SOSC 102 U

1
Topics

• Background
• Two major kinds of foreign migrant workers
• A. Foreign factory workers
• B. Foreign domestic helpers

2
Background of transnational labor migration in
East and Southeast Asia
Vivien Wee and Amy Sim, Transnational Labor
Networks in Female Labor Migration Mediating
between Southeast Asian Women Workers and
International Labor Markets, SEARC Working
Papers Series, No. 49, City University of Hong
Kong, 2003
3
Trajectories of transnational labor migration (1)

• Major sending countries Burma, Indonesia, Laos,
  Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam
• Major receiving countries Canada, the European
  Union, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, USA, and
  countries in the Middle East
• Malaysia send workers to Singapore receive
  workers from Indonesia)
• Thailand send workers to Hong Kong, Singapore,
  and Taiwan receive workers from Burma and Laos

4
Trajectories of transnational labor migration (2)

• In Hong Kong in 2001, more than 200,000
  documented foreign workers
• Most transnational migrant workers were female
• E. g. Indonesian female immigrant workers
  Indonesian male immigrants workers100 30
  (statistics in 1993-1994)

5
How did they get to work overseas

• Examples of Commercial Agents for transnational
  labor migration
• Taiwan the Dart-wits Manpower Co. Ltd the Great
  Manpower Co.
• Hong Kong the Proxy-maid Service Center
• Singapore the Maid Power Ltd.

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SOSC 102 U

• Lecture Note 13
• Transnational Immigrant Labor

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What do these commercial agents do

• Recruit the workers
• Provide training
• Find them employment (agents in sending societies
  would contact with agents in receiving societies)
• Arrange their passage
• Provide loans
• Draw up contracts
• Remit their remuneration
• Arrange their repatriation

Wee and Sim (2003 4)
8
Migration Cycle of a migrant women worker
Wee and Sim, 2003, p. 6
Enquiry friends, family, acquaintances,
job-placement agencies
Fees levied by agents (may result in debts)
Repatriation end of contract, get an extension,
look for another contract, or go home
Employment work, get paid, pay the debts, remit
money back home
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Marketing the Immigrant Workers

• Nationality-based stereotypes (constructed by the
  brokers and accepted by the employers)
• Thai men hard-working and honest ? make the best
  factory and construction work
• Filipino men good at handling machines ? good
  factory work
• Filipina women better educated, more
  civilized, good in English ? take care of
  children
• Indonesian women loyalty, caring, willingness to
  work hard ? take care of the sick and elderly

Interview of Anne Loveband (2003)
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Foreign Factory Workers

• Anru Lees case study on Thai workers in a Taiwan
  factory
• (Lee in Chow, Ch. 9)

11
Foreign Labor as Factory Worker

• Why they are in need?
• How do they get to work overseas?
• What do they do?
• How about their salaries?

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Why are they in need

• Young generation of Taiwanese women do not want
  to work in a factory
• Foreign workers become alternative source of
  cheap labor

13
How do they get to work overseas?

• Bilateral agreements between sending and
  receiving states only citizens of sending
  countries can be recruited to work overseas
• The Taiwan government would adopt a system of
  quota control and issue a two-year non-renewable
  work permit to foreign workers
• To prohibit them from permanent settlement, each
  foreign worker can stay in Taiwan no longer than
  six years and cannot transfer employers freely

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What do they do in the shop floor

• Sexual division of labor in textiles between male
  and female Taiwanese workers
• E.g.
• Mens work mechanics
• Womens work tend looms, upload and download
  fabrics

• No explicit sexual division of labor
• Sometimes Thai male workers are assigned to do
  those womens work
• Usually foreign workers are asked to do the
  undesirable jobsthe 3 D (dirty, dangerous, and
  demeaning) work

15
Salary gaps in textile factory (workers
performing similar work)

• Estimation of average monthly wages for Taiwanese
  workers (paid by piece-rate wage system)
• Male workers U. S. 1,111-1,481
• Female workers U. S. 814

• Male and Female Thai workers U. S. 518 (paid
  by fixed monthly salary)
• U. S. 518 is the minimum wage according to the
  Labor Standards Law in Taiwan

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Foreign Domestic Helpers

• Mary Romero, Maid in the U. S. A. (N. Y. and
  London, 1992)
• Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong
  (Cornell, 1997)
• Anne Loveband, Positioning the Product
  Indonesian Migrant Women Workers in Contemporary
  Taiwan, SEARC Working Papers Series, No. 43,
  City University of Hong Kong, 2003.
• P. C. Lan, Micropolitics of employing migrant
  domestic workers, Social Problems, Vol. 50, No.
  4 (2003) 525-249.

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Foreign domestic helpers in Taiwan, Hong Kong,
and Singapore

• 150,000 Filipina domestic workers are hired in
  Hong Kong, out of a total population of
  approximately 7 million
• 80,000 Filipina domestic workers are hired in
  Singapore, out of a total population of 4 million
• 120,000 foreign domestic workers from the
  Philippines, Vietnam, and Indonesia are hired in
  Taiwan, out of a total population of 22 million
• (Hong Kong and Spore Daniel A. Bell Taiwan
  Lan)

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Who are the foreign domestic helpers?

• Are they professional domestic helpers from the
  beginning?

• No. Some of them have college degrees but could
  not find a job after graduation (esp. the
  Filipinas) some of them held professional jobs
  such as nurses or teachers

• Contradictory class mobility people downgrade
  their jobs from professional or semi-professional
  tracks to take on unskilled and demeaning jobs
  while gaining higher wages overseas

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How do they become domestic helpers?

