Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers

279 Pages·2007·3.13 MB·English

by  Nicole Constable

Maid to
Order in
Hong Kong

Maid to
Order in
Hong Kong
Stories of Migrant Workers
SECOND EDITION
Nicole Constable
Cornell University Press
Ithaca and London
Copyright © 2007 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review,
this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form
without permission in writing from the publisher. For
information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,
512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First edition published 1997 by Cornell University Press
Second edition published 2007 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2007

Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maid to order in Hong Kong: stories of migrant workers / Nicole Constable.—2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-4647-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-7323-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Women domestics—China—Hong Kong. 2. Alien labor, Philippine—China—Hong
Kong. 3. Alien labor, Indonesian—China—Hong Kong. 4. Filipinos—Employ-
ment—China—Hong Kong. 5. Indonesians—Employment—China—Hong
Kong. 6. Women alien labor—China—Hong Kong. I. Title.
HD6072.2.H78C66 2007
331.4’816404609599—dc22 2007013550
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responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent
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Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Illustrations follow page 118
Preface to the Second Edition vii
Preface to the First Edition xiii
Abbreviations xxv
1. Foreign and Domestic in Hong Kong 1
2. Global Themes and Local Patterns 18
3. Superior Servants 44
4. The Trade in Workers 63
5. Household Rules and Relations 90
6. Disciplined Migrants, Docile Workers 119
7. Resistance and Protest 151
8. Docility and Self-Discipline 181
9. Pleasure and Power 202
References 217
Index 235

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Since the publication of the fi rst edition of this book I have been asked many
times about the impact of 1997 on foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong,
and about what has changed since I fi rst conducted research on the topic
in the mid-1990s. These questions prompted me to return to Hong Kong in
2005 and 2006 to see what had changed and to update my research.
This edition conveys some of the key changes that have taken place since
July 1, 1997, when Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region
(SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), since the Asian fi nancial
crisis of 1997–1998, and since the outbreak of Severe Acquired Respira-
tory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003. Although Hong Kong’s change in politi-
cal status is not the sole or even the primary cause of major changes that
have taken place among domestic workers (i.e., some changes would have
occurred even without the changeover), the year 1997 stands out in many
people’s minds and provides a signifi cant point from which to ask “What
has changed and why?”
The single most important and visible change among foreign domestic
workers is the entry of tens of thousands of Indonesian women. In the early
1990s there were but a few thousand Indonesian domestic workers and well
over 100,000 Filipinas. By 2006 there were close to 100,000 Indonesians,
about 125,000 Filipinas, and several thousand more domestic workers from
Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. Whereas Filipinas congregate
viii Preface to the Second Edition
in Central District, especially in Statue Square and Chater Garden on their
Sundays off, Indonesians now congregate in the thousands at Victoria Park
in Causeway Bay. Every week they can be seen in small clusters chatting,
singing, praying, eating, talking on cell phones—some wearing Muslim
modest dress of headscarves and long gowns, and others dressed in baggy
blue jeans and revealing tank tops dancing to hip hop music.
Another change involves migrant worker activism. Although it is still
true that only a small minority of domestic workers are politically active
in Hong Kong, they have become much more visible and more active since
1997. Whereas concerns with policies that impact domestic workers have
prompted organized responses including marches and rallies from politi-
cally active domestic worker groups since at least the 1980s, by 2005 the
scope and range of issues has grown to include much broader human rights
and international development concerns. New coalitions that crosscut dif-
ferent nationalities of domestic workers have been established and alliances
between migrant workers and locals are more in evidence.
W hat has not changed so drastically in recent years are the day-to-day
experiences of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong. Although the
names and the nationalities of domestic workers have changed, the mini-
mum allowable wage has gone down, and some specifi c employment poli-
cies have been altered, the individual experiences and the challenges that
they face in their working lives—whether they are Filipina or Indonesian,
Thai, Sri Lankan, or Indian—remain in many ways the same as a decade
earlier. My main argument about the multiplicity of power and the vari-
ous forms of discipline, pleasure, resistance, and accommodation among
domestic workers therefore still holds. What is clearer to me today, how-
ever, is how the situation in Hong Kong is but one small part of the wider
picture of globalization and the inequalities of worldwide gendered labor
migration.
Since the publication of the fi rst edition of this book in 1997, gender and
globalization has become an increasingly hot topic in anthropology and in
the social sciences. Scholars have also produced a rich and burgeoning mul-
tidisciplinary literature on domestic workers in and beyond Asia. Although
I do not attempt to provide an exhaustive review of the new literature, I
have added new references, especially those that expand or elaborate on my
fi ndings or point in new important and comparative directions.
Field research and interviews for this new edition were conducted in
Hong Kong in May and June of 2005, December 2005, and in June and July
of 2006. During those visits I became reacquainted with staff members
Preface to the Second Edition ix
from the Mission for Filipino Migrant Workers and other nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), and with Filipino activists. I met only a few of the
domestic workers I had known a decade earlier, but learned about several
who had returned permanently to the Philippines, others who had gone on
to work as care providers in Canada, and a few who had gone to Taiwan and
Macao. I talked with many domestic workers I had not known before, but
whose mothers, aunts, or sisters had worked there during my earlier visits.
In 1993 and 1994 I volunteered at the Mission for Filipino Migrant
Workers. At the time the vast majority of its clients were Filipinas. By 2005
most clients were from Indonesia, and the process had begun to offi cially
drop “Filipino” from the name to become the Mission for Migrant Workers.
In the summer of 2005, I volunteered at the Asian Migrant Centre, which
had grown from a small grassroots Hong Kong–focused organization in the
early 1990s, to a much more globally oriented migrant worker organization.
Staff at the Mission, the Asia Pacifi c Mission for Migrants (formerly the
Asia Pacifi c Mission for Migrant Filipinos), and the Asian Migrant Centre
helped to put me in touch with domestic workers and migrant worker activ-
ists of various nationalities, especially from the Philippines and Indonesia.
I visited Sunday classes and group activities for Indonesian migrant work-
ers that took place in a small fl at in Causeway Bay run by members of the
Hong Kong Coalition of Indonesian Migrant Workers Organization (KOT-
KIHO). In Victoria Park I visited four groups belonging to the Association
of Indonesian Migrant Workers (ATKI)—the mobile counseling group, the
cultural group, the religious group, and the lesbian group. I attended a
play performed by Filipina domestic workers who took Sunday classes at
the Philippine Women’s University, and visited a Filipino arts festival that
included a small display of illustrations by domestic workers. I attended the
fi rst Filipino Women Migrant Workers Summit; was a participant-observer
at numerous protests, marches, candlelight vigils, concerts, religious ral-
lies, and public performances; and visited two domestic shelters for laid-off
workers.
The stories that the Filipina and Indonesian residents of the shelters told
me about their confl icts with employers, physical abuse and unemployment,
and homesickness and loneliness were strikingly similar to the stories I had
heard a decade earlier. Staff at the shelters suggested that the greater num-
ber of shelters (now close to twenty) and the regular stream of residents
were not necessarily indicative of increasing abuses by employers but of the
growing awareness and assertiveness on the part of domestic workers—
especially among Indonesians. Whereas the vast majority of the women I