Migrant Workers' Narratives of Return 9781000922868, 9781032202587, 9781032202815, 9781003263005

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Setting the scene
2 How and why: a dash of theory and methodology
3 Struggling to reconnect: identity transformations
4 Haunted by ghosts: remembering trauma
5 Spurning exploitation: the empowered migrant worker
6 Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving?
7 Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research
8 Summary and concluding remarks
References
Appendix
Index

Citation preview

Migrant Workers’ Narratives of Return

Drawing on a corpus of 113 narratives told by migrant workers who have returned to their home country, Ladegaard details Indonesian and Filipino (domestic) migrant workers’ experiences of homecoming after years of work abroad, separated from their loved ones. The narratives deal with two major themes: 1) migrant workers’ experiences in the diaspora, which for many, particularly Indonesian workers, were associated with abuse and exploitation leading to trauma; and 2) migrant workers’ experiences of coming home, which include both the happy reunion with the family but also concerns about not ‘fitting in’ and the need to reinvent themselves because they are not who they were when they left. This is particularly true for workers whose migratory journeys have failed and who have come back to their hometowns without any financial award. Chapters also explore the major difference between Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers’ overseas experiences. The Filipino returnees share mostly positive stories, while the Indonesian returnees uncover mostly negative stories, further illuminating what may explain these diverse migratory experiences. Finally, the book discusses how research on disenfranchised groups like (domestic) migrant workers can be used for social and political action. An excellent text that will appeal to academics, teachers, and postgraduate students in the humanities and social sciences, particularly in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, intercultural communication, anthropology, and migration studies. Hans J. Ladegaard is Professor and Former Head of the Department of English and Communication at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics

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For more information about this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-inSociolinguistics/book-series/RSSL

Migrant Workers’ Narratives of Return Alienation and Identity Transformations Hans J. Ladegaard

With photos by Gratiane de Moustier

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Hans J. Ladegaard The right of Hans J. Ladegaard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Photos by Gratiane de Moustier. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-20258-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-20281-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-26300-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005 Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is dedicated to Professor Jacob Mey and Rev. Dr John LeMond, two of my most important mentors and friends, who passed away in February 2023. They were both thoughtful and incisive intellectuals who made significant contributions to their field (pragmatics and religious studies), but they were also compassionate, humble, and loving human beings who taught me so much. I owe them both a huge debt of gratitude.

Contents

Acknowledgements 1 Setting the scene

viii 1

2 How and why: a dash of theory and methodology

17

3 Struggling to reconnect: identity transformations

27

4 Haunted by ghosts: remembering trauma

47

5 Spurning exploitation: the empowered migrant worker

69

6 Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving?

90

7 Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research

111

8 Summary and concluding remarks

132

References140 Appendix151 Index152

Acknowledgements

Research depends heavily on other people, and I  want to thank the people who supported and helped me and made the research that is reported in this monograph possible. First, I want to acknowledge the financial support I have received from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, without which the research would not have been possible, or at least considerably more difficult. They awarded me three GRF (General Research Fund) grants, two of which have supported the research in this book: grant numbers PolyU-2444/13H and PolyU-15606821. I also want to thank the migrant worker NGOs who have provided continuous help and support over the years, not least PathFinders in Hong Kong and their partners in Indonesia. Their staff and volunteers have supported my research for the past ten years and organised two very successful research trips to Indonesia for me. I am particularly grateful to Kristina Zebua and Anastasia Purnomo, who organised and translated in sharing sessions in Hong Kong, organised my research trips in every single detail, and put me in touch with so many wonderful people in Indonesia. I am also grateful to Catherine Gurtin and Carmen Lam at PathFinders and Cynthia Abdon-Tellez at Mission for Migrant Workers who have followed my research endeavours for many years and always been supportive. I also want to thank all the (domestic) migrant workers in Indonesia and the Philippines who signed up to meet with me and tell me their story. Needless to say, without their participation, this research would not have been possible! I want to thank them for their openness and honesty, for sharing their (painful) stories with me, and for believing in my ability to do justice to their testimonies. It is my hope that the stories in this book will help us move one step further in our attempts to comprehend migrant workers’ life stories and the sociocultural factors that shape them. In Indonesia I had wonderful support from local migrant worker NGOs, and I  want to thank in particular Mazidah Salas and Setyo Purnomo Hadi, who organised several sharing sessions with migrant worker returnees in Central Java and invited us to stay in their home. I also had support from SBMI (Serikat Buruh Migran Indonesia) in Jakarta and INFEST (Institute for Education Development, Social, Religious and Cultural Studies) in Yogyakarta, for which I am grateful. During my field trip in the Philippines, I experienced wonderful hospitality from Casilda Luzares and Ramon Boloron, who organised the sharing sessions for me.

