Indonesian migrant women: Present 'here' and 'there' via ICTs

By Lucia Zerna


Photograph reproduced by kind permission of Xyza Cruz Bacani 

In the image above, the boy on the right has his faced pressed against the glass. While we see his face clearly, the face of the photographer is hidden by the camera. Who is she?

Xyza Cruz Bacani is a Filipina domestic worker in Hong Kong whose passion for photography inspired her to buy a digital single reflex (DSLR) camera and photograph everyday life in the city. Since posting her black and white images online on Facebook, Bacani has gained international recognition. She currently has more than 7,000 likes on her page. Furthermore, she has recently secured a 2015 fellowship on the Magnum Foundation’s prestigious Human Rights programme, under which she will receive a scholarship that will strengthen her skills in visually documenting human rights. Bacani’s success exemplifies the ways in which migrant domestic workers utilize technology in order to pursue aspirations and connect with the outside world. While the majority of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) in Southeast Asia do not achieve such visibility, many are just as active in using various types of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), such as cellphones.

From the results of the recently completed Migrating out of Poverty study on the ICT use of domestic workers in Singapore, it is apparent that use of such technologies form an integral aspect of the workers’ everyday lives. Handheld computing devices, particularly smartphones, are used by FDWs to establish a presence of both ‘here’ and ‘there’ through phone calls and short message services (SMS) to family members back home. The research found that eighty per cent of respondents in the study relied on SMS and regular phone calls to make contact with their family and friends in Indonesia.

Despite having to care for another woman’s children, FDWs also act as transnational mothers, keeping up with their own children’s wellbeing and education via ICTs. Furthermore, having a sustained line of communication is vital for preserving their mental health in environments that can be exploitive and isolating. As Rosita notes, “if I miss them I can SMS [or] Facebook. I feel happy and in high spirits.”

Additionally, the study shows that through ICTs Indonesian migrant women are able to access information on the global web. For example, Hera, a domestic worker living in Singapore, says: “[I] know more about life here… [About] Indonesian maids or the problems they have. They always upload stuff on Facebook.”

The use of ICTs is one lens through which we can see how power relations are shaped and renegotiated between the employer and domestic worker. As the study found, while ICTs help facilitate vital modes of communication for domestic workers, such devices are not readily accessible to all. Directly related to access are issues of trust, usage restrictions, and surveillance. Many domestic workers only receive a handheld device from their employer after a few years of service. Even then, FDWs are very aware of when and where they use their phones.

Yani, a 42 year-old divorcee, explains: “I know the limitation[s], I know when is the working hours and when is the time to rest. When I am eating or resting, I will call.”

Employers also monitor and curtail FDWs’ access to communication devices. Within the household they hold the password to the Wi-Fi network and may not share it with their FDW. Additionally, FDWs who do not have a phone are dependent on their employer’s devices to contact family back home. In such instances the FDW might limit herself to calling family on specific days and talking for a certain length of time.

It is clear from the research that access to and use of ICTs influence the daily routines of FDWs in Singapore in multifaceted ways. ICTs facilitate new transnational spaces where FDWs can maintain relationships with family back home. Smartphones and similar devices have become vital resources that sustain personal relationships and, in the case of Xyza Cruz Bacani, have been used as platforms for creativity and public recognition. ICTs have provided a site for her and other domestic workers to shape new trajectories and go beyond a singularizing identity of FDW. 

Lucia Zerner is currently an undergraduate spending her spring semester studying abroad in Singapore. She is particularly interested in topics related to labour migration and has most recently conducted an independent study on returned Tamil migrant workers to Madurai, India. 

Dirty jobs but a brighter future? Migrant domestic workers and the discourse on slavery and forced labour

by Priya Deshingkar

Domestic workers  are often described as “modern-day slaves” because of their working conditions which bear many of the hallmarks of forced labour and also because of their intersecting disadvantages of race, gender and poverty.   But listening to the stories of migrants working as domestic workers reveals that the choices they have made, to work as domestic workers are precisely to escape degrading situations and contexts. The realities of the lives of many poor rural women are more dirty, dangerous and demeaning than domestic work, which offers women the chance to earn and be independent. 

After two years of planning with her husband how the household would be managed without her, 34-year-old Arini (name changed) has finally managed make the trip from her remote village in West Java all the way to Singapore to work as a domestic worker or maid.  There are many like her from Indonesia working as domestic workers in other countries including Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia.  The numbers are vast, nearly five million by one estimate, and they seem to be growing.  Like many others, Arini migrated through an agent who found her a job and paid the costs of her migration up front, costs that she must repay by working without any salary for the first eight months of her assignment. 

Across the globe in Ethiopia, the story is somewhat different for Abeba (name changed) who ran away from her village in the drought-prone Amhara region at the age of 15. First she went to the nearest town, worked there as a cleaner until she had saved enough to try her luck in Addis Ababa. Her plan was to save money to migrate to Djibouti or the Middle East where thousands of women and girls have migrated to work as maids. Abeba first got a job in Addis Ababa working for a distant relative but left after they refused to pay her. She found another job through an agent, in a house where she was groped and harassed until she left. In the city she had to live by her wits, continually searching for a place to live and a job that was safe and fair, where she could work and save. The work was hard and payment was poor; sometimes she did not even get paid. She eventually saved enough to pay an agent to migrate to Djibouti.

Both Arini and Abeba are working as domestic workers. ILO research shows that the 53 million domestic workers worldwide are predominantly female and from poor and socially excluded communities.   The working conditions are tough – limits on personal freedom, long working hours and being unable to leave because of debt-bondage. The ILO identifies domestic work as one of the sectors that is most likely to involve forced labour and slavery.  The public discourse on slavery and domestic work imagine domestic workers with almost no agency; their minds are controlled and their bodies are enslaved and the conclusion seems to be that they must be rescued from this awful fate.

But a look at the process from the perspective of migrant girls and women tells another story altogether. Arini wanted to migrate so that her family could enjoy the material comforts that her migrant neighbours have. She wanted her daughter to attend the best school and to make sure that her family did not want for anything. This was a choice she and her husband made together to raise their standard of living. Like many others, she comes from a subsistence farming household where incomes are not enough to provide for the family all year round and where material and educational aspirations have been fuelled and enabled by a history of migration. They hope that migration will enable them to escape the endless hard work and poverty associated with subsistence agriculture.

Abeba’s decision to leave the village, a place and a cultural context that she perceived as dead-end and degrading, was clearly a voluntary act; an example of agency in the face of limited choices.  She ran away from home because her family wanted her to marry at 15. Having been forced to leave school at 12 to work on the family’s failing farm, and with a marriage to a local man arranged for her, she could see how her future would be, and she didn’t like what she saw. To her, life in the city meant freedom, offering her choices of how she lived, dressed, ate and where she worked, despite its many risks. Living in this way was preferable to having her destiny sealed by her parents.

The risks are clearly numerous for such migrants, but for many poor people, migration offers the opportunity to earn more that they would at home and the ability to invest in businesses, land, material security and education. For many women migration also offers them a rare opportunity to earn money of their own, achieve independence and take control over their lives. This is often overlooked in the international debate on migrant domestic workers. The importance of jobs such as domestic work to the social mobility, development and freedom of poor women is hidden under the preoccupation with ideal (and important) employment conditions.

Migration and employment in sectors such as domestic work are sometimes labelled as slavery and forced labour. However, they remain among the most important pathways of social mobility for many poor women and can be considerably less degrading than other alternatives.

Priya Deshingkar is the Research Director of the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.