"MAID TO ORDER IN HONG KONG" (NICOLE CONSTABLE).   Term Paper ID:24623 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Critical review of work on physical, psychological & social lives of Filipina domestic workers in homes of Chinese in Hong Kong.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Critical review of work on physical, psychological & social lives of Filipina domestic workers in homes of Chinese in Hong Kong. Paper Introduction: Nicole Constable, in Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers, describes the physical and psychological lives of those domestic workers in the homes of Chinese in Hong Kong, their attitudes toward own lives and work, and the attitudes of the workers and the Chinese toward one another. Constable's primary purpose, from a scholarly perspective (she is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh), is to document the particulars of the lives of these women for others interested in labor relations, cross-cultural attitudes, class differences, and the role of the state in regulating foreign workers. However, underlying this scientific viewpoint is the author's clear intention to humanize a group of workers who have previously been dehumanized both by their employers and by those with no first-hand knowledge of the women's experience, but with Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. "Why else," she asked rhetorically, "would they willingly leave children and husbands behind in the Philippines?" (vii). Constable is successful in accomplishing both of these goals. Those workers who work under illegal conditionsare especially susceptible to disciplinary abuses from their employers. The bias of Chinese employers is important to the book only insofaras it plays a part in the shaping of the Filipinas' daily reality.Constable also explores the different Filipina responses to the difficultconditions under which the Filipinas live and work in Hong Kong, responseswhich run the gamut from fatalistic acceptance to radical politicization.All of the Filipinas must deal with these conditions, including "localforms of xenophobia, occupational and gender stereotypes, attitudes aboutethnic, racial, and cultural differences, as well as local laws andgovernment policies" (xiii). Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,1997.----------------------- 6 Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong neither simply resist oppression nor accept it. Some workers dobecome fatalistic and docile, but far more workers establish at least someinner resistance to their position. In addition, Constable shows that these women are morepowerful (or at least less powerless), less oppressed, and often far fromthe "stupid" poverty-stricken foreigners held in such low esteem by theChinese in Hong Kong. In her comparison of past and present treatment of domestic workersin Hong Kong, Constable notes that although there are more legal safeguardsin place to protect these workers, disciplinary abuses continue: "What suchcontinuities illustrate is not that nothing has changed, but that despitecertain changes, similar abuses and forms of discipline persist" (153). Each individual worker must beseen as an individual who uses different combinations of coping mechanisms,resistance ploys, accommodation, etc.: This book suggests that domestic workers are not simply passive objects of oppression, nor are they active subjects who successfully control themselves and their labor. . As complex as the workers' resistance/accommodation patterns may be,however, there is simply no doubt that the lives of these women arethoroughly controlled by those for whom they work and by the state andagencies which oversee their work, including agencies in the Philippineswhich prepare them for work in Hong Kong. Above all, and to her credit, Constable resists and urgesothers to resist, any simplistic conclusion with respect to the workers'responses to the difficulties of their work. In fact, as Constable shows, Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kongare deeply moral, and the reason they come to Hong Kongis precisely for the betterment of the lives of the members of the familythey left behind at home. Herobjective presentation of their lives as she finds them at times gives wayto conclusions which seem perhaps to shine a more positive light on themthan is deserved, such as when she sees their obsession with pleasing theiremployers not as a sign of docility and oppression but as a sign they arepleasing themselves (21 ). . These "maids" understood little Chinese, could not follow the simplest instructions, and were "dirty and lazy." She believed, moreover, that Filipinas' morals were questionable. In any case, her humane perspective onthese women strengthens her book rather than weakens it, and inevitablydraws the reader more deeply into a study which is, after all, clearlymeant in part to humanize these often dehumanized women. . . Constable relies largely on interviews with workers, with Filipinaswho run a mission for Filipina workers having difficulties in Hong Kong,and with labor activists among the women, as well as on her observation ofthese women at work and outside of work. Constable's close relationship withmany of these women, and especially their frank discussions with her abouthighly personal matters, have clearly affected her view of them. The Filipina domestic worker not onlydeserves more respect and humane treatment than she generally receives fromher Chinese employer in Hong