Acknowledgements ix I also had the privilege of working with an amazing team on my two field trips in Indonesia: Santi Wulandari on my first trip, and Radha Shah and Mita Eka Wahyuni on my second trip. Santi was a fantastic research assistant, translator, and cultural facilitator, and Mita not only translated and worked as my personal assistant, she also engaged with the migrant women’s personal stories and held their hand when they needed it (something I could not do). Thank you also to Viviana Indriani who translated the Indonesian stories in this book, and to Kristina Zebua who was always helpful when I  had questions about language. Gratiane de Moustier, documentary photographer and photojournalist, is trying (like me) to document the life stories of domestic migrant workers – with her camera. She visited training centres for domestic migrant workers in Indonesia, as well as migrant worker families, and she followed some women on their first journey as domestic helpers to Hong Kong. She has kindly agreed to let me use some of her amazing photos documenting migrant women’s lives, and I’m very grateful for her support. During the time I have worked on this book, I have been Head of Department, and I am grateful to an amazing team of colleagues in the Department of English and Communication at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, who supported me and made it possible for me to spend at least some time every week on research. Thank you to Associate Head Bernadette Watson, who always provided support, constructive feedback, and a sympathetic ear; thank you to the department’s senior executive officer, Carmen Tsang, who was running the department very competently (even without me being there), and to my helpful and kind personal assistant, Daisy Wong. Thank you also to all the other colleagues in the department, academic and non-academic alike, who always supported me and made my six years as head enjoyable despite the heavy workload. I have also enjoyed the support of academics and friends around the world who have supported my migrant worker research in many different ways: from reviewing draft proposals and papers to providing personal encouragement, advice, and support. Thank you to (in alphabetical order) Sal Consoli, John Edwards, Howie Giles, Mike Handford, Janet Holmes, Malcolm MacDonald, Meredith Marra, Maggie Mathieson, Shanta Nair-Venugopal, Alison Phipps, Jason Polley, Itesh Sachdev, Dorien van der Mieroop, Tony Young, and Vivien Xiaowei Zhou. Last but not least, I want to thank my family for their love and support, and I want to thank Florence Dugayen who made it possible for me and my wife to work outside the home and have a family. Thank you, Florence, for all the meals you cooked, for keeping the flat so clean and doing the laundry, for looking after the children – and for doing all of it with a smile! We’ll always be in your debt! Hong Kong, December 2022 Hans J. Ladegaard

1 Setting the scene

1.1 Introduction The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are 272 million migrants in the world today, which is more than during any previous time in human history (ILO Report, 2021). The number is expected to rise even further because of increasing economic disparities between the Global North and the Global South and because of wars and violent conflicts in many parts of the world. Some 62% (or 169 million) of the world’s migrants are referred to as international migrant workers, that is, people who live and work outside their country of origin. Many international migrants with professional training leave their home countries by choice to seek more advantageous employment opportunities in other parts of the world, which is possible because their skills and qualifications are sought after in the global economy. But a far greater number has been forced to flee their homes because of war and civil unrest, or they have been forced away by poverty and social deprivation and have immigrated to more affluent countries in order to earn a living for their families. Canagarajah (2017b) identifies an important distinction in policy and public discourse between these two groups: “the privileged who enjoy the resources and access for travel are considered mobile, and the less privileged are referred to as migrants” (p. 5; emphasis added). About 1/3 of the world’s international migrants originate from the AsiaPacific region. Most of them come from developing countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, and they work mostly in the service industries (including domestic work) in the Arab States, Europe, and North America, and in developed economies in Asia, such as Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Migrant work has thus become crucial for the economic development in many Southeast Asian nations including Indonesia and the Philippines, which are the largest exporters of migrant workers in the region. Massive unemployment in the sending countries in combination with economic growth and therefore increased demand for labour in the receiving countries explain why labour export continues to grow, despite media and scholarly reports which document widespread abuse and exploitation of migrant workers (see Ladegaard, 2017a; Phillips, 2021 for an overview). DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005-1

2  Setting the scene A significant proportion of Asia’s international migrants work as domestic helpers1, or ‘maid servants’ as they are referred to in some countries. Of an estimated 11.54 million international domestic migrant workers (DMWs) worldwide, 3.34 million work in the Asia-Pacific region and 3.16 million in the Arab States (ILO Report, 2015). It is important to mention, however, that these numbers reflect how many DMWs leave their home countries through official channels, but it is well-known that sizeable numbers also leave through illegal means. Paul (2017) estimates that the number of undocumented migrant workers may be twice the number of official migrants or more, but for obvious reasons, these numbers cannot be verified. However, migration from Indonesia through official channels has dropped significantly in recent years. The Indonesian government temporarily banned the deployment of DMWs to a number of countries because of widespread reports of abuse, particularly in the Arab States, which have large numbers of international migrant workers but virtually no laws to protect them. But the government’s ban on legal domestic worker deployment in certain countries has led to concerns that illegal migration and human trafficking may increase and thus make Indonesian DMWs even more vulnerable (Sim & Wee, 2009; Rother, 2017). Despite changes in Indonesia’s immigration laws, thousands of DMWs still leave their home countries every year to work overseas as live-in maids. In Hong Kong, Filipino and Indonesian DMWs, who comprise around 55% and 42% respectively of migrant workers in the city, have been joined in recent years by smaller numbers of domestic workers from other Asian countries like Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Cambodia. No matter the country of origin, domestic helpers work on two-year contracts, and, in the case of Hong Kong, it is required that they live with their employers. This means there are no regulations on their working hours, and in some households, they are expected to be on call at all hours (Choy et al., 2022). It also means that employers sometimes get away with months or even years of exploitation and abuse because the abuse happens inside the employer’s home with no other witnesses than the helper and the employer (Ladegaard, 2017a). Governments in sending and receiving countries, as well as domestic helper recruitment agencies, have been quick to label DMW export as a win-win situation simultaneously addressing unemployment in developing countries and labour shortage in receiving economies (Pratt, 2012). However, what these official reports fail to mention is the devastating consequences mass migration has for families in the sending countries (Vanore et  al., 2022), as well as for the women who migrate and have to spend years on end separated from their children and other loved ones (Ladegaard, 2018a). While DMWs’ lives and experiences in the diaspora are relatively well researched, little research has been done on their return to their home countries. This book intends to fill the gap. It is a follow-up study to my 2017 monograph on the life stories of domestic migrant workers in Hong Kong (Ladegaard, 2017a), which outlines their reasons for becoming migrant workers, their attempts to stay in touch with their families and do long-distance

