother, sister or mother-in-law could look after the baby. She could take the time to ‘go to work’—(i.e. to ‘do domestic work’) for an Italian family across the border. Driving the family car, she managed the journey and the work in a period of five to seven hours, depending on the tasks she had to perform. If there were not opportunities to do domestic work for foreign families in the vicinity of the Slovenian-Italian border, numerous Slovenian rural women would not be able to obtain any economic independence. It can be assumed, though, that they would always find other ways, such as selling farm products, farm tourism, or letting rooms in order to fulfill their need for additional income. Instead of a conclusion In the period of transition from a socialist to a capitalist economy, and from a centrally-managed socialist political system to a democratic multi-party system, paid domestic work is again gaining importance. Nowadays, Slovenian families can easily find themselves in a difficult economic situation if the employed husband and father loses his job. If he cannot find another job, the task of providing for the family falls on the woman. With her own meagre income or sometimes without any, if she is not regularly employed, and has two or three children to support, she can hardly cover daily and monthly expenses. Women have to take a job just as their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, the alexandrinke, did; so, they look for paid domestic work close to home, just across the border in Italy where there is a demand for it. Attitudes towards domestic work in Slovenia are slowly changing. Rural women are employing themselves by doing household work or ironing in middle-class and in working class-Slovenian families in the nearby cities, or by doing domestic work for Italian families across the border. However, such domestic work is usually in the sphere of the black or informal economy. Owing to the specificities of domestic work and the delicacy of the personal interrelations that occur when working in a foreign family, the problems of such work need special attention from decision-makers. Domestic work needs to be transferred from the sphere of the informal, to the sphere of the formal economy,


thus making it socially acceptable. Only in this way would domestic work provide an opportunity for rural women to get a full-time or part-time job as a maid or domestic helper, and, by the same token, a chance to achieve full economic and social emancipation. Notes 1 According to a survey carried out at the beginning of the 1980s, 65.3 percent of farmers, 31.2 percent of farm wives and 69.7 percent of farm heirs/heiresses were regularly employed off the farm (Barbič 1990:251). Full-time farms were transformed into part-time ones, and part-time farms into supplementary farms. The same survey found that there were 28.1 percent full-time, 59 percent part-time, and 12.9 percent supplementary farms in Slovenia (Barbič 1990:74).

References Aškerc, A. (1908) Akropolis in piramide, Ljubljana: Schwentner. Barbič, A. (1983) ‘The farmer-worker in Yugoslavia: a bridge between the city and the countryside’, Sociologia Ruralis, 4:76–84. Barbič, A. (1990) Kmetov Vsakdan (A farmer’s everyday life), Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zalozba. Barbič, A. (1991) ‘K ‘novemu’ pojmovanju ruralnosti’ (Towards a ‘new’ concept of rurality), in A.Barbič (ed.), Prihodnost slovenskega podeželja (The Future of the Slovenian Countryside), Dolenjska založba. Miklavčič-Brezigar, I. (1997/98) Terenski zapisi in magnetofonski posnetki razgovorov z goriškimi podeželskimi ženami (Field-notes and interviews registered on tapes with rural women from Goriška region). Arhiv Goriškega muzeja, Nova Gorica. Makuc, D. (1993) Aleksandrinke (Alexandianesses), Gorica: Goriška Mohorjeva družba. Puhar, A. (1982) Prvotno besedilo življenja (The first text of life). Ljubljana, GP Delo Tušek, I. (1986) ‘Novi rimski reliefni kamni iz Ptuja’ (New roman relief stones from Ptuj), Arheološki vestnik, 37.

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Part IV AFRICA

Most African migrant domestic workers find work within their own countries, although women from Algeria, Morocco and the Cape Verde Islands provide household help in many parts of Europe. In colonial times many such workers were male, and this is still true in Zambia (Hansen 1989). Rural-urban migration has generally been male-dominated in Africa because of the patriarchal family, an agricultural system in which women are the main workforce, and genderspecific legal barriers to migration (Wilkinson 1987). In 1988, women constituted only 19 percent of the migrant labour force in South Africa (Natrass and Ardington 1990), but this proportion has been growing. Increases in female migration, both to cities and internationally, can be seen as a post-colonial response to uneven development, increased violence in many countries, desertion by husbands, and the loss of women’s rights to land in over-populated rural areas. In West and Central Africa, most migrant women engage in petty trading (Iyun and UN Secretariat 1995; Drakakis-Smith 1984) but in southern Africa, live-in domestic service is now the major occupation for unskilled migrants (Musyoki 1997; le Roux 1997). Musyoki found that urban migration was gender-balanced in Botswana, and that although the national female economic activity rate was 44 percent, in Gabarone, the capital, it was 66 percent (Musyoki 1997:308). Domestic service is the most poorly paid job in the urban economy and women made up 94 percent of those employed in this sector in Botswana (Musyoki 1997:311). In South Africa, 89 percent of domestics are women and 88 percent are black (Basson et al 1993:1). Most women domestic servants in South Africa have been forced into a kind of oscillating migration between home and workplace as even in the post-apartheid era, spatial segregation based on race continues. In Swaziland, many domestics are able to find their own homes in the city, but these may be a long bus ride from their work so they may not be able to return home every day. In this way, accommodation in the employer’s home avoids the expense of long journeys to work, provides food and security, but enforces a deep separation between home and workplace. Live-in workers receive less pay than those who come in on a daily basis and they tend to work very long hours, returning home only once a month. In her study of domestics in the Eastern Cape, Cock found that some of them work up to 85 hours a week (Cock 1989). Although South Africa extended

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the law defining conditions of work to include domestic workers in private households in 1993, the legal rights of these workers are generally ignored, as they are in most parts of the world. Most women migrants take on domestic jobs in order to support their children, but cannot keep their children with them because of the spatial and time constraints of their job; they are thus forced to depend on relatives, often grandparents. Both chapters in this section show that fathers generally play virtually no role in childcare, and other relatives are often unsatisfactory because of age. Thus, working mothers are forced to see their motherhood role limited to a financial one, with the constant stress of wondering if the absent children are attending school and keeping out of trouble. At the same time, they are being paid to care for the children of other working women. African women migrants often work for relatives, or at least people of the same tribal group. In such cases, they are considered one of the family and this situation may encourage sexual harassment by the husband. When this leads to pregnancy, they lose their job, return to the village for the birth, leave the child with their mother, and go back to the city to seek another job (Oruwari 1997). Thus, responsibility for children can be both the cause of migration and its result. Where they work for white and/or expatriate employers, racial divisions make such harassment less likely; the servant is usually accommodated outside the main house and, since the employers are relatively well paid, the maid may also receive above-average wages. References Basson, A., Louw, C. and Strydom, E. (1993) The Employment of Domestic Workers. A Practical Guide to the Law, Kenwyn: Juta. Cock, J. (1989) Maids and Madams. Domestic Workers under Apartheid, London: Women’s Press. Drakakis-Smith, D.W. (1984) ‘The changing economic role of women in the urbanisation process: a preliminary report from Zimbabwe’, International Migration Review, 18, 4: 1278–92. Hansen, K.T. (1989) Distant Companions: Servants and Employers in Zambia 1900–85, Anthropology of Contemporary Issues, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Iyun, F. and United Nations Secretariat (1995) ‘Female migration in sub-Saharan Africa: the case of Nigeria’, in International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, San Miniato, Italy, 28–31 March, 1990, New York: United Nations. le Roux, T. (1997) ‘Live-in domestics as migratory labourers—a look at the lives of resident domestic workers in Pretoria’, in U.J.Fairhurst, I.Booysen and P.S.Hattingh (eds), Migration and Gender: Place Time and People Specific, A Collection of Papers, Pretoria: Faculty of Science, University of Pretoria.

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Musyoki, A. (1997) ‘Women migrants in Botswana’s urban areas’, in U.J.Fairhurst, I. Booysen and P.S.Hattingh (eds), Migration and Gender: Place Time and People Specific, A Collection of Papers, Pretoria: Faculty of Science, University of Pretoria. Natrass, N. and Ardington, E. (1990) The Political Economy of South Africa, Capetown: Oxford University Press. Oruwari, Y. (1997) ‘Change in gender responsibility and its effect on urban development in Nigeria’, in U.J.Fairhurst, I.Booysen and P.S.Hattingh (eds), Migration and Gender: Place Time and People Specific, A Collection of Papers, Pretoria: Faculty of Science, University of Pretoria. Wilkinson, C. (1987) ‘Women, migration and work in Lesotho’, in J.H.Momsen and J. Townsend (eds), Geography of Gender in the Third World, London: Hutchinson.

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11 ‘HOME IS WHERE THE CHILDREN ARE’ A qualitative study of migratory domestic workers in Mmotla village, South Africa Tessa le Roux

The separation between the private and the public has brought with it a separation between the world of work (that of men) and the world of the home (that of women). Traditional family ideology regards the woman’s roles as wife and mother as primary roles, the roles that are given preference over any other ‘outside’ roles that may be performed. Yet the reality is quite different, and employment is a fact of life for many women: When this employment takes women away from their own homes and into the homes of others, a unique and problematic social arrangement results. In South Africa, patriarchy, poverty and the vestiges of apartheid complicate this arrangement. A qualitative investigation into the lives of migratory domestic workers illustrates the ways in which gender, migration and domestic labour combine to oppress these women. The lives of a number of ‘typical’ domestic workers will be described, with a particular focus on their feelings about social relationships and familial responsibilities, and their perceptions of male participation in family life. The discussion is based on the findings of a study in the Mmotla community,1 which lies about 50 km to the north of Pretoria. This peri-urban or suburban community has a population of approximately 12,000 and forms part of the broader Brits substructure in the North West Province of South Africa. A main road running through the community provides access to the traditionally black townships of Hammanskraal and Mabopane, and to Pretoria. During August and September of 1996, in-depth interviews were conducted with eight Mmotla women aged between 23 and 39. They were all employed as domestic workers and spent at least five nights a week away from home. Sampling was done using the snowball method and since the study is qualitative, statistical representativeness was not at issue: instead, women who were willing and able to participate were selected. Themes emerging from these interviews, conducted over weekends, formed the basis for discussion during three subsequent focus groups, with an average of ten participants each. Women freely participated in these interviews and focus groups and were keen to share their experiences.2 Interviews and focus-group discussions were tape-recorded and transcribed for analysis of the material.


Case studies Although every woman has a unique life and experience, the following ‘typical’ stories serve as background to the discussion: Jane 3 Jane is 39 years old and has passed standard 5.4 Jane is a strong-willed person, and a regular churchgoer. She is the first of three children. Her father became an alcoholic and her mother passed away when she was very young, so that her grandparents raised her. Her grandfather did not believe in educating girls, and she was forced to work as a domestic worker to educate her younger sisters. Jane has been working as a domestic worker for 25 years, and she has been working for her present employer for 16 years. Jane has one child currently in standard 3. 5 The child is staying with his paternal grandparents and she returns home every month to give them money and groceries. She earns 350 rand a month.6 At work, Jane sleeps outside in a shanty house. She is married and her husband works in Nelspruit. He also ‘visits’ home at the end of each month so that she generally sees him then. Her employer does not allow him to sleep in her room when he visits her at work. Jane is very concerned about her 12– year-old child whom, in her view, is not disciplined by his grandparents and who sometimes misses school. Paulina Paulina is 42 years old. She has passed standard 1. While at work, Paulina lives in a room in the backyard of one of her employers. She works for this employer for 2 days a week and has to perform various odd jobs in return for the room— including baby-sitting. She would like to improve her qualifications by attending night school close to her place of employment, but her baby-sitting does not allow this. She works an additional 2 days each for 2 other employers. She is trying to save money to build a house, and has therefore decided to work on Saturdays, limiting the time that she has available to go home. She feels that a permanent house will provide her with security for her old age. Because she is trying to save as much as possible, she does not go home more than once in 6 weeks. Working in 3 different households brings in more money than working full-time for one employer, but it also increases the workload considerably. Paulina’s husband divorced her for another woman and she does not get any maintenance for her children, aged 8, 15 and 17. The older children stay on their own in the corrugated iron shack, on the plot where she plans to build the house. The younger daughter is presently living with Paulina’s elderly parents. Her father also pays the school fees for the bright little girl, who attends a school in a ‘white’ area. Paulina is concerned about all her children: the elder daughter has a boyfriend and does not attend school regularly, and she is concerned that the girl may fall pregnant. Her father, who is in his seventies, has indicated that he and his wife can no longer

HOME IS WHERE THE CHILDREN ARE 181

care for the youngest daughter, and Paulina cannot afford the school fees of approximately Rl,000 per year. Domestic workers as migratory labourers Since the early years of the mining industry in the nineteenth century, migratory labour of males has been a characteristic of African society. The relatively recent abolition of apartheid and related influx control legislation, has allowed black women in South Africa to migrate more freely, and the increasing significance of female migrants is widely acknowledged (Sigwana-Ndulo 1994). Domestic work is the fifth largest source of formal employment in South Africa (Trade Union Research Project (TURP) 1994), and a very large number of these (mainly female) domestic workers ‘live in’ at their place of employment. A 1994 study of a similar place, Sandton, revealed that 58 percent of domestic workers lived on the property and another 20 percent somewhere else in Sandton (Mathers 1994). A further proportion probably live in rented rooms in squatter camps and townships close by (i.e. they are also migratory labourers) (Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) 1992). Although Mmotla is close enough to urban centers to allow most residents to travel to work on a daily basis, working conditions and work hours are such that women in domestic work whom we interviewed, often preferred to live in at their place of employment. According to respondents, their low salaries made the cost of travelling to and from work on a daily basis prohibitive, as, for example, in the case of Paulina. They also reported often being needed at work early enough to prepare breakfast, help children prepare for school, and/ or meet their employers before they depart for work. Unreliable transport and distances to work made this difficult for day-workers. For this reason, some employers also preferred their domestic workers to be resident. Time spent away from home varied. Some respondents in this study were able to go home every weekend, some at least for part of each weekend, but some, like Jane and Paulina, went home only once a month or even less frequently. Cost of transport was cited as the main reason for this. In addition to work demands, participants in focus-group discussions agreed that it is too tiring to return home after a day of housework in someone else’s house, in order to go and do the housework that is expected of them. They agreed that it is often preferable to live away from home, although the price they pay may be separation from family and loneliness. There was a reluctant acknowledgment of the fact that living in may provide some sense of personal relief, even if this came at the cost of feeling guilty. This represents a double (or even triple) irony: being a live-in domestic who does the housework in someone else’s house (thereby liberating that woman from housework) may liberate domestic workers from their own household responsibilities, but burdens them with feelings of guilt.


Socioeconomic position of domestic workers Domestic work is one of the lowest paid jobs available to women. The salary earned by Jane was less than half the minimum suggested three years prior to the study by UNICEF (1993) for bringing a family of five above the poverty datum line. The oversupply of domestic workers means that they have little or no bargaining power,7 wages areverylow, and working conditions often undesirable —in fact Cock (1989) found that, apart from farm workers, domestic workers worked the longest hours of all workers. Women with similar qualifications employed in the industrial sector benefit from trade-union8 activities, and it was suggested by participants in similar interviews and focus groups with women from that sector, that they earned two to three times what domestic workers earned. According to the domestic workers, their accommodation, food and other contributions ‘in kind’ were considered as part of their income. Although they appreciated this (as illustrated by the fact that living in may be a better alternative than travelling to work every day), they also realised that these benefits did not really assist in contributing towards their family income. This was a problem, especially since so many of these women were the sole breadwinners in their households. The issue of finances was constantly raised during both interviews and focus groups, with all respondents stating that they were unhappy with their salaries. There were reports of children leaving school at an early age due to lack of funds (as Jane herself experienced years ago). They had to try and join the labour market with very limited skills in order to supplement their families’ incomes—in the case of girls, domestic work may be one of few options available—and thus a cycle of poverty is repeated. A number of respondents reported that they would have liked to improve their own qualifications, but that their circumstances did not allow this. Thus, they feel trapped in a job with no options for improvement. Paulina’s failed attempt at improving her level of education is but one example. Financial difficulty restricted the respondents’ choice of childcare, something which will be discussed later on, and also kept them from upgrading their dwellings. In fact, lack of privacy was frequently mentioned as a problem, particularly in cases where children shared rooms with parents. Some respondents, for example, ascribed lack of discipline to the fact that children lose respect for parents, due to too much familiarity. (Viljoen 1994) found the same thing during group discussions.) It seems that domestic workers are caught in a cycle of poverty and lack of opportunities, which is difficult to break. Working conditions Joyce did not comment on the issue of salary, but explained that her main problem was her long working hours and the struggle for transport home over weekends, where she had to cook for her sick parents, especially her mother, who was too


sick to do any housework. Joyce sells merchandise after hours in order to supplement her income. Dinah feels that her employers do not treat her as a ‘human being’. They don’t care if she is ill, and wake her early in the morning to prepare breakfast and make their beds. She also looks after her employer’s mother, who needs daily assistance due to her illness. Dinah is very lonely, as she is not allowed visitors. ‘Sometimes I get so frustrated because I don’t have somebody to talk to about problems that I experience. Even when my mother is ill, I cannot see her unless it is my day off.’ Dinah’s situation represents an extreme case. Not all respondents complained about personal relationships with their employers, which in some cases seemed to be quite congenial. Complaints were based mainly on the fact that employers lacked understanding of their position. On the other hand, most of the women interviewed, experienced their working conditions (the nature of the work itself) negatively, and expressed a strong need for fixed hours9 (as in the case of Joyce above) and some time for leisure. Housework was experienced as tedious; it never stops. Paulina, for example, explained that she cleans the kitchen only to find that half an hour later teenage children had baked cookies and left it a mess to be cleaned once again. She was one of various respondents who felt that employers’ children were spoilt, and did not understand the concept of neatness and cleanliness because there was always someone to clean up behind them. It is clear that a live-in arrangement has its disadvantages for the domestic worker: she is always close-by and the distinction between working hours and non-working hours becomes blurred. The fact that she sleeps on the property also means that her day can start at any time that suits the employers, and can go on until late at night. In theory, the work hours of a domestic worker are restricted by legislation, but she is not in a good position to enforce this or negotiate her position. Family structures and the position of women The lives of these respondents represent many of the characteristics of the family life of black South Africans. Families in South Africa, and in Mmotla, are not simply extended, or nuclear, ‘intact’ or ‘broken’. In fact, as Spiegel and Mehlwana (1997) point out, family and household represent very fluid arrange ments. Many factors, including migratory labour, apartheid legislation (e.g. influx control and the Group Areas Act), as well as the forces of urbanisation and social change, have brought about changes in the structure of family life. Single parenthood, for example, is becoming an accepted fact of life in many communities. The implication of the fluidity of household arrangements is that many children are separated for considerable periods of time from their biological parent(s). UNICEF (1993) classifies children separated from their parents as ‘children in difficult circumstances’, together with those who are abused, neglected, disabled and so forth. They estimate that 1.8 million children are permanently separated from their mothers due to maternal domestic work, and in this context they refer


to the marginalisation of youth. Mabetoa (1994) also regards the separation between children and their parents as a major source of concern: The crucial family social and emotional support which acts as a buffer against the hostile world is not experienced by members of migrant families.’ She argues that the inaccessibility of parents in both rural and urban areas contributes to delinquency and teenage pregnancy, which in turn perpetuates a cycle of deprivation. The fact that family life does not conform to a simple ‘nuclear’ or ‘extended’ model does not, however, mean that it has lost its meaning and that people do not identify with kin. In previous research, it was also clear that children are very important to migratory domestic workers; in fact, their main purpose in working was for the sake of their children (see endnote 2). The work of Miles (1996 and Chapter 13 of this book) in Swaziland, likewise stressed the importance of children in the lives of women in the domestic-service sector. Respondents all voiced concern for their children. During interviews, many respondents pointed out that their children were the most important things that had ever happened in their lives. As such, they wanted the best for them. They were, however, faced with difficulties in relating to their families and fulfilling their social roles as mothers/women. Respondents expressed a strong desire to live with their children, and felt that they did not devote as much time and attention to their children as was deemed necessary and proper. According to them, this was why many children deviated from the norms and values of their families and of society. Jane, for example, was very concerned about her twelve-year-old son. She related as follows: I don’t know how to handle the situation because I am staying far away from him and when I talk to him he tells me that I don’t know the hardship that he is faced with compared to other children at school who are being cared for. The case of Malebo also illustrates the situation: Malebo complained that working far away from home was very tiring, because the work day tends to stretch out if one does not have to leave work at a certain time to get a bus or a train. By the time she got home on a Friday night, the children were almost in bed, or sometimes already asleep. Her eldest son had twice been arrested for stealing. She did not want her other children to be faced with these problems. She strongly believed that they couldn’t have a better life without education. Mothers were particularly concerned about the danger of their teenage daughters falling pregnant, forcing them to leave school, perhaps temporarily, but often permanently.10 Dinah, for example, stated that she ‘cannot even go to the zoo with my children or even spend time together talking about our social life’. They felt helpless, seeing their families grow apart, not being able to do anything. Once


again, this situation is ironic: the women work for the sake of their children, yet the very fact of employment away from home restricts the life chances of these children. The respondents in this study had different solutions to childcare. Dinah paid an unemployed neighbour to look after the child. She found the cost a problem, yet she realised that this money helps to feed her child. Respondents with children living on their own were particularly concerned about them. They had to become independent at an early age and perform potentially dangerous tasks, such as housekeeping, cooking and laundry. But what concerned respondents even more, was the fact that there was no responsible adult to make sure that the children attended school and did their homework. As mentioned before, mothers were concerned for teenage daughters, but felt unable to control the situation. Although grandparents seemed to fulfil an important function in childcare, there was a feeling amongst respondents that children living with their grandparents tended to get spoilt, and that grandmothers were often too old (and too oldfashioned) to prepare children for today’s world. These children were experienced as difficult and disrespectful. This supports Viljoen’s (1994) finding that the aged (grandparents) see their inability to control the younger, less conservative and more liberal youth as a weakness in family life. A participant in a group discussion pointed out that this situation was exacerbated by a lack of involvement by the father, and there was also agreement amongst focus-group participants that one’s own mother takes better care of one’s children than a mother-in-law does. One focus-group participant mentioned that her daughter worked as a prostitute due to the lack of care, both emotional and financial, from in-laws. In this particular case, the in-laws did not give the child the money her mother sent home to her. Concerning the role of the extended family, Kayongo-Male and Onyango (1991) argue as follows: To the African, it is uncivilised to abandon old people to their own resources, or totally to neglect a poor relative’s child or to ignore the widow. Even if constant demands from kin-group members eventually lead to some hostility towards relatives, most people still feel obliged to give a great deal of assistance to kin-group members. The only difference between current practice and recent historical patterns is that now people feel more able to reject some demands and select relatives whom they feel are more worthy of receiving help. The stories related by participants in this research suggest that the extended family has a role to play, but that it is not a simple and unquestioned role. There was a strong demand for childcare facilities, in order to relieve relatives and to provide quality care while mothers are absent. This need underlines the fact that it is a misconception to assume that extended family members ‘automatically’ act as primary socialisation agents in the absence of parents. It also supports the notion


that the traditional concepts of extended family involvement may not always apply under current circumstances. Men and family life Engle and Leonard (1995) argue that: ‘While women’s lives have been characterised primarily in terms of motherhood, men’s lives have been characterised largely without reference to fatherhood.’ This situation is exacerbated when fathers are compelled by economic circumstances to migrate in search of work, or when they spend long hours at work. It has been argued above that common perceptions of the role of the extended family may be inappropriate, as the ‘ideal’ or ‘typical’ concepts of parenthood may also be. Certainly, the absence of fathers from families seems to characterise many ‘new’ African families. In Khayelitsha, for example, females head 40 percent of households (UNICEF 1993). In 1991, in South Africa, an estimated 30,878 children were affected by divorce and separation, and UNICEF estimates that some 5 million African children are currently living without fathers. A large percentage of women also have children from multiple partners, who often refuse to assist with maintenance, leaving them with the burden of sole provision for their children (UNICEF 1993:83). The female-headed household (frequently multi-generational) seems to be emerging as a common family structure (De Visser 1995). Various studies suggest that a large proportion of fathers do not provide for their children financially, take little responsibility for childcare, and are not involved in disciplining children. They take little interest in their schooling or general well-being, and the children essentially grow up without fathers (Viljoen 1994; De Visser 1995; le Roux 1996). This was supported by the current study, and respondents showed considerable bitterness toward men for their lack of involvement. As can be seen from Table 11.1, women received little or no financial support from the fathers of their children. Focus-group participants echoed this Table 11.1 Children of interviewees


finding, and became quite emotional when one respondent related how her husband did not give the money she sent home with him, to the person taking care of the children, but spent it on himself. Some respondents blamed the lack of male support on the fact that many fathers also worked as migratory labourers, and saw little of their children. They were unaware of the needs of the children because they were not confronted by them on a daily basis. The respondents argued that their own absence from home did not have the same effect on them. As Paulina put it: ‘I don’t see my children but I still worry about what will happen to them.’ Women felt betrayed by men—they reported that men took new wives or girlfriends and left them and the children to fend for themselves. From the focus groups and interviews, it seemed that relationships between men and women often deteriorate as women who were previously unemployed started earning money. Women pointed out that they could do without men, financially and emotionally. During the group discussions, there was general agreement about the empowerment of women and the fact that women could manage families better than men. It was evident from what the respondents said that money played an important role in determining power relations between husbands and wives. Unemployed women were forced to be submissive, and men were described as bossy when they took responsibility for providing for the family. Women who were relatively independent financially felt that their husbands were jealous and insecure, and that this created conflict in family life. According to respondents, husbands seemed to feel that their wives did not respect them. One respondent phrased it as follows: ‘They feel that they lost their roles as fathers in the home since children no longer ask them for money for bread or even school fees.’ Two respondents reported that they were beaten because husbands accused them of having extramarital affairs, showing jealousy and mistrust. To summarise, the women feel ambivalent: on the one hand, they enjoy the emancipation of being financially as independent as possible, and the accompanying emotional independence; on the other hand, they feel resentful that men do not contribute what is seen as being their share. This raises important questions: to what extent are women liberated by becoming sole providers, and to what extent is this fact oppressing them because they have to carry a double burden? Also, what are the implications in terms of parenthood? Does ‘parent’ imply more than ‘female parent’, and to what extent should family policy include this idea? Bazilli (1991) makes the following statement: ‘Any political philosophy that continues to locate women primarily within the private realm of the family is fundamentally disempowering for them.’ Conversely, one could argue that any political philosophy that continues to locate men primarily outside the private realm of the family is fundamentally oppressing women. Conclusion The forces of migratory labour, domestic work and gender are all potentially oppressive. A qualitative look into some aspects of the lives of women in Mmotla


who work as migratory domestic workers, leaves one with a somewhat more complex picture. Their lives are characterised by poverty; long work hours; tedious and unpleasant work; absence from home accompanied by feelings of guilt and frustration; lack of male involvement in caring for children; and bitterness towards men. Yet, at the same time, being providers (often sole providers) leaves them with a feeling of accomplishment and power. Circumstances are against them, yet they have a strong focus: to provide better lives for their children. This is what gives meaning to their lives. Notes 1 The full study of the Department of Sociology of the University of Pretoria involved both qualitative and quantitative work, with a focus on infrastructure, demographic and health issues, community life, economic issues, and women’s issues. Students in the department, under supervision of teaching staff, did most of the fieldwork. For more detail, see le Roux, T. (1997). 2 This study was a follow-up of a previous study on the lives of live-in domestic workers (see le Roux, T. (1996)). 3 Pseudonyms are used. 4 Seventh grade. 5 Fifth grade. 6 About $70. 7 Protection by legislation (Basic Conditions of Employment Act) is limited due to, amongst other things, the high rate of unemployment, ignorance and limited access to resources. 8 Domestic workers can belong to the Domestic Workers Trade Union, but membership is limited and the activities of this union are restricted by the nature of domestic work. 9 Legislation also applies to work hours, but the same problems prevail. 10 Figures on the extent of teenage pregnancy amongst black South Africans vary but there is no doubt about the existence of the phenomenon (Boult and Cunningham 1991; Ntombela 1992:6; Preston-Whyte 1991:7). The most commonly cited figure on teenage pregnancy is that of the Ministry for Welfare and Population Development’s Greenpaper on a Population Policy for South Africa, which quotes a teenage pregnancy figure of 330 per 1000 women under the age of 19 (Green Paper 1995:7).

References Bazilli, Susan (ed.) (1991) Putting Women on the Agenda, Johannesburg: Ravan Press. Boult, B. and Cunningham, P.W. (1991) Black Teenage Pregnancy in Port Elizabeth, Port Elizabeth: Institute for Marketing Research, University of Port Elizabeth. Cock, J. (1989) Maids and madams. Domestic workers under apartheid, London: Women’s Press.


De Visser, Janneke (1995) ‘Teenage unwed motherhood amongst Blacks’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Utrecht. Engle, P.L. and Leonard, A. (1995) ‘Fathers as parenting partners’, in J.Bruce, C.Lloyd and A.Leonard (eds), Families in Focus, New York: The Population Council. HSRC, (1992) ‘Everywhere to go, nowhere to stay’ in Focus 1, 8:4–5, May 1992. Kayongo-Male, D. and Onyango, P. (1991) The Sociology of the African Family, London: Longman. le Roux, T. (1996) ‘We have families too. Live in domestics talk about their lives’, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. le Roux, T. (1997) ‘Mmotla: Demographic, social and Economical profile. Part I: Social and Economical issues’ Pretoria: Centre for Population Studies. Mabetoa, Maria (1994) ‘Cycles of disadvantage of African families in South Africa’, in Sono, T. (ed.). African Family and Marriage under Stress, Pretoria: Centre for Development Analysis. Mathers, Kathryn (1994) ‘Privilege to populism. An agenda for full utilisation of existing educational resources’, working paper based on Project Literacy’s experience in establishing adult education centres. Pretoria: Project Literacy. Miles, Miranda (1996) ‘For the sake of the children: Coping strategies of women in Swaziland’s domestic service sector’, in GeoJournal 39:81–8. Ministry for Welfare and Population Development (1995) Green Paper on Population and Development, Pretoria, South Africa. Ntombela, B.B. (1992) ‘The perception of pregnancy of the black primagravida teenager in the Umlazi area of Kwazulu, Pretoria’, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Pretoria. Preston-Whyte, E.M. (1991) ‘Teenage pregnancy in selected colored and black communities’, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). Sigwana-Ndulo, N. (1994) ‘A study of rural African family in the Transkei’, paper presented at the Conference of the South African Sociological Association, Pietermaritzburg, July 3–6, 1994. Spiegel, Andrew D. and Mehlwana, Anthony M. (1997) ‘Family as social network: Kinship and sporadic migrancy in the Western Cape’s Khayelitsha’, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. TURP (1994) ‘A user’s guide to the South African economy’, Durban: Trade Union Research Project. UNICEF (1993) ‘Children and women in South Africa: a situational analysis’, National Children’s Rights Committee and United Nations Children’s Fund. Viljoen, S. (1994) ‘Strengths and weaknesses in the family life of black South Africans’, Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council.

