DOCILE BODIES, DEFIANT SOULS : FILIPINA DOMESTIC WORKERS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Maids. Instrumental and indispensable to the Singaporean family and consequently, its extensive political economy. Maids. Veritable aliens in a foreign landscape, encountering condescension, hostility and discrimination. Maids. Primary housekeepers, caregivers, even surrogate mothers. Maids. A social nuisance, contaminating Singapore's spotless social fabric with their cheap perfume, brash talk, scanty dress and flagrant sexuality. Such are the prevalent and contradictory images of maids elicited in the Singaporean psyche. Over the years, the spotlight, rather negatively and unflatteringly, has zoomed in especially on Filipina domestic workers, given their sheer numbers and hence heightened visibility in the diminutive island of Singapore.

This academic exercise is a modest endeavour to unravel the triangular, interlocking systems of oppression imposed upon Filipina domestic workers by their employers, the Singaporean state and the domestics themselves. I would commence by elucidating how the salient role of the Singaporean state in manufacturing the disruptive and unruly body of the foreign domestic worker that rationalizes the regulation and surveillance over it by employers. Yet, I would argue that against treating the state as the omnipresent factor in steering and shaping the association between female employer and domestic, as my investigation of the ma'am-maid dyad unveils a deeper and more intricate layer of private politics. However, it is imperative not to subjugate Filipinas under the mantle of being defenseless victims without traces of subjectivity. The pivotal mission of this study is thus twofold: to trace the employers' overt and covert strategies of discipline practiced upon their domestic workers in order to establish their hierarchy and produce "docile bodies" as well as to map domestics' multifaceted strategies of resistance as testimony to their "defiant souls." Indeed, my intention is hopefully bridge the gap between interlocking structures of power over the maid and her individual "agency" in resistance in a bid to furnish a more balanced perspective.