Setting the scene 3

Photo 1.1 Photos of close family members are important for migrant women while they work overseas. They only see their family face-to-face once every two years.

mothering, and their experiences of discrimination, repression, and fear while working in the city. It also gives an account of their experiences of trauma in case they worked for an abusive employer, and how peer support can help the women construct discourses of agency and resistance. The research reported in the 2017 monograph was based on recordings of sharing sessions among DMWs seeking refuge at a church shelter in Hong Kong. One theme that was often brought up in these sessions was their return to the home country. Most of the women who came to the shelter had lost their job and would therefore have to leave Hong Kong within two weeks of termination of contract. Migrant worker laws in Hong Kong stipulate that domestic helpers who have lost their job can only stay in the city for two weeks or be liable to imprisonment and/or deportation. Therefore, the prospect of going home was real for the women at the shelter, and it became obvious that for many, this was a contentious issue fraught with fear and uncertainty, but for some also with anticipation and excitement. In the remaining part of this chapter, I shall first give a brief account of the Church Shelter Project, which provides the backdrop for the current study,

4  Setting the scene followed by an outline of the Migrant Worker Returnee Project, which provided the data for this book. I shall also briefly outline that latest of my externally funded projects on domestic migrant workers, the Trauma Narratives Project, which, at the time of completing this monograph, was still in the data collection and transcription phase. Finally, I provide a brief overview of the themes that will be covered in the rest of the book. 1.2 The church shelter project I joined the Bethune House shelter for migrant women as a volunteer in 2008. My job at the shelter was to lead sharing sessions with newcomers. The shelter provides temporary accommodation, food, and other necessities to DMWs whose contract has been prematurely terminated, or who have run away from an abusive employer. Bethune House wants to be ‘a home away from home’ and provide for the women’s daily needs for as long as it is required without payment. It is a charity run by Mission for Migrant Workers and the Anglican Church in Hong Kong, and it also provides legal advice from pro bono lawyers, English enhancement classes, as well as workshops and talks that seek to inform migrant women of their rights. The aim of these activities is to empower the women so that they are less likely to put up with exploitation and abuse (see Chapter 4). The sharing sessions had two aims: first, to clarify the details of a newcomer’s case and, if possible, provide documentation if she wanted to file a complaint to either the Labour Tribunal or the police. Violations of Hong Kong’s labour laws, such as underpayment, not providing statutory rest days, suitable accommodation or food/food allowance, should be reported to the Labour Tribunal, and criminal cases such as physical or sexual assault should be reported to the police. If a migrant woman loses a complaint case or a lawsuit against her employer, it is usually because she cannot prove that she was assaulted, paid below the minimum wage, or not given the statutory holidays stipulated in the law. Therefore, the sharing sessions aimed at recording the women’s stories in as much detail as possible and collecting whatever evidence was available. Experienced domestic helpers who knew about their rights would sometimes collect evidence, such as photos, audio recordings, or CCTV footage, which may be crucial for their chances of winning a case against an abusive employer. However, more often than not, there was no evidence, and it was therefore the helper’s word against the employer’s, and such cases are difficult to win. The second aim of the sharing sessions was to serve a therapeutic function. They gave the women an opportunity to talk about their (traumatic) experiences in a safe environment, and this could be an important first step in a long healing process (Duvall & Béres, 2007). Sunday is a statutory holiday for DMWs in Hong Kong, so they would meet their friends on Sundays in parks or other public places throughout the city, and in case they had experienced abuse, they would be advised by their friends to run away. This means newcomers would usually arrive at the shelter on Mondays, and the sharing

Setting the scene 5 sessions were therefore held on Monday night. I led the sharing sessions at Bethune House every Monday night for four years, except on public holidays, over the summer and Christmas break, or when the shelter had organised other activities for the women. This generated a data set of more than 300 stories about the lives and experiences of Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong. After a couple of months of voluntary work at the shelter, I  realised the potential for greater social impact if these stories were documented and shared with a wider audience. I therefore added a research component to the sharing sessions while continuing other forms of voluntary work at the shelter, such as organising social events and participating in fundraising. I  was aware of the potential problems involved in fulfilling multiple roles at the same time: researcher, volunteer, and social activist (see Ladegaard & Phipps, 2020 for a discussion). First, the role of the researcher who needs to observe and analyse language without unduly influencing the linguistic and social environment s/ he is studying. Second, the role of the volunteer who needed to encourage the women to talk about their (traumatic) experiences, advise and support them, and who had to abide by the credo of the shelter: empowerment of migrant women; and finally, the social activist whose ambition was to push for changes in migrant worker policies but who needed to set aside his own (political) agenda and support the women in whatever goals they had (see Chapter 7 for a discussion of these multiple and sometimes conflicting roles). While I began the research at the church shelter with a clear picture of the observer’s paradox and the positivist empirical tradition at the back of my mind, I increasingly became aware that I could not be a neutral observer and stay in the background in order to collect ‘good’, ‘uncontaminated’ data. I had to take sides and commit myself to working for and with the women whose stories I was recording. Scholars have argued that it is difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish sharply between research commitments on the one hand, and social or political commitments on the other, in projects that involve underprivileged and marginalised groups (Thurlow, 2013; Sorrells, 2022). Thus, as the church shelter project developed, I increasingly saw myself as a researcher and a social activist, and I argue that these roles can be complimentary rather than contradictory (Phipps & Kay, 2014). At times, the volunteer, the researcher, and the activist would be distinguishable but increasingly, as the project progressed, melt into one with no clear boundaries between them. 1.3 The returnee narratives project Going home is something DMWs have been anticipating for years – some with dread, some with anticipation (Constable, 1999). Overstaying is a serious offence, so unless a helper has a pending Labour Tribunal or court case, she has to leave the city within two weeks if she has lost her job, even if she intends to continue working as a domestic helper in Hong Kong. This means that the women at the shelter were preparing mentally to go home, and the issue was