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12 WORKING IN THE CITY The case of migrant women in Swaziland’s domestic service sector Miranda Miles

Postcolonial development in Swaziland has played a major role in influencing the migration and employment patterns of Swazi women. The growth of the Swazi economy and the increasing standards of living of the average urban household, together have created a demand for female labour in both the private and public sectors of the economy. An overview of the Swazi economy draws attention to the complexity of the patterns of local employment that have been generated by the nature of its development. The picture that emerges, begs the question: what have the vacillating mutations in the Swazi economy (as they relate to the regional economy) meant for Swazi women in the labour market? Swazi women’s increasing involvement in formal employment has influenced a process of upward social mobility for them, as they gained access to their own finances and were better able to improve their own standard of living, as Well as that of their families. The growth in the number of female-headed households in Swaziland has made female participation in the labour force more common, hence creating jobs for others in domestic service. The growing number of women in domestic service is a phenomenon mainly of the postcolonial era as increasingly more women have entered the labour force, creating the need for domestic helpers. This has generated a wave of female migration to towns from rural areas, where these women are in need of income to support their families. Drawing from an in-depth study of women’s mobility and livelihood strategies in Swaziland (Miles 1996), through the experiences of a group of low-income women employed as domestic workers (such women make up the bulk of women migrants in Swaziland), this chapter establishes their responses to the changing geography and unchanging traditional structures in the country, which for years have limited women’s full participation in the development process. Some of the unusual aspects of the situation of female migrancy in Swaziland relate to gendered, land-ownership structures, which, coupled with male migration, have left women in an impossible situation. Their entry into the wage labour market through the avenue of domestic work, provides an understanding of the dynamics involved in the lives of women, who, for the sake of their children, migrate to the city as domestic workers in spite of cultural norms and traditional structures that threaten their livelihoods. For many rural women, domestic work is a means to


this end. Domestic service, as a female-dominated employment sector in Swaziland, speaks to larger issues concerning women’s right to land, their migration experience and their role as workers in the Swazi labour market. Agrarian transformation and landlessness: implications for women’s migration As in any agrarian society, the land question has been central to the issue of postcolonial development in Swaziland. More specifically, the extent to which agrarian transformation has impinged on women’s ability to sustain the household in an economy that has placed great emphasis on capitalist development, sheds some light on the supply factors that promoted female rural-urban migration in the postcolonial era. A plethora of literature exists examining the Swazi land question (Hughes 1972; Youé 1978; Crush 1980a, 1980b; Neocosmos 1987; Funnell 1991; Simelane 1992). Not only has this literature presented detailed accounts of how the territory was partitioned in 1907 (in such a manner that only one-third of the land was available for the exclusive use of the Swazi), but attention is also paid to the socioeconomic impact of this partition. Throughout modern Swazi history, land has remained a critical issue of political debate. One of the primary goals and challenges of the independent Swazi State was to ensure continued restoration of lands formerly alienated from the Swazi people. In an attempt to resolve the contentious land question, the independent State made admirable pledges ‘to lead the Swazi from the injustices of colonial rule and eradicate the elements of colonial oppression and exploitation’ (Simelane 1992:27). Nevertheless, the land question ceased to be a struggle between the colonised and the colonisers, but was transformed into a typical class struggle under the supervision of the postcolonial State. In fact, Simelane (1992:28) states that ‘the land question was a microcosm of the fact that class formations in Swaziland underlie the structures of inequality and the functioning of the postcolonial State’. Amidst class struggles for land (in contrast to modern title deed lands, which, more often than not, are highly productive, privately-owned, capital-intensive, technologically advanced and well-managed) (Booth 1983), Swazi Nation Land (SNL) continued to display low levels of marginal productivity, and was run largely along traditional lines using family labour and draught animals, while producing mainly for subsistence. With over 90 percent of Swaziland’s population classified as rural, the imbalances and stress created by uneven development have made rural life more difficult to manage. It has also induced even higher rates of rural-urban migration, especially by women, and has widened the rural-urban income gap. From the disquietude, and the economic and social effects of postwar capitalist development and industrialisation, means were sought to counter the lure of the urban industrial areas by improving the quality of life in the countryside. To this

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end, government policy to improve the quality and productivity of Swazi Nation Land has been channeled through the efforts of the Rural Development Area Programme (RDAP), first implemented in 1966. Several conclusions may be drawn from an analysis of the RDAP, and a more general body of literature that makes reference to the situation of women in relation to the land issue in postcolonial Swaziland. First, although the literature on the land question makes extensive reference to social differentiations that have arisen out of unequal access to land, and to the power struggle that has emanated over the control of SNL, the impact on women, and their plight in the struggle for land has not been addressed. If access to SNL, a prerogative of every Swazi (male), has given rise to social and class differentiations that have produced a wagedependent rural population to supplement declining on-farm production, for Swazi women, access to land has been critical to their increasing dependence on wage labour to sustain their families. With the alienation of prime tracts of land for the intense program of rural development and social engineering, significant shifts occurred in the social relations of land distribution and allocation that easily and subtly ignored women’s customary rights to land. These shifts were related to the failure of the Government to acknowledge the social and gender relations involved in the implementation of the RDAP. One of the characteristics of the Rural Development Area Programme was that it assumed the existence of male-headed households, and homogeneity in the social structure of Swazi rural society (see also Funnell 1991). The programme did not take cognisance of local land-tenure practices, which were based upon principles of obligations and responsibilities that guaranteed women access to land, and control over land and the produce thereof. The implications, therefore, of the RDAP, for women farmers, unmarried and widowed women, were that they were quickly marginalised. The RDAP was also based on the selection of rural participants, a procedure which overlooked the full participation of women. To this effect, the only noted involvement of women in rural development is in the acclaimed Women-in-Development Projects (Tabibian 1983; Armstrong 1985). Second, the well-known effects of male labour migration in Southern Africa, including Swaziland, have been manifested in the form of changing marital patterns, with the number of female-headed households increasing. Nhlabatsi (1988) notes that up to 60–70 percent of rural households in Swaziland are headed by women. Certainly, generalisations must be made with caution, in view of the fact that women are not a homogeneous social entity, and the degree to which they have access to land and labour, and can rely on kinship distributive mechanisms, differ. However, a combination of factors, such as declining food production, land scarcity in some areas and high rates of temporary and permanent out-migration, have meant that self-provisioning agriculture has no longer been a viable option for Swazi homesteads. The changing character of gender relations with respect to the reproduction of family units is evident in the obligations of women (even married women) to raise


or supplement incomes through wage employment or informal income-generating activities. The findings of this study further support those of Andrehn et al (1977) and de Vletter (1983), which have both commented upon the priority and emphasis placed on education for children. When asked why they joined the labour market, a common response of my informants was that they had to raise money to pay for their children’s school: ‘I had to find a job because of the need to send my children to school.’ As land becomes an increasingly scarce resource for women, emphasis on education for their children grows. Third, the landless class that Simelane (1992) refers to as a creation of the postcolonial State’s land policy, has had implications for women within this category of the population. The evidence from this study suggests that women who belonged to the landless class of Swazi peasants, and who were unable to gain access to land quickly, became rural-urban migrants. One point of interest is the extent to which gender relations involved in land usage rights in rural Swaziland, have been critical in shaping women’s lives, even in the urban setting. The problems of land rights and access that face women in the rural areas, are transferred to the urban setting, further impinging upon women’s access to housing resources, even in the city. Finally, the establishment of female migration in the postcolonial era is not just a picture of rural economic decline, leading to the need to migrate; neither is it simply the product of rational economic behavior. Rather, it has taken place within an arena of domestic struggles over the fruits of migration. Desertion by husbands and possible conflict with in-laws have been documented elsewhere in Southern Africa as primary reasons for women’s rural-urban migration (Gordon 1980; Brown 1983). Elson (1992:41) has argued that ‘migration in a growing number of cases, appears to be a polite word for desertion’. As we will see, Swazi women have in no way been spared the follies of desertion and domestic conflict. Female migration and domestic labour Discourse on agrarian change has bounced back and forth, concluding in general terms that the progress of capitalist penetration had destroyed all vestiges of a peasant economy, and the Swazi homestead had become structured around wage labour, and thus fully integrated into the capitalist economy (Gibbons and Neocosmos 1985). Given Swaziland’s agrarian history, the peasant economy on the eve of independence, was hardly in a position to sustain the average rural homestead. Worsening conditions in the rural economy and the growing demands on women to provide for their families only led to women ‘voting with their feet’. This meant migrating to the urban centers of Swaziland, which were only just beginning to register any significant growth, especially in terms of employment opportunities. The critical nature of this gendered process of urbanisation and economic development emerges as a significant factor in postcolonial Swaziland. The growth and sustenance of a domestic-service sector in the country quickly became one of the hallmarks of the post-colonial era, given Swaziland’s vague


history of domestic labour. The question must now be asked: what implications did growing social change have for women migrating to the city for the sake of their children? At the most general level, four familiar factors can be identified which have affected women’s growing involvement in domestic service. First, land expropriation at the turn of the century was a catalyst for the emergence of a male migrant workforce. The way women were also drawn into the wage labour market was therefore clearly linked to the development and continuation of the migrant labour system. Second, as Gaitskell et al. (1983) note, the different ways in which households were transformed as sites of production under the intrusive impact of capitalism, clearly and dramatically transformed the role of women in the home. A greater need was created for women to seek wage labour in order to sustain the home. With the demand for servants also on the increase in colonial society, women swiftly filled the demand. In the case of Swaziland (with the progression of the colonial period towards the birth of a sovereign State in 1968), shifts in the nature of the employing households, in terms of race and class, began to occur, accompanied by an increase in the demand for domestic servants. There was a shift away from the white, expatriate servant-employing class to a middle-to-high income, urban Swazi servant-employing class. Third, an important feature of the postcolonial Swazi economy was a tendency towards indigenisation of the labour force. With the increasing ‘feminisation’ of the Swazi labour force, as a result of postcolonial indigenisation of the economy, more Swazis (including women) have secured posts in managerial, professional and administrative levels of the public and private sectors (Russell 1986). Higher standards of living and the general high costs of living have combined to force many women into the labour force, thus increasing the need for domestic help. The supply of domestic labour in the postcolonial period has therefore been shaped by the nature of women’s proletarianisation and urbanisation, as well as the sexual composition of the labour force. Earlier predictions of the ILO (International Labour Office) in 1977 that opportunity structures would become markedly skewed, and that the gap between rich and poor would widen, have been realised. For many women who were unable to obtain employment in the industrial sectors, domestic service has served as an important employment opportunity for them as migrants in the city. Finally, domestic workers are a contingent of women who, for various reasons, have left the rural areas and come to the city to eke out a living for themselves and their households. They seek from their jobs the money and possibly the housing that these may provide. Their position as low-income domestic workers forming an obscure and unrecorded part of the wage labour force, presents an opportunity to analyze, through their own experiences, the problems women face in an urban environment.


The migration experience of domestic workers Although the literature on urbanisation and development in Swaziland over the past two decades has been essential in terms of presenting an overview of the conditions and levels of human development of the urban population, it has tended to obscure local realities in a number of ways. First, it has generalised the migration experience of the urban population. Second, it has emphasised the socioeconomic status and condition of the ‘average’ urban dweller, while overlooking the experiences of urban women. Finally, it has adopted stereo-typical responses to social and economic transformation in the city, responses which deny women’s roles as actors who cope with urban poverty and constraints in creative ways. Case study one: Ida Zwane I got married at the age of thirteen…I was born on a farm in Zululand, South Africa. My father, like other families that lived on the farm, worked the farm and we worked in the white man’s kitchen. We lived well…whenever we ran short of food or clothing, the white man would provide. We also ate very well. Then I met this Swazi man (Mr Nxumalo) and he took me to his home in Swaziland where we got married. It was such a rural place!!! Life was good at first. I lived in the homestead of his parents which had two huts for the ancestors, one for us, one for his older brother and his wife, one for his younger brother and his wife, one for my father-in-law, who had already passed away, one for my mother-in-law and then two separate ones for the girls and the boys. It was a big homestead…although we did not cook together. My husband was working…he worked as a cane-cutter at the sugar plantations in the South. But men are so stingy, I don’t even know how much my husband was earning!! I was only grateful for what he gave me. For me, Swazi rural life was so different from where I came from!! My husband sent me some money, from which I had to make sure that I bought soap, food and other things…but the money was never enough. You see, the reason why a woman goes out to look for work, because she cannot cope with this kind of life. Then my husband fell ill and had to come home for a whole year. Throughout that year, we had nothing to eat. Eventually he went to the city of Manzini to see a doctor. He never came back. We heard that he was working, but he never sent money or even came home. What was worse was that my children were beginning to starve and there was nobody to help. Eventually, I decided to go and look for a job. I asked to speak with my mother-in-law who by that time was blind and very helpless. I told her of my intentions to go and look for work. She asked me where I would work since I had never been to school. I told her that the only


work I knew was domestic work. She gave me permission to go and even promised to look after my three children. I packed everything I had and left. I first found a job nearby…in the cotton fields. I was taught how to pick cotton, and was earning 15 cents a day. I had to do it for the sake of the children! Just to get the money and to get a meal: we were given porridge to eat. After three weeks, I started earning 40 cents a day. But I was still dissatisfied and angry with my husband for leaving me with the children. So I went back to my mother-in-law who suggested that the best thing was for me to go to Manzini to look for him. My sister-in-law also confirmed that she had seen him in Manzini, living with another woman. I went to Manzini with my sister-in-law because she knew where to find my husband. We got to Manzini…and, and went to where my husband was living. He was so angry that I had found him. The next day, he said he would give me money and I should return home, but I refused. Return home to what? Why? At his home there is no food or even soap. I had to find a job, but how? This is the story of a young woman who migrated to the rural southern part of Swaziland in the mid–1950s, at the age of 13. She has lived in Manzini since 1974 and has no intentions of going back to the rural area. Her story, though not representative of every migrant woman, contains important features of the convergence of the migration experience of the average rural woman in Swaziland: the conditions under which she migrates, the disadvantaged position she faces in the city, not only as a migrant, but also as a woman, an unskilled labourer and, ultimately, as head of her own household. The urban and work experiences of women like Ma-Zwane (as she is known) highlight the need to revisit theoretical conceptualisations of women’s employment in Swaziland, as well as broad notions of ‘development’ in the postcolonial era. The needs of women for daily bread and dignity, and the coping strategies involved, are testimony to women’s experience of migration and development in postcolonial Swaziland. As a young bride, Ma-Zwane came to Swaziland in 1955, leaving behind a very different rural kind of life, one which was based on tenant farming and sharecropping as the mainstay of African subsistence in South Africa at the time. The southern part of Swaziland is characterised by a very dry climate with little rainfall. Crops grown in that area include sugar, cotton and tobacco. The climate is not always conducive to subsistence cropping. According to Ma-Zwane, the homestead of her in-laws, into which she was quickly integrated, grew a variety of root crops and legumes that suited the climate. Their home displayed all the noted characteristics of a Swazi rural homestead (Kuper 1947; Sibisi-Ngubane 1979, 1983; de Vletter 1983). A gendered division of labour was an apparent and accepted part of the world Ma-Zwane lived in.


The period during which Ma-Zwane lived in the rural south, before migrating to the economic hub of Manzini, was one in which Swaziland was rapidly becoming a theater of massive penetration and development of foreign investment (Booth 1983). The magnitude of the development and construction taking place in the postwar years created an insatiable demand for local labour. The place of women, in what became a frantic struggle for Swazi labour (Booth 1983; Crush 1987), was in the fields; on the homefront, or on the large sugar and cotton plantations (Miles 1991). Despite higher wages and better working conditions (for men) during this era of renewed development, conditions of poverty only worsened for women. MaZwane’s experience of abject poverty as a young bride in rural Swaziland resembles the well-documented experiences of BaSotho (Gordon 1980; Murray 1981) and BaTswana women (Brown 1983; Izzard 1985), which forced many women into wage labour. For Ma-Zwane, the simple yet traumatic combination of desertion, poverty, and the need to give her children food, soap and an education, set in motion the process of proletarianisation. Bozzoli (1983) argues that women do not undergo a full process of proletarianisation, because they did not have any rights to certain factors of production. Yet could Bozzoli’s argument be applied in the case of a woman like Ma-Zwane: a woman who has held no rights to any factors of production in a hierarchical rural homestead, in which her social position relegated her to the bottom of the ladder with no independent control of fields for subsistence? She was, instead, dependent on her husband’s remittances to put food on the table in a homestead with a minimal output of food production. With a husband who had virtually deserted her, and in his continued absence, Ma-Zwane was left with no option but to seek permission to enter wage employment. Similar cases of women joining the labour force and migrating to the urban areas have been documented in Southern Africa, even though the idea of women’s migration was considered distasteful (Miles 1991; Cockerton 1995). Efforts to reduce and/or alleviate rural poverty were made by both the colonial Government and the Independent Government, by means of the Rural Development Area Programme. Except for the occasional tractor hire from the nearest RDAP mission station, none of the women interviewed, nor their families, had experienced any positive impact on the levels of poverty in the rural homestead. Instead, their tales of poverty and hunger as children and young adults, undermine government efforts at reducing hardship. Thus, it was not uncommon for women to migrate to the city in search of employment, because there was nothing to eat in the rural area. It is important to recognise that generalisations cannot easily be made about women’s migration experience, due to its complex nature. Not every migrant woman in the city of Manzini migrated because of marital discord; their reasons for migrating are varied. Clearly, evidence from Swaziland supports the literature in assuming that major changes in gendered patterns of labour, household formation and composition, cultural expectations of women and the needs and


aspirations of women caused women to migrate in their own right (cf. Brydon and Chant 1989; Chant 1991). Swazi female migration clearly defies all theoretical underpinnings suggesting that African women migrate(d) only as dependants (Gugler and Ludwar-Ene 1995; Olurode 1995). Ma-Zwane’s story is an indication of the social impact of the beginnings of uneven regional development, which were the result of massive capitalist penetration in the years after Swaziland attained sovereign rule. For many households, the need for wage labour meant that one or more members of a household had to migrate to find employment. In many cases though, this did involve desertion, a factor which ultimately pushed women into wage employment. The crucial question remains, however, what was the fate of a migrant woman in the urban center with no money and no skill? The search for employment: the strategy of domestic work In an urban community, a major source of vulnerability for women has been in the labour market (Moser 1996). Swazi migrant women have been confronted with the common challenges of the urban environment. To keep their households out of poverty and to reduce their vulnerability, they have mobilised their labour and, where possible, that of additional household members. This has meant that they have undertaken poorly paid employment to reduce short-term poverty. At a general level, the position of migrant women who had moved to the city after the 1970s, was predetermined by a nexus of factors that relegated them to the confines of domestic work. The postindependence Swazi labour market that confronted women in the city, was saturated with male labour. Women were, more often than not, confined to jobs that required little or no skill. Certainly, a proportion of them had begun to permeate and even dominate the teaching and nursing professions (Armstrong 1985; Armstrong and Russell 1985; Government of Swaziland 1986; Akinnusi 1991; Mahindi 1991; Miles 1991), but their numbers certainly did not account for the majority of women in Swaziland. Migrant women who came to the city of Manzini to eke out a living for themselves and their children, without education or marketable skills, were therefore confronted with increased demand for cheap domestic help as more middle-class Swazi women moved into the labour market. Like women in other parts of Southern Africa, their easiest foothold into the rapidly growing urban economy in the postcolonial era, was domestic work. Interviews conducted with domestic workers revealed that the inability of the labour market to provide jobs for a rapidly growing school-leaving population has meant that for some women, domestic work has become a ‘waiting zone’, in which they while away time in the city, while waiting for a more alluring opportunity to arise elsewhere (Miles 1996). Domestic service was also an avenue for saving money to realise a dream. Judith and Nonhlanhla are two young Swazi women who both migrated to Manzini to find jobs in the factories. Unable to find work there, they turned to domestic work temporarily while they awaited an opportunity


to enter factory employment. Judith is now trying to save money to buy a sewing machine and take sewing lessons, and then she will leave domestic service. For the domestic worker in Swaziland, domestic work is a strategy to feed and clothe the children. A frequent response was, that ‘I am doing it for the sake of the children’. Their ambitions are simple: to obtain a good education for their children, and to establish a path of upward social mobility for them. In this way, by investing in their children’s education at all costs, women have opted to avoid perpetuating poverty from one generation to the next. Domestic work is also attractive to migrant women because it provides accommodation, and a measure of safety and security, that the alternative, informal housing, does not (given the reported high rates of crime in Swaziland’s informal housing settlements). Those domestic workers who used domestic work as a strategy to obtain a roof over their head, do so also to save on food, rent and transportation costs. Their savings can be used to realise a dream and to invest in their future. In the case of younger women, migrating to the city to enter wage employment, does in fact improve their status within the family (see also Gray 1993; Raghuram and Momsen 1993). Case study two: Phindile Mamba Phindile Mamba was born in 1967. She works as a live-in maid for a female-headed household in the middle-income residential area of Fairview in Manzini, a job she has held for less than a year. She came to the city in 1980, after she ran away from home because her mother was ill-treating her. With a standard-5 education, Phindile has worked as a domestic worker since 1980. Given the conditions under which she left home, Phindile maintains only weak ties with rural kinship and considers herself a permanent resident in the city. Because the city is her home, yet she has no family there, nor can she afford to rent her own accommodation, Phindile has always sought domestic employment which provides accommodation. In all her jobs, this accommodation has either meant sleeping with the children in their bedroom, or sleeping on the floor in the living room, or at the very worst, sharing a room with the gardener in the servants’ quarters. Her living and working conditions have been harsh, although to varying degrees, depending on the households she has worked for. Phindile holds very vague memories of some of the jobs in which she has worked, yet others are still vivid in her mind, for the sole reason that, in her opinion, they epitomise oppression and humiliation. Yet, her story draws attention to the variations in work and living experiences of a domestic worker that are a function of the household she works for. In addition to taking care of the children and cleaning the house (for a monthly income of US $7), Phindile was expected to render other services to her male employer: He lived with his wife and his mother and their children. My job was to take care of the children because his wife worked at the Casino at night. The


problem with him was that when there was a domestic worker in the house, he expected her to ‘take his wife’s place as well’. So I did not want that. So he suggested to his wife that I should be fired. That she was a ‘servant’ and ‘different’ was made very clear to Phindile by the restrictions placed on what she could or couldn’t eat, yet she was treated ‘as one of the family’, and in some cases, she even had to use a separate spoon, cup and plate. Two particularly painful incidents stand out in Phindile’s mind. The first, was when she worked for a certain white family that gave her only dry porridge to eat everyday. To add insult to injury, Phindile tells of how, in the same household, she was not given a separate room to sleep in, but instead had to share a room with the gardener. The second incident was her treatment at the hands of a certain black family. The wife was a teacher and the husband a banker. The irony of this situation was that she was oppressed by a woman whom she had considered kin. She was expected to work around the clock; there were no days off; the house she was expected to clean was a nine-roomed house; worse still, she was subject to verbal abuse from the ‘madam’. This ‘madam’, Phindile recalls, constantly reminded her that while she was a ‘degree-d, qualified teacher’, Phindile was a mere uneducated domestic worker. Phindile’s story is not unique. It demonstrates the complexity of experiences of live-in domestic workers, with respect to both their work and living conditions. It is the story of many live-in workers, who by virtue of being migrant women in the city, and usually without family, are constantly under the control of their employers (who may even be relatives), with whom they live as dependants. As stated earlier, being a live-in is an attractive option, especially for a young migrant woman like Phindile, because she does not have to pay rent. Yet, there is a price to be paid, as this entails losing a measure of control over their lives and the freedom to make basic choices. Employers decide what food they eat, and how a live-in maid should spend her free time (if any). Live-in maids tend to be underpaid because many employers reason that ‘after all, they are given a place to sleep and food to eat’. In modern-day Swaziland, race and class do not necessarily determine the servant-employing population as they did in former times. In fact, today, considerable numbers of the urban population can afford to hire a helper or a nanny. This has been made easy by the fact that servants’ wages are normally determined by the employer. Legislated terms and conditions of service for domestic workers are not recognised, enforced, nor even known by employers, domestic workers nor labour officials themselves (Maziya 1993). Live-in workers lead subservient lives, and the findings of this study reveal that none of them were able to negotiate and articulate their conditions of service and concerns about living conditions, for fear of being reprimanded or fired. That there is no Domestic Workers Union in Swaziland, has only served to exacerbate this situation. The result is that they have to do multiple jobs: childcare, housecleaning, laundry, cooking, outdoor chores and running errands. Owing to their


multiple roles, many live-in domestic workers complained of being tired and overworked (Macwan’ gi 1995). Variations in living and work conditions often correlated with employers being African or white, or whether workers were in female-headed or male-headed households. Phindile’s story draws attention to these variations which, more often than not, are the common experiences of many live-in workers. First, working in a male-headed household may subject live-in maids to verbal abuse and even sexual harassment, as Phindile’s story reveals. Yet, in the case of female-headed households, the live-in worker is treated like ‘one of the children’. In fact, in most cases, working for a female-headed household makes living-in imperative for the security and companionship both employer and servant need. Second, the racial group to which employers belong is also closely related to their income level. Generally, the white people resident in the city of Manzini are expatriates who hold professional, managerial or administrative posts in major business ventures. Domestic workers in their employ are known to earn higher wages than those employed by locals. In some cases, these domestic workers are even on the payroll of the company their employers work for. This makes a substantial difference in their living conditions, which raises also, the important issue of privacy. More commonly, servants in the employ of the urban white (expatriate) population have the privacy of a servants’ quarters. No case was found of a domestic worker living in the main house with their white employers. The domestic workers interviewed felt that while black families tend to treat them as one of the family, placing no limitations on what they can eat or use around the house, the disadvantages of being ‘one of the family’ far outweighed the advantages. Wages tended to be lower and erratically paid on the premise that the maid would ‘understand’ their financial situation. Incorporating a domestic worker into the family circle is usually, although not always, a sure way of depressing wages and possibly hiding even the most discreet forms of exploitation involved in the employer-employee relationship. Being in domestic service has thus subjected workers to much hardship and humiliation, yet the sense of helplessness and exploitation is overridden by the need to care for their children and to ensure that they do not have to resort to domestic work. As one informant, Ma-Dlamini, remarked: ‘I don’t wish for my daughters to work in the kitchen the way we do.’ Literature on migration points to a very important factor in the ability of a new migrant to find a job in the city or in town. This ability rests on a trusting reliance on the ‘homegirl network’ (cf. Vaa et al. 1989; Bozzoli 1991; Trager 1995). This is confirmed by another informant, Tryphinah Bhembe, who notes that: The only way to get a job is to ask women you know if they have heard anything. And if they have, you wake up early in the morning to go and try your luck.


Unless women knew somebody in the city, who knew somebody else who needed a domestic worker, it was difficult to get a job. Normally this would mean going from door to door asking for a job. The network, which is made up of an intricate web of friends, acquaintances and homegirls, forms part of the coping strategies of women, strategies that are based on a mutual understanding of the need to secure employment ‘for the sake of the children’. It is also a means of them helping each other maintain their dignity in the midst of the pressures of both rural and urban poverty. The absence of domestic work employment agencies has been an impetus for women to help each other find jobs in the city. Conclusion Development in Swaziland has been typified by many contradictions. A rapidly declining rural economy and traditional gendered patterns of land ownership have given rise to mass-scale exodus of both men and women from the rural area. In common with other African countries, the Government of Swaziland is faced with an urban crisis far beyond the objectives of its national policies. It is a crisis exacerbated by policies that are a legacy of the colonial administration, and that continue to marginalise large sectors of society. The inability to cope with rapid rates of urbanisation has meant that the much sought-after sustainable human development has not been achieved. This has given rise to widespread urban poverty. Changes in Swaziland’s labour market since the early colonial period, have been a major source of vulnerability for the greater proportion of the Swazi community. Women’s response to declining incomes and a stagnant rural economy has been to join the labour force in increasing numbers. The absence of any significant economic growth nodes in the rural areas has meant that the majority of women have migrated to urban centers. The fact that Swazi women have increasingly joined the labour market, does not mean that fewer men are employed and working, but rather, that many households are characterised by multiple earners. The reality of working in competitive, dead-end occupations with long work hours and low pay, is portrayed through the reality of the lives of women employed in Manzini as domestic workers. The phenomenon of rural-urban migration in Swaziland has taken place within the context of the country’s political and historical evolution and has had serious effects, on the one hand, on urban development and growing urban poverty. On the other hand, it has had implications for the ability of growing numbers of migrant women in the lower ranks of the urban economy to cope with urban poverty. A large proportion of these women are employed as domestic workers. For women, urban poverty has presented serious problems. For domestic workers, living below the poverty line, the situation has been even more serious. Their vulnerability has been increased by the fact that the Swaziland Government continues to treat domestic work as an ‘invisible’ occupation. Even the legal system protects them only in theory. Central to an understanding of women’s


migration is the issue of Swaziland’s unresolved land question, which for many decades has continued to deny women a livelihood in the rural area and a place to call their own. With increasing numbers of female-headed households, women’s landlessness runs the risk of perpetuating poverty from one generation to the next. Under these conditions, migrant women who come to the city in order to earn a living to support their children and to establish a future for them, and who find themselves in an occupation that has not changed much since the colonial era, are confronted with a variety of obstacles. These include the absence of a social welfare system of support, inflated health, education and housing costs, limited rights to land, and a lack of financial resources. Yet, this has not prevented them from adopting alternative strategies to overcome such obstacles and to pursue their ambitions. For the sake of the children, domestic workers have devised coping strategies that compensate, to some extent, for the Government’s failure to ensure adequate sustainable development in Swaziland. Faced with the difficulties common to domestic service, the problems of being a migrant, the need to create a path of social mobility for their children, and their marginalisation as women, the stories of workers rarely convey a sense of despair. Rather, they simply highlight the specific needs of low-income women in the city, and the bearing these have on their lives. The stories also point to the need for recognition of domestic work as a legitimate employment sector for women, while indicating the importance of adequate and sensitive approaches in the planning process that will acknowledges the work, needs and initiatives of women in the city. References Akinnusi, D. (1991) ‘Women in formal employment in Swaziland’, in A.Okore (ed.) Proceedings of the National Workshop on Population and Development: Focus on Swaziland, Mbabane: UNFPA/UNDESD. Andrehn, I. et al. (1977) Draft Report on the Living Conditions of Women in the Northern Development Area of Swaziland, Mbabane: Government of Swaziland/UN Office of Technical Cooperation. Armstrong, A. (1985) Women Employed on Agricultural Estates in Swaziland: Survey Results 1984, Kwaluseni: SSRU. Armstrong, A. and Russell, M. (1985) A Situation Analysis of Women in Swaziland, Kwaluseni: SSRU/UNICEE Booth, A. (1983) Swaziland: Tradition and Change in a Southern African Kingdom, Boulder: Westview Press. Bozzoli, B. (1983) ‘Marxism, feminism and Southern African studies’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 11, 2:258–80. Bozzoli, B. (1991) Women in Phokeng, Johannesburg: Ravan. Brown, B. (1983) ‘The impact of male labour migration on the women in Botswana’, African Affairs, 82, 328:367–88. Brydon, L. and Chant, S. (1989) Women in the Third World: Gender Issues in Rural and Urban Areas, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.


Chant, S. (1991) ‘Gender, mlgration and urban development in Costa Rica: the case of Guanacaste’, Geoforum, 22, 3:237–53. Cockerton, C. (1995) ‘‘Running away from the land of the desert’: women’s migration from colonial Botswana to South Africa, 1895–1966’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Queen’s University, Canada. Crush, J.C. (1980a) ‘The colonial division of space: the significance of the Swaziland land partition’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 13, 1:71–86. Crush, J.C. (1980b) ‘The genesis of colonial land policy in Swaziland’, South African Geographical Journal, 62, 1:73–88. Crush, J.C. (1987) The Struggle for Swazi Labor, 1890–1920, Montreal/Kingston: McGill/ Queen’s University Press. de Vletter, F. (ed.) (1983) The Swazi Homestead, Kwaluseni: SSRU. Elson, D. (1992) ‘From survival strategies to transformation strategies: women’s needs and structural adjustment’, in L.Beneria and S.Feldman (eds), Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty and Women’s Work, Boulder: Westview Press. Funnell, D. (1991) Under the Shadow of Apartheid: Agrarian Transformation in Swaziland, Aldershot: Avebury. Gaitskell, D., Kimble, J., Maconachie, M. and Unterhalter, E. (1983) ‘Class, race and gender: domestic workers in South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, 27, 8:86– 108. Gibbons, P. and Neocosmos, M. (1985) ‘Some problems in the political economy of African socialism’, in H.Bernstein, and B.Campbell (eds), Contradictions of Accumulation in Africa, Beverly Hills: Sage Publishers. Gordon, E. (1980) ‘An analysis of the impact of labour migration on the lives of women in Lesotho’, The Journal of Development Studies, 17, 3:29–46. Government of Swaziland (1986) Report of the Swaziland Population Census 1986, Mbabane: Government Printers. Gray, L. (1993) ‘The effects of drought and economic decline on rural women in western Sudan’, Geoforum, 24, 1:89–98. Gugler, J. and Ludwar-Ene, G. (1995) ‘Gender and migration in Africa south of the Sahara’, in J.Baker and T.Akin Aina, (eds) The Migration Experience in Africa, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Hughes, A.J.B. (1972) Land Tenure, Land Rights and Land Communities on Swazi Nation Land in Swaziland, Durban: University of Natal Press. International Labour Office (1977) Reducing Dependence: A Strategy for Productive Employment and Development in Swaziland, Addis Ababa: ILO. Izzard, W. (1985) ‘Migrants and mothers: case studies from Botswana’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 11, 2:258–80. Kuper, H. (1947) The Uniform of Colour: A Study of White-Black Relationships in Swaziland, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Macwan’ gi, M. (1995) ‘Social and physical living conditions of nannies in high cost residential areas of Lusaka, Zambia’, in S.Sithole-Fundire, A.Zhou, A.Larsson and A.Schlyter (eds) Gender Research on Urbanization, Planning, and Everyday Life, Phase One, Harare: ZWCN. Mahindi, C. (1991) ‘Housing in Swaziland’, in A.Okore (ed.), Proceedings of the National Workshop on Population and Development: Focus on Swaziland, Mbabane: UNFPA/ UNDESD.


Maziya, M.I. (1993) ‘The legal position of domestic employers in Swaziland’, paper presented at the Workshop for Domestic Employers, organised by the Council of Swaziland Churches. Miles, M. (1991) ‘Missing women: a study of Swazi female migration to the Witwatersrand, 1920–70’, unpublished M.A. thesis, Queen’s University, Canada. Miles, M. (1996) ‘Migration and development in postcolonial Swaziland: a study of women’s mobility and livelihood strategies’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Moser, C. (1996) ‘Confronting crisis: a comparative study of household responses to poverty and vulnerability in four poor urban communities, Environmentally Sustainable Development Studies Monographs Series, No. 8, Washington DC: The World Bank. Murray, C. (1981) Families Divided, Johannesburg: Ravan. Neocosmos, M. (1987) ‘Homogeneity and differences on Swazi Nation land’, in M. Neocosmos (ed.), Social Relations in Rural Swaziland, Kwaluseni: SSRU. Nhlabatsi, L. (1988) ‘Women and employment in the Kingdom of Swaziland’, paper prepared for Reader on Women in Development in Southern Africa, Nyanga, Zimbabwe. Olurode, L. (1995) ‘Women in rural-urban migration in the town of Iwo, Nigeria’, in J. Baker and T.Akin Aina (eds), The Migration Experience in Africa, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Raghuram, P. and J.Momsen (1993) ‘Domestic service as a survival strategy in Delhi, India’, Geoforum, 24, 1:55–62. Russell, M. (1986) ‘High status, low pay: anomalies in the position of women in employment in Swaziland’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 12, 2:293–307. Sibisi-Ngubane, H. (1979) ‘Homestead organization: sociological observation on some aspects of rural development in Swaziland’, Ministry of Agriculture Working Paper, No. 11, Mbabane: Ministry of Agriculture. Sibisi-Ngubane, H. (1983) ‘The Swazi homestead’, in F.de Vletter (ed.) The Swazi Homestead, Kwaluseni: SSRU. Simelane, H. (1992) ‘The post-colonial state, class and the land question in Swaziland’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 11, 1:22–50. Tabibian, N. (1983) Swazi Women’s Income Generating Activities, Kwaluseni: DEMS. Trager, L. (1995) ‘Women migrants and rural-urban linkages in South Western Nigeria’, in J.Baker and T.Akin Aina (eds), The Migration Experience in Africa, Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Vaa, M., Findley, S. and Diallo, A. (1989) ‘The gift economy: a study of women migrants’ survival strategies in a low-income Bamako neighbourhood’, Land, Labor and Capital, 22, 2:234–60. Youé, C.P. (1978) ‘Imperial land policy in Swaziland and the African response’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 7, 1:56–70.

Part V ASIA

Three international migration circuits of female domestics have been identified for Asia (Abella 1995). The first, is the largest in the region and involves women from South and South-eastern Asia going to the oil-rich countries of West Asia on short-term labour contracts. In the late 1980s, the leading countries sending women migrants, especially Muslim women, to Saudi Arabia, were Indonesia and Sri Lanka, followed by the Philippines, India and Thailand. Most of these migrants move alone, and it is estimated that almost 100,000 migrate through legal channels each year, with an additional 60,000 moving clandestinely. The second circuit encompasses migrant flows of women from the poorer Asian countries (Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines) to the labour-short, rapidly industrializing ones (Brunei, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia). Until 1997, this movement, mostly for domestic service employment, was expanding rapidly and included many undocumented women, so that the total movement may have been greater than that to West Asia. With the current economic crisis in the region, illegal immigrants are being repatriated, especially Indonesians from Malaysia. However, as the need for middle-class women to find paid work grows, the market for domestic servants will continue to exist. The third circuit is made up of Asian women moving to Canada, the United States and Europe. Some of these migrants are nurses, but a majority go to work as domestics. As legal controls increase in the receiving countries, the proportion of illegal migrants grows. Most of these migrants come originally from the Philippines, Thailand and Sri Lanka, but may be working in Hong Kong, Singapore or the Middle East when they decide to make the long-distance move to North America or Europe. This is probably the smallest migration circuit, but consists of women planning to settle permanently overseas. Within most Asian countries, except for the city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong, many domestic servants are internal rural migrants. This migration circuit is often highly personalised and dependent on traditional networks. Many of these young migrants see domestic service as an introduction to modern, urban ways of life. They often plan to move into other occupations, such as factory work, fairly quickly. Today, as rural areas are even more impoverished by drought and high inflation, urban jobs other than domestic service have almost disappeared. With

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40 percent of Indonesia’s population living below the poverty line, rural-to-urban migration is increasing and the competition for domestic jobs is growing. International migrant domestic servants working within Asia are usually employed on short-term contracts of two years. Their employment is highly organised by government and private agencies, and both employer and employee have to pay fees to these agencies. The employers control their employees closely and see the servant as providing status, as well as much-needed flexible childcare. In Hong Kong, it appears that working mothers are not interested in care outside the home for their children, but in Malaysia many women would prefer government-provided childcare in nurseries, to dependence on unreliable maids (Buang 1997). The maid is seen as maintaining the patriarchal gender division of labour, and Tam (Chapter 16) calls for encouragement of male involvement in childcare through the provision of paternal leave. This was tried in Malaysia, but the government put a stop to it when it was realised that fathers were using this leave to play golf, rather than to play with their children (Buang 1997). References Abella, M.I. (1995) ‘Sex selectivity of migration regulations governing international migration in Southern and South-eastern Asia’, International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, San Miniato, Italy, 28–31 March, 1990, New York: United Nations. Buang, A. (1997) ‘Elusive rescuers: coping with migrant housemaids, a Malaysian experience’, in U.J.Fairhurst, I.Booysen and P.S.Hattingh (eds), Migration and Gender: Place Time and People Specific, A Collection of Papers, Pretoria: Faculty of Science, University of Pretoria.