• In a recruitment agents in sending countries
  Packing the product--to transform women of
  different backgrounds into a domestic workers
• The training include how to cook, to do household
  chores, to use modern electronic facilities
• All women would be required to become (or at
  least to look like) a hardworking, submissive,
  and obedient domestic helper

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How do Potential Employers Choose their Live-in
Maids?
Middle income or above Family with kids under 12
or the older above 65
Local agents e. g. the Proxy-maid Service Center
Access to individual applicant files
The agency coordinates the necessary paperwork
with a counterpart agency of the sending country
See candidates on video monitors
After three or four months, the maid arrives
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Why are they hired?

• Why are domestic helpers in need? Where are the
  housewives?

• Many double-income families cannot arrange time
  to fulfill these home demands

• market substitutes of home demands

• Some upper middle and upper class families with
  full-time housewives would also hire domestics
  helpers

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Implication of Hiring Domestic Workers for
double-income families

• Wee and Sim This practice of hiring domestic
  maids reflects a particular developmental
  trajectory where the economy is developed through
  the labor force participation of its female
  citizens, without the government compensating for
  the withdrawal of their labor in social
  reproduction.

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Why foreign maids were favored than compatriot
maids

• Hiring women of different races to work for
  domestic helpers is a common practice
• For example, middle-class families in Hong Kong,
  Singapore and Taiwan (mostly ethnic Chinese) hire
  domestic helpers from Indonesia and the
  Philippines
• In the U. S., many white middle- and upper-class
  families hire working-class women of color (esp.
  the Chicano women from Mexico) as domestic helpers

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Why dont the middle-class women hire someone of
their own color?

• Interviews of white middle-class women in the U.
  S. the employers regard that hiring a woman of
  color is a form of social benefit, reducing the
  unemployment rate of the minorities

• Scholars (Romeo, Lan, and Loveband) however argue
  that the working relationship entails a racial
  and class hierarchy between the middle-class
  employers and the domestic workers

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Racial and class hierarchy

• Master-servant relationship is easier to
  establish when the differences are obvious
• Ethnic differences help to establish class
  dominationcompared with hiring a compatriot
  maid, employers would feel more comfortable to
  control the relationship
• Employers vs. Employees class and racial
  differences

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Labor process of domestic helpers

• Domestic work include two primary spheres
  physical labor and emotional labor

• Physical labor the employers decide what aspects
  of physical labor should be left for domestic
  helpers to take care of. While some employers
  hire women to replace their own labor, others
  hire women to do much more demanding household
  labor

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Labor process of domestic helpers

• Emotional labor domestic helpers are hired to do
  emotional labor, such as to talk, to offer
  psychological support, and to be accompany with
  the employers
• Protomothers of domestic helpers expected to
  perform the emotional labor of mothering both
  the women employers and their families

• Would reciprocal relationship be established
  through emotional labor and thus diminished the
  master-servant hierarchy

• Romeos research on domestic work in the U. S.
  No.

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Emotional labor and social hierarchy

• The inherent power relation between an employer
  and employee
• 1. Employers expect to be consoled, but the
  psychological needs of domestic helpers are often
  neglected
• 2. Most employers would show a condescending
  manner to interact with their domestic helpers
• 3. Even when employers initiated conversations at
  a peer level, domestic helpers have to hide their
  real feeling
• 4. Instrumental personalism or strategic
  intimacy Some employers would try to makes
  friends with domestic helpers in exchange for
  better service

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When home becomes a workplace (hiring live-in
domestic helpers)

• Domestic service creates a unique social setting
  that women (or men) from different
  social-economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds
  interact in an informal and intimate way
• The social setting is the employers home

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Boundary work

• Theory of Boundary Work the strategies,
  principles, and practices we use to create,
  maintain, and modify cultural categories
• For example, employees would describe the
  home/work boundary by organizing realm-specific
  matters, people, objects, and aspects of the self
• In the context of domestic service both the
  employers and employees would negotiate the
  boundaries between each other
• Visible boundary and invisible boundary

Based on P. C. Lans research on Filipina
domestic work in Taiwan
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Visible boundary

• Eating arrangement in a family who is included
  in the dining table, where to sit at the table,
  who eats before or after whom, who gets more
  food, better quality, and a larger variety, whose
  tastes or needs are prioritized
• Spatial arrangement (living/working space)

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Invisible boundary

• Invisible boundary guardianship (are employers
  the foreign migrant maids protectors?) privacy
  (how much should they know each other?)

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Employers boundary work
Family Boundary
Inclusion
Exclusion


Distant Hierarchy
Highlighting
Maternalism
Class/ ethnic divides
Business Relationship
Personalism
Downplaying
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Workers boundary work

• Live-in domestic workers live in a dual lifethe
  life with front and backstage
• Life in the front stage submissive servants on
  weekdays
• Life in the backstage go to church, picnic, meet
  friends, go shopping, dancing, etc. on Sunday

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Workers boundary work in front stage
Front/backstage boundary
Integrating
Segmenting


Keeping safe distance
Seeking patronage
Accepting
Class/ ethnic divides
Obscuring previous positions
Highlighting status similarity
Objecting
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discussion

• Equal rights for foreign resident workers?
• Pros Liberal democratic theorists argue that
  foreign resident workers should be put on the
  road to citizenship. Rights of guest workers in
  Europe and immigrants in North America are
  protected by laws (Daniel A. Bell)
• Cons if the foreign workers are not satisfied
  with the wages and labor conditions, they can
  choose to leave and to return their home countries