6  Setting the scene therefore brought up in almost every sharing session. DMWs cannot get permanent residency and therefore eventually have to go home. This means they are ‘permanent transients’ (Clifford, 1994), unable to settle anywhere. The receiving countries they have lived in do not accept them as ‘people’ but only as ‘workers’ and will not grant them the rights that apply to other non-local residents (Phillips, 2021). And for many DMWs who have been away from their home country for 20 years or more, it becomes increasingly difficult to retain strong connections with family, neighbours, and friends despite their attempts to maintain connections via social media (Waruwu, 2022a). For these women, going home is something they dread, and if they had a choice, many would prefer to stay and work in the receiving country (see Chapter 5). The desire to collect and investigate DMWs’ narratives of return thus grew out of my research at the shelter. Questions that came up in many sharing sessions but were never answered included: What happens when DMWs go home after years of work overseas and try to reintegrate into their families? Do they feel at home or has ‘home’ acquired a new meaning for them? Do they feel accepted by their children, husbands, and neighbours, or do they need to work hard to ‘fit in’? What are the implications of their diasporic experiences on their sense of self? Do they feel they belong in the family and the village, or do they feel estranged? In close collaboration with migrant worker NGOs in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and the Philippines, I set out on two field trips in 2014–2015 in the attempt to answer these questions. PathFinders, a migrant worker NGO in Hong Kong with several partners in Indonesia, became a close collaborator in this project from the beginning. The first step of the project was to meet and interview DMWs in Hong Kong who had been deported for overstaying and therefore had to go back to Indonesia. These women had become pregnant while working in Hong Kong, and with one exception, they were not married and would therefore most likely face condemnation and ostracism upon their return to the home country (see Chapter 4). I conducted two pre-departure sharing sessions at PathFinders’ office in Hong Kong. I like the concept of sharing life stories, so groups of four to six women were invited to share their stories together. I formulated the questions, but a female Bahasa-speaking staff member conducted the interviews while I mostly observed, took notes, and occasionally asked follow-up questions. The sharing was done partly in English and partly in Bahasa, and if a woman decided to share her story exclusively (or mostly) in Bahasa, I would get a brief summary from the translator with regular intervals. Only three broad questions were used in this and all the following sharing sessions, with occasional follow-up questions to clarify particular issues: 1) What was it like for you to be a migrant worker? 2) What was it like for you to come home? 3) What are you thinking about the future? In the predeparture sharing session, question 2 was changed to: What do you think it will be like for you to come home? From the outset, I  came to appreciate the group setting as ideal for these sharing sessions. I had no clear expectations as to what might transpire during the sharing, but because many of the

Setting the scene 7 returnees had difficult stories to tell, the group setting provided support and comfort in case a woman had a difficult story to tell. The pre-departure sharing sessions were difficult because the women had suffered the humiliation of being deported and also had to endure the shame and anxiety involved in returning to villages in rural Indonesia with a child and no husband. They knew they would be labelled wanita tidak bermoral (immoral women) and condemned for what their family and neighbours would see as an immoral lifestyle, and they knew their migratory journey would be seen as a failure (Prusinski, 2016; Chan, 2018). 1.3.1 The research sites

The Indonesian research sites were picked by the Indonesian migrant worker NGOs that my collaboration with PathFinders had facilitated. The leaders of local migrant worker NGOs in East and Central Java had gone to villages in their area to identify women who would like to meet with me and tell their story in a small-group sharing session. I agreed with the NGOs that, as a token of appreciation, the women would be paid the equivalent of a day’s labour for their participation (at the time, IDR20,000 or US$2), but this information was not shared with the women when they were invited. We wanted the returnees to participate in the research because they felt they had a story to tell, not because they were being paid. The invitation to attend was issued to all migrant worker returnees in the village; the only criterion was that they must have worked overseas as migrant workers and recently returned to Indonesia. I suggested that ‘recently’ should mean within the last year, but I realised later that there had been some confusion about this, so some of the returnees who turned up for the sharing sessions had actually been back for (much) longer. We decided, however, that this should not be a reason to turn them away. As the examples in the coming chapters will show, these returnees’ memories did not fade, and even after many years, they still had vivid recollections of what happened to them during their time overseas. The research sites in the Philippines were villages in the central part of Bohol. My contact to the returnees in these villages was again established through a local NGO. A spokesperson for the NGO (referred to by the pseudonym Rodrigo in the excerpts that follow), who had served as an unofficial leader in the community, was my contact person. The local women referred to him as a ‘community elder’, but this presumably had more to do with his status than his age since he was not an elderly person. He was very well connected to returnees throughout all the migrant worker communities in central Bohol in a radius of about 20 kilometres from Tagbilaran, the main city on the island. He had visited the returnees prior to my arrival and invited them to participate in a sharing session. Two local college students that I hired for the project went ahead of us in order that the women were prepared for our arrival (mobile phones were not common in the community at the time), and sharing sessions were held outside in a covered area at a central location in the village.

