SOCIAL MAPS OF FILIPINA MAIDS IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

In the wake of global economic restructuring, the structural positions of women have undergone drastic changes within a few decades. More women, especially those in Newly Industrializing Economies (NIEs) which are experiencing rapid economic growth, are moving beyond the confines of the home and entering the sphere of productive work. With larger numbers of women entering formal productive work, there has been an increasing need to turn to substitutes to fulfil responsibilities in the reproductive sphere. Female migrant workers from neighbouring developing countries have thus been increasingly drawn upon to work as domestic helpers. This has created a burgeoning "maid trade", which is fast becoming a major world phenomenon. This study focuses on socio-geographical aspects of the maid trade. Specifically, it explores social maps of Filipina maids in Singapore, where female migrant workers have increasingly become a significant component of Singapore's society and economy. Filipina domestics are chosen for this research because while they may have become a rather significant force in terms of number, they remain a marginalized group with regard to their nationality, race and gender. Two aspects of Filipina maids' social maps are explored. First, the study focuses on their cognition of and attachment to place in different spaces. Specifically, it examines the different degrees of "insideness" experienced by Filipina maids within the home, neighourhood and wider society. Second, it examines their use, contestation and compliance within certain social spaces during both their daily working and off-day routines. Contestation and compliance are concerned in terms of style, ’a form of cultural insubordination that expresses an attitude of defiance and disrespect to those in authority’ (Jackson, 1992:59), and strategy, which implies some degree of conscious deliberation and is generally action-based. Methodologically, the study employs a house-to-house survey as well as a questionnaire survey to help build up a profile of Filipina maids in Singapore. Additionally, fifteen in-depth interviews and participant observation at selected public places frequented by the maids during their off-days have also been carried out. The aim is to understand the maids' social maps at three spatial levels (home, neighbourhood and wider society) and at two temporal scales (during their working and off-days routines). The study shows that basically, the maids' cognition of and attachment to place are very much dependent on their degree of integration into the household or community and their sense of "insideness" within social spaces. These are in turn affected by a number of factors, such as temporal factors (e.g. the maids' length of employment) and socio-cultural factors (e.g. their previous work experience, their attitudes and behaviour, their employers' attitudes and behaviour as well as cultural and/or linguistic differences). It is also noted that strategies adopted by the maids in their use, contestation or compliance at the three spatial scales are usually covert, non-confrontational and unorganized. In terms of styles, those adopted at the home and neighbourhood during their daily working routines differ distinctively from those adopted during their off-days in public places mainly in terms of their attitudes, topics of conversation and their dress code. The study shows that while Filipina maids constitute a marginalized group subordinate to their employers and host society, they are not entirely ’’passive" in their relations to those who are more "powerful". Instead, they are capable of different styles and strategies in their use and “colonization" of space based on their own cognitions, priorities and habitual routines.