Kong, she is also a complex, spirited, open-hearted soul full of life, intelligence, and insight into herself, heremployers and her relationship with them, and her often tryingcircumstances. Their "employers" are not merely the individual orfamily they work for, but also those institutions which control their livesthrough laws, regulations and discipline, including the employment agenciesand the state. These "maids" are both widely used in HongKong and widely abused both by their Chinese employers and by thegovernment regulating their work. Nicole Constable, in Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of FilipinaWorkers, describes the physical and psychological lives of those domesticworkers in the homes of Chinese in Hong Kong, their attitudes toward ownlives and work, and the attitudes of the workers and the Chinese toward oneanother. Constable writes that in most instances, these workers "want to telltheir employers a thing or two," not only about the abuses of discipline,but also the fact that they often own their own land in the Philippines--often more than their Hong King employers--that they have their own maidsat home, "but they refrain from doing so because their employment dependson maintaining the pretence that they are 'just poor maids'" (111). The book's scholarly depth,theoretical concerns and full documentation qualify it as a work forresearchers in related fields, but its focus on these women as human beingsinvolved in a difficult cross-cultural drama also qualifies it asfascinating material for the lay reader. Still, such conclusions are kept clearlyseparate from the author's data. The latter two serve as especially frighteningobstacles to those Filipinas who work outside the law, by necessity orchoice, such as working for more than one employer. The book covers the spectrum of the lives of these women and theirwork, and the study of the same, including theory and history related totheir roles in the political economy, related literature, the export oflabor to Hong Kong, types of "imported" domestic workers in the history ofHong Kong, employers' discipline of the workers, and the responses of theworkers to such discipline. Theportrait she draws is nothing like the stereotype expressed by most Chineseemployers, including one whose bias piqued Constable's interest in thesubject in the first place: "Filipinas . Despite the fact that the workers' relationship with their employersis heavily weighted toward the employers in terms of power, Constableportrays those workers as far more active in the relationship--if onlypsychologically and among themselves--than is believed by those employersand others who contribute to the stereotyping of the workers. Maid to Order in Hong Kong. Resistance in most cases is notovert, at least in face-to-face confrontations with their employers, whichwould lead to dismissal. . . Constables writes that her specific foci are the forms of control or discipline that Filipina domestic workers experience in their dealings with recruitment and placement agencies in the Philippines and in Hong Kong, with employers, and with government bureaucracy, rules, and regulations . . . Clearly, employers see these workers as docilebeings willing to adhere to such control, but Constable reports that whenone worker read the rules above to other workers, the list was met with"jeers and a chorus of dissent" (87). These apparent contradictions suggests that the question of resistance cannot be resolved by appealing to simple phenomenological logic (13). Part of this control is simplyfor the sake of control, rather than for the specific results of thespecific domestic chore at hand: "Such discipline is meant to establish'uninterrupted, constant coercion, supervising the processes of theactivity rather than its result'" (83). Theauthor draws book portraits of individual Filipina maids in Hong Kong fromboth the anthropological and the human point of view, and also gives aclear and objective sense of life for these women as a foreign class in agenerally hostile environment. Constable's primary purpose, from a scholarly perspective (she isAssistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh), is todocument the particulars of the lives of these women for others interestedin labor relations, cross-cultural attitudes, class differences, and therole of the state in regulating foreign workers. In addition, the author utilizes"archival materials, popular literature, editorials, and articles" in localperiodicals, as well as earlier studies of the same subject (xiii). However, underlying thisscientific viewpoint is the author's clear intention to humanize a group ofworkers who have previously been dehumanized both by their employers and bythose with no first-hand knowledge of the women's experience, but with muchprejudice about the women themselves. . Rules are designed forpsychological as well as physical control, including "You are not allowedto rest and lean on sofa of parlour" and "Do not write any letters duringyour working days" (87-88). This messageseems to this reader to be the most important to Constable. By far, the most intriguing subjects in the book have to do in someway with the relative power of the workers and their employers as elementsof a labor struggle. Work CitedConstable, Nicole. [and] the multiplicity of ways that domestic workers respond to such discipline (xiii). are very stupid." . If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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