8  Setting the scene I visited a total of 30 villages during my two-week visit in each country: 19 in Java and 11 in Bohol. What all these communities had in common was extremely high unemployment. Bohol is one of many tourist destinations in the Philippines, but the beach resorts that attract large numbers of tourists to the island are located along the coast. They provide employment opportunities for people who live on the coast, but in Central Bohol, there is no work, except small-scale farming which rarely provides enough income for a family. This means migration is the only viable solution for the men and women in this part of Bohol if they are to sustain their families (see Chapter  6). The communities I  visited in East and Central Java are very similar: small-scale farming is the only way to provide an income, but because farmers can only sell to each other, little exchange of money and goods is happening since people generally have little money. Thus, as I was told by one of the community elders in a village in Central Java, people typically exchange produce (e.g., bananas in exchange for potatoes), which is useful, but it provides no income for anybody. In one of the areas I visited in Central Java, there was a palm oil factory, which provided seasonal contract work for the returnees in the community. At the time, a full day’s work in the factory would pay IDR20,000 (US$2), which, even by local standards, was very little and therefore not seen as an attractive option. In the remaining sending communities in Java, there was massive unemployment, and migration was largely seen as the only feasible way to provide an income. In all the sending communities I visited, everybody was impacted by migration. In each and every family, a mother or father (or both), a daughter or son, a sister or brother, either had been or currently was away working as a migrant worker. And many of the women who had returned were planning on leaving again because the family struggled with financial problems, and they could find no work locally. In the Bohol communities, many of the returnees were struggling to reconcile with the fact that now when they had finally retired and come home, their children whose education their overseas work had paid for had now left the Philippines to work overseas. Thus, perpetual separation from their children was the headline for many of these women’s lives. In most of the communities I visited in Java, I stayed with local families. This provided me with an opportunity to experience Indonesian hospitality first-hand, but also to observe and, to some extent, participate in life as it is lived in migrant worker communities. I went for walks, talked to people who could speak English (usually only returnees who had worked in Singapore or Hong Kong), and in one village, I visited the local school and sat in on an English class for primary students. During my walks, I also observed how it was visible in the village whose migratory journey had been a success. Migrant worker returnees who had made more money than was needed for their family’s upkeep during their stay overseas would often build a house with tiles, running water and electricity, which then became a visible token of their financial success. And these houses were highly visible in the community because they were very colourful, and in a village where most of the houses were simple

Setting the scene 9

Photo 1.2 After working four years abroad as a domestic helper, this woman was able to build her own house as a symbol of a successful migratory journey.

houses made of wood, a painted multicoloured stone house would stand out as a beacon of success and prosperity. In some families, I witnessed how the men went through ritual cleansing in preparation for evening prayer, which gave me insights into the importance of religion in these communities. Everywhere I went, I felt genuine hospitality and attempts to include me, as much as possible, in life in the community. Needless to say, I was of course an outsider in these villages and would never claim otherwise. Neither would I claim to fully ‘understand’ migrant worker returnees and their families, but seeing the immense difficulties they were facing first-hand helped me understand why migrant work is a necessity more than a choice for people in these communities. I was treated like an honoured guest, and wherever we came, food and drinks were served, and we were urged to share a meal with them before our departure. Thus, I was, as I often am in my meeting with migrant workers, touched by their kindness and hospitality, impressed by their resilience, and humbled by the wisdom, but also the despair and pain I heard in many of their stories. The Indonesian women in particular left their home in good faith; they expected to be treated with the same respect with which they treat other people. But for many, their migratory journey

10  Setting the scene became a painful reminder of the unfairness, discrimination, and exploitation that migration entails for people at the bottom of the globalisation market, as Blommaert (2010) so aptly phrases it with reference to refugees and asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking, and forced migrant workers. 1.3.2 The participants

As I  have outlined previously, the participants in this study were randomly selected. I  am not claiming that they constitute a representative sample of the people in the communities where they live. I have been criticised by peers who have reviewed papers I have written about this research that my sample is skewed, or even biased. I obviously do not agree with this assessment, and I reiterate that I have never claimed my participants are typical representatives of sending communities in Indonesia or the Philippines. The fact that the participants were identified by local migrant worker NGOs is important. It is arguably more likely that returnees who have encountered problems while working overseas would contact a migrant worker NGO for help upon their return to the home country, as opposed to migrant workers whose migratory journeys were relatively unproblematic. It is also important that the invitation to join a sharing session mentioned that recent returnees who would like to share their experiences of working overseas as migrant workers were invited. It is possible that returnees who had negative migratory experiences would feel more inclined to join as opposed to DMWs who had mostly positive experiences. Thus, I make no claims about the representativeness of the participants in this study. The women (and men) who came forward in Java were returnees who had mostly negative migratory experiences, and the women (and men) who joined sharing sessions in Bohol had mostly positive experiences (although some also had negative stories to tell). What is important is that the stories of these women and men are authentic. What happened to them was real, and their stories therefore deserve to be told (Shuman, 2005). Another unique group of participants in this study is the former PathFinders clients. What these women have in common is that they became pregnant (most of them out of wedlock) while working in Hong Kong and therefore sought help from PathFinders. If a domestic helper becomes pregnant in Hong Kong, it is likely she will lose her job, although the law stipulates that pregnancy is not a legitimate reason for termination of contract. This means most pregnant DMWs end up in a very precarious situation. Many of them decide to overstay in Hong Kong until after the baby is born, but this means living illegally in the city with no rights and no access to healthcare. PathFinders provides help and support to these women who are facing a terrible dilemma: going home to Indonesia where they will be shamed and ostracised for their perceived transgression, or staying illegally in Hong Kong with the immediate threat of deportation. I met some of these migrant mothers while they were still in Hong Kong awaiting deportation, and I met some of the women again a few months later when they had returned to Indonesia. I  also met some