13 INTERLINKING TRAJECTORIES Migration and domestic work in India Parvati Raghuram

The role played by domestic work1 in the process of migration is well-documented (Bunster and Chaney 1985; Hojman 1989; Hill 1994). It has been viewed as a bridging occupation, providing both geographical and occupational mobility (Broom and Smith 1963; Jelin 1977). Domestic work is particularly suitable for new migrants as it requires minimal inputs in terms of capital, linguistic or professional skills. Owing to the ease with which migrants can enter the occupation, and the gendered nature of domestic work, migrant women working as domestic workers are often the first members of migrant households to penetrate the labour market, providing the initial financial security needed. Both migration and entry to domestic work for these women are assisted through the use of social networks. Recent literature on migration theory has recognised the significance of social networks in facilitating migration2 (Harriss 1997; Boyd 1989). Such networks assist migration by providing capital, information about the place of destination, first residence and access to jobs (see also Chapter 7 of this book). Social networks have also been used as conceptual tools in understanding migratory processes, with social-network theory being used to overcome some of the problems of existing theories of migration. These range from behavioralist theories that privilege individual decision-making in the context of push-pull, to structuralist theories which contextualise the decision to migrate in terms of the political economy of the areas of departure and destination. Social-network theory helps to overcome the dualism between agency and structure implicit within this framework, by adopting a Giddensian structuration perspective. It focuses on the ways in which the routes of migration are negotiated by migrants (for a full discussion, see Goss and Lindquist 1995). While the usefulness of social-network theory is increasingly being realised, its interrelations with gender have hardly been addressed (Tacoli 1995), and there has as yet been little attempt to see how women access and mobilise social networks during the migration process. In this chapter, I use the situation of domestic workers to explore the manner in which social networks facilitate migration. Domestic work provides an interesting case study of these processes as the gendering of domestic labour has led to female-centred social networking, both during migration and in the entry to work.

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Domestic work Domestic work has become the focus of much academic attention in the last decade and a half (Huang and Yeoh 1996; England and Steill 1997; Cumaranatunga 1990). This literature focuses largely on the experiences of live-in domestic workers who have migrated alone, usually across international boundaries (Anderson 1993; Chin 1997; Macklin 1994; Romero 1992; Shah et al. 1991).3 S tudies of domestic work and internal migration have also focused on the experiences of single migrants who live in the employing households while undertaking paid domestic work (Radcliffe 1986; Robinson 1991). This chapter examines the migratory and work trajectories of internal migrants who have moved from a rural to an urban area, and who have entered part-time, live-out domestic work. This form of parttime work, where domestic workers do not live in with their employers, is the most common form of paid domestic labour in urban India today, but it is also becoming increasingly common in other parts of the world (see chapter 7). Romero (1988), for instance, cites the increasing significance of ‘job work’ among Chicanas in the United States (see also Chapter 4). Job workers specialise in a small range of tasks, and are paid for each task that they perform with the same tasks being performed in a number of households. In India, this pattern is replicated daily, but in the US the domestic worker returns to the same household once or twice a week (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). Part-time, live-out domestic work has become increasingly popular in India, as domestic work has become dominated by women who have the responsibility of overseeing the performance of reproductive tasks in their own households, and thus prefer part-time employment.4 They perform specific tasks in multiple households, and then return home to their own housework. Increasingly, employers also prefer part-time domestic help. Competition for urban space has meant that employers now have smaller houses, so that it is no longer easy to accommodate resident domestic workers. High rates of inflation have also reduced the number of households capable of meeting the increasing cost of maintaining a live-in domestic worker. Thus, a significant proportion of the domestic labour force in urban India is now drawn from the migrant population of slums and shantytowns, often located at the urban periphery. Changes in the gender-balance of the migratory stream have also influenced the nature of domestic work. For instance, rural-urban migration in India was dominated by men in the post-Independence periods, and domestic work in urban areas was largely a male job (Mehta 1960). With the migration of larger kinship units, women in migrant families enter domestic work, while men take up other forms of employment.5 There has therefore been a change both in the sex ratio of domestic workers in urban India, and in the nature of the domestic work being performed. Not only has there been an increase in the proportion of women employed in domestic work, but the demographic profile of the domestic workforce has also changed. A few decades ago, most domestics were female heads of household, in particular, widowed, deserted and older women (Banerjee

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1982). As family migration has increased, younger women have become more numerous in domestic work (Banerjee 1992). Changing migration patterns have thus altered both the demography and the structure of domestic work. The context of the study In this chapter, I have focused on the experiences of 127 domestic workers living in M.S. Flats, Delhi. The data presented here were collected between July and November 1989 as a part of a larger study on female domestic workers in Delhi6 Domestic workers were defined as those people performing household cleaning tasks for a wage.7 The views presented here are informed by long periods of residence in M.S. Flats, frequent and ongoing interactions with the interviewees, and a process of analysis that continues to the present day. M.S. Flats, situated a few kilometres from the centre of the city, consists of official housing rented out to high-ranking officials working for the Government of India. Attached to the 207 apartments (9 high-rise blocks of 23 units each) are an equal number of ‘domestic workers’ quarters’.8 The domestic workers’ quarters are allocated to the officials along with their own residence, the use of the former being left to the officials’ discretion. In most cases the quarters were given to domestic workers in return for performaning a minimum of three tasks, usually cleaning the floor, washing dishes and doing laundry. The practice of allocating residences to domestic staff was institutionalised during the period of British administration, and was continued by the government of independent India. Domestic work has, in this case, retained much of its essentially feudal nature, with the primary and often only mode of payment for domestic work being accommodation for the worker’s family. Domestic workers’ quarters are essentially of two types. The first type are located behind the service chute on the same floor as the employer ‘s residences. They consist of a single room opening into a corridor, with the room normally being fitted with a bell that is used to call the domestic worker. There are three such quarters on each floor sharing a toilet and a bathroom. The second type of distinctive residential area for domestic workers is located in four apartment blocks, set at some distance from M.S. Flats. These blocks are all four storeys, high and the quarters consist of a room and partitioned cooking area with water supply, as well as a washing-up area. The average age of domestic workers in the area was 32 although actual ages ranged from 14 to 70. Almost half the domestic workers were below 30 years of age. Most of those living in M.S. Flats are first-generation (79 percent) or secondgeneration (14 percent) migrants. The residents of M.S. Flats come from all over the Indian subcontinent—India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. However, the two largest groups are those from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and those from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, just to the east of Delhi. M.S. Flats is located at some distance from major industrial and commercial districts, and thus alternative employment opportunities are limited. Trade, or

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working for government departments in charge of the maintenance of neighbouring government accommodation and the foreign embassies, are the major sources of employment in this neighbourhood, although these jobs are usually only open to men. Women in M.S. Flats have few opportunities to earn wages within or near their neighbourhood. However, by engaging in domestic work, and thus acquiring accommodation, they subsidise the household’s existence. Migration and entry to domestic work About 85 percent of migrants interviewed in M.S. Flats had come to Delhi directly from their place of origin.9 They moved from their villages to the capital without making any intermediate moves to regional towns. Since the wage rates of domestic workers in cities like Madras are about a third of those in Delhi, migrants who plan to enter the domestic labour market see the long-distance move as more economically advantageous (Rani and Kaul 1986). Once the pattern of migration is established, the existence of a network of kin in the city serves to encourage future migrants, and to reinforce the pattern. In 1977, Majumdar estimated that there were 20,000 people from Tamil Nadu living in the Delhi slums, and that this was a result of the importance of social networks in migration. The primary unit of migration is often the household.10 Most of the women were accompanied when they first moved to Delhi. More than one-third of respondents had come with their husbands and/or children, and about a fifth came with parents and siblings. Less than one-third of the migrant women in M.S. Flats migrated alone, and most of the women in this group were marriage migrants, moving to join husbands. Thus, migration usually occurred in the context of the household, either as the unit of migration or as the rationale for migration. The experiences of migrant domestic workers in M.S. Flats, thus differs from the experiences of domestic workers noted elsewhere (see Radcliffe in Chapter 5 of this book). Support provided by social networks plays a vital role during the process of migration. Much of the support provided by extended kin is rendered within the context of migration, as shown in Table 13.1. This has resulted in the pheno menon of chain migration. This aid is channeled through the networks and generally includes the following: information about the area; travel costs; board and lodging on arrival in the city; help in finding jobs and loans to cover initial expenditure. Assistance provided by extended family ties is especially significant for women, as ‘there is a strong reluctance among them to form close friendships with those who are not related by ties of kinship or marriage’ (Singh 1977:247). Singh’s study of four unauthorised squatter settlements in Delhi showed that women’s ties with their kin are maintained and extended ‘beyond what might normally be expected to occur in the village’ (ibid.). The persistence of such extended kin networks in urban and industrial areas, has been documented in other regions as well.


Table 13.1 Aid from Chettiar networks during migration

Source: Field Survey, 1989

In some cases, the support provided to migrant families extended beyond the provision of a first residence. Almost half of those who could remember how long they had spent with their first hosts, said they had spent over a year with them. Thus, the assistance given by the host family continues for some time, until the migrants feel adapted to their new environment. Many of these migrants still maintained close relations with their initial hosts. In spite of the overriding ideology that defines relationships primarily through the male, in M.S.Flats, affinal relations appeared to form a very important source of support for migrants to the city. For example, uncles and aunts of the domestic worker were often cited as having provided first residence in the city: much of this help was extended by female relatives. This was especially important for female-headed household units migrating to the city, as, for example, in the case of Divya. Divya is forty years old and comes from the Mainpuri district of Uttar Pradesh. She was married to a boy from Agra in western Uttar Pradesh at the age of fourteen,11 and together they moved to Calcutta shortly after the marriage. Ten years ago, however, she separated from her husband and returned to her motherin-law’s house in Agra, where she lived until her mother-in-law died a year ago. She then moved to Delhi, as she was assured of help from her daughter and niece. She stayed with her daughter for the first ten days after arriving in Delhi, and then moved to live with her niece for the next twenty-five days. Her niece then helped her to find accommodation in the same squatter settlement, and got her a job as a domestic worker. Thus, all her moves have been made possible through the assistance provided by female kin. In many households, other female kin,

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especially the husband’s sisters, also play an important part in the migrant’s adjustment to the city. Because of the propensity for parents and offspring in M.S.Flats to stay in close proximity, a number of domestic workers also had siblings in the area. Twentytwo women had brothers, and nineteen had sisters, residing in M.S. Flats, while eleven had brothers-in-law, and twelve had sisters-in-law living there. This is particularly prevalent among the domestic workers in M.S.Flats, where living quarters are obtained through the women’s labour. Hence, female-centred social networking has also lead to patterns of coresidentiality among female kin. This pattern is specific to migrants, especially migrant domestic workers, as the prevailing ideology tends to be patrilocal. Matrilocality becomes, then, an expression of the significance of female social networks in facilitating migration. In M.S.Flats, accommodation, as well as employment in domestic work, was largely found through female networks (Table 13.1). Only ten respondents said that they had received no help in securing their first job. Frequently, the hosts themselves were engaged in domestic service and introduced the migrant women to prospective employers. This was especially true in the Tamil community. Such an introduction is vital when the migrants do not speak Hindi, the language most commonly used by the employers in Delhi. Personal contacts are the preferred method of locating domestic workers,12 as such introductions serve as references, helping the employer to assess the domestic worker as a person. Second, as domestic workers were living out it was important for the employers to be able to get in touch with them through such contacts. Finally, these contacts were often also asked to fill in for the absence of the people they introduced. This provided flexibility in work conditions for the employers. Over 80 percent of the domestic workers who had received assistance, had got their first job with the help of female friends and relatives. This is, in part, a reflection of the existing sexual division of labour in part-time domestic service in Delhi. Since women were more likely to be employed in such jobs, they had more contacts in the employer’s neighbourhood. In some cases, the employers themselves solicited the services of the domestic worker. Casual acquaintances and neighbours also reported vacancies to migrants on the look out for employment. It was interesting that none of the domestic workers reported that their husbands had helped them to get their first job. Once settled in the city, many of these migrants themselves channel and support other migrants from their home community. In M.S.Flats, 11 percent of the respondents reported having directly supported friends or relatives coming to the city. In the next section, I explore two kin networks, and the ways in which these networks have actually facilitated migration and entry to domestic work. The Devendras and the Chettiars The most important single migrant group in M.S.Flats was the Devanga Chettiars13 of Chinalampatty, Madurai district, Tamil Nadu. Devanga Chettiars are a caste of


Kannada and Telugu weavers now resident in Tamil Nadu.14 The Chettiars in this area are Kannada-speakers from Madurai district in Tamil Nadu. Traditionally they were weavers of silk saris, but the displacement of workers in the cottage and handloom industries, through mechanisation and industrialisation, has led to mass migrations. These workers have moved into cities, and into manual occupations such as domestic work, resulting in the de-skilling of an entire population group (Devi 1985). It is common to see women squeezed out of independent marketoriented production and forced into casual labour and domestic work (Shamin 1988). The scale of migration can be judged from the figures for decadal population growth rates in Chinalampatty Nagar Panchayat (an administrative unit in Dindigul taluk). These fell from 35.93 percent between 1961 and 1971, to 0.02 percent between 1971 and 1981 (Village and Town Directory—Madurai district 1981), during the peak periods of migration. Another predominant migrant group in M.S.Flats, is that of the Devendras. Devendra is an endogamous sub-caste of Pallars (an agricultural serf caste of Tamil Nadu), which is proficient in wet cultivation. Most of the Devendras belong to an extended kin network and come from Salem district in Tamil Nadu. Many of them were small farmers in the village, but frequent droughts in the area had made agriculture no longer viable for small farmers, resulting in mass migration to Delhi. Most of them initially squatted in Karol Bagh in West Delhi, providing domestic service to the large number of South Indian households in the area. Others squatted in the area around M.S.Flats, which was scrubland at that time. Between 1975 and 1977, the slums were razed to the ground under the Slum Clearance and Improvement Scheme (1958), and their inhabitants were relocated to settlements on the periphery of the city. They were given 25–square-yard plots in the settlements on the floodplain of the river Yamuna. Here, they could build their own houses. However, since these settlements were far away from their places of work, some of them moved into the domestic workers’ residential quarters in M.S.Flats. Roughly ten households in M.S.Flats belonged to this group: most of them are members of an extended kin group, with members living in other, outer parts of East Delhi. A number of factors have led to the concentration of Chettiar and Devendra women in domestic work. Lack of education and skills act as stumbling blocks for entry to other occupations. At the same time, the nature of recruitment through informal networks acts as a pathway to continuance within that occupation. Glenn (1981) describes these as the structural and dynamic elements in the process of occupational ghettoisation in domestic work. Most of the assistance provided by the network of kin occurs within the context of migration. For instance, the stream of Chettiar migrants from Madurai district has been made possible by the support provided by the kin group. Priya was the first migrant in her family, though her own migration to Delhi was facilitated by her brother-in-law. Since then, she has helped her brother and her niece, Raji, to come to Delhi (Table 13.2). She also found jobs for all her daughters-in-law soon after their marriages. Raji helped her sister-in-law to come to Delhi, and

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subsequently helped both her sister-in-law and a daughter-in-law to find jobs as domestic workers. These migrants also exhibit a propensity to live close together, and to maintain a high level of interaction with each other. The Chettiars, for instance, have formed an extensive network in M.S.Flats.15 Diya, a 25–year-old Chettiar woman has 6 brothers, all living in M.S.Flats. Her husband also has sisters and brothers living in this area. Diya helped her sisters-in-law (her bhabhi [brother’s wife], her nanad [husband’s sister] and her devarani [husband’s younger brother’s wife]) to get jobs and accommodation in this area. Thus, even in the urban environment of Delhi, kinship continues to provide the most critical basis for interaction among individuals. For most of the domestic workers of M.S.Flats, visiting is restricted to the homes of near relations. Since leave is limited and travel is expensive, these women must prioritise their outings. Most women will attend celebrations in the home of close kin, helping their hosts Table 13.2 Kin aid for Devendras during migration

Source: Field Survey, 1989

with housework and childcare. For example, Rajamma spent a couple of days helping to cook and feed the guests who came to see Usha’s new daughter-in-law. The marriage was conducted in Mangole Puri, a resettlement area where a large group of Chettiars resides. Most of the Chettiars from M.S.Flats stayed overnight in the area to participate in the festivities. Those who stayed behind in M.S.Flats provided domestic labour to the employers of relatives who had gone away. Such support is very important for domestic workers in M.S. Flats. Leave is not normally sanctioned, and absence is punished by opprobrium and threat of dismissal from work, and hence homelessness. It is therefore important to have cover for absence, and the domestic workers’ social networks provide this cover. While such cover prevents conflict between domestic worker and employer, it also delays/prevents renegotiation of the domestic worker’s workload and helps to perpetuate the practice of not sanctioning leave.


The cooperation and support provided by domestic workers to each other is, however, also marked by some serious conflicts. The cooperative element in kin relations should not be emphasised at the expense of the stress that often accompanies it (Banck 1980; Kalpagam 1994). For instance, Veeramma maintains close relations with her own family living in Mangole Puri, and has little to do with any of the Chettiars in M.S.Flats. She is comparatively well-off and the other relatives felt that the prospect of having to share her wealth with her poorer kin may be one reason for her isolation. Such dissensions are frequently caused by inequalities between households in their access to resources. Among the poorest people, the need for survival dictates that the resource-pooling unit limits contributions to others if it affects its own viability. Thus, households may be reluctant to help others who are still poorer and have little to offer in return. They may be viewed as a drain on the limited resources, so that no long-term commitment to assist such people is likely to be made. Support may be made available to meet the moral code of kinship during the process of migration, but may subsequently be withdrawn. Where members of a household unit had achieved some financial stability, they did not want to jeopardise this fragile equilibrium by stretching their resources among poorer kin for extended periods. Equitable financial status underlies the close kin network among the Devendras of Salem. They are a smaller group but are tightly knit together through the pattern of cross-cousin marriages. Kinship forms the basis for residential proximity among this group. All of them live in the four-storied buildings, many of them residing in the same building and on the same floor. As a result, the range of interaction among the Devendras is greater even than that among the Chettiars. Many of the men have secured permanent employment in the offices of the Central Government, so that these households have considerable financial security and comparable incomes and standards of living. The social content of such relationships often overrode any material benefits that may accrue to the actors. The relationships are value-laden, but value is defined not only in terms of its economic contribution but also by its ideological or emotional content. This type of interaction between the Devendras is very high. They sometimes substitute for each other at work, spend a lot of their leisure time together, make joint trips to relatives living in other areas of Delhi (Shakarpur Basti etc.) and help each other during times of crisis. For example, when Selvi had to vacate her living quarters, she and her family lived and ate with Sarda until she found alternative accommodation. The support provided by this kin network thus acts as a form of security in times of stress. Conclusion This chapter has illustrated the extent to which social networks facilitate migration and entry to domestic work in M.S.Flats, Delhi. Such assistance is also gendered, reflecting the nature of domestic work. Two case studies of kin networks are used

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to illustrate the ways in which such networks lead to coresidence and continuing support for the domestic workers’ households. This support often tends to be female-centred, in spite of the overriding patriarchal ideology that leads to patrilocality and a focus on filial relations. However, although support is offered during the migratory process, it may be withdrawn if it appears that the newlyarrived migrants will unsettle the financial equilibrium of the host’s household. The nature of the migrant unit is influenced by the causes of migration and the social and cultural norms of the rural area from which the migrant originates.16 For instance, the Chettiars and the Devendras migrating from Tamil Nadu were more likely to be part of larger chains of migration. Such moves were induced by ‘push’ factors in their areas of origin, but the migration process was strategised by the active negotiation of social networks to establish route of migration, first place of stay, and first entry to work. One impact of this networking was the extent to which women from these groups dominate the domestic labour market in some parts of Delhi. The use of network theory helps to understand the role of agency and aspects of the social which condition agency, during the migration process. The use of social networks as a way of understanding migration and career entry, helps to overcome some of the weaknesses of other theories of migration. It partially erases the unhelpful distinction between agency and structure by focusing on the channels of migration. Such channels also operate to secure entry to domestic work. The significance of social networks among domestic workers is increasingly being realised. Such networks may become formalised as in Campani’s (1991) study of Filipina domestic workers in Italy. In M.S.Flats, formalisation did not occur, because the networks were themselves inscribed with power differentials between those who had achieved some stability and upward mobility after migration, and those who had not. Thus, social networks may be used both to exploit (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994) as well as to support (Dasgupta 1991; Robinson 1991) other migrants. Finally, the existence of supportive networks may prevent or delay the renegotiation of gendered household work (both waged work for employers and unwaged work within domestic workers’ own households), due to an increasing feminisation of domestic work,17 as well as a decrease in live-in domestic work. Notes 1 In this chapter, I have distinguished between domestic work, which involves performing domestic labour in an employer’s house in return for wages, and housework, which involves doing the same tasks in your own home. While the tasks performed are often the same, the social relations regulating the performance of these tasks vary between the two. 2 The significance of social networks has also been alluded to in the now considerable literature on ‘diasporas’.


3 Giles (1994) in her study of Portuguese Chambermaids in London hotels, suggests that even domestic workers employed in the more formalised sectors of domestic work are likely to live-in. 4 A 1979 survey of eight Indian regions reveals a predominance of women in domestic work: 77.56 percent of the interviewees were female (Roshni Nilaya n.d.). 5 However, in private households in India, the more remunerative full-time, live-in domestic work is more likely to be done by men. They are more likely to get paid holidays and other benefits. Males also dominate the more secure, higher-paid sector of this occupation offered by the government (e.g. sweeping and performing domestic work in the houses of high-ranking defense officers). The tasks involved in all domestic work are similar, but as the working conditions improve, the same jobs are often defined as male. 6 The data were collected through semi-structured interviews, each lasting between 1 and 4 hours. 127 women were interviewed. The interviews were usually held in the respondents’ homes, often in the presence of other women. Questions were asked in Hindi and responses were given in Hindi, or occasionally in one of the other regional languages with which I am familiar. Most questions were open-ended, exploring the attitudes and perceptions of the interviewee and their relationships with others. Many of the respondents were interviewed a second time; the length of these interviews ranged from short visits to long interviews lasting for several hours. These visits helped me to pick up and correct inconsistencies, and to confirm or revise opinions. Husbands of 27 of the women were also interviewed. 7 Cooks, child-minders and other categories of household workers were excluded from this study, as the context within which these tasks were performed were all different from each other. Similar definitional issues have also been addressed by other researchers writing on domestic work (Gregson and Lowe 1994). 8 Of the 207 domestic workers’ quarters in the area, 66 were sublet, or occupied by relatives or lying vacant. I could not interview four households because we did not speak a common language, and ten people refused to participate in the study. The primary reason for non-response was because they did not want to let anyone know that they were domestic workers. 9 These patterns are also noted in other parts of the world. For example, in a study conducted in the Dominican Republican (Duarte 1989), 82 percent of domestic workers migrated to Santo Domingo directly from their place of birth. 10 The migration of households may mask conflict of interest between different members of the household, so that the decision to migrate results from complex bargaining between them. Although such negotiations fall outside the scope of the paper, it is important to note that such negotiations (in the case of the migration of domestic workers) occur within the context of favourable labour market opportunities for women. 11 The ethnographic present is 1989. 12 In a study conducted in Buenos Aires (Gogna 1989), 81 percent of the interviewed migrants had obtained their jobs through particularistic relations, 30 percent of whom were already employed in domestic work. 13 They are also called Senniars or Sedars. 14 Caste distinctions were not very important in the perception of most domestic workers of M.S. Flats. This can be attributed to the lack of residential segregation by caste, disparity between the caste structure of the different areas from which the

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residents migrated, and the breakdown of caste-based occupational segregation, among other reasons. 15 It must be recognised that the extent of cross-cousin marriages has also influenced the networking among this group. Certain bonds are strengthened, but dissension within the group can also be amplified by the density of the networks. 16 On the whole, there has been a shift from male migration to family migration, as noted in this paper and elsewhere (Raju and Bagchi 1993), but there are regional variations in the constitution’ of the migrant unit. Single-male migration is still important in North India, but less so for migrants from the South (de Haan 1997). 17 This reflects a universal pattern (Hansen 1989; Kuznesof 1989).

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England, K. and Steill, B. (1997) “They think you’re as stupid as your English is”: constructing foreign domestic workers in Toronto’, Environment and Planning A 29: 195– 215. Giles, W. (1994) “‘It’s the foreigners who do the laundry”: the work of Portuguese chambermaids in London hotels’, in W.Giles and S.Arat-Koç (eds) Maid in the Market, Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Glenn, E. (1981) ‘Occupational ghettoisation: Japanese-American women and domestic service 1905–70’, Ethnicity 8:352–86. Gogna, M. (1989) ‘Domestic workers in Buenos Aires’, in E.Chaney and M.Garcia Castro (eds), Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Goss, J. and Lindquist, B. (1995) ‘Conceptualising international labour migration: a structuration perspective’, International Migration Review 29, 2:317–51. Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (1994) Servicing the Middle Classes: Class, Gender and Domestic Labour in Contemporary Britain, London: Routledge. Hansen, K. (1989) Distant Companions: Servants and Employers in Zambia, 1900–85, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Harriss, N. (1997) The New Untouchables, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hill, B. (1994) ‘Rural-urban migration of women and their employment in towns’, Rural History 5, 2:185–94. Hojman, D.E. (1989) ‘Land reform, female migration and the market for domestic service in Chile’, Journal of Latin American Studies 23:105–22. Huang, S. and Yeoh, B. (1996) ‘Ties that bind: state policy and migrant female domestic helpers in Singapore’, Geoforum 27, 4:479–93. Hondagneu-Sotelo, P. (1994) ‘Regulating the unregulated? domestic workers’ social networks’, Social Problems 41, 1:50–64. Jelin, E. (1977) ‘Migration and labour force participation of Latin American women: the domestic servants in the cities’, Signs 3:129–41. Kalpagam, U. (1994) Labour and Gender: Survival in Urban India, New Delhi: Sage. Kuznesof, E. (1989) ‘A history of domestic service in Spanish America, 1492–1980’, in E. Chaney and M. Garcia Castro (eds), Muchachas No More: Household Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Macklin, A. (1994) ‘On the outside looking in: foreign domestic workers in Canada’, in W. Giles and S. Arat-Koç (eds), Maid in the Market, Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Majumdar, T.K. (1977) ‘The urban poor and social change: study of squatter settlements in Delhi’, Social Action, 27, 3:216–46. Mehta, A. (1960) The Domestic Servant Class, Bombay: Popular Book Depot. Radcliffe, S. (1986) ‘Gender relations, peasant livelihood strategies and migration: a case study from Cuzco, Peru’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 15, 2:29–47. Raju, S. and Bagchi, D. (1993) ‘In sum and looking forward’, in S.Raju and D.Bagchi (eds), Women and Work in South Asia: Regional Patterns and Perspectives, London: Routledge. Rani, P. and Kaul, P. (1986) ‘For two meals a day—a report on Tamil domestic maids’, Manushi, 35:2–14. Robinson, K. (1991) ‘Housemaids: The effects of gender and culture on the internal and international labour migration of Indonesian women’, in G.Bottomley, M.de Lapervenche and J.Martin (eds), Intersexions: Gender/Class/Culture/Ethnicity, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

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Romero, M. (1988) ‘Chicanas modernise domestic service’, Qualitative Sociology, 11: 319– 34. Romero, M. (1992) Maid in the U.S.A., London: Routledge. Roshni Nilaya. (n.d.) A National Socio-Economic Survey of Domestic Workers, Madras: CBCI. Shah, N., Al-Qudsi, S. and Shah, M. (1991) ‘Asian women workers in Kuwait’, International Migration Review, 25:464–86. Shamin, I. (1988) ‘Migrant rural women and the informal sector: case studies of survival strategies’, paper presented at the fourth National Conference on Womens Studies, Andhra University, December 28–31. Singh, A.M. (1977) ‘Women and the family: coping with poverty in the Bastis of Delhi’, Social Action, 27, 3:241–65. Tacoli, C. (1995) ‘Gender and international survival strategies’, Third World Planning Review, 17, 2:199–212. Village and Town Directory. (1981) Series 20. T.N.Madurai District Part XII A, A.P. Muthuswami of I.A.S., Director of Census Operations, Tamil Nadu.

14 MAIDS IN SPACE Gendered domestic labour from Sri Lanka to the Middle East Munira Ismail

Can you imagine what I felt when I got off that frightening bird with its brain-bursting noise? I wanted to run away, run somewhere with the sand burning my feet. Can you imagine what it is like to find yourself in a strange land, to look upon a landscape where there is no grass as far as the eye can see, no trees to cover the burning blue of the sky, to hear tongues that make no sense, intercept glances that you cannot interpret, where smiles are leers because you are a woman of another color, in strange clothes, where you sense invitations though the words have no meaning, where obscenities are flung at you because you are at their mercy? (Fernando 1984:23) Labour migration from Sri Lanka to the Middle East began in the early 1970s when increased petroleum production created a demand for both skilled and unskilled labour in the region. In the early stages of the oil boom, the demand for labour in the construction sector was met mostly by male workers either from neighbouring Middle Eastern countries or from low-wage Asian countries. Eventually, as construction projects came ‘onstream’ and living standards rose, opportunities for employment in the service sector became available and opened the doors for female labour to enter the Middle Eastern market. Sri Lanka was one of the last Asian countries to enter this labour market, but currently has more workers there than any other South or South-Asian country. Between 3 and 6 percent of the total population working in the Middle East at any one time is from Sri Lanka (Dias 1996; Ruhunuge 1996) (see Table 14.1). Of these migrants, almost a quarter belong to the Muslim community, and two-thirds of these are female. Economically disadvantaged Muslim women in Sri Lanka are often compelled by pressures of filial poverty to leave their homes, parents, husbands and children to work as domestic servants in the Middle East. In so doing, the female Muslim migrant transcends social barriers by defying the structural and spatial constraints that inhibit her daily life in Sri Lanka. Given the conservative background from


Table 14.1 Labour migration from Asian countries to the Middle East, 1983

Sources: Data adapted from Eelens et al. (1992:3); Estimates for 1994—Ruhunge (1996); Dias (1996:5)

which the mostly rural migrants originate, the act of migration breaks with established rules of religion, culture, space and gender. Methodology The fieldwork was carried out over a two-month period in the summer of 1993. It involved the collection of secondary data from some of the leading socioeconomic research centres in Sri Lanka and in-depth interviews with both migrants and recruiters. This data was then compared with that of two previous national surveys. Migrants were interviewed both prior to their departure for the Middle East and after their return, using a snowball technique. Recruiting agents were interviewed concerning migrant patronage and familiarity, and randomly selected using the official register of licensed agencies. The labour market By the early 1980s, completion of major infrastructural projects in the Middle East and emphasis by local governments on training their own nationals, led to a lower demand for imported skilled and manual labour. At the same time, the emergence of a middle class created a new demand for unskilled labour, especially in the domestic sector. This transition in the demand for labour from the public space to the private space of the home meant a transition from male to female labour, resulting in the feminisation of expatriate labour in the Middle East. At the same time in Sri Lanka, female employment was severely curtailed by the free-market economic policies of the United National Party (UNP), which swept into political power in 1977. Open-market policies, including import liberalisation of textiles and yarn, virtually wiped out the female-dominated

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handloom and textile sector, helping create a female unemployment rate estimated at 45 percent (Eelens et al 1992). Sri Lanka found a niche for its surplus female labour in the Middle East. Unlike the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh which, due to reports of physical, sexual and psychological harassment of housemaids, banned female migration for employment to the Middle East, the Sri Lankan government openly supported the process and set up the facilitating infrastructure led by the state-sponsored Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE). Migration soon grew to be a major source of employment for Sri Lankans, with total migration increasing from 215,000 in the mid 1980s (Korale 1985; Eelens et al 1992) to over 800,000 in 1994 (see Table 14.1). Of these, a surprising 83.5 percent were estimated to be female, earning a salary of US$100–200 a month1 (Ismail 1994; Dias 1996). Religion and migration Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic nation with three dominant ethnic groups: the Singhalese who are mostly Buddhist, the Tamils who are mostly Hindu, and the Moors and Malays who are Muslim. Although Muslims constitute just over 7 percent of the total population, they represent 23 percent of the Sri Lankan labour force bound for countries in the Middle East (see Table 14.2). More than twothirds of these migrants are women (Dias 1996; Jacobs and Papma 1992). Within the Muslim community, however, a marked difference in the percentage of Malay migrants highlights an intra-racial class distinction in the process of migration. The Malay Muslims, who are predominantly urban and of Malaysian descent, are not inhibited by the more conservative, gendered spatial restraints that inhibit the Moors, who form the majority of Muslims in Sri Lanka. The consequent spatial and cultural freedom to seek employment in Sri Lanka results in fewer Malay women going to work overseas. These urban Malays speak English, an asset in Table 14.2 Distribution of migrants by ethnicity, 1985: (men and women)

Source: Korale (1985:42) (adapted)

the local labour market, and are thus assured of better-paying jobs at home.


It is not the usual practice amongst the Muslims, especially those living in rural areas, for women to work away from home. Males are considered to be the breadwinners of the family, and the female’s duties lie within the confines of her own home. Although this view is changing quickly among the younger generation in response to economic hardship, reports of abuse in the Middle East, and availability of factory jobs for women in Sri Lanka, 60 percent of the return migrants who were interviewed said they would not work as a domestic servant in a Sri Lanka home. The key to the household acceptance of their migration was that they had to leave Sri Lanka. This seems rather a drastic solution and raises the question of whether these women left of their own free will or were forced to go by the male head of household. In-depth interviewing revealed that the former was true in most cases, with filial pressures playing a complementary role in the decision-making process. Compared to the average migrant, Muslim women were found to come from smaller families with a higher household income and a higher education, coupled with a greater determination to overcome economic hardship by making use of the opportunities migration provided. These were not women who were helpless and forced into migrant labour. In many cases, they took a proactive role in making sure they were nominated to leave the household in search of work. Prospective migrants used the specter of household poverty as a way of transcending local spatial constraints and convincing a strongly patriarchal Muslim community that it was acceptable to allow its women to relocate themselves to a foreign country hundreds of miles away from home. These women use their identity as Muslims to justify their travel, claiming that because Middle Eastern countries are Islamic, they would be safe. They also make use of their Islamic heritage to win favourable travel incentives from local recruiters desperately in need of Muslim clients. The Muslim housemaids, in contrast to their non-Muslim counterparts, are charged a nominal fee by the recruiter and do not have to pay for air travel to their destination. Once in the Middle East, these women renegotiate their position in a new location and culture by once again trading on their Muslim identity in order to gain a favoured status within the family they serve. This is achieved by participating in religious activities, which are not open to non-Muslim housemaids. Placed in a vulnerable position in a foreign country, with no language skills or status, these women use any leverage they have to better their position. Some 90 percent of those interviewed in the field survey reported that they found it easier to secure employment because they were Muslims. These maids, then, make use of their identity as Muslims and, when it suits them, as foreigners, to gain greater psychological and physical access and mobility in a new society. The role of the housemaid With the widespread distribution of wealth in the Middle East (thanks to the oil industry), a burgeoning middle class has fueled a demand for domestic servants.

