Managing transnational families

: emotional labour and entrepreneurial agency among Filipino migrant domestics in Hong Kong

Abstract

The international labour migration of women has caught attention in recent decades because of the large number of women migrants and the social costs that go along with migration. While the traditional family structure changes when women leave the home country to work, they do not stop being mothers or daughters. In fact, migration changes and strengthens their roles in the family. This research explores how Filipino migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong manage transnational family ties as their roles within those families change. The phenomenon of women's migration from the Philippines for work abroad has given rise to a substantial debate on the implications for gender relations, in the main over whether the new roles taken on by daughters and mothers who migrate are contained within prevailing notions of filial duty, motherhood and emotional labour, or whether they transform them, and gender relations with them. In this study, I address this issue by looking at how migrant workers manage remittances and loans, and how far this changes their positions in transnational families and households. I emphasize loans taken in Hong Kong, as one of the less studied issues in migration, that may pose major problems for the well-being of migrants, but can also be a source of opportunity, showing that the phenomenon is widespread and important. On the one hand, these new roles accentuate the intensive care work and nurturing understood as emotional labour, and are frequently addressed and experienced in such terms. On the other, in an aspect of transnational motherhood that has received less attention in the literature, with their new role as breadwinners, migrant mothers in particular may become active financial managers or entrepreneurs. I ask how far women migrants become acknowledged decision- makers and resource managers, and how their status within the family changes as a result. Secondly, I look at the moral economy that underpins the way in which changing relationships are understood and conducted. To address these issues, interviews with Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong were collected through snow ball sampling, with parallel interviews conducted with matching family members in the Philippines (18 families, and small number of other individual interviews). The evidence gathered shows that migrant domestic workers are active managers of the resources they generate, and that they 'manage' family relationships as well as material resources, in accordance with a commitment to productive investment, and a moral economy of gratitude (especially to parents) and reciprocal obligation (in relation to children and other family members). Entrepreneurial management includes rational administration of remittances and loans, weighing and calculating risks, deciding on recipients, earmarking and frequency of remittances and managing the repercussions of decisions made on personal relationships. The research concludes that while fulfilling emotional labour through remittances and loans, migrant domestic workers demonstrate a degree of entrepreneurial agency that has not been recognised before.

Date of Award	15 Jul 2015
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Paul Anthony CAMMACK (Supervisor) & Catherine C H CHIU (Supervisor)