Setting the scene 11 former PathFinders clients for the first time during my field trip. All these women had experienced extreme humiliation after their return to Java because they came back with a baby and no husband. These women’s actions affected not only their own standing in the community but also brought shame and dishonour on their families (Chan, 2018). Therefore, much was at stake for them in order to make up for their failed migratory journeys and atone for what the community saw as their sins (Constable, 2014) (see Chapter 4 and 5 for examples). I originally intended this project to focus exclusively of domestic migrant workers who are overwhelmingly female. There is a small minority of male DMWs, but their job functions are usually different in that they typically work as drivers or gardeners, but they are in Hong Kong (or elsewhere) on the same terms as female DMWs. I  may not have communicated clearly to the local NGOs that I was looking for female DMWs because a few men turned up for the first sharing sessions in Central Java. However, since it is an unwavering principle for me that nobody should be turned away from a sharing session because they are not ‘suitable’, I invited the men to stay and participate. Only eight men in total participated in the project, so it is not possible to make any general claims about their experiences. One observation is prudent though: the male migrant workers who shared their story in this community in Central Java were exploited as badly as the women. They were not subjected to sexual assault, but like the female DMWs, they were underpaid (or not paid at all), working extremely long hours, and not provided with enough food or appropriate accommodation and healthcare (see Chapter 4 and 6). 1.4 The trauma narratives project Just like the Returnee Narratives Project grew out of the Church Shelter Project, the Trauma Narratives Project was developed because of what I found as a common thread in the Indonesian returnee narratives recorded in 2014: that a large number of migrant women return to Indonesia every year haunted by traumatic experiences they had while working overseas as domestic helpers (Choy et al., 2022) (see Chapter 4). Out of a corpus of 73 narratives by Indonesian returnees, as many as 1/3 showed signs of being traumatised. This led me to speculate that hundreds (possibly thousands) of traumatised domestic workers return to Indonesia every year with no prospects of receiving professional counselling or any kind of medical attention to help them put their traumatic memories behind them (see Prusinski, 2016; Nisrane et al., 2019). This estimation is supported by an article in The Jakarta Post (‘Returning migrant workers dogged by mental problems’, 26 June 2012) in which the author, Burhaini Faizal, argues that the psychological pressure Indonesian migrant women experience while working overseas leads to depression, psychosis, and suicidal tendencies. Faizal also claims that the number of migrant worker returnees suffering from mental health issues is on the rise.

12  Setting the scene Thus, I  embarked on the next phase of the domestic migrant worker research in January 2022. This project is also done in close collaboration with PathFinders, who set up sharing sessions at their office in Hong Kong on Sunday afternoon with migrant women who had experienced trauma. They also organised another field trip to Indonesia in October–November 2022 in collaboration with migrant worker NGOs in East, West, and Central Java. We met DMW returnees in and around Jakarta in West Java, in villages around Yogyakarta in Central Java, and in villages around Surabaya in East Java. Like it was the case in 2014, all the villages had a large number of migrant worker returnees, so everybody was affected by migration, either directly or indirectly. In this project, the sharing focused on the experience of trauma and recovery from trauma. Migrant worker returnees who had experienced some form of trauma were invited to join informal sharing sessions, usually in the private home of one of the returnees. Participants were promised lunch and reimbursement of travel expenses, but they were not told that they would also receive a souvenir of IDR100,000 (around US$6) for their participation. A total of 111 migrant worker returnees participated in sharing sessions, mostly in groups of five, but a few were interviewed alone. Everybody was invited to share their personal story initially, and subsequently we focused on their experience of trauma and what it takes to recover from trauma. An additional 20 DMWs were invited to share their story in Hong Kong, and more will follow in the coming six months, so it is expected that the corpus will eventually comprise around 150 narratives. At the time of writing this chapter, only ten of the sharing sessions have been transcribed, so it is premature to make any conclusions about the Trauma Narratives Project. However, although this book focuses on the returnee narratives recorded in 2014–15, it has been impossible for me to ignore my field trip to Indonesia in 2022, which had profound impact on me. I was struck by the migrant workers’ amazing hospitality, their earnest desire to make money for their family at the expense of their own personal happiness, and the frequency of the stories of exploitation and abuse we heard. My emotions alternated between extreme anger about the inhumane treatment Indonesian DMWs are subjected to, extreme sadness about the stories we heard and the impact trauma had on the women’s lives, and extreme joy that so many of them showed a high degree of resilience and had already come far on the road to recovery. Thus, I will draw on a few of the narratives from the Trauma Narratives Project because they fit well into the theme of this book, but the overarching conclusions will be saved for later publications. However, one preliminary conclusion from this project should be mentioned. A total of 24 male migrant worker returnees participated in sharing sessions in 2022, and if we compare the stories of these men with the stories of their female peers, it is noticeable that domestic work is a separate category. Most of the male returnees had worked in car factories in Japan or Korea. Some of them had been illegal (to avoid exorbitant agency fees), and this had caused anxiety and trauma, but most of them had regular working hours, a weekly day off, clear terms