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While the wealthy households traditionally employ multiple domestic servants, middle-class families are in most cases limited to one servant per household. As a consequence, the maid has to perform a wide range of tasks, and in some cases, due to large families and an extended family structure, has to work for more than one household at a time. This makes their work extremely arduous. The specific tasks that maids are assigned range from cleaning and washing, to cooking, tailoring, serving meals, and taking care of the aged, children and the disabled (Ismail 1994; Spaan 1992). The employment situation of these immigrant servants is distinctive in that women are both the employee and employer, and the working and living space of the migrant worker is within the private space of the employer’s home. This fusion of work and living space results in the maid being called upon to perform household tasks at all times of the day and night. As a result, working hours are long, with over two-thirds of the housemaids working between eleven and twenty hours a day. The women usually worked all week, with some maids having Friday off (Ismail 1994; Spaan 1992). The level of dependency and/or exploitation that evolves between the maid and the lady of the house determines whether the relationship is one of trust and friendship, or of abuse and exploitation (Momsen 1991). This is further complicated by the cultural conflicts that arise, especially over the influence that foreign maids have on children and the potential for sexual relationships between the maid and employer’s husband, and/or adult sons. The perceived benefits of upward social mobility on the part of the local employer, and perceived upward economic mobility on the part of the employee, evolve, in most cases, into a love-hate relationship between the maid and the mistress of the house. Migrant welfare in the workplace A question that needs to be addressed at this point concerns the working conditions of Sri Lankan housemaids in the Middle East. It has been pointed out that some neighbouring Asian countries have banned women from working as housemaids in the Middle East, due to concerns regarding harassment and sexual and physical abuse of these women. Pakistan and Bangladesh banned the export of housemaids to the Middle East in 1983, due to public reports of mistreatment. The Philippine government has considered a similar course of action. Sri Lanka appears to be most lackadaisical on the issue. A convenient strategy used by the authorities in charge of investigating mistreatment, is to accuse these women of lying. Although lying has certainly occurred, it does not nullify the actual cases of abuse. According to a study by Korale (1986), 5.7 percent of those interviewed terminated their contract prematurely, due to harassment by the employer. The untold number who have endured abuse in order to keep their employment can only be inferred, since the sensitive nature of the subject keeps many from talking about it. Many of the women interviewed did admit to being aware of the risks involved in securing employment in the Middle East, but most of them felt it could be avoided by their


own restrained behavior. The mantle of abuse is assumed to be the responsibility of the women. In cases of abuse, because the employers hold the passports of their employees, the maids have either to find alternate employment with an employer willing to pay off the previous employer for the release of the passport, or are forced to return to the same employer. Some run away and seek shelter at the embassy. In a documented incident, the Honorary Consul-General for Sri Lanka in Jordan, a wealthy Jordanian businessman, was arrested for selling illegitimate babies born to Sri Lankan maids in Jordan. He was arrested by Jordanian police on the grounds that he provided safe houses for Sri Lankan maids to give birth to illegitimate babies. The consul sold the babies for prices ranging from US$5000 to $8000 each, to childless couples in Europe. He was also arrested on three counts of rape (Reuter News Agency 1996). Despite the numerous complaints, the government of Sri Lanka has made little effort to impose limitations on the trade in these unsuspecting women. With remittances being arguably the most important foreign-exchange earner for the country, these maids are Sri Lanka’s most lucrative export commodity. The income earned by women who scrub floors, change diapers, cook meals, clean house and put up with much abuse, pays for Sri Lanka’s import of food, fuel, military equipment and much more. The continuation of earnings by these women is not only a matter of ‘household survival’, but of national security as well. However, the women involved, until recently, received no state-sponsored protection from the abuse they underwent to provide this precious foreign exchange. This is partly due to the fact that the migrants are generally from a rural, lower-class background whose voices are seldom heard. In many cases, the only government involvement in the whole process of recruitment lies in the signing of the ‘model contract of employment’. This contract, drafted by the governmentsponsored Bureau of Foreign Employment, is of little practical use once the migrant leaves the shores of Sri Lanka. There has been no recorded litigation for breach of contract, although most contracts are thought to be broken. For these migrant women, the aims and aspirations with which they leave Sri Lanka are far removed from the realities they experience. Abused by their employers, deprived of their friends and freedom, sometimes even of their pay, they endure it all, in the hope of bringing home enough money to build a house, educate their children and improve the quality of their lives. Characteristics of female muslim maids Age and marital status The average age of the Muslim housemaids interviewed in 1993 was 34 years, with over 75 percent coming within the 30–45 year age group (Table 14.3). This reflects the conditions imposed by Middle Eastern recruiters, who specify an approximate age range of between 30 and 45 years. In a national comparison,

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Muslim migrants have a much older profile than other women migrants2 due to the circular migratory pattern that develops as a result of the high demand for, and restricted supply of, Muslim domestic servants. The survey found that 75.8 percent of the female Muslim migrants were married. A higher incidence of married women leaving for employment overseas is partly due to the fact that many women migrants hesitate to send their unmarried daughters to the Middle East3 because of the negative social image associated with working as a domestic in the region (Jacobs and Papma 1992), or because of the assertiveness of mothers who do not want their daughters to undergo the same hardships they had to. Other reasons include the changing and less conservative attitudes within the Muslim community towards female employment outside the home, and the burgeoning opportunities for employment in Sri Lanka, with multinational electronics and garment industries attracting young women who would otherwise have left for employment in the Middle East. Because they do not have the skills required for employment in the factories, older women are at a disadvantage because they are perceived to be too old to learn the necessary new skills. With no other form of comparable economic activity in Sri Lanka, these older Muslim women form a ‘captive labour pool’ whose opportunities for employment exist outside their home and country. Over 75 percent of the women Table 14.3 Distribution of female Muslim migrants by age, 1993

Source: Field Study 1993

interviewed, including those categorised as prospective migrants, were on their third or fourth trip to the Middle East. Education The Muslim migrants were found to have the same, or even higher levels of education as the migrant women of other ethno-religious communities. They were also found to be amongst the more educated of their own Muslim community. Almost half of these women had at least 6 years of formal education. The rate of


primary and secondary education in the study sample is higher than the national average of 37.5 percent, as is the rate of secondary education which exceeds the national average of 29.2 percent. (Department of Statistics 1990). Data compiled by the Marga Institute (1986) study on non-gendered ethnic migration was used to cross-check data collected in our survey. According to the Marga Institute study, Muslim migrants (male and female combined) with a primary education, accounted for 34 percent of the migrant population, and those with a secondary education approximately 61.1 percent (see Table 14.4). The Marga Institute (1986) figures support my 1994 findings that the Muslim female migrants are better educated than the non-migrant women belonging to their own and other ethno-religious communities; in particular, they are more likely to have reached the secondary level of education. Being more educated is a trait found amongst many female migrant communities around the world (Monk 1981). Household income and size The household income of the migrant women (both returned and prospective migrants) was calculated solely on the earnings of the spouse or male guardian. This was found to be necessary, since none of the women claimed to be employed in the formal sector in Sri Lanka either before or after their employment in the Table 14.4 Educational level according to ethnicity of migrants (%)

* Primary level refers to up to 6 years of formal education; Secondary is between 6 and 10 years Source: Adapted from Marga Institute, 1986; figures in parentheses from Field Survey (1993)

Middle East. This lack of paid employment for women in Sri Lanka is not unusual. According to Brochmann’s (1992) survey of female migrants, 79 percent of the prospective migrants claimed to have had no paid employment prior to their departure, as did 70 percent of the migrants in the Marga Institute (1986) survey. All the women interviewed for this study claimed to have never been engaged in any form of formal income-generating activity prior to their departure to the Middle East. They had been entirely dependent on their husband’s earnings. However, a number of the female migrants reported that once they secured employment in the Middle East, their menfolk gave up their jobs due to a variety

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of alleged reasons such as being laid off, sickness or physical disability. During the interviews, it appeared that in most cases the men were taking advantage of their wives’ income to stop working. It was common for the mother of the migrant to take over the care of the children and/or the entire household. The remittances were in many cases sent directly to the mother. Only 33 percent of the women sent their earnings directly to their husbands. Once the migrant maid, who was sometimes the only income-earner in the household, returned home, the family that had become solely dependent on her income was severely impoverished. This placed the entire household in financial jeopardy. In these circumstances, the migrant often felt pressured by her family to leave for overseas employment once again. This cycle of dependence reinforces the characteristic circular migration that defines female Muslim migration to the Middle East. The average income of the household of the prospective Muslim migrant is barely above the official poverty level, although over 50 percent received a monthly income in excess of US$40 per month. Despite the possible exaggeration, one needs to recognise that these families are marginally better off, compared to households that did not have a prospective or active migrant to support it. A household of a prospective migrant needs to have funds to fund the migrant’s departure, as well as to support itself until remittances arrive. If money needed to be borrowed, the family had to be credit-worthy. Not all moneylenders accept expected earnings as collateral. The process of migration favours those who can afford to go and not necessarily those who need to go. A study of the characteristics of these women suggests that the female Muslim migrant comes from the more progressive and more educated element of the Muslim community. This distinction may explain why these women are out of their home and country earning their own incomes in a manner so different from the average Muslim woman in Sri Lanka. Most Muslim women in Sri Lanka are less educated than women of other ethno-religious communities, they participate in far fewer economic activities, and are generally considered to be the most subservient to their male kin. The Muslim woman who takes the initiative to break away from the norms of her society to seek employment in the Middle East may not be merely pushed to this drastic action by the force of the poverty that surrounds her and pressure from her male kin; she may instead be taking this bold and courageous step on her own initiative, and may see migration to the Middle East as the only way through which she can initiate upward economic mobility for herself and her family (Brochmann 1990; Hettige 1992; Jacobs and Papma 1992). The actual migrant who tears herself away from home and goes to the Middle East, is socioeconomically different from the rest of her community, and it may suffice to say that not all Muslim women faced by identical economic pressures will migrate, even if selected to do so by the ‘household’. Instead, it tends to be the more educated woman enjoying some measure of self-confidence and coming from a smaller household, who will use the migration option in an attempt to


alleviate the poverty her family faces. The case involving ‘Zarina’ illustrates this point. Zarina was a 22–year-old, lower-middle class unmarried woman with a secondary education when she migrated. Her widowed mother struggled to support her family of 3. With poverty a pressing issue, Zarina concluded that emigration as a domestic servant to the Middle East was the only way out. She migrated to the Middle East in 1978 and worked for a family in Iran earning US$75 per month. With the Iranian revolution in 1979, Zarina was given the option of going back to Sri Lanka or migrating to the United States with the family she worked for. Seeing no point in going back, she opted to complete the remaining years of her contract in the United States. She saved every penny of her now US$375 per month salary and sent most of it to her mother in Sri Lanka. Upon completion of her contract, and with no visa to remain in the United States, Zarina, after some persuasion by a friend, decided to marry a Caucasian-American Muslim bus driver who was willing to help her get a ‘green card’. She worked at a retail store as a cashier earning US$7 per hour. Astutely, Zarina invested her meager savings in a joint real-estate deal with three friends, and made enough money to buy a house in San Bruno, California. Not satisfied with her job, she joined Farmers Insurance as a trainee real-estate agent, received her license in 1990 and rose to become one of their best agents. Today, Zarina works for Alliance Bancorp in Millbrae, California as an insurance agent and loan consultant. She hopes to open her own real estate/ insurance agency soon. Zarina owns two homes in California. She still supports her family in Sri Lanka, is a devout Muslim, and is extremely proud of her own personal success. This is a success story beyond the ordinary. It is a story of a woman’s desperate attempt to avoid the life she saw for herself if she stayed in Sri Lanka. She is the epitome of the type of Muslim migrant whose stories we never hear about. With good timing, Zarina took advantage of every opportunity available in order to advance and accomplish the purpose of her migration, that is, to help her family and herself become economically and socially upward mobile. A synthesis of gender, religion and race The whole process of female migration to the Middle East is a lower- to lowermiddle class phenomenon in Sri Lanka. Whilst the status of the family whose females are working in the Middle East is enhanced within the same social class, they are looked down upon by those of a higher social class because they needed the migration of their women for family survival. Therefore, whilst the income from the Middle East enables the family to get out of debt, build a house, educate children and raise its consumption level (Ismail 1994; Yapa 1995), it also brings with it the social stigma that is attached to a female working as a domestic servant outside her home (also see Buang 1993). The salaries that are earned by these maids are high enough, however, that they sometimes attract women from the middle class as well.

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The dilemma that faces the middle-class woman is the cultural bias that considers paid housework to be an inferior occupation (Brochmann 1990). This is unfortunate with regard to the national impact that could have been achieved as a result of female migration. The lower-class women, by virtue of their higher earnings, contribute to a higher standard of living based more on consumption than investment. Paradoxically, the class of people who could utilise the income in a manner that could yield long-term returns do not, for the most part, make use of the opportunity. The Muslim migrant pursues the act of migration in spite of the social stigma attached to the job. She makes use of her gender and religion to negotiate her economic future, regardless of class-based social taboos, and moves into a foreign work space. The migrant female Muslim housemaid molds herself using a combination of gender, religion and class, which interact to define her status within the community. Conclusion The Sri Lankan female Muslim migrant who travels to the Middle East in search of employment, is a woman pushed by the economic needs of her family into contractual bondage with employers she has never met or spoken to. She is remunerated for her sacrifices in monetary terms that are far above what she could ever earn back in her home country. However, the sacrifices she makes (including the possibility of abuse, long separations from loved ones, and servant status) in her attempt to alleviate the poverty of herself and her family, are not quantifiable in economic terms and are far in excess of normal circumstances. She ventures forth to migrate in order to make use of one of the few opportunities available to her to ease her economic burden; in addition, she does so in spite of the cultural constraints that bind the women of her community to a restricted environment governed by religion, class and gender. The strong demand for the Muslim housemaid makes this situation all the more interesting, because the number of Muslim women who have the potential to be actual migrants is small and this facilitates a circular type of repeat migration. Women who migrate are the more advanced in terms of education, income and personal confidence (all of which are developed independently of the effect of migration), when compared to the rest of the community. These preexisting social and economic factors that favour the probability of migration amongst certain Muslim women, help define the Muslim housemaid as a unique entity in the process of migration from Sri Lanka to the Middle East. Notes 1 In 1992, US$100 was the minimum wage set by the government of Sri Lanka. The exchange rate is: US$1=SL Rupees 60. 2 ‘The national average age for female migrants was 24 in Brochmann’s (1992) study.


3 Monk (1981) found the opposite occurring in Puerto Rico, where the propensity to migrate among young women was positively correlated to their mothers having worked outside the home.

References Brochmann, G. (1990) The Middle East Avenue: Female Migration from Sri Lanka, Causes and Consequences, Oslo: Institute for Social Research. Brochmann, G. (1992) ‘Sri Lankan housemaids in the Middle East: an avenue for social and economic improvement?’, in F.Eelens, T.Schampers and J.D.Speckmann (eds), Labour Migration to the Middle East, London: Kegan Paul Int. Buang, A. (1993) ‘Development and factory women: negative perceptions from a Malaysian source area’, in J.H.Momsen and V.Kinnaird (eds), Different Places, Different Voices, New York: Routledge. Department of Statistics. (1990) Statistical Yearbook, Colombo: Sri Lanka Department of Statistics. Dias, M. (1996) ‘An assessment of migration policies with special reference to female domestic workers, Sri Lanka’, paper presented at Consultative Meeting of ANWIM, Indonesia, October 9–12, 1996. Eelens F., Schampers, T. and Speckmann, J.D. (eds) (1992) Labour Migration to the Middle East, London: Kegan Paul Int. Fernando, V. (1984) ‘Homecoming’, Navasilu, 6:23. Hettige, S.T. (1992) ‘Economic gain and social costs of West Asian migration: the case of Nachchaduwa’, Marga Quarterly Journal, 12, 2:1–17. Ismail, M. (1994) ‘The migration of Muslim women from Sri Lanka to the Middle East’, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of California, Davis. Jacobs, E.J.J. and Papma, A. (1992) ‘The socio-economic position and religious status of Sri Lankan Muslim women migrating to the Gulf’, in F.Eelens, T.Schampers and J.D. Speckmann (eds), Labour Migration to the Middle East, London: Kegan Paul Int. Korale, R.B.M. (1985) Foreign Employment: Sri Lanka Experience, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Ministry of Plan Implementation. Korale, R.B.M. (1986) ‘Migration for employment in the Middle East: its demographic and socio-economic effects on Sri Lanka’, in F.Arnold and N.M.Shah (eds) Asian Labour Migration: Pipeline to the Middle East, 213–34, Boulder: Westview Press Marga Institute (1986) Migrant Workers to the Arab World, Colombo, Sri Lanka: Marga Institute. Momsen, J.H. (1991) Women and Development in the Third World, London: Routledge. Momsen, J.H. (1992) ‘Gender selectivity in Caribbean migration’, in S.Chant (ed.), Gender and Migration in Developing Countries, London: Belhaven Press. Monk, J. (1981) ‘Social change and sexual differences in Puerto Rican rural migration’, in O.H. Horst (ed.), Papers in Latin American Geography, in honour of Lucia Harrison, Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers, 1:28–41. Reuter News Agency. (1996) Reuters News Agency report, March 26, 1996. Ruhunuge, L.K. (1996) ‘Sri Lankan labour migration: trends and threats’, Economic Review, 2l: 1–10.

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Spaan, E.J.A.M. (1992) ‘Socio-economic conditions of Sri Lankan migrant workers in the Gulf states’, in F.Eelens, T.Schampers and J.D.Speckmann (eds), Labour migration to the Middle East, London: Kegan Paul Int. Yapa, L.K. (1995) The decision making process of international labour migration with special reference to the Sri Lankan housemaid’, M.A. thesis, University of Colombo.

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15 ‘LEARNING THE WAYS OF THE PRIYAYI’ Domestic servants and the mediation of modernity in Jakarta, Indonesia Rebecca Elmhirst

Presences and absences Paid domestic work is a fact of life throughout Indonesia. In both rural and urban areas, and among both rich and relatively poor households, many people employ others to undertake domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning and childcare. From urban élites to government workers, from business professionals to market traders, all but the poorest households have, at some time, engaged paid domestic workers or pembantu (literally, ‘helpers’) and in myriad ways, domestic service touches the lives of almost everyone in Indonesia. Although there are no systematic data on domestic service in Indonesia, studies of urban labour markets in Indonesian cities indicate that a high proportion of informal-sector workers are employed as domestic servants (Guinness 1986; Jellinek 1991; Murray 1991; Wright 1997). Historical studies, literature and film indicate that the domestic servant has been a feature of life for many years in Indonesia, both before and during Dutch colonial rule.1 In recent years, as this paper will show, a number of social and economic developments in Indonesia point to the continued, if not the growing, importance of domestic service in numerical terms. Prior to the economic crisis of 1997–98, increasing wealth, a shift from an agrarian-based to a manufacturing and servicebased economy, the rise of an urban middle class, and increasing female labour force participation generally, are suggestive of the importance of domestic service. First, the employment of domestic servants is an important backstop, which enables élite women to manage the changes in middle-class family life brought by women’s formal sector-employment and changing consumption practices. Secondly, domestic service is an important entry point for female migrants to the city, who lack the skills or capital needed to work in more formal occupations (as factory workers or setting up in petty trade). While female literacy rates in Indonesia are relatively high, at 74 percent for Indonesia as a whole, and 97 percent for Jakarta, just 28 percent of Indonesian women have completed junior high school: a qualification which is needed in order to obtain work in a factory.2 No such entry restrictions affect domestic service. Furthermore, as factories beset by economic difficulties have dismissed large numbers of female workers, domestic

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service is increasingly regarded as an important income-source for newly unemployed young women who previously would not have considered such work. More generally, other features of domestic service in Indonesia make it a common mode of employment for poor women in cities. Board and meals are usually provided, and in some instances, women combine caring for their own children with completing domestic tasks (e.g. minding their child while washing laundry). For these reasons, domestic service in Indonesia is seen as a useful safety net for poor, unskilled women arriving to work in the city. Finally, as other papers in this volume point out, domestic service is of vital importance in conceptual terms, and this is no less the case in Indonesia. Wider social changes and the ways in which these intersect with, and reconfigure aspects of domestic life, are brought into focus when attention is paid to domestic service. As Gill points out in her study of domestic service in Bolivia, ‘an exploration of domestic service allows us to ask questions about the way work is structured in homes, how this work is shaped by changes in the wider society, and how beliefs about gender are molded within and between classes and ethnicities’ (Gill 1994: 6). In view of its numerical, socioeconomic and conceptual importance, it is surprising that there have been so few studies of domestic service in Indonesia. Those that do exist have tended to concentrate on what Cooper calls ‘transnational mega dramas’ of labour export (Cooper 1997), wherein women leave Indonesia to work in the Middle East and other parts of Asia as domestic servants. In Indonesia, activist, scholarly and media attention has tended to centre on this issue, imbued as it has been with questions of economic nationalism, social morality and international social justice (Heyzer and Wee 1995; Huang and Yeoh 1996; Chin 1997). In 1994, this culminated in the Indonesian Minister for Women’s Affairs, Mien Sugandhi, announcing the government’s intention to stop women working overseas as domestic labourers. According to the International Labour Organisation, government-sanctioned unskilled labour export is now being phased out (ILO 1994). Far less attention has been given to the situation of domestic servants within Indonesia itself, where their position is equally ambiguous. Domestic servants are simultaneously ever-present and invisible. On the one hand, state development planners, intent on maximizing women’s participation in development, seem to assume the presence of unlimited paid (or unpaid) domestic help, while on the other, domestic servants are ‘invisible’ in policy terms. Female domestic servants are unaccounted for in labour censuses, unprotected by labour legislation or trade unions, and beyond the reach of most non-governmental organisations. That domestic service should be so invisible is not surprising to feminists, who have long recognised the invisibility of the ‘domestic sphere’ and informal economic activities in development planning (Kabeer 1994) and trade-union activity (Hosner Martens 1994). Activities of traditional trade unions tend to elude people working as domestics in scattered units, who are devoid of legal employment status, lacking in financial support, and who have little contact with other domestic workers. In Indonesia, where the latitude of trade-union activity is severely circumscribed, the


situation for domestic workers is even more challenging. One labour organisation is officially recognised, the Serikat Pekerja Seluruh Indonesia (All Indonesia Workers Union), seen by many as a government tool of control, and without international recognition as a legitimate trade union (Hadiz 1993).3 SPSI has an office for women and child workers, but it effectively only reaches a small minority of women workers, mainly in the manufacturing sector (Smyth and Grijns 1997). Attempts to liaise with domestic workers are hampered by the kinds of constraints faced by unions in other countries, attempting to organise in this sector. In addition, the ambiguities of domestic service in Indonesia, particularly the ways it is often tied in to kinship links between servants and their employers, has often put it out of the reach of non-governmental organisations. However, there are other, more complex and unsettling reasons why domestic service within Indonesia remains so invisible despite its implicit role in most people’s lives. The persistence, and even growth of domestic service in Indonesia, raises awkward questions about class divisions in a country that has been, until recently, marked by high economic growth (in the 1980s and early 1990s), but where wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small but spectacularly wealthy élite (Robison 1996).4 For Indonesians, in abstract terms, most aspects of domestic service hold feudal connotations that are at odds with an imagined ‘modern’ Indonesia. Benedict Anderson’s discussion of a recent novel by an Indonesian feminist writer, Title Said, illustrates this tension nicely (Anderson 1996).5 He points to the implausibility of there being no maids in the home of the novel’s wealthy protagonists, and suggests their absence represents ‘a strange, itchy, veiled encounter’ between the ideological norms of New Order Indonesia (i.e. the rule of President Suharto from the mid 1960s to 1998), and the author’s 1990s Jakarta feminism. Furthermore, female servants were ideologically invisible to the Suharto regime, despite their vast numbers: the true Indonesian Woman is supposed to be ‘alongside her husband, caring for him, his home and his children’, not separated from him, cooking for other people, and minding other people’s children (Anderson 1996:291). Indeed, servanthood ‘belies the formal egalitarianism of Indonesian nationalism’ (ibid), and contradicts the inclusive intentions of middle-class feminism among Jakarta’s educated women. For these reasons, domestic servants remain off stage in the novel, as indeed they do in most television portrayals of middle-class urban life. The discomfort and ambivalence that de facto middle-class activists, scholars and policy makers (both Indonesian and expatriate) feel towards domestic service in Indonesia, appears to match that which is now being explored in an emerging European and North American literature on contemporary paid domestic work and the ‘politics of the domestic’ (Gregson and Lowe 1994; Pratt 1997; Stiell and England 1997). Yet, while a renewed emphasis on the ‘domestic realm’ and its importance in producing particular (post?)modernities has considerable relevance in Indonesia, attention needs to be paid to the ways domestic service is constructed locally. Local configurations of modernity itself, and the particularities of ‘the domestic’ as a source of cultural, social and economic production, constitute


domestic service in specific ways in Indonesia. In turn, domestic service plays an important part in configuring and mediating gendered class relations and Indonesian modernities in the 1990s. This paper examines the specificities of domestic service in Indonesia, as well as the role of female domestic servants in mediating contested notions of tradition and modernity among Jakarta’s middle classes, comparing these with employment in expatriate households. These specificities are placed in historical context by examining traditional representations of domestic service in Indonesia, before attention is turned to contemporary Indonesia and the changing context of domestic service. Of interest, is the rise of an urban middle class marked by particular patterns of female labour force participation and consumption practices, both of which have taken place in a climate of debate about tradition and modernity in Indonesia. This paper considers the central role of female domestic servants in enabling contradictory images of modern Indonesian femininity to be reconciled among middle-class women. This, in turn, raises new contradictions between an invisible class of poor, female domestic servants and their high-profile, middleclass employers. Drawing on secondary materials and on time-geographic research among a small sample of female domestic workers in Jakarta, this paper considers reconfigurations of gendered class relations, of the domestic sphere, and of work. The tradition of domestic service in Indonesia6 While the data are patchy, domestic service has a long history in Indonesia. The employment of servants was common practice, both by indigenous élites, and by Dutch colonials through the colonial period. Its importance for poor indigenous women is illustrated by early census material gathered by Dutch officials which suggests that in some places, as many as 6 percent of indigenous (i.e. Indonesian) women were engaged in domestic service in the early 1930s (Locher-Scholten 1992). Underreporting suggests that the actual figure might have been even higher. Among Java’s indigenous élite, the employment of servants was closely associated with the system of patronage that tied élite (priyayi) families to particular families of the rural poor (wong cilik, literally, ‘little people’) (Koentjaraningrat 1985). Systems of patronage and obligation ran between the two families, and into arenas beyond the domestic. For example, access to rice land for poor families was governed by their relationship with their priyayi patron. Among the Javanese, these patron-client relations were further marked by complex, status-reinforcing practices including modes of speech and bodily deportment. Servants would enter a room on their knees, with head lowered and eyes averted, and on leaving, they would back out, never turning their back on their employer. Working as a servant was represented discursively as a privilege: a way of learning the ways of the priyayi and of charting a course of upward mobility, although in practice this was rarely the case. Rather, the servant-employer relationship was a way in which status and hierarchy could be achieved and maintained. Priyayi ‘Javaneseness’


was something to aspire to: ‘a trajected composite: the end product of a prolonged series of customary rites dutifully completed between servants and employers’ (Pemberton 1994:141). Insomuch as a moral economy of domestic service ever actually existed (see also Scott 1976), employers were under some obligation to reciprocate their servants’ loyalty by providing shelter, food and clothing. Effectively, this meant that the domestic servant was ‘owned’ by their employer, living in, on duty at all times, and with major life decisions in the hands of their priyayi master or mistress. Relations between domestic servant women and their priyayi patrons were also underscored by kinship, whether fictive or not. Often, servants were related in some way to the families they worked for (e.g. distant cousins). Occasionally, and particularly among the less well-off élites, priyayi would ‘adopt’ or borrow a relative’s child (minta anak), who would be brought up both as a daughter and as an unpaid domestic helper. In addition, there was some slippage between the roles of ‘wife’ and domestic helper (paid in kind with food and shelter). Priyayi men either married or took in a second or third wife, who would effectively hold the status of unpaid domestic helper and sexual partner, enabling the principal wife to give up domestic work and concentrate on business activities—an important role for élite women (Djajadiningrat-Nieuwenhuis 1992). Some of these practices continue in contemporary configurations of domestic service. The conferring and reinforcement of status through the employment of servants remains important among Jakarta’s élites and upwardly mobile. Although it is rare to see servants prostrate at the feet of their employees, other signs are used to reinforce status distinctions and to parade social position. For example, neatly uniformed maids on hand are important cultural capital for the presentation of ‘self’ in wealthy metropolitan circles. Second, among the urban middle class, it is common for families to ‘adopt’ a child and pay for their education, in return for their working as a laundry maid or cleaner before school begins. In the Sumatran province of Lampung, there is often an ethnic dimension to this relationship: Lampungese may adopt a poor Javanese child to fulfil the role of domestic helper, paid in kind with education. The Javanese are considered to be better equipped (culturally) to serve than the Lampungese, for whom servitude implies a serious loss of status (pi’il pesinggiri) (Elmhirst 1997). Third, wealthy rural land owners may take on second and third wives who effectively fulfil the role of domestic servants, relieving the principal wife of domestic duties. For similar reasons to those given for adopting a Javanese child, some wealthy Lampungese land owners acquire a Javanese wife to carry out domestic tasks (and work in the fields), while their Lampungese wives remain in the city, engaging in more acceptable ‘feminine’ pursuits. Indigenous systems of patronage between servant and employer (as outlined above), were re-configured and reworked by Dutch colonials, who employed numerous Javanese women as house maids and nurse maids in the preIndependence Netherlands Indies. For the most part, servants’ activities involved general housekeeping, cooking and washing and, where their employment was


with a Dutch family rather than a lone man, childcare. Reciprocal relations between servants and colonial households were less marked. Rather, the presence of ‘native servants’ appears to have been a source of great anxiety for European colonials concerned about racial ‘purity’—numerous manuals were produced detailing how servants should be kept separate from the main household, and how their role in bringing up European children should be minimised (Stoler 1996). According to Stoler, colonial domestic servants ‘effectively policed the borders of the private, mediated between the “street” and the home, occupied the inner recesses of bourgeois life, were, in short, the subaltern gatekeepers of gender, class and racial distinctions, which by their very presence they transgressed’ (Stoler 1996:77). These transgressions were particularly acute in the Netherlands Indies context, since the line between servanthood and concubinage was blurred (in parallel to indigenous relations between servants and employers). For example, in the nineteenth century, more than half of the European men in the Indies lived in domestic arrangements with ‘native’ women who were simultaneously their servants, sexual partners and household managers (Stoler 1996). Domestic service and new Indonesian modernities Domestic service has continued to be an important form of employment for women in post-Independence Indonesia, in a context where female labour force participation has always been relatively high. Even assuming considerable underreporting of women’s employment, in the early 1960s, 30 percent of rural women and 24 percent of urban women were counted as working (Wahyuni 1994). According to the 1990 census, around 36 percent of the total work force was female (Biro Pusat Statistik/Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) 1994). The proportion of this increase attributable to domestic service is difficult to ascertain, since paid domestic work tends to be collapsed into the census category of service employment, which includes a whole range of occupations unrelated to domestic service. However, the extraordinary social and economic changes that have taken place in Indonesia during the 1970s and up until the present, have created a context in which the demands for both paid domestic workers and for paid domestic employment have shifted, in line with changing economic realities and changing notions about what is ‘women’s work’ (see Table 15.1). First, over the 1970s, and particularly in rural Java, income-generating opportunities for women in agriculture were squeezed, as changes in farming practices and institutional arrangements regarding access to paid work tended to reduce the opportunities of poorer people (Stoler 1977; Hart 1986). These changes were especially felt by women: the sickle was substituted for the hand-held harvest knife, traditionally used by women, and mechanised rice hullers displaced female workers. In addition, the formalisation of access to credit and agricultural inputs through government schemes tended to discriminate against women, making it more difficult for poorer women to make a living out of agriculture (Sajogyo 1986; Smyth 1993). Among the small sample of domestic workers interviewed for this


Table 15.1 Employment history of domestic servants in Jakarta

Source: Field surveys by author, Jakarta 1986

study, all but three had been employed in agriculture before moving to Jakarta in the late 1970s and early 1980s. All had come from densely populated areas of Java, known for having a high proportion of landlessness and land-poor farmers dependent on wage work in farming. According to Sukiati, from Purwokerto in South Central Java, where rural population densities average more than a thousand per kilometre, agricultural wage work was hard to come by. There was no alternative work, so I followed my aunt to work in Jakarta as a maid for a Javanese family,’ she explained.


While recent studies of rural labour markets have tended to dispute the extent to which women have been pushed out of agriculture in rural Java (White 1991), in the 1990s a new set of factors is prompting a further shift away from farm employment. Government support for large-scale commercial agriculture and outgrower schemes has led to contractual arrangements in which title rests with the male ‘head of household’, meaning women lose vital independent income (White 1997). In a context where divorce is commonplace (but not stigmatised), divorced women must therefore seek alternatives such as paid domestic work. Both Tatun and Sulastari lost their ability to earn income from farming when they divorced, and so moved to Jakarta to find work. In addition, the transfer of land to urban uses and the construction of golf courses in urban fringe areas have restricted farm employment possibilities. For those with few formal skills, domestic service is seen as an important safety net. When Idah’s family sold its tiny plot of land in Mauk for industrial development, domestic service was the obvious choice for a woman with minimal education and a family network already employed in this sector. A second factor which has implications for domestic service in Indonesia relates less to changes in rural production as to changes in urban consumption practices, fueled by economic growth and increasing wealth, at least among a proportion of Indonesia’s population during the 1980s and early 1990s. Recent studies have pointed to dramatic increases in the size and profile of the middle classes in Indonesia, from populist lower-middle classes (employed as government workers, bank clerks and so on) to wealthy indigenous and Chinese capitalists (Robison 1996). In Jakarta, evidence of increased wealth over this period, and an expanding middle class, is seen in the mushrooming new housing estates enclosed by high walls and policed by security guards, luxury high-rise apartment buildings, and large, multi-storied, air-conditioned shopping malls, all of which were built in the 10 years up until the 1997–98 economic crisis. Census data for this period show that around 8.4 percent of Jakarta’s 8.26 million population were categorised as ‘professional and technical’ and ‘managers and administrators’, compared with 6 percent of a 4.5 million population in 1971 (BPS 1990). For this burgeoning middle class, employing domestic servants is seen as crucial to elaborating a convenient urban life style in a context where there are few basic public services. Of the Jakarta households interviewed in this study, a third could be described as middle-class Indonesian: an architect and his beauty salon-owning wife; businessmen and business women, and an employee of the government-run Pertamina oil company. Each of these households employed more than four domestic servants: usually, a security guard (male), a driver (male), a gardener (male), a cook (older female), a laundry maid (young female), and a child minder (female). Typical tasks involved not only conventional domestic work but activities such as taking papers to the office, paying utility bills on behalf of the employer, and running errands. These activities normally involved a hot and dusty two-hour bus ride through Jakarta’s permanent traffic jam. Employing trustworthy and hard-working individuals who could do all of these things was a high priority


for the families interviewed. Through a related set of processes, the number of expatriate professionals working in Jakarta has also grown, in turn fueling demand for domestic workers. The World Bank estimates that there are around 50,000 expatriate ‘experts’ resident in Jakarta alone (World Bank 1994), and without exception, they employ domestic servants. If the process of Indonesian modernity has been about an economic shift from agriculture to industry and services, and about the rise of an urban middle class with particular consumption practices, it has also been a profoundly gendered process (Stivens 1997). This has been especially the case around women’s work —whether inside or outside the home—which has become a focus of local debates around issues of tradition and modernity. What is interesting, is the central importance, albeit invisibility of, the paid domestic worker in the discourses and practices surrounding these changes. Women’s work was a particular target of the Suharto government in Indonesia’s development effort. Following a liberal ‘women-in-development’ agenda (Moser 1993), women have been strongly encouraged to join the work force and take part in formal productive activities. A significant proportion of the growth in urban formal-sector employment (i.e. in manufacturing, retailing and clerical positions), is accounted for by an increase in women’s participation in such activities. The proportion of women in the urban formal sector increased from 25 percent in 1980 to 31 percent in 1990 (OeyGardiner 1993). For a small proportion of highly educated women, participation in formal work has involved taking up professional careers, while for other, middle-class women, it has involved work in small businesses.7 This has been accompanied by the emergence of considerable media and academic debate about women’s roles as both dutiful wife and mother, and career woman (Ihromi 1995). Women’s multiple roles (peran ganda) are seen as an essential element of national development. Yet, this enticement into a greater productive role for women has taken place without any reconfiguration of domestic responsibilities between men and women. Effectively, women’s participation in formal work is facilitated not by men or the state, but by paid domestic workers (Heyzer and Wee 1995; Chapter 7 of this book). Furthermore, in Indonesia, women are obliged by the state to take part in a multitude of official women’s ‘community’ organisations.8 The brief of these organisations varies, but generally they are concerned with support for the family (seen as women’s destiny or kodrat wanita). Such groups are often seen as instrumental in defining Indonesian womanhood and, in many ways, their ideas about appropriate roles for women sit uncomfortably with women’s participation in formal waged work (Djadjadiningrat-Niewenhuis 1992). Members receive instruction in house-keeping, hygiene, public relations conduct, and schooling in national ideology (Pancasila): in ways redolent of what Mies (1986) has termed ‘housewifisation’. Yet, ironically, the endless cycle of meetings and activities place considerable demand on women’s time for domestic work (Sullivan 1983). As Cooley (1993) notes, members who are usually urban and middle class, must rely on paid domestic workers to support their participation in women’s


organisations. Much of the triple burden faced by middle-class women in Indonesia as workers (business women), wives and mothers, and participants in state organisations, is transferred to other, poorer women who appear to have been left out of this particular vision of kodrat wanita (‘women’s destiny’). The feminisation of formal labour markets in Indonesia has had implications for domestic service in other ways. More important than the feminisation of professional and administrative occupations, has been the employment of young women in export-oriented factories, which expanded rapidly during the 1980s and early 1990s (Oey-Gardiner 1993). Typically, such work is open only to those with the requisite educational qualifications (usually a minimum of junior-high-school education). Prior to Indonesia’s economic crisis, factory work superseded domestic service as the principal entry point into urban labour markets for young rural women with some education. By the mid-1990s, wealthy households were reporting that it was increasingly difficult to find affordable domestic help, at least in urban areas where domestic service competed with other, better-paid employment such as factory work. While other Southeast Asian countries looked abroad to recruit women as paid domestic workers (Heyzer and Wee 1995), in Indonesia, urban labour markets tended to stretch over national space and into poorer, more remote rural areas far beyond Greater Jakarta, where wages and education levels are lower. Until the recent economic crash, it was common for middle-class Jakartans to travel long distances to find young women willing to work as domestics, and accompany them back to Jakarta. One employer, a government official, described how he had been unable to find cheap domestic help in Bogor (West Java): They maybe work for two or three months, then they go. There are so many factories, that if they have some schooling, they can just find other work,’ he said. He had traveled to Lampung province (on the island of Sumatra) on business, and while there, visited poor transmigration settlements in the hope of finding a young woman who was willing (and whose parents were willing for her) to work as a domestic.9 From the point of view of young women themselves, domestic service is only a ‘choice’ when they lack the skills to enter other types of employment, or when their life stage prohibits them from paid factory work. More recently, as the opportunity to work in factories has disappeared, domestic service has become the only ‘choice’ available, even for young women with some education. Among the domestic servants interviewed for this study, only three had been to junior high school, while the remainder had, at best, attended school up to primary level. None had ever worked in the formal sector. Rather, domestic service had offered the only option: one which depended only on their having basic domestic skills, one where there was a network enabling them to find such work (either through family ties or through direct recruitment by the employer who visited their natal village as Table 15.1 shows), and a support system enabling those with children to organise their own child care (five of the women interviewed had two or more children, all of whom were cared for by other family members, either in Jakarta or in the village). Thus, a number of factors imply contradictory influences upon


paid domestic work in Indonesia: poor rural women are being displaced from agricultural work and drawn into domestic service in order to serve a growing middle class of women who are increasingly taking part in formal-sector work to support particular consumption patterns, and who are increasingly burdened by the demands of the state to fulfil their ‘role in development’. The next section considers how these conflicting demands are produced and played out in the domestic sphere. Reconfiguring domestic time and space As Stivens (1997) has pointed out, most studies of modernisation and change in Asia tend to represent the domestic realm as somehow static and unyielding - a point of continuity amidst the changes associated with new modernities and globalisation. Yet, as the above has indicated, it is precisely this site where both work and consumption practices are being reworked, and power relations reconfigured, as has been the case elsewhere (Davidoff and Hall 1987). To understand such a process in Indonesia means uncovering the specificities of ‘the domestic’ as a particular type of social space in this context. An analysis of the relationships within and around domestic work, are between domestic servants and their female employers, provides a useful window on the lines of tension between tradition and modernity as these are played out within the domestic realm in Indonesia. Producing domestic space In much of the literature on domestic service in Europe and North America, it is represented in terms of poorer women working for money in other people’s private home spaces. However, in Indonesia, there are particular ways in which the ‘domestic’ is configured, which have implications for the lives of domestic servants. These may be revealed by comparing the spatial stories of domestic servants in middle-class Indonesian households to the stories of those employed by western expatriates in Jakarta. Between these groups, there are considerable differences in the ways the term ‘domestic’ is understood, both materially and conceptually. A comparison says much about the role of female domestic servants in mediating contested ideas of tradition and modernity, as well as conflicting notions of female subjectivity, in Indonesia. For the expatriate households interviewed in this study, the ‘domestic’ was a private home space, separated and secluded, not just from the world of work but also from ‘Indonesia’ in the sense that it was a space in which ‘home’ (the United Kingdom or the United States) could be recreated. All of the homes contained the trappings of western consumer culture: television, western videos, hi-fi, fridgefreezers and microwaves. Personal belongings marked the space as ‘home’, including some rather unlikely items (in one household, an electric guitar and Stetson hat marked the ‘home’ of a Texan oil executive who played country and


western music when in his own private domain). Expatriate households conformed to received Western notions about the ‘domestic’: a nuclear family living in a structure designed to separate paid work from leisure or domestic tasks. Domestic servants generally lived out, and arrived each morning ready to undertake the day’s work. Their position as an ‘employee’ was clearly defined. In expatriate domestic spaces, domestic servants had ‘no place’. On arrival, at dawn, the domestic entered ‘Western’ or foreign space, which for many women, hailing from poor rural families, was problematic in quite practical ways. Working for expatriates meant dealing with unfamiliar foods (e.g. potatoes and pasta), coping with strange domestic appliances (e.g. cappuccino makers), and handling numerous powerladen cultural differences. For employers, the difficulties servants had in handling western domestic space was a source of many complaints: She’d never worked for westerners before. So she had no idea. I continually have to tell her about washing all the fruit and vegetables in boiled water. I mean, there are so many germs you can pick up here. She was not used to people having pets. I had to explain to her how to cook the mince for the dog. And to hoover the house every day to get rid of dog fur. For Muslim domestic servants, the very presence of dogs in domestic space was seen as unclean. Domestic servants themselves challenged with incredulity those modernities associated with expatriates, such as western diets, (westerners rarely eat rice, a daily necessity for Indonesians), alcohol consumption, western family life, and the ways expatriate children were brought up: They are very strict, never kind to their children. If the child does not want to eat, they make him eat, even if he doesn’t want to.’ Speculation about what had happened to the parents of expatriate employers also served to define a line of difference between Indonesian family life and the expatriate families that domestic servants were able to observe. General disapproval was expressed with regard to ‘modern’ western lifestyles and the individualistic values they represented. In the Indonesian households in this study, the production of domestic space was quite different. Within these households, an ambivalence towards tradition and modernity was played out and contested in complicated ways between domestic servants and their wealthy Indonesian employers. Central to the kinds of relationships that existed between these employers and domestic servants was a kinship idiom, which underscored, and was reproduced by, the material construction of domestic space. This idiom, in turn, served as an important rhetorical device for mediating the contradictions of domestic service (as an abstract category), so-called Asian family values and Indonesian ideas about women’s destiny (kodrat wanita). As is the case in much of Java, the homes of the Indonesian families interviewed, involved notions of front space and back space. The front of the house, including the veranda and front room, were semipublic spaces, in which guests would be entertained and business dealings


transacted. The rear of the house was a private, intimate space reserved for close family members. Significantly, the back space of the house was where behind-thescenes domestic tasks were completed, and where domestic servants lived, sharing food and, in less wealthy households, a bathroom, with the employer. The location of servants within that back space meant that they were considered as low-status family members, sharing intimate family space. Use of kinship idioms to describe and position domestic servants with respect to their employers also contrasted with servant-employer relations in expatriate households. The kinship idiom was used in a manner similar to that described by Radcliffe (1990) in Peru. For example, it was common for sons and daughters of employers to refer to domestic servants as adik, a term used for younger siblings. Familial ties between Indonesian employers and employees meant genealogies of obligation ran between them. For several of the domestic servants interviewed, their employers paid for their children’s schooling and even doctors’ bills for a sick parent. However, the kinship idiom also had the effect of restricting the ability of domestic servants to script their own lives. This was not just in terms of time spent at work, it also involved major life decisions such as marriage partners. One domestic worker described how her employer (she used the term Ibu—mother or respected female superior) had made her convert from Islam to Christianity. Domestic servants were reluctant to challenge the almost parental authority of their employers. Thus, intrahousehold class relations between servants and their employers were filial in essence, and struck a chord with the feudal priyayi-wong cilik relations described previously. These relationships were described in positive ways by both parties: as a reflection of ‘Asian family values’, which were contrasted discursively with the brutality of ‘western’ individualism. ‘It is family mutual assistance’ (gotong royong keluarga) explained one Javanese employer.10 The kinship idiom allowed a vision of Indonesian domestic life of which domestic servants were an organic part. For employers, the domestic servant as fictive kinswoman lessened the contradictions between various female subjectivities: those associated with ‘traditional’ Asian family values and ‘women’s destiny’ (in which women’s place is in the home), and those associated with Jakarta feminism and Indonesian modernity (in which the place of the poorer women is in wealthier women’s homes, while they are at the office). Producing domestic time Another way in which the tensions between conflicting femininities may be seen to be played out, is through an analysis of the complex ways in which employers’ and domestic servants’ lives intersect over time and space. Tracing the annual and daily time-space paths of employers and domestic servants, reveals the role domestic servants play in enabling middle-class Indonesians to maintain a semblance of Asian family values in the face of ‘modernity’ (the term here includes women’s formal-sector work and Jakarta shopping mall life-styles). Given that


most activities associated with domestic service involve some sort of copresence of the employer and domestic servant, analyzing these paths reveals the network of power relations that comprise domestic service; the agency of employers and employees as they negotiate these, and the embodied nature of domestic social relations. The way s in which power relations between employers and domestic servants are played out over the course of a year, can be observed by considering the effects that the Muslim festival of Lebaran (Idul Fitri) has on the annual time-space paths of different people. Lebaran marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. Traditionally, it is a time when all Muslims return to their natal villages to visit older relatives and pay their respects, bringing gifts of money, food and clothing from the city. It is a time when filial piety and obligation is most closely observed, and Muslims have a chance to reflect on their behavior, morality and values. For these reasons, Lebaran is a time when the tensions between the ideal of the ‘traditional Asian family’ and the demands of modern (westernised?) Indonesian life are most keenly felt. Among the female domestic workers interviewed, distance and cost prevented them from making frequent visits to their home village. Most would have to travel more than 500 km, and with children in tow, the cost was prohibitive. Instead, ties were maintained by sending money and by relying on one important annual visit: at Lebaran. However, the pressure these women were under to visit their families was in direct conflict with the pressure applied by their employers, who required that they stay in the city to work. In expatriate households, employers dictated that servants’ holidays coincide with ‘leave’, which rarely came at the same time as Lebaran. In Muslim households, domestic servants were expected to stay in order to deal with the increased workload. This issue was resolved by domestic servants taking it in turns to return to their home village at Lebaran each year. For those who stayed, their role was to cope with the extra cooking, cleaning and child-care associated with Lebaran celebrations, in which extra duties included a deluge of guests and preparation of elaborate meals and late night feasts. In pre-crisis, 1990s Indonesia, as incomes have risen, Lebaran has become ever more lavish. Coping with the increased demands on domestic labour has, inevitably, fallen upon the domestic servant. Similar relationships can be observed over the course of a day. Examining the time-space paths of domestic servants and their employers, reveals the extent to which domestic service is ‘a working arrangement that sets strong limits’ (Jelin 1977:138) on the way paid domestic workers organise their lives, particularly in terms of juggling the demands of their families with the demands of their employers. Effectively, domestic servants mediate between competing notions of time that are embraced in a series of different modernities in Jakarta. These include the rhythm of formal employment (the 8-to-4 work-day of their female employer), the rhythm of the school day (for employers’ children), and the rhythm of the market place, which they are dependent upon for provisioning the household. This


is not to mention the conflicting demands placed upon these women from their own families.

Figure 15.1 The daily time-space paths of individuals in a Jakarta household

Figure 15.1 is a figurative representation of the power relationships that structure the time-space path of domestic servants in Jakarta. First, the activities of servants are strongly conditioned by the employment patterns of their employer. For most employers who work in offices, the day begins early, as they face a twohour commute into the centre of Jakarta. For servants, the day begins even earlier, as they must cook and prepare everything their employer might need before setting off. Second, the school day is important. For servants working in households with children of different ages, this might involve several trips to school with the children, since school days are organised in shifts to maximise use of school buildings. In addition, domestic servants may have to chaperone children to the nearest McDonalds restaurant or the shopping mall after school. Third, all of these activities must fit in with opening hours at the market. Although supermarkets are increasingly a part of the Jakarta foodscape, among the households interviewed in this study, the market was still important, particularly as a source of fresh vegetables and fruit, most of which were bought on a daily basis. Markets opened very early in tune with the arrival of vendors from out of town, and they closed early too. For many domestic servants, this meant rising very early to ensure goods


were still available when they got there. Finally, the other tasks which domestic workers had to complete, were fitted around these particular rhythms and included laundry (clothes were washed by hand early in the morning in order to be dry for ironing in the afternoon) and cooking (a time-consuming task, involving the preparation of spices and an array of vegetables). Table 15.2 shows that the typical day of a Jakarta domestic servant is one marked by conflicting demands, with little time to devote to his or her own families, or to religious observance such as praying five times a day (for Muslims). Table 15.2 shows a day in the life of Wassi and her employer. What is notable, is how her employer has been able to construct a modern urban life style that fulfils all demands upon her time: as a wife, a mother and a participant in development. Yet, Wassi has been unable to do this: her children are in the village being cared for by aging grandparents, she works long hours, with little benefit to herself, and she is constrained from participating in women’s organisations in any meaningful way. The kinship idiom through which her relationship with her employers is structured, is a poor substitute for the family that economic circumstances have led her to forego. Conclusion Domestic service appears to be playing a pivotal role in producing Indonesian modernity, in reconfiguring gendered class relations, and in mediating conflicting discourses of femininity among wealthier Indonesian women. A number of factors imply contradictory influences upon paid domestic work in Indonesia, at least up until the 1997–98 economic collapse. On the one hand, poor rural women are increasingly being displaced from agriculture and forced to seek alternative means of earning income. On the other hand, many young women (those with high school education at least) are offered an alternative in the form of formal-sector factory work which is better paid and offers more freedom. These processes are taking place in a context where increasing demands are being placed on wealthy women’s time as the state attempts to redefine Indonesian womanhood, and where the work force in general is being feminised with more and more middle-class women involved in formal-sector paid work. Both of these trends demand the support of paid domestic workers: poor women who are seemingly excluded from contemporary ideologies of Indonesian womanhood and marginalised from most new income-generating possibilities. In this way, a gendered process of modernisation in Indonesia appears to be strengthening class disparities between a majority of marginalised, poorly-skilled women and a (growing) minority middle class of educated women, being targeted as ‘mothers of development’ but whose position depends on the support of an invisible army of domestic servants. This suggests that in Indonesia too, it is in the realm of reproduction that the strongest tensions of class are found (Gregson and Lowe 1994), and where new visions of modernity are likely to be challenged and contested.


Table 15.2 Time allocation of a domestic worker and her employer household

Source: Field surveys by author, Jakarta 1986

Postscript Since the research for this paper was undertaken, Indonesia has once again been undergoing a profound transformation, this time associated with economic crisis and collapse, rather than the rapid growth that appeared to characterise the late 1980s and early 1990s. The most dramatic changes were wrought at the beginning of 1998, when the Indonesian currency plunged by 36 percent in the space of a couple of days. At that time, it was estimated that around 80 percent of corporate Indonesia was technically bankrupt, with a private-sector debt of US$65 billion. Economic contraction meant that annual per-capita income at the beginning of 1998 was down from US$1,200 to US$300 (Far East Economic Review, 29


January 1998:16). The longer-term, labour force implications of economic crisis had only just begun to emerge at the time of writing. In early January 1998, around six million people had lost their jobs, mainly in construction, factory work and agriculture. The Indonesian SPSI trade union was predicting that an extra nine million people would be without work by the end of the year. Until systematic research has been conducted, the ramifications of economic crisis and a contracting formal-sector labour market for domestic service can only be guessed at. What appears to be the case, is that middle-class Indonesians are continuing to employ domestic workers, despite their own economic insecurities. This is being facilitated by a downward pressure on wages for domestic service, as newly unemployed women are desperately seeking alternatives to factory work. Such women are turning to domestic work: a low-paid, insecure and demeaning choice for women with formal education, but, for many, the only choice in the absence of alternative sources of income. Notes 1 There are few documentary sources specifically concerned with domestic service, but it is alluded to in descriptions of élite family life, for example in the collection edited by Locher-Scholten and Niehof (1992) and in Pemberton (1994). 2 Figures for 1993 (BPS 1994). 3 Since the downfall of President Suharto, rules governing formation of unions have been relaxed. It remains to be seen whether new labour organisations will take on the concerns of domestic workers. 4 Economic growth between 1980 and 1992 averaged 5.7 percent per annum, while the ratio of the population with the highest 20 percent of expenditure share to the lowest 20 percent was 4.9 (1990) (Robison 1996). Economic difficulties in 1997 and early 1998 have changed the picture somewhat, with an economic contraction of 10– 15 percent being forecast (FEER 1998). 5 The novel in question is Bidadari, a phantasmagoric story of an Indonesian transsexual, which Anderson takes to be an allegory of feminist aspirations for a reconfiguring of family life and domestic arrangements in urban Jakarta. 6 This section is based on in-depth interviews with elderly servants and their employees in Jakarta and Yogyakarta, conducted in 1986 and in 1994, and in Lampung between 1994 and 1995. 7 Indonesian women, particularly Javanese women, have long been central to business and financial matters, either independently, or behind the scenes in their husband’s or family’s business affairs. 8 Organisations include the PKK (Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga, or ‘family welfare movement’), and various wives’ organisations, including Dharma Wanita (‘wives of civil servants’) where a woman’s position within the organisation relates directly to the position of her husband at work. 9 Lampung, on the island of Sumatra, has long been the destination of migrants through the state-sponsored transmigration resettlement program, which moves poor, landless farmers from Java to new settlements. Many of these settlements are


themselves very poor and it is common for young people to leave in search of work (Elmhirst 1997). 10 Gotong royong is a Javanese term describing a style of ‘moral economy’ exchange labour within communities. The term has been adopted to serve a number of ideological purposes in Indonesia, not least to compel people to take part in unpaid labour for the state, such as road-building and street cleaning.

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16 FOREIGN DOMESTIC HELPERS IN HONG KONG AND THEIR ROLE IN CHILDCARE PROVISION Vicky C.W.Tam

Every Sunday, tens of thousands of Filipina women gather in Statue Square, the heart of the central business district in Hong Kong. This area, which turns into a desert town at the end of the business week, is livened up by the music, conversation and laughter generated by the crowd. The women hold picnics by the fountains, share food and photographs, and chat about families and friends back home in the Philippines. Such rendezvous often last for the whole day. The crowd disperses after dark when it is time to go ‘home’, the place where these women live and work for their employers’ families. They are domestic helpers who came to Hong Kong to earn a living. By putting manual labour into childcare, housekeeping and cooking, these women are able to remit money to their home country to support their own families. This phenomenon has become part of the social landscape in Hong Kong for the past decade. There are over 160,000 foreign domestic helpers employed in the territory. They play an important role in providing domestic services to local families, yet their presence is often overlooked by the public except when tragic incidents occur (Ming Pao 1997a, 1997b). While Filipina helpers are reasonably happy with their work situations, they are not always properly treated by their employers (French 1986). It is also important to note that the heavy reliance on foreign domestic helpers incurs social and psychological costs to both themselves and local families. It is the objective of this chapter to examine the employment of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong, with a focus on the role of the helpers in filling the service gap in childcare provision for dual-wage families with young children. The discussion is substantiated by empirical data collected from married female employees of a public service agency in Hong Kong, especially those who employ foreign domestic helpers. It is argued that the employment of overseas domestic helpers offers an affordable and convenient solution to meet the demand for childcare. Yet, the practice is used without sufficient consideration being given to its ramifications. The prevalence of employment of foreign domestic helpers reflects the assumption behind social policy-making that provision of childcare remains the responsibility of the private domain, and it perpetuates the patriarchal ideology of gender inequality in division of domestic labour. Discussion in this


chapter highlights the need to make the employment of foreign domestic helpers, and the provision of childcare in Hong Kong, a fair practice to all concerned. Foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong The history of entry of foreign domestic helpers into Hong Kong began in 1969, when expatriates were allowed to bring along their domestic servants from overseas (Office of the Commissioner for Administrative Complaints 1995). In the early 1970s, local Hong Kong residents began to hire overseas domestic helpers in increasing numbers. According to figures available from various government sources, the number of foreign domestic helpers jumped from 881 in 1974 to 164,299 in 1996 (Howlett 1997; Office of the Commissioner for Administrative Complaints 1995). The demand for overseas domestic helpers is tremendous, as is shown in an average increase of 15.33 percent annually from 1990 to 1996. Owing to political and social factors, the current visa regulations preclude residents of China, Macau, and Taiwan from entering Hong Kong as domestic helpers. Hence, the majority of such visas are issued to citizens of nearby, developing Southeast Asian countries, who find it an excellent opportunity to earn a higher income. The largest nationality group among foreign domestic helpers consists of citizens of the Philippines, who constitute around 85 percent of the population. The second and third largest groups are from Indonesia and Thailand, who make up around 9 and 5 percent respectively (Office of the Commissioner for Administrative Complaints 1995). According to a recent survey, nearly all foreign domestic helpers are female (99.7 percent) and their median age is 30 years (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 1997a). This group is vulnerable to discrimination because of their non-citizen status, gender, occupation and income level, as well as the employment and visa conditions under which they are allowed to enter. Recruitment of foreign domestic helpers is done either through employment agencies or by word of mouth of helpers, who make referrals for their relatives and friends back home to potential employers. Through the sponsorship of the employer, a prospective helper then applies for a work visa, which allows her to enter Hong Kong on a standard two-year employment contract. This type of work visa restricts the helper to domestic duties such as cooking, household chores, baby-sitting and child-minding for a specific employer. The work contract and visa are renewable upon the mutual agreement of the employer and the helper concerned. There is no specific ordinance governing the employment of foreign domestic helpers. Apparently, they enjoy the same entitlements under Employment Ordinance (Cap. 57) as apply to local workers: these provide for the protection of the wages, the regulation of general conditions of employment, employee compensation and labour dispute. There are also stipulations in the Immigration Ordinance concerning the stay of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong; such stipulations pertain to change of employer and premature termination of contract, so as to guard against job-hopping and unlawful employment. Owing

FOREIGN DOMESTIC HELPERS IN HONG KONG 261

to the fact that status of helpers relies on their employers’ evaluation of job performance, some helpers may refrain from reporting cases of maltreatment by the employers. This raises the issue of whether their rights as employees are being fully exercised. The current policy on overseas domestic helpers puts no ceiling on the number of such work visas, thus allowing as many local families to make use of the arrangement as possible. The arrangement is indeed attractive to many local families, as even those of lower-middle socioeconomic status find it affordable. For example, the stipulated minimum wage for foreign domestic helpers was HK $3,750 per month (approximately US$480) in 1996, whereas the median monthly household income for the local population in 1996 was HK$17,475 per month (approximately US$2,240) (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 1997b). The wage level is low, compared to the pay rate of local domestic helpers who are more likely to work part-time. The cost of hiring a foreign domestic helper is further cut down by making it a live-in arrangement, so that the employer does not have to pay an extra amount for food and accommodation. Figures from the Census and Statistics Department (1997a) show that over 110,000 families, i.e. 6. 1 percent of all domestic households, employ one or more overseas domestic helpers to assist with housework and childcare. About 71 percent of the households who employ live-in helpers have children below the age of 12; these households constitute 13.5 percent of all families with underage children. The figures above show that the helpers are hired by dual-wage families in order to look after children, thus indicating the high demand for childcare and housework assistance among local families. The use of this employment arrangement is further illustrated by examining childcare provision in Hong Kong. Filling the gap of childcare provision in Hong Kong The influx of foreign domestic helpers into Hong Kong coincided with the demand for female labour in the local job market. Labour force participation rate for women between the ages of 25 and 34 increased tremendously from 47.8 percent in 1976 to 72.2 percent in 1996 (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 1986, 1997b). In 1996, the figure for married women between the ages of 30 and 39 (i.e. the prime child-bearing and child-rearing period) is 55.1 percent (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 1996). The increasing participation of women in the paid work force has, in part, facilitated the economic success of Hong Kong in the last few decades (Ngo 1992). In order that mothers can take up work outside the home, childcare provision has to be available. As Ngo (1992) points out, childcare responsibilities strongly influence the choice of employment of married Hong Kong women. Yet, the increase in demand for childcare in Hong Kong has not been matched by an increase in resources available to dual-wage families with young children. When conventional forms of childcare, such as formal child care, informal care provided by relatives and family members, and child-minding do


not meet the families’ needs, hiring an overseas domestic helper becomes an attractive option. The formal sector of childcare in Hong Kong provides services for a small number of local families only. This sector of childcare consists of crèches and nurseries for young children in the under-2 and 2–6 year age groups respectively. The operation of the formal care sector relies heavily on aided non-governmental agencies and private providers. According to figures for 1996, there were a total of 368 childcare centres providing 1,713 places in day crèches and 37,341 places in day nurseries (Hong Kong Social Welfare Department 1996). The level of provision is low compared to the numbers of young children in Hong Kong—about 339,681 in the 0–4 age group in 1996 (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 1997b). Yet, it is surprising to find that the average waiting period for crèches is only 1.6 months (Hong Kong Social Welfare Department 1992). The relatively low demand for formal care is attributed to the fact that families with childcare needs may not be aware of the services provided by nurseries and crèches (Hong Kong Family Welfare Society et al. 1995). Alternatively, they may worry about the quality of care provided by nurseries and crèches (Hong Kong Young Women’s Christian Association and Hong Kong Shue Yan College 1982; Lam 1982). Such worry may stem from unfamiliarity with the service, since mothers who had used organised childcare services often had an extremely favourable impression of them (Lam 1982). In a nutshell, there is no central policy providing directions for the development of childcare services in Hong Kong. Thomas (1994) points out that formal childcare services are largely based on piecemeal responses to practical problems. It is obvious that the government views childcare as the family’s responsibility, and this view is used to justify its minimalist policy (Wong 1992). When there are few options in terms of organised childcare, families turn to private individualised solutions for care arrangements. Earlier studies, conducted in the 1980s, showed that informal care provided by grandparents and relatives was common, and a preferred option among working mothers (Hong Kong Family Welfare Society and Law 1991; Hong Kong Young Women’s Christian Association and Hong Kong Shue Yan College 1982; Lam, 1982). Yet, informal help provided by relatives is sometimes unavailable. Demographic trends indicate that the nuclear family is becoming predominant in Hong Kong, constituting 63. 6 percent of all domestic households, whereas the corresponding figure for extended family households is only 9.9 percent, and has been on the decline in the last decade (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 1997b). Furthermore, newly formed nuclear families are likely to relocate to recently established neighbourhoods, and are thus isolated from their extended family networks. Apart from geographical relocation, considerations of personal factors, such as differences in child-rearing attitudes, may make care provided by relatives not feasible to some families. Some local families solicit the assistance of childminders, another form of informal care. Child-minders are stay-home mothers who take care of a small number of children for a fee, in addition to their own


offspring. Their services vary from a few hours a day to home-stay care. Childminders are usually recruited through mutual friends or by word of mouth. Families from lower socio-economic classes are more likely to rely on childminding as an affordable form of childcare. As child-minders are not regulated by the government, the quality of the care provided varies. With few childcare alternatives available, families with young children often turn to foreign domestic helpers. The use of helpers as a compromise solution is further substantiated by empirical data collected in a survey and follow-up interviews with married female employees of a public service agency. The findings that are discussed in the next two sections reveal local families’ preferences for, and actual use of, childcare options, as well as issues relating to the involvement of overseas domestic helpers in childcare. Attitudes towards, and use of childcare arrangements Attitudes towards, and actual use of childcare arrangements involving young children up to the age of 4, was examined in a survey on married, female Chinese employees in a mid-size public service agency in Hong Kong. A total of 226 valid questionnaires were returned, representing a response rate of 60.9 percent. The two largest job groups among the respondents were clerical/ secretarial staff (47. 4 percent) and administrators (29.6 percent). Around two-thirds of the respondents (60.6 percent) were parents, among whom half (34.1 percent) had a child of 4 years or under. This sample of mainly white-collar workers belonged largely to middle and lower-middle socioeconomic groups. Their views towards, and actual use of childcare arrangements were likely to be affected by their socioeconomic background. The majority of the respondents (79.2 percent) considered that the ideal mode of childcare for families with workings mothers and young children of 4 or under, was informal care provided by family members or relatives. The other childcare options—child-minding, formal care and foreign domestic helpers—each received less than 5 percent of nominations. Patterns of response were fairly similar, regardless of whether the respondents were parents or not. The actual use of childcare arrangements portrayed a different picture. Among respondents with young children, 49.3 percent relied on foreign domestic helpers as the major care provider, while only 30.6 percent had a family member or relative to look after their children. In other words, many families did not use their preferred option for childcare. The contrast between the perception of ideal care and the actual use of childcare, illustrates that working mothers’ choice of care option was a reluctant or compromised solution to meeting family needs within constraints. Their ambivalence was likely to affect these mothers’ perceptions of the arrangement of employing overseas domestic helpers for childcare and housework. These perceptions are explored further in the follow-up interviews.


The involvement of foreign domestic helpers in childcare Follow-up interviews were conducted with fourteen working mothers who had at least one child of 4 years or under, and who hired live-in foreign domestic helpers. The focus of the interviews was these mothers’ experiences in using this mode of care. Six of the informants were clerical/secretarial staff and the rest were in administrative positions. The family size of the informants varied from one to three children, and the ages of these children ranged from 3 months to 11 years. Almost all cases were nuclear families, apart from two which were extended households with grandparents, and another two which had a grandparent coresiding for part of the week. In six families, grandmothers were reported to have rendered assistance in childcare. All helpers were from the Philippines, except one who was from Indonesia. Individual interviews were semi-structured in nature, and covered topics such as the choice of, and preferences for childcare arrangements and level of satisfaction with the option of foreign domestic helpers. Informants were visited at their workplace during lunch or after work, and interviews lasted from fortyfive minutes to two hours. Verbatim transcripts of the interviews were prepared; analysis of the transcripts followed the approach of Lofland and Lofland (1995), in which the strategies of coding, memoing and diagramming were employed. The content of each transcript was first categorised under a list of codes. Summary tables comparing codes across cases were compiled, and memos elaborating the content of these codes were prepared. The findings reported here are a synopsis of the data analysis that pinpointed recurring themes concerning the use of foreign domestic helpers for childcare. An option out of no choice Half of the group mentioned that the option of foreign domestic help was taken because they had no other choice. A mother of two boys, aged one and seven, said, ‘Hiring a helper is not an ideal solution (to the problem of childcare). But it is the simplest solution to the problem when there is no other choice.’ Another mother made a similar comment: There does not seem to be any other choice. (Hiring a helper) is the way to go because I do not consider any other (option). It seems that it is the best arrangement, because I like working, and it is unreasonable to ask my mother to care for the child on a full-time basis. It will be too tough for her. (Mother of a seven-month-old boy) The option of using an overseas helper was often compared to the other two popular care arrangements (i.e. informal care provided by a grandparent, and childminding). When these two possibilities were ruled out, hiring a helper was


apparently the only remaining solution, especially when it was a popular arrangement used among friends and coworkers. Care provided by relatives, often the grandparents, was considered the ideal option by the informants, because it involved genuine concern and love for the child. A mother of a boy, aged twenty-three months, remarked: The ideal mode—I do admire people who have a family elder looking after their children. In such cases, the children are loved and treasured. I feel sorry for my baby, because I leave him with a person who does not even speak our language. It is not good. In this regard, care provided by a helper, especially a stranger from overseas, was considered to be of lower quality. Yet, the help of grandparents or relatives was not used by these informants. Reasons given included: grandparents might not be available because of health or work reasons; informants did not want to burden the elders with childcare responsibilities; they worried about losing control over child-rearing and the possible dispute that might occur as a result of intergenerational differences. With domestic helpers, informants believed that they could have a total say in how their children were raised and cared for, because of their status as employers. Yet, as we shall see later, such control is sometimes illusive. The option of formal care, crèches in particular, was rarely considered by informants. Informants were concerned that their children might not receive prompt attention from staff in a group-care setting, and that the premises might not be clean. The reluctance to consider formal care stemmed from a vague and negative impression of this mode of care, since few informants had actually used the service or even visited a childcare centre before. Informants did not see childminders as a feasible solution to childcare, either. First, there was the concern over the quality of childcare rendered by child-minders. One informant spoke of her experience of having four minders over the course of five years, and complained about one irresponsible minder who left her toddler son unattended at home, with no adults around. Second, child-minding often involved overnight home-stay care, which made a number of informants unwilling to consider it, as they would miss the child. Hiring a helper allowed the family to keep the young child at home. It also carried the added advantage of providing assistance with housework, which made it more favourable than other childcare options. On the whole, the decision to use a foreign domestic helper for childcare was based on consideration of the problems associated with other modes of care, as well as the lack of viable alternatives. Such an attitude was likely to make informants feel cautious about the use of the arrangement. This was revealed during discussions on the issue of trust.


Trusting the helper The majority of informants hired helpers through referrals made by the overseas domestic helpers employed by their own friends and relatives. Only three obtained successful referrals from employment agencies. The preference for an informal channel of recruitment was a way to deal with the problem of selecting a helper without any measure of quality assurance. It seemed more reassuring to the informants to entrust the heavy responsibility of child care to someone recommended by a helper whose performance was proved to be satisfactory. One informant said: (My friend’s) helper is quite good. So someone referred by her should not be too bad. You see, even a helper hired through an agency may not be good. You don’t know the person anyway. In fact, I feel that it is like gambling when you look for a helper. (Mother of two girls, aged 10 and 4 years) Employers often knew little about the helpers before the latter started working for them. The visa application procedures themselves required no specific information about the background of the prospective helper other than a certificate for medical health. Hence, finding helpers resembled gambling in that there was no way to guarantee their performance. Five informants stated that a major criterion in selecting a helper was honesty and trustworthiness. This is an important factor because a stranger is going to live with the family and take up the important task of childcare while carrying out her duties unsupervised for most of the day. The fact that the helpers were from a different ethnic background and spoke a different language aggravated the problem. One mother with a seven-month-old son said, ‘Honesty is very important to us. There are people whom from the first encounter you know you cannot trust’ Most informants had heard stories about the irresponsible behavior of other foreign domestic helpers from friends and relatives; this made them cautious about trusting the helpers. Several mothers talked in the interviews about experiences of helpers being dishonest. These incidents were usually minor, involving hiding food or household appliances for the helper’s personal use, but trust was nonetheless violated. Some informants called home from work or went home during lunch breaks in order to monitor the helper’s performance. Three informants arranged to have grandparents visit the family several times a week during the day to keep an eye on the helpers. Informants understood that these measures were futile in ensuring that helpers were doing their jobs, but felt that there was little else they could do. A mother of a four-year-old boy and a three-month-old baby girl shared her views: It would be better if I know more clearly about what happens to the baby during the day. Some friends suggest installing a closed circuit TV system.