Setting the scene 13 of employment stipulated in a contract, and even a hotline they could call if they were unhappy about something. Their experiences of trauma were usually related to family issues, not the terms of their employment. In stark contrast were the stories of female domestic migrant workers, many of whom told us about excessive working hours, underpayment, no proper accommodation, no days off for years on end, and, in some cases, verbal, physical, or sexual assault. It was also noticeable that none of the participants, male or female, would allow their daughters to become domestic helpers, whereas they would not rule out other types of work overseas for their children. This provides further evidence for the claim made by several studies and news reports, as well as reports from NGOs and human rights organisations, that domestic work is a precarious occupation and domestic workers are generally more vulnerable than other migrant workers (Nisrane et al., 2019; Ladegaard, 2020b; Phillips, 2021). In the remaining part of this chapter, I shall briefly outline the content of this monograph. 1.5 Overview of content Chapter 2 provides a dash of theory and methodology: first, it outlines the methodological frameworks that were applied to the data collection and analysis, and second, it briefly summarises the analytical and theoretical frameworks that have been applied to the analysis of data. The concept of sharing is important for understanding how the data were collected. In a sharing session, the emphasis is on getting the women to tell stories that are important to them. Thus, no hypotheses or preconceived ideas about findings were proposed; the study was exploratory, and data were used to generate new theories and applications. No interview guide was used, and only three broad questions guided the sharing sessions: 1) What was it like for you to be a migrant worker?; 2) What was it like for you to come home?; and 3) What are you thinking about the future? This approach was used to facilitate the storytelling and allow the women to tell their stories, as opposed to the researcher’s ideas about what constitutes a good story. Finally, the chapter outlines the analytical frameworks that have been applied to the analyses: a narrative analysis approach informed by sociolinguistics (Toolan, 2001) in combination with the narrative therapy approach (White & Epston, 1990), which argues that we live storied lives, and by helping storytellers re-author their narratives, we can help them change their actual lives. It also outlines the relevance vis-à-vis this study of a relatively new area of enquiry, migration linguistics (Borlongan, 2023). Chapter  3 analyses narrative excerpts in which migrant worker returnees talk about their experiences of coming home. The themes explored in this chapter include alienation, identity transformation, and the need to reconceptualise familiar concepts like ‘home’ and ‘family’. In the narratives, migrant women testify that they feel like strangers in their own home. The children are more attached to their father and, in some cases, consistently reject the

14  Setting the scene mother and deny her any role or function in the family. This realisation leads to emotional distress and a feeling that the price they have had to pay to financially sustain their families has been very high. Migration has forced families in Indonesia and the Philippines to redefine traditional gender roles: women have become breadwinners, and men have become caretakers, but this also creates power imbalance and distrust within the family. This is evidenced in the women’s painful stories about their husbands’ infidelity. Other stories in this chapter deal with the alienation the returnees feel in their home communities: they need to conform to prevailing sociocultural and religious norms, and for some, this means renouncing the freedom they had while working overseas. For other women, the return to the home country has been associated with shame and defeat. They bring back a mixed-race child and no husband and are therefore seen as bringing shame on the family. These women are literally ostracised from the community, and the chapter discusses the impact this has on the women’s self-perception and how this new situation necessitates identity transformations. Chapter 4 deals with trauma narratives. A significant number of returnees, particularly among the Indonesian participants, are ‘haunted by ghosts’, and even years after their return, they still remember the impact traumatic experiences had on them. This chapter analyses narratives in which the women (and men) share their memories of trauma while working overseas. The stories include experiences of wrongful accusations of theft with subsequent termination of contract, physical, and sexual assault, and other kinds of repeated humiliations caused by employers, agents, or police officers. The chapter outlines the characteristics of trauma storytelling and it gives examples of what trauma does to the storyteller. It also analyses the importance of code-switching in storytelling, and it argues that code-switching and emotional expression are aligned. Switching to the storyteller’s second language (L2) might ease the emotional impact of recounting traumatic experiences because a person’s L2 is less emotionally charged. Or, as an alternative explanation, switching to the teller’s L2 might increase emotional impact because this is normally the language more closely associated with the experience (the language in which it happened). The focus of Chapter 5 is migrant workers’ positive experiences of migration. The positive stories, which are narrated overwhelmingly by the Filipino returnees, appear to be aligned with DMWs’ ability to stand firm and not tolerate mistreatment and exploitation. The stories in this chapter deal with empowered women who do not tolerate any disrespect and humiliation, and when it happens, they reproach their employers and make it clear that if they are not treated well, they will leave. The stories provide powerful examples of how DMWs can empower themselves, and how migration can turn into stories of relative success, fulfilment, and renewed commitment to their families. The stories show how a mutually respectful relationship between employer and migrant worker is established: the participants keep their integrity because they know they are doing important work for their employers,