Well, I think it would be too much to do that, since it would give the helper too much pressure, knowing that she is working under the monitoring of a TV system. The concern about trust was likely to put pressure on the helpers. It could also lead to tension in the employer-employee relationship. Expectation of the helper’s performance Most informants were satisfied with the performance of their foreign domestic helpers. They were relieved to see that the helpers loved their children, and even bought toys or candies for them. Two mothers were grateful for the assistance helpers provided in making it possible for them to work outside the home, especially when they themselves found childcare duties mundane and burdensome. For example, a mother of a six-month-old girl was thankful to her helper for waking up several times at night to check over the baby. However, she also felt that it was the helper’s duty to do so. Feelings, then, were ambivalent. The most common complaints about helpers were that they were sometimes forgetful and overlooked minor details of childcare, or that they did not follow instructions nor perform tasks as instructed. Informants usually accepted situations in which the helper forgot about minor matters, or they discussed why the instructions were not followed; some mothers, however, felt frustrated when they could not get the helpers to follow their instructions precisely. In some instances, therefore, the sense of control over a helper was illusive. Dissatisfaction with the helper ‘s performance was often related to the implicit expectation that the helper should behave like a mother. In five cases, the informants expected the helper to be as sensitive and caring towards the child as the mother would be. A mother of two girls, aged one and five years, said: It is of utmost importance that [the helper] should play [the parental] role when we are not home. So we have a relatively high expectation on her. Sometimes, our expectation may be a bit too high, because the helper, after all, is just doing it as a job. She may not even know what is expected of her.

Such expectation of the helper was likely to put undue pressure on her. Furthermore, as the duties of mother and helper, with respect to the child, often overlapped, the helper’s role was perceived to be obscure. This led some mothers to worry about the consequences of a close relationship between helper and child, which might compete with, or even overshadow the mother-child relationship. One mother shared her worries: I already have the mental preparation. For example, the baby now begins to smile, and she smiles more to the helper than to me. I don’t know why….


My daughter does play with me and my husband, but her reaction is not as strong as when she is with the helper. It’s heart-breaking. (Mother of a four-year-old boy and a three-month-old baby girl) These worries demonstrated the implicit assumption that the helper was a mothersubstitute, who was to sit in for the mother when the latter was away at work. Feelings towards the role and performance of the helper were thus ambivalent. A mother of a seven-month-old son expressed her feelings: I hope my helper can love the child genuinely from her heart. But then I also know that I should not have the expectation that the helper has a total commitment to the child. The helper is just doing her job. It’s okay as long as she is not treating (the baby) badly. Informants wanted the helpers to be like mother-substitutes, but, on the other hand, did not want the helpers to overshadow them. Ambivalent feelings stemmed partly from the contradiction inherent in employing a low-paid helper to assist with the important task of caring for one’s beloved children. Although childcare work is undervalued, as is reflected in the low rate of pay, the very nature of the job necessitates dealing with one of the most important and crucial family tasks. Involvement of fathers Fathers were often less involved in childcare was than were the mothers, even when there was a domestic helper at home. Mothers were more likely to be managers of the household and supervisors of the helpers. Only two fathers were reported to be concerned parents with equal levels of participation in the care of their children as the mothers. At least five fathers were so busy with their jobs that they had little time to spend with the family, let alone taking care of their children. Even when fathers had time or showed an interest in their children’s upbringing, they were reported as being more likely to play with the children than to be involved in physical care. In other words, while the employment of a domestic helper relieved the burden of the mother, it did not enhance the involvement of the fathers. This finding is shared by research studies conducted in Hong Kong in the last two decades, which indicate that fathers, in general, still play a peripheral role in the provision of care to children, notwithstanding the employment status of the mothers (Choi and Lee 1997; Hong Kong Young Women’s Christian Association and Hong Kong Shue Yan College 1982; Lam 1982; Lit et al 1991; The Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong 1984, 1990). The findings above from interviews with working mothers employing foreign domestic helpers, reveal the following issues and concerns: First, the decision on the use of a foreign domestic helper for childcare was based on both consideration of problems associated with other modes of care, as well as the lack of viable alternatives. Hiring a foreign domestic helper was often a reluctant solution, one


which made employers feel insecure about the arrangement itself. Second, there was widespread concern about entrusting the heavy responsibility of caring for an infant or toddler to a stranger from overseas. The absence of a measure of quality assurance aggravated this concern, which was indirectly tackled by using informal referrals for recruitment and sometimes by futile efforts to monitor the helper’s performance. Third, while the overall evaluation of the performance of helpers was positive, the expectation of mothers concerning their performance, and concern about affectionate ties between helper and child, revealed the implicit assumption that the helpers were perceived as mother-substitutes. Ambivalent feelings arose because of the contradiction inherent in hiring a low-paid helper to be in charge of important childcare duties. These observations reveal the obscure nature of the role of foreign domestic helpers in the family, a fact which was likely to put pressure on the helpers. Fourth, the household division of labour between the genders had not undergone much transformation as a result of women’s participation in the paid work force and the involvement of a domestic helper. Childcare involved replacing the mother’s care with the cheap labour of another woman, and thus continued to be undervalued as women’s work. As Okin (1989) and other feminist writers argue, the persistence of a rigid mode of gendered division of labour in domestic households, as one that lags behind macro-structural change in gender relations, reflects the perpetuation of injustice and inequality that prevents women participating fully as equal members of society. Looking ahead The policy of importation of overseas domestic helpers continues after the official handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China in 1997. It is anticipated that foreign domestic helpers will continue to be a major form of childcare until there is a major reform in organised care provisions. Thus, it is important that this arrangement takes place in a context is acceptable to all concerned. On the one hand, children deserve to grow up in a safe, caring environment, even when the care is provided by a non-parent; on the other hand, helpers who work hard caring for families and children deserve to receive remuneration and respect that are commensurate with their duties and performance. The obscure nature of the duties of helpers is likely to increase their work load and strain. The Office of the Commissioner for Administrative Complaints points out that the streamlining and standardisation of procedures for handling the visa applications of foreign domestic helpers, might provide loopholes for exploitation by dishonest or even malicious employers and helpers. The provision of adequate and appropriate accommodation by employers is one example of the concerns that have been raised. It is sad to note that the general public in Hong Kong has not been empathetic to the needs and rights of the helpers who have contributed so much to the territory. Local citizens complain about the noise and litter generated by the weekly rendezvous in the Central District and in other popular gathering places for foreign domestic helpers throughout the territory. These complaints,


however, merely reflect the lack of venues for recreational and leisure activities during helpers’ weekly days off. Some local legislators even protest against granting equal employment rights such as maternity leave to overseas domestic helpers (Tam 1997). Given their low status in Hong Kong, overseas domestic helpers are susceptible to discrimination and abuse. The situation is aggravated by the lack of legislature concerning the protection of helpers’ rights, which indirectly generates a ‘second-class’ population. Foreign nationals who work as domestic helpers in Hong Kong continue to remain a separate group, lacking the possibility of integration into the local community while relying heavily on their own ethnic group for social support (French 1986). Hence, more stringent measures should be implemented safeguarding the rights of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong (i.e. stipulations concerning duties and work hours). Public education is also required in order to eliminate discrimination against this minority group. Discussion in this chapter has also drawn attention to the provision of childcare services in Hong Kong. With the increase in female employment, the issue of childcare becomes crucial. The lack of attention given to the issue in the public policy domain in Hong Kong, reflects the patriarchal ideology of placing childcare responsibilities entirely on the shoulders of women in the private domain, while at the same time undervaluing such responsibilities. The separation of the public and private spheres is one way in which patriarchy perpetuates the domination of male over female in society (Chow and Berheide 1988). The policy gap in childcare provision that serves as ideological support maintaining the existing patriarchal system, has also been noted in other countries such as Taiwan (Feng 1995; Yi 1994) and the USA (Scarr et al. 1989). From the experiences of the working mothers interviewed in this study, it has been demonstrated that the use of a foreign domestic helper was a compromised solution, and that the arrangement did not transform the existing rigid division of labour along gender lines nor did it improve the status of women. To rectify the situation, gender-fair childcare options should be given consideration in the making of public policy. The elimination of patriarchal domination in both public and private domains should begin with the recognition of the importance of childcare services, in terms of ensuring an adequate supply of human resource and manpower in the labour market. Consideration should be given to adequate provision of quality childcare options in the public and private domains—in the form of organised childcare services, and the regulation of informal care services such as child-minding and domestic helpers. Finally, an increase in men’s involvement in their children’s lives should be encouraged through family-life education, as well as offering incentives such as paternity leave. The contribution of foreign domestic helpers in caring for families and children in Hong Kong needs to be recognised. Yet, the arrangement needs to be used within the best possible context. Policy-makers in Hong Kong should give more attention to the employment of foreign domestic helpers by protecting their rights and well-being. At the same time, attention needs to be given to the provision of


childcare options in ways that would help to promote gender equality in the community. References The Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong. (1984) Parenthood in Contemporary Hong Kong: the Experience of Mothers, Hong Kong: Author. The Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong. (1990) The participation of fathers in housework in Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Author (in Chinese). Choi, P.K. and Lee, C.K. (1997) ‘The hidden abode of domestic labour: the case of Hong Kong’, in F.M.Cheung (ed.), Engendering Hong Kong Society: a Gender Perspective of Women’s Status, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Chow, E.N. and Berheide, C.W. (1988) ‘The interdependence of family and work: a framework for family life education, policy, and practice’, Family Relations 37:23–38. Feng, Y. (1995) Child Care Services: An Ecological Analysis, Taipei: Juliu (in Chinese). French, C. (1986) Filipino Domestic Workers in Hong Kong: a Preliminary Survey, Hong Kong: Centre for Hong Kong Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department (1986) Hong Kong 1986 By-Census: Main Report Volume 1, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Printer. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department (1996) Quarterly Report on General Household Survey Labor Characteristics: October to December 1996, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Printer. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department (1997a) Social Data Collected by the General Household Survey (Special Topics Report No. 14), Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Printer. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department (1997b) 1996 Population By-census: Main Report, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Printer. Hong Kong Family Welfare Society and Law, C.K. (1991) Needs of Single Parent Families: a Comparative Study, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Family Welfare Society. Hong Kong Family Welfare Society, Yeung, K.C. and Ho, W.S. (1995) Childminding Needs in Butterfly Bay, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Family Welfare Society. Hong Kong Social Welfare Department (1992) Study of Children Attending Day Crèches, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Printer. Hong Kong Social Welfare Department (1996) Director of Social Welfare 1995–96 Departmental Report, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Printer. Hong Kong Young Women’s Christian Association and Hong Kong Shue Yan College (1982) Report on Working Mothers in Family Functioning, Hong Kong: Authors. Howlett, B. (ed.) (1997) Hong Kong 1997, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Information Services Department. Lam, M.C. (1982) Changing Patterns of Child-Rearing: a Study of Low-Income Families in Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Department of Social Work, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lit, K.Y., Fok, S.Y and Ip, Y.Y. (1991) Fatherhood in the 1990s: Implication for Service Needs, Hong Kong: Department of Applied Social Studies, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong. Lofland, J. and Lofland, L.H. (1990) The participation of fathers in housework in Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Author (in Chinese).


Lofland, J. and Lofland, L.H. (1995) Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis (third edition), Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Ming Pao. (1997a) ‘Man accused of raping Indonesian maid’, Ming Pao, August 27, 1997, A7. Ming Pao. (1997b) Two Filipino maids charged kidnapping’, Ming Pao, August 27, 1997, Al (in Chinese). Ngo, H.Y (1992) ‘Employment status of married women in Hong Kong’, Sociological Perspectives, 35, 3:475–88. Office of the Commissioner for Administrative Complaints. (1995) Report of the Investigation on Accommodation for Foreign Domestic Helpers, Hong Kong: Author. Okin, S.M. (1989) Justice, Gender, and the Family, New York: Basic Books. Scarr, S., Phillips, D. and McCartney, K. (1989) ‘Working mothers and their families’, American Psychologist, 44, 11:1402–09. Tam, F. (1997) ‘Foreign domestic helpers get pregnant so as to obtain leave?’, Sing Tao Daily, April 30, 1997, A13 (in Chinese). Thomas, J. (1994) ‘Policy in child care’, in N.Rhind (ed.), Empowering Families: a Collection of Concepts and Methods, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Family Welfare Society. Wong, C.K. (1992) ‘Economic growth and welfare provision: The case of child day care in Hong Kong’, International Social Work, 35:389–404. Yi, C.C. (1994) ‘Childcare arrangements of employed mothers in Taiwan’, in E.N. Chow and C.W. Berheide (eds), Women, the Family, and Policy: a Global Perspective, Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

17 SINGAPORE WOMEN AND FOREIGN DOMESTIC WORKERS Negotiating domestic work and motherhood Brenda S.A.Yeoh and Shirlena Huang

Feminist geographers in recent years have increasingly drawn attention to the ‘home’ as an ‘unbounded space’, which is simultaneously influenced by broader social discourses on gender, family and motherhood and, at the same time, represents an important site where gendered ideologies are elaborated, sedimented and occasionally challenged (Dyck 1990; Johnston 1993; Gregson and Lowe 1995; Buckley 1996). The complexity of these negotiations is further compounded by the crisis in household reproduction, in countries where there is a rapid influx of women into the formal economy, and where paid reproductive labour has been introduced as a means to alleviate (one set of) women’s domestic burden, often by transnationalizing it to (im)migrant women. Foreign domestic workers have been used as a lens to investigate how the ‘other’ is socially and spatially inscribed, within the ‘interlocking, relational systems of difference, especially gender, race/ ethnicity, nationality, immigration/citizenship status and language’ (Stiell and England 1997:339; see also Bakan and Stasiulis 1995; England and Stiell 1997; Pratt 1997; Stasiulis and Bakan 1997; Yeoh and Huang 1998). Interestingly, transmigrant women as domestic workers have also been used as a reflexive and refractory mirror in order to examine constructions of ‘self’, as embedded in issues of ‘nation’, ‘race’ and ‘gender’, from the perspectives of both countries of origin of the diaspora (‘homeland’), as well as in the countries where diasporas sojourn and break their journeys as ‘exilic communities’ (in ‘host societies’) (Aguilar 1996a). Indeed, at the national level, van der Veer (1995:6) has argued that definitions of ‘self’ and ‘other’ are ‘structurally interdependent’ and that ‘nationalism (which has its basis in the control of space or territory) needs this story of migration, the diaspora of others, to establish the rootedness of the nation’. While others have argued that the ‘copresence’ of ‘migration’ and ‘nation’, of ‘guests’ and ‘hosts’, and of ‘outsiders’ and ‘the established’, provides doublesided mirrors bouncing off images, which are then worked into constructions of ‘national self’ and ‘international identities’, we would like to argue here that negotiations of social identity also occur at other levels below the national. Specifically, we examine the negotiations between women—between employers and foreign domestic workers—over gendered notions of ‘domestic work’ and ‘motherhood’. In doing so, we wish to focus not so much on the way employeremployee relationships are negotiated around concepts of difference, constructed


through the filters of ‘race’, ‘class’ and nationality, and rooted in webs of asymmetrical power relations (an important theme which has recurred in recent work on migrant women in domestic service: see Rollins 1985; Glenn 1992; Romero 1992; England and Stiell 1997; Stiell and England 1997; Pratt 1997; Stasiulis and Bakan 1997), but to examine how shared notions that place women at the centre of the home are negotiated between women. As has been pointed out, women’s participation in paid work has not detracted from their being assigned the domestic role of reproducing the family through household work (WGSG 1997: 122). The ideology of domesticity and the association of women with housework, childbearing and childrearing in the private sphere, appear to be ‘endemic crossculturally’ and ‘remarkably resistant to macro-level economic circumstance’ (Sanchez 1993:454). Neither the maid nor her mistress—both of whom have taken up paid work—has escaped the bind of domesticity: the maid has removed herself from ‘home’ only to further entrench herself in another domestic world in a foreign country, while the mistress may have shifted some of the physical burden of domestic work onto another woman, but continues to fulfil a supervisory role over the domestic arena, as well as the moral and emotional weight of reproducing the family. As Dyck (1990: 464) argues, ‘the primary responsibility [and this can be in literal and/or symbolic terms] taken by women in the domestic sphere of activity will frame experiences and understandings of their lives in and outside the home’. In attempting to understand the complex negotiations of gendered identity between employer and employee, we draw on Mary Louise Pratt’s (1992:7) definition of a ‘contact zone’ (situated in the context of colonial encounters in her work) as ‘an attempt to invoke the spatial and temporal copresence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historical disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect’. A ‘contact’ perspective ‘emphasises how subjects are constituted in, and by, their relations to each other…not in terms of separateness or apartheid, but in terms of copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices, often within radically asymmetrical relations of power’. Paid domestic labour has often been interpreted as complicity on the part of female employers in ‘simply perpetuat[ing] the sexist division of labour by passing on the most devalued work in their lives to another woman’ and ‘escap[ing] the stigma of “women’s work” by laying the burden on working women of color’ (Romero 1992:131). What has been given less attention, is that far from the unilateral transfer of one woman’s immutable burden to another, the nature of that ‘burden’ undergoes translation in the context of copresence, as each woman repositions and redefines herself within the web of domestic practices vis-à-vis their own worlds and each other’s. Contrary to the idea of ‘home’ as a place of ‘stability, oneness and security’, treating the home as a contact zone where gendered norms and domestic practices are constantly negotiated between women—between ‘self’ and ‘other’—shifts the perspective to one of seeing ‘home’ as a place ‘where one discovers new ways of seeing reality, frontiers of difference’ (bell hooks, quoted in Massey 1994:171). While the women operate within a framework of dominant and pervasive cultural and largely patriarchal norms which shape understandings

SINGAPORE WOMEN AND FOREIGN DOMESTIC WORKERS 275

of home and associated practices of domestic work and motherhood, these notions, as Dyck (1990) has shown, are also reaffirmed, re-evaluated and redefined on a day-to-day basis as women relate their social identities to the particular material contexts in which they find themselves. The Singapore context As a labour-short city-state without a hinterland, Singapore has had to depend on both drawing more women into the waged economy (the female labour force participation rate crossed the 50 percent mark in 1990), as well as on foreign labour of all classes, skilled and unskilled (foreigners constitute some 30 percent of the country’s work force, the highest in Asia), in order to sustain its aspirations to attain ‘superleague’ status (Perry et al. 1997). Singapore women’s participation in the formal economy, which took off in the 1960s with the move to exportoriented manufacturing, has continued in the 1980s and 1990s as Singapore moved beyond its manufacturing base to consolidate its role as a major financial and communications centre. In response to the developing crisis in the reproductive sphere, inextricable from the state’s exhortation for women to enter the work force (and exacerbated by the dwindling of traditional stocks of paid substitutes such as black-and-white amahs and local servants, as well as by the decline of the extended household and shrinkage in help from extended family members to share out domestic work) (Huang and Yeoh 1994, 1996), the state, in 1978, finally granted work permits to allow a limited recruitment of domestic servants from Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Within two decades, the number of foreign domestic workers has reached 100,000, three-quarters of whom are from the Philippines, one-fifth from Indonesia and the rest, mainly from Sri Lanka (Straits Times, 5 November 1997). At least one in every eight Singaporean households employs foreign domestic help as a means to resolve the crisis in household reproduction (Wong 1996:128). A recent study, based on the 1990 population census, found that foreign domestic workers are evenly spread between households living on landed properties and those in public housing flats, concluding that ‘this phenomenon may be interpreted as a dependence on maids, or that the maid culture has become a way of life in Singapore’ (Toh and Tay 1996: 48). Fears that the development of a ‘maid dependency syndrome’ in Singapore will undermine the virtues of hard work and self-reliance—values perceived to buttress Asian immigrant society—have been ventilated in public discourse, particularly concerning the ‘insidious influence’ of foreign maids on the young (Yeoh, Huang and Gonzalez 1999:127). The anxiety that the presence of the transnational servant may sap the vigor and verve of the nation’s young, and hence its future, brings under scrutiny women’s moral and social role in the family, as mothers not only of individual lives, but ultimately, as ‘mothers of the nation’ (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989). Within the context of a strong demand for the labour of women-citizens in the workforce, and the national dilemma of transnationalizing reproductive work onto increasing numbers of immigrant women,


we focus on the perspectives of mistress and maid, women most—intimately caught up in tussling with the ‘self/other’ divide in (re)structuring the burden of the household reproductive sphere and (re)constituting women’s identities. Methodology and sample profile The research is based primarily on a random questionnaire survey of 162 pairs of Table 17.1 Sociodemographic characteristics of foreign domestic helpers in Singapore

* Percentages add up to more than 100 percent because respondents provided multiple responses. Source: Authors’ field survey, 1995–96


foreign domestic workers and their employers. This was followed by indepth interviews with 15 employers and 30 foreign domestic workers, some of whom paired. Interviews generally lasted between 2 to 4 hours each. Of the 162 domestic workers, over half (53.1 percent) were Filipino, 27.8 percent were Indonesians, 12.4 were percent Sri Lankans, and 6.8 percent belonged to other nationalities (Indian, Thai and Burmese). In general, most of the maids were in their twenties and thirties, single rather than married, and had some formal education. Most had worked before coming to Singapore and had held jobs in the informal sector (usually as domestic helpers, itinerant hawkers or unpaid family labour), or they had worked as production workers, or in the sales and service industry (Table 17.1). Of the one-third who have ever been married, almost all (96.2 percent) have left children mainly in the care of the children’s grandmothers, aunts or fathers in the countries of origin. In contrast, most employers were older (in their thirties and forties), married, and with at least a secondary-school education (Table 17.2). The majority worked in the formal sector, mainly in management, executive, professional, administrative, secretarial or clerical positions; a quarter were housewives or had retired. It is not surprising that none of the employers held production or production-related jobs, or worked as hawkers or manual labourers. Although no official figure exists, it has been estimated that only those with a minimum yearly income of $30,000 are granted permits to employ foreign domestic helpers (this ensures that employers have the means to provide for upkeep of a maid) (Straits Times, 5 April 1992). More than two-thirds (69.8 percent) have children—67.3 percent have pre-school children, 58.4 percent have children in primary school, and 28.3 percent have teenagers. Employing a maid: Singapore women and the negotiation of domestic work and motherhood As more Singapore women have chosen to enter the formal economy, the demand for replacement reproductive labour has become more pressing. The maid provides the most ‘complete’ substitute for the wife/mother’s reproductive labour on many counts, as is clear from the following testimonies: I wanted to go back to work [after stopping work to look after her two children when they arrived]…actually I felt I needed the adult company. After a while with the children, you can only do baby talk…. We needed a maid because my second was too young to be put into a childcare centre. The other alternative was to shuttle them up and down to my aunt’s place but that is very hectic, very tiring. And at the end of the day, you still have to come back and do the housework and the necessary. (April, full-time manager with two young children)


Table 17.2 Sociodemographic characteristics of employers surveyed

Source: Authors’ field survey, 1995–96

When my first child came, I didn’t have a maid. We [husband and wife] would bring her down in the morning [in her husband’s car] to my motherin-law’s place and then I’ll take a bus to work. And in the evening, I’ll take the bus to my mother-in-law’s, meet my husband there and we’ll go home after dinner with the baby…. When the second child came along, we had hoped to be able to cope…. After ferrying my first child to and fro for almost two years, I would say that things were working out all right except that it was quite taxing for the child. She had to wake up very early and sometimes by the time we get home, she’ll be very tired, and probably didn’t get enough


stimulation. So for a sense of permanence, and roots for the child, we decided it’ll probably be better if my in-laws moved in with us, especially when my second child was born…. I told my mother-in-law that if she thinks she can’t cope, to let me know, and we’ll go hire a maid. None of us really wanted a maid because we all like to preserve our privacy, but on the other, hand you know, the everyday routine [suffers]. How to do ten-thousand-and-one things all at the same time? I used to do most of the housework on weekends or wake up early to do the housework before going to work. But it’s not the same, because you have to cook special meals for the baby, and a two-yearold is quite a lot to handle because my mother-in-law believes in cooking ‘proper’ stuff for the children. Nothing came out of a can. Everyday, we’ll have to go to the market for special fish and vegetables and all that. It just wasn’t working out, running back and forth. So we had to get a maid. (Polly, full-time professional with two young children) Polly’s experience with the first maid was disastrous, culminating in the maid running away. However, by then, the family had progressed up the socio-economic ladder and domestic labour was required, not only to care for two young children, but a large house and garden. Having a maid around the house had become indispensable: We had to have a maid! My mother-in-law could not cope! By then we had moved to a big house [from a flat]. A big house! There was so many things to do, and on top of that there was the garden to tend to as well. So we agreed we were going to have a maid, and I went to look for one. In the interim period, I did all the work. I got up at three in the morning and went to bed at midnight. Did everything on top of a full-time job—wash toilets, wash the plates, did the laundry, did the ironing, did the mopping, and because the children were young, we had to mop the floor everyday because they’d be crawling all over the place on their hands and knees, picking up things from the floor to eat and what have you. They threw their toys all over the place and every once in a while you must pick up, or the house would be accident- prone…. After the first week, my husband says that the quality of life had decreased substantially. There was no way we can do without a maid. (Polly). The crux of the argument as to why foreign domestics are indispensable to dualcareer households, is best summarised in a letter from a working mother to the forum page of the daily newspaper, entitled ‘Child-care centres cannot replace maid’s service: Maid can do other chores besides caring for children’ (Straits Times, 7 November 1997). In the letter, the following reasons were given as to why ‘placing children in child-care centres is not an effective substitute for employing a maid’:


• Working parents have little time to spend with their children. Therefore, they need to spend quality evening hours with their children after returning from work, and not spend time on housework; • The operating hours of child-care centres are rigid. If the working parents are on split shift or they have last minute meetings, there will be no one to take their children home in the evening; • Child-care centres demand that parents take care of their children at home when they are ill. This means that working parents have to take urgent leave from work. This will disrupt work. Furthermore, there are extra holidays such as Children’s Day, Youth Day and Teachers’ Day which will exhaust most parents’ annual leave entitlement; • The cost of sending two children to a child-care centre can be a financial burden. Working parents will find that employing a maid is value for money because she can also help them in housework; • Few child-care centres are willing to take [children under the age of two]; • For children of school-going age, a maid can be used to take them to EC A (extra-curricular activities). She can also take babies for immunisation at a polyclinic and go to the market. No child-care centre can provide these services; • Working parents have to rush their half-asleep children to child-care centres early in the morning before they proceed to work. They need to endure the inconvenience of using public transport in the evening when they take their children home. These activities are time-consuming and tiring; • The conducive environment at home and home cooking are always better for a child than an institution such as a child-care centre. The presence of a housemaid perpetuates traditional cultures of domesticity, which valorises the ‘home’ as a site of physical, emotional and moral nurturing for the family, and as a safe haven for children (providing a sense of ‘permanence’ and ‘roots’ as Polly puts it) (Gregson and Lowe 1995). This is in contrast to non-homebased options, such as institutionalised childcare, babysitters (both options involving travel and stress on the mother and child), or using commercially prepared food (‘proper’ food is home-cooked and does not come ‘out of a can’). Once secured, the maid’s replacement labour is also highly flexible. It is expandable to fill the domestic vacuum at no extra cost. Not only can the daily specifications of work include a multitude of tasks, from housework, childcare (including children too young for institutionalised childcare), care of the elderly, cooking, marketing, car washing, to walking the dog or taking the child to the clinic or school activities, but, in addition, the live-in maid’s service is continuously available to meet every contingency (from ministering to a sick child, to holding down the fort when parents work late or during ‘extra holidays’). The labour provided by the maid is also accommodating of the Sisyphean logic which characterises domestic work. Employers, for example, often equate the presence of the maid with the maintenance of the house in a perpetual state of orderliness: constant ‘picking up’ becomes an unwritten job description.


The ‘need’ for a maid is not just about ensuring that specific jobs around the house get done; it is also about maintaining a decent ‘quality of life’ (as Polly’s husband puts it)—symbolised by a ‘big’ house in spick and span order, or the ability to ‘do ten-thousand-and-one things all at the same time’—and the luxury of having contingency plans to fall back on by securing another person subservient to self to pick up the slack (which otherwise falls on the wife/mother as, for example, when Polly temporarily went without a maid). As purchasing the maid’s labour actually involves securing the maid’s constant presence and availability (particularly crucial in view of parents’ absence and limited availability at home), rather than just paying for the performance of specific, divisible and definable tasks, the act of multiplying the ‘tasks’ (e.g. increasing the number of children under the maid’s care or stretching the hours of work at the beginning or end of the day to cover ‘emergencies’) entails no further financial outlay. That the ‘stretching’ of the boundaries of domestic work, without financial compensation, does not normally cause concern among employers, is partly due to the way domestic work is evaluated as the ‘natural’ labour which women perform: after all, the maid is already being paid to perform what was formerly the employer’s unpaid ‘labour of love’. It should also be noted that the maid’s replacement labour does not necessarily free her female employer from all domestic concerns, but simply modifies them, as Kaladevi (full-time professional and mother of a preschooler and a teenager) observes: Without a maid, you’re so stressed up for so many reasons, so many things to do. If you keep a maid in the house, it’s not that your stress level really goes down either. Yes, physically it does go down to a certain extent, but mentally the stress [is still there]…you still have to keep track of what’s happening at home and sometimes when things go wrong, you’re like trying to solve problems long distance. It’s not always easy.

However ‘complete’ the maid’s replacement labour is, she is seldom perceived to amount to more than an appendage of the employer, who remains inextricably linked to the domestic realm, even at ‘long distance’. As Romero (1992:100) puts it, ‘employers hire persons to replace labour, at once considered demeaning and closely identified with family roles of mothers and wives’. Such contradictory and ambivalent demands on the hired persons continue to shape everyday practices, as employers tussle with defining the ‘place’ of the maid vis-à-vis themselves. In turn, these practices, often underpinned by gendered and racialised categories, both modify and reaffirm understandings of women’s identities as embedded in domesticity and motherhood. As Pratt (1997:173) has argued, one of the most psychologically taxing issues to come to terms with for employers (as a result of the insertion of substitute reproductive labour in the household), is the ‘fraught terrain of motherhood’, which lies uncomfortably at ‘the crossroads of anxieties about sameness and


difference’. For households with children, childcare is ranked by the majority of employers (82.3 percent) as one of the maid’s duties, and by half of employers (49.6 percent) as the maid’s main duty (this contrasts with ‘adults-only’ households, where ‘general housework’ is the main work priority). The maid’s role as substitute childcare giver is hence a significant one which, as Pratt (1997: 169) notes, produces a whole set of ‘ambivalences’ for women’s identities as mothers. Mothers such as Ellen (full-time administrator with three young children and two maids), who have come to the conclusion (after lengthy exploration of other options) that relying on the maid as substitute caregiver is the only ‘solution’ to negotiating the demands of home and work, still continue to wrestle with the everyday implications of the ‘solution’: My maid used to sleep with my first child when he was a baby…she was so attached to the baby that the baby didn’t want me, you see. So I said, no, no, no! No matter how, I’ll stay up at night and do the night feeds. I’ll do it, you know. I’ll do it, I’ll do it! Then you have the first child, and then the second, now the third, you’re so tired, aiyoh, you just want the added sleep lah, so I would rotate with her [the maid], you see, alternate nights with the baby. Then since I had the second maid, aiyah, since I’m paying her so much, I shouldn’t be wasting my nights, sleepless nights you know, let her look after [the baby] lah! So for the last few months, I have not been [sleeping with the baby], only like on Friday nights, once a week…. But I feel that I’m neglecting him [the third child]. You see, with the [addition of the] second maid, it becomes inevitably ‘Minda [one of the maids], can you please look after the baby?’ I feel that I just want more time to myself, and then when I evaluate [what’s happening], aiyah, what is this lah, I’m neglecting him!

In Ellen’s case, the tensions over the way night-nursing is scheduled, become emblematic of the contradictions between the divisibility of mothering work and the notion that motherhood is inseparable from the personhood of the ‘real’ mother. Ellen fluctuates between fears of being supplanted should the baby bond better with the maid, pangs of maternal guilt hinged on the idea that ‘time out’ for ‘self’ amounts to a form of neglect, and the consciousness that having paid for a double share of substitute labour, she is not getting value for money. Employers strive to preserve an ‘ideal sphere’ (Simmel’s term, quoted in Goffman 1956:481) around themselves which attests to the inviolability of their social identity as mothers, even as they abdicate responsibilities and share out mothering time with the maids: You see, my maid has been taking care of my boy since he was a baby, so for instance, when he wants to sleep, he tends to want Meera [the maid] to get him to bed, but…when I reach home, I’m the preferred person, and


sometimes he wouldn’t even let me go, so I would say that I feel that this kind of reaction is not at all unnatural. I think it is to be expected given the background…. Weekends, for instance, I would be the preferred sort of companion, but when we are at work, then he’s quite happy to spend time with the maid. (Li Ying, full-time professional and mother of two young children) My youngest child is very spoilt by the maid because she gives in to him. She looked after him as a baby so I suppose she pays extra attention to him…. He is really very attached to her…I take it that it is a natural bonding he has with her because he can see that she loves him, so I just accept it… But, well, blood is thicker than water, after a while he’ll still come back to me. Now and then, he comes in between us [the maid and self], but for certain things—like when he is in pain—it’s still back to me. (Cheng Ee, involved in home-based part-time work, and mother of three young children) Actually I prefer the children not to bond with the maid. Previously, I thought it would be good to have the maid get close to the children but, you know, when the maid goes off after two years, the children will get affected. They miss her, and would cry more and be more demanding. So now I try to get them separate from the maid. The maid is actually to do the housework…. [In a later part of the interview]…. I was actually hoping more for the maid to like the children, not so much for the children to like the maid, you know, because if the maid likes the children, then she will take good care of them because they are so young, so dependent on the maid. (April)

While most accept the inevitability of a degree of bonding between the maid and the children, and some perceive it as desirable (since bonding simulates motherhood more closely and enhances the quality of care), others try to enforce a certain distance between the maid and the children. Of employers living in households with children, 17.7 percent indicate that their maids are not involved in childcare at all. Alternatively, they restrict the maid to the sphere of housework (while childcare is apportioned to a more trusted caregiver such as a grandmother) or simply believe that there is no reciprocity of attachment in the children’s relationship with the maid. Employers also assure themselves that their ‘place’ as the ‘real’ mother is secured by ties of blood and nature. Key incidents—either crisis moments (e.g. when the child is in pain) or special occasions (weekends and holidays)—rather than the recurrent practices of everyday care, are seen to provide the litmus test of true motherhood. The ideal mother substitute is also one who operates within clear, if unwritten, space-time coordinates:


She [the maid] took care of my children as if they were her own. However, as soon as I set foot inside the house, she would stop what she was doing, leave me with my children, and go to her room. Many times, I complained that Prima does not even give me time to put down my purse, or to change and freshen up from work. Initially I resented her for that. I soon realised that Prima did this to allow me ‘quality time’ with my children…. My highprofile career failed to impress her. As far as she was concerned, I had to do the ‘mothering’ during weekends…. After almost six years with us, Prima went home to the Philippines. It was time for her to start her own family. She will make a beautiful mother. (One Singapore employer’s testimony, published in Tulay Ng Tagumpay,1 1993a:4–5) Prima’s ability to switch between providing a motherly presence in her employer’s absence and immediately withdrawing such a presence the moment the ‘real’ mother puts in an appearance, so that she can spend ‘quality time’ with the children, endears her to her employer as the ideal maid whose own motherhood is safely located in a different time and space. Anxieties over the substitutability of motherhood can also be discerned in the debate over whether it is maids who are older, married mothers or young, single women, who make better caregivers for young children. Some employers associate qualities of trustworthiness and maternal responsibility with an intersecting matrix of racial type (Indonesians being more ‘homely’ than more ‘sociable’ Filipinas), age and marital status (older, married maids being both more experienced, and more earnest about making a living, and therefore undertake their childminding responsibilities more seriously): For my first maid [Filipina],…she was quite a young girl, I think in her early twenties, I believe, and, she wasn’t married…. It didn’t work out because she socialised quite a bit, you know, she’s quite fun-loving…. I felt that she was too young to handle the responsibility of looking after children…she was quite spendthrift. She would spend all her wages the moment she got hold of the money…. I thought she wouldn’t be suitable for looking after young children, not quite appropriate, so I sent her back to the agency after four months…. I was not comfortable with somebody with this kind of values…. [As for my current maid,] I have deliberately chosen an Indonesian this time round. As a rule, Indonesians are simpler in outlook [compared to Filipinas], especially if you choose the older, married ones [her maid is in her late thirties and is not only a mother but a grandmother as well] who are quite earnest about earning a living and will take responsibilities seriously. And they [a second Indonesian maid, also married with children, was later employed when the second child was born] have shown themselves responsible people who are experienced in looking after children. (Li Ying)


Others prefer the malleability associated with the young and single, precisely because the maid’s lack of personal experience in mothering allows her to be molded to fit into an ‘ideal’ extension of the employer. This is achieved by embodying the latter’s notions of good mothering practices: We don’t want somebody old, who has too much experience, because I thought that that means I can’t teach her what I want to teach her. I don’t want somebody who’s married, has a kid, because they come with their ideas of bringing up a child, and it may not be the ideal, so I wanted somebody who can be trained. (Kaladevi, who has employed five maids in succession, all of whom young and single, as primary caregiver for her young daughter) Although the relationship between employer and maid, stretching across the contact zone, is mainly characterised by domination/subservience, this does not altogether rule out the sense of empathy which women, and mothers in particular, may share across other lines that divide. Employers who themselves feel the contradictory pulls of home and work are also conscious of their maids’ struggles as working mothers. In the following editorial published in the Tulay Ng Tagumpay (1993b: 1), in the form of a mock letter from a Singaporean mother to her neighbour’s Filipina maid, the nobility and sacrifice of the maid’s binational motherhood is celebrated: Every night, you and I pray for our families. When my son wakes up from a nightmare, I am there to comfort him. How do you feel rocking your employer’s baby to sleep, dreaming about the little boy or girl you left behind in the Philippines? Even though you are far away, your loved ones think about you as much as you do them. They know you have gone away to give them a better life. They will never forget the mother, auntie or cousin who sent them much needed money for food, clothing, shelter and school fees. On your Day Off I listen to the little boy downstairs crying and calling your name. I know his mother scolds him, but he loves you. He will always remember the ‘tita’ who comforted him when he was scared, who stood in the hot sun or pouring rain waiting for his school bus to arrive, and who taught him to use the potty. Now we are worlds apart [but] I have to tell you that I admire your strength and sense of purpose. The next time you are overwhelmed with work, stop and remember how important you are. You serve two families and will always be remembered by both. These sentiments are seldom expressed in such exalted tones in real life, although occasionally, a shared understanding of motherhood has been a means of guiding women’s actions, as seen in the following instance:


I usually go for a single maid because I don’t want them to come here and start thinking about their children. I prefer someone young with no family commitments…. All my maids have been single except Putri [the current Indonesian maid]. I chose her more out of pity, sympathy. She was a transfer maid, was sent back to the agent by her previous employer. When I saw her face to face, I had a kind of sympathy…. She was pleading, ‘please take me’, and I asked the reason why she had come to Singapore to work when she already has a child. Her answer was, ‘I don’t want my son to have the same fate as me. I need the money to support him’. I asked how old he is and who’s taking care of him. And she said that actually what happened was that her husband has abandoned them. She sounded genuine and I told myself, okay, let’s give her a try. (Julia, a full-time secretary with two children) In general, however, empathy stemming from a common identity as mothers, does not necessarily translate into bridges that span the women’s ‘worlds apart’ with any degree of permanence. Employers are still primarily concerned about negotiating an appropriate space for their maids as substitute mothers within their own homes, rather than their maids’ other lives as real mothers with real families. In fact, employers often fear that the maid’s maternal longings may interfere with her childminding abilities: My first maid was married…. She very poor thing…. She cried and cried when looking after my son…she had children about the same age as mine [pre-school]. That time we did not have a maid’s room, so she slept with my kids, and she would cry. So my kids said, ‘Aiyoh, mummy, why she cry?’ She stayed for two years…but it wasn’t good for the children. After that, I didn’t want to employ married maids. My next three were all single. (Mui Yan, full-time manager with three children) Becoming a maid: migrant women and the negotiation of domestic work and motherhood Drawn into the realm of domestic service, migrant women who become housemaids, like their employers, constantly (re)negotiate the way they frame their identities as workers and mothers, although the material conditions that circumscribe these negotiations in their case are rather different. As noted in Table 17.1, about a third of the maids surveyed (32.3 percent) have been involved in domestic labour (as paid work [17.3 percent]; as an informal arrangement [14. 9 percent]), prior to their arrival in Singapore, while the majority (72.2 percent) have been engaged in a wide range of occupations including production work, sales and services, and clerical and secretarial jobs. Domestic service is perceived to be a job of very low social standing—undertaken only by the poorest—even in labour-exporting countries. Most migrant women felt that they would not be


working as maids had they remained in their home countries. Some, like Rita (an Indonesian maid in her mid-twenties), had gone as far as concealing the nature of her overseas job from her family: All my family members are professionals—my father is a police officer, my sisters are all teachers and nurses. I’m the youngest…. I have gone to high school and have done office work in a hospital. I wanted to work in Singapore to earn more money. I told my family it is to do office work, not as a maid. My father and mother would be very unhappy if they knew I was working as a maid. Only a very small minority of the maids surveyed (7.0 percent) actually felt that being a maid is ‘all that they know how to do;’ most (91.9 percent) see themselves driven to overseas domestic service primarily for the economic benefits. They argue that the reasons why they, rather than a husband or a brother, have resorted to overseas work as a maid, is simply because such work is more easily available than jobs for men, and also pays far better than any available job at home. Many, at the start of their migratory journey, see a stint as an overseas domestic worker as a temporary stop-gap measure; few relish domestic work as the vocation of a lifetime or even feel any ‘natural’ inclination or aptitude for such work. For some, becoming a foreign domestic worker actually serves as their first introduction to domestic work. For example, Gita (formerly a clerk in Sri Lanka), comes from a middle-class household where the cooking and cleaning are done by a ‘poor woman’ whose husband had divorced her. Gita’s mother had questioned her ability to do housework: My mother says I can’t work in Singapore [as a maid] because I didn’t work at home. She told me, ‘You only eat and sleep. You can’t work. You don’t go.’ Similarly, Kalliya (in her early twenties), who had worked in turn as a cashier, an accounts clerk and a telephone operator in Sri Lanka, has little experience of domestic work: I told the [recruitment] agent that I don’t know how to look after sick person, I don’t know how to look after children…[but] he said, ‘No experience is okay, you can look after sick person, small babies also’…. Actually, my mother very scared to send me [out as a maid] because she knows actually I didn’t do housework [at home]. After that, come here, so many mistakes [laughs]. Now [six months into her contract] also sometimes I can’t manage [the housework] but my madam’s really kind to me although sometimes she scolds. (Kalliya, whose work entails household chores, cooking and looking after a pre-schooler)


Domestic work is seldom the preferred vocation; indeed, for the young and single in particular, domestic work does not come ‘naturally’. Indeed, the growth of the ‘maid trade’ can be better explained by the intersection between the development of a transnational hierarchy of work and the ‘genderised mode of labour substitution’ (Heyzer and Wee 1994:39), rather than any innate affinities that women have for domestic work. Most migrant women who enter domestic service see it as an economic passport to better things, although not all are successful in using it as a ‘bridging’ occupation and they may actually remain locked into overseas domestic service for longer than they first anticipated. The low status of the job itself is balanced by its value as ‘a form of secular pilgrimage in a quest for economic bounty and life experience’ (Aguilar 1996a:114). Women such as Gita and Kalliya, for example, are planning to work for the duration of one contract (two years) in order to save up enough to get married to their boyfriends at home, buy land and build a house, and start a business. Attitudes towards domestic work itself may differ considerably. Kalliya looks upon it as an apprenticeship under an older, more experienced woman, that will equip her with domestic skills which will stand her in good stead: I didn’t know how to cook [when she first came], not even Sri Lankan food. My madam taught me everything….[It is okay] if she scolds, then I know and can [correct] my errors, then if I do something like that next time, I’ll remember. My mother and my boyfriend very happy that I now know how to clean house and cook. Others like Dora (a Filipina maid in her mid-twenties) see ‘enforced’ domesticity during her contract in Singapore as the quickest means to an end: I only come here to work as a maid because it was the only way to save enough money to go to America…. No way I want to do [domestic] work all my life…. It’s the hardest work…better to start a business…it’s very fast to earn money. Within the duration of their contracts, however, few maids exert control over the type of domestic work they take on,2 or indeed over any change in the scope of work during the contract, as a result, for example, of a move to a larger house or the arrival of a new baby. Only the more assertive—usually those who have accumulated some work experience overseas—are able to exercise some degree of control over the nature of domestic work they undertake. This is illustrated in April’s account of the succession of maids (seven in total) she employed over a period of six years: [When the second maid left,] I got a replacement for her—this was the time my second son was born—but this third maid didn’t want to look after babies, so after two months she changed employer. The boss [of the agency]


himself highly recommended her and said that she was very good with children and she speaks very good English, and that she has never been to Singapore before, but when we collected her, she told us that she had already worked in Singapore for two years and didn’t know she was going to look after children, so for that reason, she didn’t want to work for me. She didn’t want to look after babies at night…. I think in her previous employer’s place she had to look after a baby so she knows the work involved. You know, after coming out for one contract, they are more fussy, they pick and choose what kind of household they want. She requested for a transfer and after that we had to go for about six weeks without a maid…[relates her experiences with her fourth and fifth maids]…. My sixth maid stay ed with me for one year. I think I treated her too nicely…. I allowed her to go to my church [Filipino] fellowship, and she got to know Filipino friends there and found out that there were other employers who could give her every Sunday off, whose kids were all grown up and offered a higher salary. It so happened that her friend [another maid] was going back to the Philippines and recommended her [to the employer], so she transferred to the other side…. I don’t believe in holding on to the maid when she is no longer interested in working for you. In the same way that the daily specifications of reproductive labour constituting motherhood often present the Singapore employer with dilemmas of ambivalence, so maids also have to constantly confront their identities as ‘mothers’ as they grapple with issues of childcare. This may be the care of their own children in their natal homelands, or playing surrogate mother to their employers’ children, or both. Often, it is precisely the desire to give their children a better future—in terms of an educational headstart or material security—that spurred the women on to seek domestic employment overseas, and to persevere in what sometimes turns out to be a long haul away from home. For example, Lucy, a high-school graduate, was a housewife when her husband passed away in 1980, leaving her with two children aged 9 and 5. She then worked as a clerk in Manila (she was paid the equivalent of about S$60 a month) but in 1986, decided to leave her children with her mother in order to take on domestic work overseas: I don’t have enough money, lah. I need to earn money because, ah, I’m alone. I’m the father, I’m the mother, and then how, if the children grow up, I have no money. Aiyah, then now, my son is in school already, then high school already, then er, college, then what to do? I’m thinking of the education. Every time I think of going home after finishing a contract, my children say, ‘Very expensive, all the things here’. Then, my money is only so much in the bank, then when [they] finish schooling, then how? That’s when I think I can come back for another two years lah…. So another two years more! [laughs] Twelve years now [since first starting out as a foreign domestic worker]!


Having overcome her own feelings of anxiety concerning her children, and her extreme homesickness, Lucy recalled (with great amusement and some condescension) the story of her sister-in-law who left after three months in Singapore because she had become: so homesick, ya, cannot tahan [local colloquialism for ‘tolerate’ or ‘withstand’] already. Wanted to climb the window and then jump! I said, ‘Okay, lah. Go home’…. But I, when I [used to] thinking and thinking like that, I lie to myself, lah. I think how is my children’s education, the schooling. Must be practical, lah! The strength of mind and ‘pragmatism’ needed to countenance leaving one’s children in the hands of others in order to undertake domestic service abroad (which may, ironically, involve caring for the children of others) define acts of motherhood in heroic terms, investing them with all the pain of self-sacrifice and toil. At the same time, migrant women are well aware that transnational motherhood has to withstand the distancing effects of space and time; the fear that the emotional (as opposed to material) ties that bind children to their mothers, may gradually unravel, is thus a real one (which, paradoxically, parallels their employers’ fear of being displaced). Mothers like Lucy do not regret their decision to seek overseas employment, but lament the gradual yet inexorable erosion of communication with their children through the years: [When the children were small], I telephone, telephone, always twenty dollars, ten dollars, five dollars. ‘How are you there? Are you okay?’ When I see the typhoon, ‘How is the typhoon there?’ Now, no more already. Telephone stop…. Also very few letters…only on special occasions…my birthday, Christmas, Mother’s Day. My daughter says, ‘No, I’m very busy, I’m studying.’ Then my son says, ‘I’m working’…[laughs]…. Okay lah, never mind, they don’t want me anymore [laughs to hide her embarrassment] Others, like Alice, who came out to Singapore as a domestic worker 12 years ago, in order to put her children through school, struggle to live up to their mothering ideals long distance: Sometimes I regret that I have neglected my duty to my family, especially my children, they grow up without me. But it also helps because they become independent themselves…. Sometimes I have to spend $60 on a phone call…. They must tell me what they feel. I must tell them what I feel. I tell them what I do, or ‘I’m angry with you because you do like this, you do like that.’ They joke, ‘oh come on, do not make sermon over the phone!’ But I have to. Being a mother, we have to discipline our children whether far or near. Because it is our duty to motivate our children. It is not easy to be a mother far away, you know.


‘Long-distance’ mothering anxieties have also been given substance by stories of betrayal and rejection at the end of the maid’s economic pilgrimage and on homecoming, such as the following which appeared in the Tulay Ng Tagumpay (1993c:5): Gwendolyn writes that after four years as a Domestic Help in Singapore, she returned to Manila for a vacation. She looked forward to rejoining her husband and her two children, for whom she had sacrificed so much. She was disappointed when there was no one [sic] at the airport to meet her. With a heavy heart, she made the long journey to her province. Her home, she noticed, had been quite improved. In fact, it looked quite remarkable amongst the little nipa thatches and barong-barong in the barrio. She went inside and found another woman in her newly renovated home. Gwendolyn’s husband had introduced her into the home over eighteen months before. Not only had this woman won the affection of her husband, but that of her two children as well, who now looked upon this intruder as their own mother. The fear of displacement and being rendered dispensable that underlies transnational motherhood, is further complicated for domestic workers, who have to negotiate the shift from being ‘mother’ to becoming ‘surrogate mother’ to their employers’ children. Newly separated from an unfaithful husband, Rhoda left the Philippines for domestic work in Singapore to support her three pre-schoolers, entrusting them to her sister’s care. Ironically, she finds herself working for a divorcee with three young children whose former husband ‘has got another girl’. The relationship between employer and employee is tense and uneasy (‘no big trouble but we argue’) and at the same time bound by a sense of empathy for each other’s circumstances (‘ma’ am has her moods but I treat her like my sister’). Rhoda relates her struggles with binational motherhood: [When I phone home,] my three children would be fighting, ‘I want also to speak to mama!’ I cry after I talk to them. And my sister sends me pictures of them, my children. I miss them. I always send them my picture [so that] they know, ‘My mamma there in Singapore, she’s working’…. [My employer’s children,] I treat them like my own children. [The elder two girls] are very wild, very rude, they say, ‘You’re our maid! My mother pay you every month! You have no right to scold me, to teach me, because she maid, the maid, only pick up the house’…but I scold them, I treat them like my own children. I don’t want them to be rude because I also got three children. This little baby [the youngest of her employer’s children] is quite good… we sleep together in one bed. If he saw me cry in bed in the evening, he [would] wipe my face… I didn’t do to my children what I did for him. When he got fever, I’m very worried. But with my own children, I’m relaxed only.


At the same time as striving to maintain her place as mother in her own children’s lives, Rhoda also draws on a stock of motherhood ideals in caring for her employer’s children: she resists relegation to being seen as ‘just the maid’ by the two older girls while asserting some degree of moral authority over them, and develops emotional rapport with the youngest boy. In Lucy’s case, her attachment to her employer’s youngest son, whom she had cared for from birth, finally tipped the balance in her decision to stay on with the family despite a better financial offer from another family: I decided lah to stay because I [would] miss John [the child]. He is still very small. If I change employer, then John how? I [would] feel very sad. John [would] miss me. If he feels sick, how lah? Never mind, salary is not important. As Romero (1992:125) has argued, ‘some domestics willingly exchange certain types of emotional labour for respect, status, and influence, for instance by manipulating traditional ‘feminine’ qualities attached to housework. By being “motherly”, they support and enhance the well-being of others, while eliminating many negative and harsh attacks on their self-esteem. The search for respect and dignity in domestic service leads most household workers to trade additional physical and emotional labour for psychological benefits.’ The quality of ‘being motherly’ has thus become an important strategy for maids in negotiating their identities vis-à-vis their employers. Even young, single women such as Kalliya, who are thrust into a position of playing surrogate mother, try to win over their young charges, not simply to please their employers but also for a sense of emotional well-being: sometimes I feel like mother, sometimes like sister…. Sometimes she’s [the child] is not well, that time, I try as hard as I can to feed her by telling stories. She likes it, she wants somebody around. So when I’m very close to her, she is also very close to me…. When I told her I have to go back after two years, she started to cry. Before, I [used to] think it’s only a job,…now I’m not thinking it’s my job, now I’m like part of the family, a precious relationship. Conclusion It has often been observed that the phenomenon of the ‘maid trade’, as a retrogressive, non-modern form of domestic work, has further entrenched the gendered nature of domestic and mothering work, and, as a consequence, the often unquestioned patriarchal underpinnings of society. Aguilar (1996b: 5), for example, argues that ‘the plentiful supply of migrant workers from the Philippines [and other labour-exporting countries] has made possible the retention of archaic,


slave-like forms of domestic labour in Singapore, which has propped up customary patriarchal relations in family and society’. While this is clearly the case, it should also be noted that domestic and mothering practices, while seldom crossing the gender divide, are constantly being (re) negotiated, as women—both employers and maids—interpret their identities in relation to the particular context in which they find themselves, and in the ‘copresence’ of each other. As a ‘contact zone’ providing a ‘space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations’ (Pratt 1992:4), the home provides a lens through which to examine the way women of different cultures, nationalities and class, interpret and play out interlocking understandings and practices of domestic work and motherhood. While employers and maids are ‘worlds apart’ in many ways, they also participate in negotiations around similar issues: both sets of women often justify resorting to ‘substitute mothering’ in terms of seeking material betterment for their families; both have removed themselves physically from the reproductive burden of their own households, but do not entirely escape the multiple ties that bind women to the domestic world; both struggle with ‘distance mothering’ (although this occurs on different scales). Examining how employers negotiate their positions in the domestic realm vis-à-vis their maids, not only contributes to understanding their anxieties about ‘difference’ and ‘sameness’, but also helps explain the often excessive degree of control which employers exert over their maids, as well as the demand for clear structures of deference as a means of distinguishing ‘self’ and ‘other’. At the same time, from the point of view of the foreign domestic worker inserted into the employer’s household as replacement labour, the nature and boundaries of domestic work and motherhood become blurred, taking on transnational and binational dimensions. It is clear, however, that ambiguities and negotiations notwithstanding, women—be they middle-class Singaporeans or migrant Filipina, Indonesian and Sri Lankan workers —remain firmly committed to the ideals of ‘good’ domestic and mothering practices. Notes 1 A magazine published by the Philippine Pastoral Ministry in Singapore, targeted at, and circulated among Filipina domestic workers. 2 While potential employers usually have a lot of choice in who they pick as their maid (often sieving through dozens of bio-data files and video clips before a choice is made), as well as considerable power to replace their maid ‘in the event the Servant does not work out;’ as one employment contract puts it (in fact, some placement agencies advertise ‘unlimited replacements’ as a sales gimmick), maids have very little corresponding choice as to who they work for. Most have no information regarding the type of household they will be working for when they sign the employment contract, and have to accept the situation on arrival in Singapore. Their only recourse is to terminate the contract voluntarily, in which case they have to pay


for their passage back home and, if insufficient notice is given, forfeit a portion of their salary.

References Aguilar, Jr., F.V. (1996a) The dialectics of transnational shame and national identity’, Philippine Sociological Review, 44, 1–4:101–36. Aguilar, Jr., F.V. (1996b) ‘Filipinos as transnational migrants’, Philippine Sociological Review, 44, 1–4:4–11. Bakan, A.B. and Stasiulis, D. (1995) ‘Making the match: Domestic placement agencies and the racialisation of women’s household work’, Signs, 20:303–35. Buckley, S. (1996) ‘A guided tour of the kitchen: seven Japanese domestic tales’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14:441–61. Dyck, I. (1990) ‘Space, time and renegotiating motherhood: an exploration of the domestic workplace’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 8:459–83. England, K. and Stiell, B. (1997) “‘They think you’re as stupid as your English is”: constructing foreign domestic workers in Toronto’, Environment and Planning A, 29: 195–215. Glenn, E.N. (1992) ‘From servitude to service work: historical continuities in the racial division of labour’, Signs, 18:1–43. Goffman, E. (1956) ‘The nature of deference and demeanour’, American Anthropologist 58:473–502. Gregson, N. and Lowe, M. (1995) “‘Home”-making: on the spatiality of daily social reproduction in contemporary middle-class Britain’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 20:224–35. Heyzer, N. and Wee, V. (1994) ‘Domestic workers in transient overseas employment: who benefits, who profits?’, in N.Heyzer, G.Lycklama, A.Niejholt and N.Weerakoon (eds), The Trade in Domestic Workers: Causes, Mechanisms, and Consequences of International Migration, 1, London: Zed Books. Huang, S. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (1994) ‘Women, childcare and the state in Singapore’, Asian Studies Review, 17:50–61. Huang, S. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (1996) ‘Ties that bind: State policy and migrant female domestic helpers in Singapore’, Geoforum, 27, 4:479–93. Johnston, L.C. (1993) ‘Textured brick: speculations on the cultural production of domestic space’, Australian Geographical Studies, 31, 2:201–13. Massey, D.B. (1994) Space, Place and Gender, Cambridge: Polity Press. Perry, M., Kong, L. and Yeoh, B. (1997) Singapore: A Developmental City State, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Pratt, M.L. (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London: Routledge. Pratt, G. (1997) ‘Stereotypes and Ambivalences: the construction of domestic workers in Vancouver, British Columbia’, Gender, Place and Culture, 4, 2:159–77. Rollins, J. (1985) Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Romero, M. (1992) Maid in the U.S.A., London: Routledge. Sanchez, L. (1993) ‘Women’s power and the gendered division of domestic labour in the Third World’, Gender and Society 7, 3:434–59.


Stasiulis, D. and Bakan, A.B. (1997) ‘Negotiating citizenship: the case of foreign domestic workers in Canada’, Feminist Review, 57:112–39. Stiell, B. and England, K. (1997) ‘Domestic distinctions: constructing difference among paid domestic workers in Toronto’, Gender, Place and Culture, 4, 3:339–59. Straits Times, various issues. Toh, M.H. and Tay, B.N. (1996) Households and Housing in Singapore, Census of Population 1990, Monograph No. 4, Singapore: Census of Population Office. Tulay Ng Tugampay (Singapore) (1993a) ‘Maraming Salamat, Prima: A Singaporean mother pays tribute to the woman who helped raise her family’, 2, 8:4–5. Tulay Ng Tugampay (Singapore) (1993b) ‘Viewpoint’, 2, 8:1. Tulay Ng Tugampay (Singapore) (1993c) ‘Taking care of your family’, 2, 11:5–6. van der Veer, P. (1995) ‘Introduction: the diasporic imagination’, in P.van der Veer (ed.), Nation and Migration: The Politics of Space in the South Asian Diaspora, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Women and Geography Study Group (WGSG) (1997) Feminist Geographies: Explorations in Diversity and Difference, Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman. Wong, D. (1996) ‘Foreign domestic workers in Singapore’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 5, 1:117–38. Yeoh, B.S.A. and Huang, S. (1998) ‘Negotiating public space: strategies and styles of migrant female domestic workers in Singapore’, Urban Studies, 35, 3:583–602. Yeoh, B.S.A., Huang, S. and Gonzalez, III, J. (1999) ‘Migrant female domestic workers in Singapore: Debating the economic, social, and political impacts in Singapore’, International Migration Review, 33, 1:115–37. Yuval-Davis, N. and Anthias, F. (1989) Woman-Nation-State, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

296

CONCLUSION Future trends and trajectories Janet Henshall Momsen

Despite tighter controls on illegal immigration and reduced legal migration in recent years, independent migration of women for employment has been growing rapidly (United Nations Secretariat 1995a; Economist 1998) and female migrants working as domestics is one of the categories that has expanded most in various parts of the world (Weinart 1991). This migration does not just happen, but is a response to changes both in sending countries and regions and in the recipient areas. Sassen-Koob (1984) argues that the same set of processes that have promoted the off-shore location of manufacturing plants, have also contributed to an unsatisfied demand for low-wage workers in the developed countries and in the largest urban centres of the global South. Concomitant with the general feminisation of labour is an increasing polarisation of women’s jobs, with the majority being in the lowest-waged sector, including domestic service. In addition, as professionals work longer hours, especially in the United States and Britain, they have less time to do unpaid work at home and need the flexibility of in-home childcare. Singer (1974) argues that domestic service in the Third World is a vehicle for the reproduction of a labour reserve that can be seen as the equivalent of the welfare state in industrialised societies. Elmhirst’s research in Indonesia (see Chapter 15 of this book) supports Singer’s view as she notes that in the latest Asian economic crisis, women who are repatriated from overseas jobs1 or who lose their local work in factories, are seeking employment as domestic servants in middle-class Indonesian homes. The reasons that women choose to migrate to take up jobs as domestics in cities or overseas, are many and varied. For some, it is seen as a secular pilgrimage or even a rite of passage that will provide status, training and savings for marriage on the return, as shown by Miklavčič-Brezigar and Barbič in Chapter 10, and by Yeoh and Huang in Chapter 17. For others, it is a bridging occupation permitting entry to a place with greater potential for social and economic mobility, as Pratt was told in Vancouver (see Chapter 2), Pappas-DeLuca in Santiago (see Chapter 6) and Radcliffe in Quito (see Chapter 5). It may also be seen as part of family survival strategies, as discussed by Raghuram (see Chapter 13) and Ismail (see Chapter 14). Mattingly (see Chapter 4) in her research saw a link with male migration. As men migrate independently, more female-headed households are formed, and may be


denied resources by the extended family, as found by Miles (see Chapter 12) in Swaziland. In order to support themselves and their children, women are forced to migrate themselves. In many cases it is single (abandoned, separated or divorced) women with children to support, who take up domestic work (Kossoudji and Ranney 1984) and Miles (see Chapter 12). At the same time, it is often the most adventurous who migrate, and for many such women the search for personal freedom and the accompanying rejection of traditional gender roles is as important as economic reasons, as was indicated to Ismail (see Chapter 14) and PappasDeLuca (see Chapter 6). Efforts by some states, such as Pakistan, to prevent the overseas migration of women, are based implicitly on views that women are essentially vulnerable and that their respectability is likely to be compromised by the very fact that they migrate alone. Yet, women will continue to migrate and to be agents of change. It is important to understand the reasons for migration and to effect policies to make migration safer and more effective for women. As the United Nations Secretariat (1995b:9) pointed out: ‘After all, the vulnerability of migrant women is a social construct that can and must be “deconstructed”.’ Migrant women are not necessarily victims. The effect of migration on women may be seen as liberating, and may increase their status and position in the family, and in soeiety (Morokvasic 1984). They may gain respect and a greater decisionmaking role within the family (as Ismail see Chapter 14) found. But the effect on the family left behind is rarely considered (Tornea and Habana 1989; Ismail and Momsen 1997; Graham 1997). Husbands may give up their own jobs once remittances begin to arrive and may find new sexual partners, as described by Ismail (see Chapter 14) and by Yeoh and Huang (see Chapter 17). In most cases, the children are left with grandparents who often find the burden of looking after them too great, as the women in le Roux’s survey show (see Chapter 11). This may mean the children do not attend school regularly, are undisciplined and get into trouble, or that money sent by the mother may not be spent on the children as reported by Miles in Chapter 12. Those left behind argue that the parent overseas tries too often to buy the child’s love with expensive toys, instead of sending money for food, clothes and school (Sarmiento 1998). Most mothers working as migrant domestics justify their job in terms of it enabling their children to have a better life than their own, but the costs are great, for migrant, children and relatives. Even when migration is within the same nation, it may be too far for women working long hours as domestics to see their children often, limiting their mothering role to financial support, and causing guilt and distress for the migrants, as le Roux shows in Chapter 11. Women migrants are generally considered to be more reliable at sending home remittances, especially to those relatives caring for their children (Chant and Radcliffe 1992). However, the growth of female-headed households and overburdened, remittance-dependent grandparents in many migrant source areas, make it hard to maintain a stable society and a prosperous rural economy (Graham 1997). When the migrant returns, she finds it extremely difficult to readjust to her

CONCLUSION: FUTURE TRENDS AND TRAJECTORIES 299

home society and is often forced to undertake another labour contract overseas, as was found by Ismail (see Chapter 14), although some NGOs are trying to assist the re-entry of return migrants in the Philippines (Sarmiento 1998). Women who employ servants to care for their children also feel guilty, and worry about the effect on their children of being left in the care of a foreigner. Both employers and employees justify their reliance on substitute mothering as the basis for seeking economic betterment for their families. As Yeoh and Huang (see Chapter 17) remind us, both women have removed themselves from the reproductive burden of their own households, and both struggle with mothering from a distance. Both become totally dependent on the mother substitute in order to carry out their duties in the productive sphere (Buang 1997), but at the same time resent her closeness to their own children, as discussed by Tam (see Chapter 16), Yeoh and Huang (see Chapter 17) and Pratt (1997). These feelings of guilt and dependence underlie some of the efforts to control the maids and the emphasis on the degree of difference between ‘self’ and ‘other’. In North America, today working women employing substitute mothers are being portrayed in the media as bad mothers and blamed when the childcare worker provides inadequate care, or worse. At the same time, those caring for the children of migrant domestics are complaining increasingly about their burden. The impact of the intersection of a transnational hierarchy of work with labour substitution in the reproductive sphere, is resulting in increasingly complex and asymmetrical relations between women, and in the growth of female-headed households and new forms of family structure, both of which are having as yet undetermined effects on the next generation of children in both the global North and the global South. Note 1 Sih Handayani of the Yogyakarta Joint Secretariat for Gender Issues (SBPY 1998) reported that in the last three weeks of February 1998 alone, 332 boats brought back 3,971 illegal Indonesian immigrants from Malaysia. In the whole of 1997, the total number of repatriated illegal migrants sent back by the Malaysian authorities was 5, 432.

References Buang, A. (1997) ‘Elusive rescuers: coping with migrant housemaids, a Malaysian experience’, in U.J.Fairhurst, I.Booysten and P.S.Hattingh (eds), Migration and Gender: Place, Time and People Specific, A Collection of Papers, Pretoria: Faculty of Science, University of Pretoria.


Chant, S. and Radcliffe, S. (1992) ‘Migration and development: the importance of gender’, in S.Chant (ed.), Gender and Migration in Developing Countries, London and New York: Belhaven Press. Economist (1998) ‘Immigration’, September 26th: 106. Graham, P. (1997) ‘Florense women as “widows” at home and workers abroad’, paper presented to the International Conference on Women in the Asia-Pacific Region: Persons, Powers and Politics, Singapore 11–13 August, 1997. Handayani, S. (1998) Personal communication, June 6, 1998. Ismail, F.M. and Momsen, J.H. (1997) ‘Migration as the nexus of gender and religion: the migration of Sri Lankan Muslim women to the Middle East’, in U.J.Fairhurst, I. Booysen and P.S.Hattingh (eds), Migration and Gender: Place Time and People Specific, A Collection of Papers, Pretoria: Faculty of Science, University of Pretoria. Kossoudji, S.A. and Ranney, S. (1984) ‘The labour market experience of female migrants: the case of temporary Mexican migration to the U.S.’, International Migration Review, 18, 4:1120–43. Morokvasic, M. (1984) ‘Birds of Passage are also women….’, International Migration Review, 18, 4:886–907. Sarmiento, F.C.M. (1998) Personal communication, June 16, 1998. Sassen-Koob, S. (1984) ‘From household to workplace: theories and survey research on migrant women in the labour market’, International Migration Review, 18, 4:1144– 67. Singer, P. (1974) ‘Migraciones internas: consideraciones teoricas sobre su estudio’, Las Migraciones Internas en America Latina, Fichas No.38, Nueva Vision: Buenos Aires. Tornea,V.F. and Habana, E.P. (1989) ‘Women in international labour migration: the Philippine Experience’, in Asian Pacific Development Centre, The Trade in Domestic Helpers: Causes, Mechanisms and Consequences, Kuala Lumpur: APDC. United Nations Secretariat (1995a)’ Measuring the extent of female international migration’, in International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, San Miniato, Italy, 28–31 March, 1990, New York: United Nations. United Nations Secretariat (1995b) ‘The international migration of women: an overview’, in International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, Proceedings of the United Nations Expert Group Meeting on International Migration Policies and the Status of Female Migrants, San Miniato, Italy, 28–31 March, 1990, New York: United Nations. Weinart, P. (1991) Foreign Female Domestic Workers: HELP WANTED!, International Labour Office: Geneva.

INDEX

(n) identifies items found in notes on the relevant page Abadan-Unat, N. 113 Abella, M.I. 206 abuse 113, 118, 125, 225–4, 232 accent 23, 51, 55, 141 see also language accommodation 10, 12, 173, 181, 199, 210, 211, 213–4, 269, 274 adventure 10, 297 advertisements 125, 129, 135, 136, 140 age 7, 10, 63, 81–6, 100, 106, 115, 131, 137, 141, 166, 175, 179, 184, 210, 212, 228, 259, 275, 283 agency 8, 9, 12, 22–4, 29, 31, 33, 47, 53–5, 57, 122, 124, 129, 134–42, 141, 142, 223, 285 see also domestic employment agency, placement agency affective labour see labour affinal relations 212 Africa ix, 1, 12, 113, 123, 124, 148, 155, 173– 206 Afro-American 2 Afro-Caribbean 46–49 agriculture: displaced workers 2, 81, 242, 246, 252; agrarian transformation 81, 191–8, 244; reform 83, 98; seasonal 66 Aguilar, F.V. Jr. 272, 292 Akinnusi, D. 198 Albanian 120, 121 Alexandria 161–7 Alexandrinke 161, 172 Algeria 145, 146, 173

Alonso, A. 88 Andall, J. 113 Anderson, Benedict 238 Anderson, Bridget 6, 7, 44, 112–33, 131, 132, 152 Andes 83–7, 86 Andrehn, I. 193 Anthias, F. 44, 275 Arat-Koç, S. 25, 33, 43, 45, 158(n) Ardington, E. 173 Argentine 2 Armstrong, A. 192, 198 Arondo, M. 146 Asian and Pacific Development Centre (APDC) 1 Asia 1, 8, 25, 42, 113, 226, 239; South East Asia 148, 259 Asia-Pacific ix Athens 113, 114, 120, 121, 125 au pair 7, 14(n), 15(n), 33, 60, 110, 131–40, 138, 141 Aunt Jemima 47 Australia 2, 110, 136, 137, 142 Avina, J. 69, 75 babysitter 4, 26, 35, 62, 70, 154, 169, 179, 259, 279, 280 Bagchi, D. 219(n) Bakan, A.B. 4, 5, 6, 7, 25, 33, 43, 44, 45, 47, 50, 55, 122, 272, 273 Balan, J. 78 Banck, G. 216 Banerjee, N. 210 Bangladesh 211, 224, 226

301


Barbič, A. 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 160–77 Barcelona 113, 121, 126 Barsotti, O. 6 Basson, A. 173 Bazilli, S. 187 Bean, F.D. 26, 73 Beijing, China 4 Beishon, S. 7 Belgium 1 Berheide, C.W. 269 Berlin 113, 120, 125 Bhabha, H. 11 Bihar 211 black 47, 49, 82, 87, 90, 91, 92, 112, 114, 117, 122–8, 137, 180, 182, 201 Black, R. 112 Bloss, T. 153 Body-Gendrot, S. 158(n) Bologna 113 Booth, A. 191, 197 boredom 101–10 Boserup, E. 1 Bosnia 110, 132 Boston, USA 21 Boti, M. 26 Botswana 173 Boult, B. 188(n) Boyd, M. 208 Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong 268 Bozzoli, B. 197, 202 BPS 241, 242 Bracero Program 65–8 Brazil 2, 13(n) Brenner, J. 114 Brettel, C.B. 146 Briody, E.K. 65 Britain 2, 4, 7, 12, 42, 46, 54, 110, 129–47, 153, 295 see also United Kingdom British Columbia, Canada 23, 24, 38, 40(n), 42 British Commonwealth 132 Brochmann, G. 230, 231, 232, 233(n) Broom, L. 208 Brown, B. 193, 197 Bryden, L. 105, 198 Buang, A. 10, 207, 232, 298

Buckley, S. 2, 272 Buddhist 5 Buenos Aires, Argentine xiv, 78, 21(n) Bunster, X. 1, 81, 208 Bush, B. 44 Bustamante, J.A. 65, 74 butler 131–40, 142 Cairo, Egypt 161 Calcutta 213 California 20, 60– 77, 231 Calliste, A. 47 Campani, G. 6, 7, 9, 13, 14(n), 113, 217 Canada 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 20, 21, 22–60, 133, 141 Cape Verde Islands 173 carer 45, 48, 120 Caribbean ix, 2, 7, 12, 25, 42, 43, 46 Caribbean Domestic Scheme 47 Cárdenas, G. 65 caste 12 Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (CEM) 96 CEPLAES-UNFPA 84 Chaib, S. and Y. 148 chain migration 66, 211, 217 Chaney, E.M. 1, 81, 82, 84, 92, 131, 208 Chant, S. 105, 198, 298 chauffeur 119, 135, 136 Chavez, L.R. 64, 65 chef 119 childcare ix, 3, 45, 96, 112, 113, 115, 118, 131, 133, 134, 153, 169, 185, 235–3, 241, 257–75, 280, 281; childcare centre 261, 277, 279 child-minder 96, 259–71, 270, 283 see also domestic, mother’s help, nanny Chile 3, 9, 94–110 Chin, C.B.N. 1, 3, 8, 12, 209, 237 China 2, 3, 4, 13, 259 Choi, P.K. 268 Chow, E.N. 269 CIRRS (Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Services) 64 city 2, 9, 81, 84, 199, 203; services 3 citizenship xiv, 6, 10, 33, 37, 49, 74, 272

INDEX 303

class xiv, 10, 11, 12, 44, 57, 80, 85, 94, 201, 232, 237, 239, 241, 248, 252, 273, 293 cleaner 40(n), 61, 66, 68, 69, 131, 134–9, 138–5, 150, 153, 154–60, 235, 287 see also domestic, domestic helper, domestic servant, domestic worker, maid Cleeland, N. 65 clothing 83, 87 Cock, J. 1, 175, 181 Cockerton, C. 197 Coletivo Ioe 113 Cohen, R. 158(n) Colen, S. 6, 9 Colombia 139, 140 Colonna lactaria 160 commodification 8 commuting daily 12, 13, 72–5, 166–2, 171, 173 compadrazgo 83 Conger Lind, A. 84 Constable, N. 1 contextualisation 95 contract cleaning 61, 134 cook 134–40, 161, 169, 235, 257–4, 278–5, 287–3 Cooley, L. 245 Cooper, N.L. 6, 237 Cornelius, W.A. 66 Coser, L.A. 1, 145 Couper, K. 145, 146 Court, G. 142 Cox, R. 4, 7, 110, 129–47, 150 crèche 261, 264 see also childcare centre Crummett, M. 81 Crush, J.C. 191, 197 culture xiv, 45, 223 culture shock 4, 14(n) Cumaranatunga, L. 209 Cunningham, P.W. 188(n) Cyprus 8, 110–16 Daenzer, P.M. 25, 43, 47, 50 Dasgupta, A. 218 Davidoff, L. 117, 246 Davidson, C. 129

Delhi, India 9, 210–28 dependence 9, 118, 298 de-skilling 9, 26, 37, 71, 214, 286–2 Devanga Chettiars 214–4 development 1, 191–7 Devendras 214–4 Devi, U. 214 de Haan, A. 219(n) de Vletter, F. 193, 197 De Visser, J. 185 Diallo, A. 202 Dias, M. 222, 224 disrespect 115 division of labour 81, 197, 269; domestic 96–2, 259 Djajadiningrat-Nieuwenhuis, M. 240, 245 domestic 7, 9, 46, 73, 84, 112, 161, 239, 245–5, 295 see also domestic help, domestic helper, domestic worker, maid, servant domestic employment agency 4, 7, 129, 202 see also placement agency domestic help 3 domestic helper 6, 240, 257–75 domestic servant ix, xiv, 3 see also domestic worker domestic service ix, 5, 66, 67–69, 74, 80–6, 85–90, 144, 157, 173, 183, 235, 238, 241–59, 295 domestic space 10, 246–5 domestic tasks 3, 119, 209 domestic work xiv, 22, 42–6, 52, 83–8, 94, 98, 112, 153, 160, 168, 171, 198, 208, 214, 239, 272, 277–91, 297 domestic worker ix, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 42–6, 48– 50, 52–7, 61–4, 96–4, 105, 114–31, 129, 131, 138, 141–6, 144, 146–61, 163, 177, 179, 187, 203, 213, 235, 244–2, 273–9, 290–8 see also maid, servant domesticity 42, 50, 279, 281, 288 Dominican Republic 110, 118, 120, 126, 218(n) Donato, K.M. 60, 64, 68 double burden 3, 145 Drakakis-Smith, D.W. 173 dual-career 3, 11, 110, 156, 257, 260, 279 Duarte, I. 218(n)


Duarte, L. 3, 4 Dubrovsky, S. 81, 82 Duran, J. 83, 88 Durand, J. 65, 68 Dyck, I. 95, 272, 273, 274 Dymowski, R. 66, 69, 73 economic crisis 73, 235 economic migrants 60, 65, 73, 145–51, 161, 171 Economist 3, 14(n), 112, 133, 158(n), 295 Ecuador 4, 80– 94 education 2, 9–10, 12, 26–8, 37, 44, 50–4, 60, 69–2, 84–9, 89–3, 94, 96–1, 100, 103–11, 118, 154, 156, 165–71, 168, 170, 179, 193, 198–5, 203, 225, 229–8, 233, 237, 240, 242, 245, 252–8, 269, 275–2, 289, 297 Eelens, E. 224 Egypt 2, 11, 160–7 elder care 3, 47–9, 112, 150, 182, 226, 280 Elmhirst, R. 3, 4, 92, 235–62 Elson, D. 193 emigration 146, 161, 167 Emke-Poulopoulos, I. 111 employee 12, 49, 96 employee payment scheme 150–6 employee relations 49, 145, 152, 257, 273 employee strategies 87, 152–8 employer xiv, 7, 10, 12, 22–5, 38, 47–55, 87–4, 150–6, 162, 169, 213, 227, 238, 244, 257, 264, 280, 289, 293; tactics 28–32 employer/employee relations 10, 82, 88, 91, 118, 137, 145, 156, 162, 202, 246–5, 257, 266, 273, 275, 282–9, 286, 291, 293, 298 employer organisations 102, 106, 151 employment agency 121, 122, 140, 150, 259, 265 see also domestic employment agency, placement agency employment laws: British Columbia 24, 27; France 150, 157; Hong Kong 259–5, 269; South Africa 175

employment hierarchy 91, 144, 155 England 2, 46, 53, 135, 141, 142 England, K. 7, 12, 33, 42– 60, 82, 132, 134, 137, 141, 209, 239, 272, 273 Engle, P.L. 185 Enloe, C. 9, 131 Espenshade, T.J. 20, 65, 68, 72 ethnicity xiv, 44, 49, 57, 78, 82–6, 88, 138, 141, 142, 237 ethnic minority 85, 145, 153, 155, 269 Europe ix, 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 12, 20, 25, 33, 42, 43, 45, 110; Central Europe 110; Eastern Europe 110, 113, 120, 132, 136, 149; Southern Europe 120; Western Europe 132; European Union 110, 112, 113, 117, 120, 121, 123, 131, 132 European Forum of Left Feminists 112 Eviota, E. 50 expatriate workers 244–3 exploitation 7, 118, 156, 226, 269 extended kin networks 211–9, 214 factory employment 81, 101, 169, 225, 235, 245 factory work 81, 85, 87, 169, 228, 237, 245, 252, 252, 295 family 9, 49–4, 263; control 9; migration 65, 210; reunification 65; structure 182–92, 298 father 171–6, 185–2, 267–3, 275 Far East Economic Review 252, 254(n) farm women 166 female labour 1: Indonesia 260; Sri Lanka 222 female migration 67, 81, 83, 91, 163–9, 170 see also migration of women female migrants 82, 88, 146, 170, 235, 295: labour migrants xiv, 1, 8, 81, 146, 170, 295 female networks 202, 209, 212–21, 217 see also network

INDEX 305

female relatives 212, 213 female servants 2 feminist 88 feminisation 238, 252; of labour 146, 194, 218, 223, 244, 252; of migration 64; of poverty 84, 85 Feng, Y. 269 Fernando, V. 222 Feyiseton, B.J. 94, 103 Filipina/o 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 20, 21, 24, 27, 33, 39(n), 45–7, 48–50, 52, 56, 113– 9, 118, 120–6, 123, 132, 135, 155, 257, 275, 283–9, 288, 293 see also Philippines Findley, S. 202 Flores, E.T. 65, 66 Fok, S.Y. 268 Foreign Domestic Movement Program 25, 43 foreign domestic worker xiv, 42–7, 52, 110, 257, 272 foreign exchange 7, 227 formal sector 155, 235, 244–2, 249–9, 261 France 1, 3, 7, 110, 116–5, 122, 124, 126, 136, 144–63 freedom 10, 297 free time 1, 35 French, C. 257, 269 French, J. 81 French Ministry of Social Affairs 113 Frickey, A. 153 friends 23, 257 Frybes, M. 145, 146 Fryer, P. 117 Funnell, D. 191, 192 Gaitskill, D. 194 Galarza, E. 65, 66 Galvez, T. 94, 97 Garcia, B. 64, 74 Garcia Castro, M. 1, 81, 82, 84, 92, 131 Garner, C. 129 Garrett, P. 94, 98 gender xiv, 44, 57, 81–6, 84, 89, 91–5, 114, 141, 198, 259, 272; ideologies 83;

norms 81; relations xiv, 49, 114, 193, 239; roles 10, 95–99, 107, 192–9, 232, 239, 241, 244–1, 272, 297; segregation 81 Germany 116, 117, 120, 136 Ghana 114 ghettoisation 69, 73, 129, 133, 138, 215 Gibbons, P. 193 Giles, W. 158, 218(n) Gill, L. 1, 4, 84, 87, 131, 237 Glenn, E.N. 44, 114, 215, 273 global cities 133 Goffman, E. 282 Gogna, M. 219(n) Gonzalez, J.L. III 6, 9, 275 Gordon, E. 193, 197 Goriška, Slovenia 160–76 Goss, J. 208 governess 163, 169 Graham, P. 297, 298 Grandea, N. 43, 50 grandparents xiii, 3, 165, 171–6, 175, 179, 180, 184, 263–71, 275, 283, 297, 298 granny fostering 105 Gray, L. 199 Greece 8, 115, 117, 120 Gregson, N. 2, 3, 4, 49, 55, 129, 134, 150, 218(n), 239, 252, 272, 273 Grijns, M. 238 group interviews 113 Guadeloupe 110, 148, 153 Guayaquil, Ecuador 88 Guendelmen, S. 64 Gugler, J. 198 guilt ix, 282, 298 Guiness, P. 235 Habana, E.P 297 hacienda 85 Hadiz, V. 238 Hagerstrand, T. 94 Haiti 123 Hall, C. 246 Hallin, P.O. 95 Hamnett, C. 134 Hampstead, London 129, 135, 138, 139, 141


Handayani, S. 15(n) Hansen, K.T. 173, 219(n) Hargreaves, A. 145, 146, 148 Harriss, N. 208 Hart, G. 242 Henry, K 7 Herold, J.M. 94, 97 Herzog, L. 73 Hettige, S.T. 231 Heyzer, N. 3, 237, 244, 245, 287 Higman, B.W. 2 Hindi 213, 218(n) Hill, B. 208 Hogeland, C. 64, 70 Hojman, D.E. 7, 94, 97, 98, 101, 208 home 225, 257, 272–8, 293 homeworker 85, 86, 88, 89 Hondagneu-Sotelo, P 66, 68, 208, 209 Hong Kong 3, 5, 11, 12, 26–8, 29, 33, 257– 76 Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department 259, 260, 261, 262 Hong Kong Family Welfare Society 261 Hong Kong Shue Yan College 261, 268 Hong Kong Social Welfare Department 261 Hong Kong Young Women’s Christian Association 261, 268 Hooper, J 13(n) Hoskyns, C. 7, 14(n) Hosner Martens, M. 238 hours 22–4, 27–30, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 62, 87, 96, 113, 116, 119, 120, 124, 125, 131, 138, 144, 181, 182, 187, 269, 280, 297 household 29, 85, 211, 225, 229–7, 231, 293, 297 household helper 166–2 see also domestic helper housemaid 161, 169, 225–4, 232, 286 see also maid household reproduction 272, 273, 274 household worker 80, 84–8, 90–4, 102–11, 166, 292; see also multi-household work, domestic worker housekeeper 45, 50, 67, 69, 73, 102–11, 131, 134, 135, 136, 137, 142, 257 housework 1, 2, 3, 45, 54, 169, 259, 265, 277, 280, 281, 287, 292

see also domestic work, domestic tasks Howlett, B. 257 Hoy 90 HSRC 180 Huang, S. 1, 3, 11, 26, 209, 237, 272– 295 huasicama 83 Hughes, A.J.B. 191 Hungary xiv, 110, 121 husband 2, 8, 10, 20, 179, 211, 230, 285, 286, 289, 291 Hyndman, J. 35 Ibarra, T. 131 ideal sphere 282 identity 10, 43, 44, 74, 80, 91, 114, 123, 292; hybrid 11 see also national identity illegal xiv, 6, 64, 65, 69, 110, 117, 136; migrants 20, 62 immigrant women 42, 52, 110 immigration 42, 53; policy 7, 145; status 14, 129; costs 40(n) immigration legislation 6, 10, 11, 14(n), 15 (n), 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 37, 60, 117, 131– 6, 145, 180 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) 60–4, 64–7, 68–2, 72–5 Immigration Reform Act (IRA) 21 independence 10, 21, 99, 101, 102–7, 156, 166, 168, 170, 171, 186, 231, 290, 295 in-depth interviews 60, 113, 129, 152, 177, 218(n), 263, 275 India 7, 208–28 indigenous 82, 83, 90–5, 97, 239–7 Indonesia 5, 6, 12, 235–62, 259, 263, 274, 283–9, 285, 286, 293–9 industrialisation 1, 192 infantalization 82 informal 172, 238, 261 informal sector 82–7, 153 INSEE 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154 Instituto Nacional de Estatistica 96, 98 INTERCEDE 47, 50, 58(n) International Geographical Union: Commission on Gender ix;

INDEX 307

Commission on Population ix International Labour Office 194, 237 invisible xiv Ip, Y.Y. 268 Irish 2, 110, 132 Ismail, F.M. 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 222–41, 297 isolation 102, 106 Italy 1, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14(n), 110, 115, 12, 136, 145, 146, 146, 160, 165–74 Ivory Coast 126 Iyun, F. 173 Izzard, W. 197 Jacobs, E.J.J. 224, 228, 231 Jackson, P. 2, 44 Jamaican 45–50, 52, 56 see also West Indian James, D. 81 Japan 7 Jakarta 238–6, 242–52, 250 Java 239–6, 242–9, 248 Javate de Dios, A. 5 Jelin, E. 1, 10, 208, 250 Jellinek, L. 235 job work 62–5, 209 Johnston, D.C. 14(n) Johnston, L.C. 272 Joly, D. 145, 146 Jordan 227 Kabeer, N. 238 Kalpagam, U. 216 Kanlungan Centre Foundation 5 Katz, C. 57 Katzman, D.M. 2, 70 Kaul, P. 211 Kayongo-Male, D. 184 Kimble, J. 194 kinship 216, 238, 240; fictive 49, 240; group 185, 209, 215; idiom 248 Koentjaraningrat 239 Korale, R.B.M. 224, 226 Kossoudji, S.A. 64, 66, 297 Kovorkin, T. 84 Kuper, H. 197

Kuwait 6 Kuznesof, E. 2, 219(n) labour 144–9, 160, 238, 269; affective 50; export 7; market 81, 120; migration 81, 170, 222 labour force 2, 80, 83, 110, 115, 189; peripheral 268 Lai, A.E. 3 Lago, M.S. 94, 98 Lam, M.C. 261, 268 land ownership 189, 202 landed immigrant status 24, 27, 33, 34, 37, 43, 52, 53 landlessness 173, 193, 203 land tenure 81, 97, 192 language use 12, 51–4, 83, 89, 110, 154, 156, 170, 171, 264–71, 272 Laos 146 Lapeyronnie, D. 145, 146 Laslett, B. 114 Latin America 1, 25, 80 see also South America Law, C.K. 261 Laws, L. 11 Lawson, V. xiv, 80 Lebaran 249 Lecchini, L. 6 Lee, C.K. 268 Legoux, L. 149 leisure 182, 269 Le Moigne, G. 145, 146, 149, 150, 157 León, M. 81, 84, 85 le Roux, T. 3, 9, 13, 173, 177–94 Leonard, A. 185 Leonetti, I. 112 Levy, F. 113 Liang, Z. 66, 69 LIFE 145 life path 95, 249 life-style 249–7 Lindquist, B. 208 Lit, K.Y. 268


live-in 13, 21, 34–6, 56–8, 62, 82, 89, 96, 100, 105, 107, 108, 110, 120, 150, 200, 218, 263 live-out 96, 100, 105, 120, 152, 209 live-in/live-out workers 62, 82, 96, 104–11, 113, 126 Live-In Caregiver Program 9, 24–6, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 43, 53 live-in domestic workers 4, 21, 35, 37, 42, 47, 61, 63, 66, 82, 86–89, 96, 100–11, 124, 173, 260, 263 live-out domestic work 35, 63, 69, 145, 247 livelihood strategies 85, 105–11 Loach, B.L. 96 Locher-Scholten, E. 239, 252(n) Lofland, J. 263 Lofland, L.H. 263 London, England 12, 133–46, 150 López-Garza, M. 64, 65 Louw, C. 173 Lowe, M. 2, 3, 4, 49, 55, 129, 134, 150, 218 (n), 239, 252, 272, 279 Ludwar-Ene, G. 198 Mabetoa, M. 183 Macau 259 MacDonald, O. 44 machismo 96 Mackenzie, S. 95 Macklin, A. 43, 44, 209 Maconachie, M. 194 Macwan’ gi, M. 201 Madras 211 Mahgreb 146, 155 maid 150, 160, 162–9, 167–6, 238, 240, 242, 273, 274, 275, 277–91, 291–8 see also domestic, domestic worker, servant maid-servant 112, 144, 240 mail-order publications 136, 138 Majumdar, T.K. 211 Makindi, C. 198 Makuc, D. 161, 162, 163, 165, 170 Malaya 3 Malaysia 3, 5, 10, 12, 14, 298 Marga Institute 229, 230 Marianismo 96

marital status 65, 94, 97, 103, 228, 275–2, 283, 286 marriage 3, 104 Martin, P. 15(n) Martinique 110, 148 Mauritius 153 Massey, D.B. 274 Massey, D.S. 65, 68 maternalism 49, 285 Mathers, K. 180 matrilocality 213 Matthaei, J. 145 Mattingly, D.J. 6, 9, 13, 60– 77 Maziya, M.L 201 McBride, T. 131 McCartney, K. 269 McDowell, L. 11, 142 Mediterranean 2 Mehlwana, A.M. 182 Mehta, A. 209 mestizaje 82–90 Mexico 2, 9, 12, 20, 60–77 Mies, M. 245 middle class 2, 3, 9, 62, 71, 78, 83, 84, 86, 89, 114, 145, 169, 172, 226, 232, 235–5, 240, 242–53, 252, 252, 287, 293, 295 Middle East 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 222–33, 228– 40, 237 migrants 86, 94, 110, 120, 126, 145–50, 297–3; organisation 11, 13, 102, 164–9 migrant women xiv, 7, 11, 20, 81, 85, 88, 98, 112, 114, 146, 157, 161–7, 272, 286, 292, 297 migration xiv, 12, 80, 88, 163, 208; circuit 11, 20, 206; female-led 81, 160, 173, 189, 232; rural to urban 80–6, 87, 94, 97, 110–7, 167, 189–8, 195, 203, 209, 242; family-reunification 40(n), 65, 66, 146, 211 Mikita, J. 25 Miklavičič-Brezigar, I. 2, 6, 7, 8, 11, 160–77 Milan 165, 168, 169 Miles, M. 7, 11, 183, 189– 206 Mines, A. 68, 74 Ming Pao 257 mistreatment 12, 113, 257, 260

INDEX 309

mistress 11 mobility 10, 82, 84, 90, 95, 99, 101, 108, 208, 240, 295 modernity 86, 91, 239, 241–52, 248, 249, 252 Momsen, J. xiv– 19, 20–4, 78–2, 110–6, 173–81, 199, 206–4, 226, 295–4 Monk, J. 229, 233(n) Moser, C. 198, 244 Morokvasič, M. 113, 297 Moss, P. 57 mother 3, 9, 145, 149, 245, 261–73, 277– 91, 290–6, 298; substitute 267, 277, 281–8, 285, 289, 293, 298 motherhood 272–9, 277–91, 289–6, 293 mothering practices 3, 105, 149 mother’ s help 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 150 Mui Tsai 2, 3 multi-household work 5, 13, 31–3, 37, 62, 63, 152, 168, 179, 209 Murdoch, R. 43 Murray, A. 235 Murray, C. 197 Muslim 5, 9, 12, 154, 222, 224–2, 228–40, 247, 249 Musyoki, A. 173 NAFTA 64, 74 nanny 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 14(n), 20, 22, 23, 34– 6, 36, 40(n), 43, 45, 51–4, 54, 55, 57, 61, 73, 110, 112, 131–41, 142, 160–6; agency 9 Narula, R. 3, 7, 144–63 nation 80, 83, 272–8, 297 national identities 42–7, 48, 50, 57, 71–4, 83, 89, 92, 123, 135–41 nationality 43, 45, 121, 123, 137–4, 142, 293 National Institute for Statistical and Economic Studies (France) (INSEE) 145–54 National Insurance 116, 120 Natrass, N. 173 negotiation 91, 94, 95, 99, 103, 154, 156, 157, 182, 293 Nepal 211

Netherlands 110 Neocosmos, M. 191, 193 Nett, E. 81, 83 network 7, 11, 120–9, 202; immigrant 13, 111, 152; informal 102, 136, 138–4, 215; kinship 13, 121, 211–9, 214, 216–4; transnational ix New Caledonia 148 New York, USA 9, 133 New Zealand 110, 136, 137 Ng, R. 43, 44 Ngo, H.Y 260, 261 Nhlabatsi, L. 192 Niehoff, A. 252(n) Nieto, S. 83, 88 NNEB 54–9, 59(n), 132 Norland 35, 136 North Africa 111 North America 1, 20–110, 110, 111 Nova 5 Ntombela, B.B. 188(n) nurse 7, 9, 15, 155 see also wet-nurse nursery 261 Nutrices Augustae 160 O’Dy, S. 126 Oey-Gardiner, M. 244, 245 Okin, S.M. 268 Oliveira, O. de 64, 74 Olurode, L. 198 Ontario, Canada 42 Onyango, P. 184 Orellano-Rojas, C. 94, 97 Orlansky, D. 81, 82 Oruwari, Y. 175 Pakistan 7, 211, 224, 226 Palmer, P. 63 Paperman, P. 156 Papma, A. 224, 228, 231 Paraguay xiv, 78 Paris 113, 125, 144–63 Passel, J.S. 65 patriarchal relations 82, 83, 96, 103, 259, 269–5;


system 3 patriarchy 4, 9, 45, 97, 99, 177, 269, 274, 292 patrilocality 213 patronage 82 pembantu 235 Pemberton, J. 240, 252(n) Pena, D. 64 Penrose, J. 44 Perez-Itriaga, A. 64 Perry, M. 274 Peru 83, 118, 120, 122 Phillips, D. 269 Philippines 5, 6, 22, 26, 42–4, 110, 135, 226, 259, 263, 274, 283–90, 288, 291–8, 297 Philippine Women Centre 35 Phizacklea, A. xiv, 132, 153 Pile, S. 10 placement agency 4, 43, 45, 48, 50, 133, 293 see also employment agency PMRW/APIM 6 Poland 120, 132 political refugee 148 Pond, C. 134 poverty 9, 94, 177 181, 182, 187, 197, 199, 202, 203, 222, 231 Portugal 7, 110, 123, 131, 135, 137, 140, 142, 145, 146, 146, 153, 155, 218 postcolonial 88, 189, 191, 192–9 power relations 10, 54 Pratt, G. xiv, 4, 7, 9, 10, 22– 41, 82, 141, 239, 272, 273, 293 Pratt, M.L. 273, 281 precariousness 144 Pred, A. 94 pregnancy 62, 88, 180 184, 227 Preston-Whyte, E.M. 188(n) private 10, 269; space 10, 11, 12, 171, 181, 277 priyayi 235, 239, 240 productive labour 113, 157 professionalize 85, 119–5, 131, 132, 167 proletarianization 194 prostititution 5, 13, 120, 125, 184 Psimmenos, I. 112 public 10 Puhar, A. 160

push and pull factors 9, 97–2, 208 qualitative methods 100 Quito, Ecuador 80–90 race 11, 44, 47–49, 57, 80, 82, 85, 88, 91, 92, 114, 155, 173, 175, 201, 241, 272, 283 racial hierarchy 49, 81, 89, 110, 123, 144, 155 racialisation 42, 80, 85, 112, 116 racism 47–9, 155 Radcliffe, S. 2, 4, 10, 44, 78, 80– 94, 98, 131, 209, 248, 298 Rafael, V. 26 Raghuram, P. 7, 9, 11, 12, 199, 208–28 Raju, S. 219(n) Rani, P 211 Ranney, S.I 6, 64, 297 recruitment 287; agency 5 see also employment agency, placement agency Rees, T. 134 reflexivity ix refugee 10, 110, 148–3 Reher, D.S. 1 remittances 7–8, 20, 65, 111, 170, 179, 197, 227, 230, 257, 285, 298 relatives 53, 175, 265, 298 reliability 265, 298 religion 5, 10, 12, 44, 223, 225, 232 reproduction 60, 298 reproductive labour 113, 134, 277, 281, 289, 293; work 140, 297 resistance 10, 11 respect 52, 292 restructuring xiv Reuters News Agency 227 Roberts, K.D. 4, 89 Robinson, K. 209, 218 Robison, R. 238, 242, 252(n) Rollins, J. 44, 55, 63, 273 Romania 110, 121, 125 Rome 160 Romero, M. 1, 64, 114, 115, 209, 273, 281, 292

INDEX 311

Rosen, K 64, 70 Roshni Nilaya 218(n) Rubbo, A. 81, 82, 91 Ruhunuge, L.K. 222 Ruiz, V.L. 64 rural livelihood 81, 191–7 rural poverty 3, 85, 87, 196–3 rural restructuring 83 rural upbringing xiv rural women 2, 3, 81, 89, 94, 166–6, 191– 8, 242–51, 252 Russell, M. 194, 198 Sajogyo, P. 242 Sanchez, L. 273 San Diego, California 21, 62, 65, 68, 73, 74, 75 San Francisco, California 21, 65 Santiago, Chile 9, 98–6, 106–11 Sarmiento, F.C.M. 15(n), 297 Sarup, M. 45 Sassen-Koob, S. 295 Sassen, S. 61, 65, 68, 74, 133, 134 Satnam, V. 7 Saudia Arabia 5, 14 Scarr, S. 269 Schampers, T. 224 Scott, A.M. 82, 88 Scott, J.C. 240 Segura, D. 64 Seipel, C. 64 Senegal 153 Seoul, Korea 22 servant 1, 2, 3, 81, 166, 238–6, 244–7, 298 see also maid, domestic services 151 Servicio Nacional de la Mujer 96 Serwonka, K. 42 sex-role ideology 94–97 sexual abuse 125–1, 224 sexual division of labour 210, 273 Shah, M. 209 Shah, N. 209 Shanin, I. 214 sickness 36–8, 38, 87, 88, 182 sick pay 120 Simon, R.J. 146

Singapore ix, xiv, 5, 6, 8 9, 12, 22, 26, 33, 272– 295 Singer, P. 295 Singh, A.M. 212 single parent 105, 196–3 single women 2 SINTRACAP 97 sisterhood ix, slavery 2, 3 Slovenia 110, 132, 160–77; emigrants 11, 160; maids 160; women 2, 160 Smith, J.H. 208 Smith, M.L. 91 Smith, R.C. 61, 65, 68, 74 Smyth, I. 238, 242 social landscape 257 social differentiation 124 social identity 154, social mobility 84, 91, 99–7, 108, 168 social network theory 208–6, 211, 213, 216, 217 social security 87–1, 113, 149–4, 157, 203, 257, 260 Solórzano-Torres, R. 6, 65, 70 Sorensen, E. 72 Sørensen, N. 6, 11, 13 South Africa ix, 9, 136, 173, 175, 177–94 South America 78–110, 113, 162 Spaan, E.J.A.M. 226 Spain 1, 5, 110, 115, 117, 120, 131, 135–42, 145–51, 153, 155 Speckman, J.D. 224 Sri Lanka 5, 6, 8, 11, 121, 222–41, 274, 287, 293 Stasiulis, D. 4, 5, 6, 7, 25, 33, 42, 44, 45 50, 55, 122, 209, 272, 273 Statistics Department 209 status 82, 89, 115, 117, 151, 238–6, 248, 259, 264, 268, 292, 295, 297 Stiell, B. 7, 12, 33, 42– 60, 82, 132, 134, 137, 141, 239, 272, 273 stereotypes 7, 12, 44, 52, 96, 99, 110, 122, 140–6, 156, 195 Stivens, M. 244, 246 Stoler, A. 241 Straits Times 274, 275, 279


street vending 81 Stutzman, R. 83 subaltern voices xiv Suez Canal 2, 160 Sullivan, N. 245 Surinam 110 Swaziland 173, 189– 206, 297 Swazi Nation Land 191–7 Tabibian, 192 Tacoli, C. 208 Tagalog, 24, 39 Taiwan 259, 269 Tam, F. 269 Tam, V.C.W. 257–76 Tamil 213 Tamil Nadu, India 9, 211, 214, 217 Taussig, M. 81, 82, 91 taxes 14(n), 15(n), 116, 120, 150, 157 Tay, B.N. 274 teachers 9, 198, 200 terms of employment 5, 9, 15(n), 27–32, 52, 63, 131, 144, 151, 157, 168, 169, 201 Thailand 259, 274 The Lady 129, 133, 136 Third Space 11 time geography 89, 94, 95, 107, 239, 249–7 Todaro, R. 94, 97 Toh, M.H. 274 Tolentino, R. 26 Tornea, V.F. 297 Toronto, Canada 21, 25, 33, 43–60 Torrealba, R. 151, 175 Tokyo 133 Toynbee, P. 129 trade unions: France 144, 151, 152; Indonesia 238, 242; South Africa 181 Trager, L. 202 transport 180–7, 184 transmigrant women 272 transnational xii, 13, 287, 291, 293, 298 Trieste 165, 168 trousseau 165, 170 trust 266 Tulay Ng Tagumpay 283, 284, 290

Tunisia 146 Tunnell, L. 65 Turkey 148 TURP 180 Tusek, I. 160 Tyner, J.A. 4 undocumented xiv, 61, 64, 68–3, 73, 74, 113, 117, 118, 150, 151 unemployment 84, 151, 152 UNICEF 181, 183, 185 unionisation 84 United Kingdom 7, 44, 247 see also Britain United Nations Secretariat 20, 173, 295, 297 United States 2, 7, 9, 20, 21, 22, 61–78, 133, 209, 231, 247, 288 United States Accounting Office 73 Unterhalter, E. 194 urban 3, 83, 209, 224; consumption 247 urbanization 1, 183, 194, 195 Uttar Pradesh, India Vaa, M. 202 Valdéz, T. 96 Vancouver, Canada 9, 11, 20–41 Vancouver Courier 35 van der Veer, P. 272 Velasco, P.M. 58(n) victim 9 Vienna xiv Vietnam 146 Viljoen, S 181, 184, 185 Village and Town Directory 214 violence 4, 5–6, 173 vulnerability 37, 120, 144, 156, 198–4, 202– 259, 297 Wade, P. 82 wages 2, 5, 15(n), 21, 27–29, 35, 38, 50, 62, 69, 71–5, 82, 84, 85, 87, 96, 113, 116, 119, 131, 138, 144, 152, 157, 175, 181, 201, 211, 245, 252, 260, 274, 292 Wahyuni, E. 241 Walter, B. 44 Washington DC, USA 21

INDEX 313

Wee, V. 237, 244, 245, 287 Weinart, P. 295 Weismantel, M. 89 Welfare State 114, 295 West Coast Domestic Workers Association 40(n) West Indians 7, 12, 21, 47, 50, 110 see also Jamaicans Westwood, S. 88, 92 wet-nurse 2, 110, 160–9 see also nurse WGSG 273 White, B. 242 White, M.J. 66, 69 whiteness 4, 50, 88–3, 157 whitening 82, 92, 120 wife 169, 240–7, 245, 277–2 Wilkinson, C. 173 Williams, B. 82, 83, 88 Windebank, J. 144 Wisniewski, D. 129 women workers 84, 157, 170, 237–52 women’s progress 144, 238, 252, 274 women’s roles 239, 244–2, 268 Wong, D. 274 Woo, O.M. 65 Woodrow, K.A. 65 work migration 145–61 work permit 20, 140, 155, 169–4, 259, 269, 274 worker/employer dynamics 49, 156 working mothers 3, 4, 14, 15(n), 30, 36, 175, 257–74, 275, 279, 284 World Bank 244 Wright, J. 235 Yapa, L.K. 232 Yeoh, B.S.A. 1, 3, 11, 26, 209, 237, 272– 295 Yi, C.C. 269 Youé, C.P 191 Yugoslavia 146, 160, 166, 168 Yuval-Davis, N. 45, 275 Zambia 173 Zimmerman, R.A. 64

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