Setting the scene 15 and by doing that, they are also sustaining their families while keeping a positive sense of self. Chapter 6 compares positive and negative narratives of migration. Although the data set is not large enough to make conclusive comparisons, it is striking that the Filipino workers’ migratory experiences are mostly positive, while the Indonesian workers recounted almost exclusively negative experiences. The Filipino DMWs took pride in the work they did for their own families and for the families they worked for. They held a positive self-esteem and emphasised their role as ‘household managers’ whose work was necessary for their employers, and necessary for their children, spouses, and other family members who were sustained financially through their work. The Filipino returnees share mostly happy memories from their time overseas, and given the chance, they would go overseas again. They were part of a vibrant community of Filipino expats, and there is a strong sense of fulfilling a purpose in their narratives. The Indonesian returnees, on the other hand, share almost exclusively unhappy memories from their time overseas. Their stories are characterised by defeat, repression, and fear, and they have no desire to go overseas again. The chapter discusses these consistent differences in the returnees’ stories and the sociocultural variables that may explain them. The typical Indonesian DMW in this study is young, she has received little or no formal education, she speaks no English and little or no Chinese, and she was often signed up for migrant work by her father or husband. The typical Filipino DMW, on the other hand, is mature, she is relatively well educated and speaks good English, and she signed up for domestic work overseas herself. These differences are important for understanding why so many Indonesian workers are abused and exploited while working overseas, while the Filipino migrant workers are generally better at protecting themselves. Chapter  7 is a critically reflective chapter which analyses the relationship between the researcher and disenfranchised participants like DMWs. It positions the researcher in relation to the participants and argues that the unequal power relationship should always be taken into account in research for and with disenfranchised groups. The chapter also reflects on the failures we make in our research endeavours, and it argues that researcher subjectivities are part of the research process and findings and should be taken into account in the analysis of data. The chapter also discusses how we may advance an empowering research agenda for migrant workers, and it looks at the social and political implications of migrant workers’ life stories. Sociolinguists have traditionally been interested in using their research to address real-life problems, not least in educational and health settings, but in recent years, it seems that academics’ commitment to engage in real-life problems has faded. Chapter 7 argues that academics should be encouraged to not only use their research for academic purposes and scholarly endeavours but also engage in the social and political dimension of their work. It will reignite the debate about scholars as public intellectuals who have a commitment to the people who have helped them generate their research findings. The chapter finally argues that if we want

16  Setting the scene to see real change in migrant workers’ life stories, scholars, news reporters, lawyers, and NGOs need to work together and put pressure on policymakers, recruitment agencies, and the governments of sending countries to push for change in the working conditions of DMWs. The final chapter provides a summary of the main findings of this research, highlights the most important social implications, and discusses what a socially engaged research agenda for and with DMWs might look like. Note 1 ‘Domestic (migrant) worker’ is the preferred term in the research literature. It is argued that the term ‘domestic helper’ has negative connotations because it does not recognise domestic work as ‘work’ (Constable, 2014). However, I also use the term ‘(foreign) domestic helper’ because the women in my data consistently refer to themselves as ‘helpers’ (see further in 5.1).

2 How and why A dash of theory and methodology

This chapter will outline and explain what a narrative is, how the migrant worker returnee narratives used for analysis in this book were collected, and what frameworks have been used to analyse them. I  shall also position my work in relation to a relatively new area of enquiry, migration linguistics, which seeks to combine insights from migration studies and sociolinguistics. 2.1. Narrative: form and function Storytelling serves a variety of social and interactional goals. People tell stories to amuse and entertain, to pass on information, to make accusations or justifications, to complain about others or to boast about accomplishments, and to establish social connection with the audience and (re)align the social order (Goodwin, 1997; Holmes, 2006). In fact, storytelling is so fundamental to human experience that Damasio (1999) has labelled it ‘the beginning of consciousness’ and Bruner (1986) has called it ‘a human universal’ that applies across all social and cultural groups. Storytelling also serves deeper psychological functions: people use stories to make sense of themselves and of past events. Cortazzi (2001) emphasises the close connection between individuals and their stories when he says: “through life stories individuals and groups make sense of themselves, they tell what they are and what they wish to be, and as they tell so they become, they are their stories” (p. 388) (emphasis in original). Because storytellers are in a sense one with their stories, narrative research also becomes a way to study people’s actual lives, their identities, their past experiences, and their hopes and aspirations. McAdams (2008) has proposed this definition of narratives and the essential functions they serve in our lives: the stories we construct to make sense of our lives are fundamentally about our struggles to reconcile who we imagine we were, are, and might be in our heads and bodies with who are were, are, and might be in the social contexts of family, community, the workplace, ethnicity,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005-2

18  How and why religion, gender, social class, and culture writ large. The self comes to terms with society through narrative. (italics in original) (pp. 242–243) Thus, storytelling serves a therapeutic function in that the self comes to terms with their past through narrative, but it is also a means to communicate social aspirations and desires, to align with the surrounding environment, and solicit social support (Ladegaard, 2017c; Oktavianus & Lin, 2023). Sociolinguists have been at the forefront of studying narrative (Thornborrow & Coates, 2005), and most studies refer to Labov (1972) who proposed the following six key components of a narrative: (1) abstract (a brief summary of the story’s main points; will usually occur at the beginning of the story); (2) orientation (key background information like time and place and who is in the story); (3) complicating action (the key events or the point of the story); (4) evaluation (evaluating the key points of the story); (5) resolution (how the complicating action was resolved); and (6) coda (closing or concluding remarks). Not all six components are necessary to form a story, but the complicating action and resolution are essential. In trauma storytelling, however, while the orientation and complicating action are usually present, the resolution is often missing. This is due to the nature of the storyteller’s situation: it is unresolved, which contributes to the trauma, and it is therefore unlikely that there is any resolution or coda in her story. Toolan (2001) makes a distinction between narrative and spontaneous talk and argues that the former should include at least some of the following characteristics: (1) narrative is constructed to some degree and follows a recognisable pattern that is not present in spontaneous discourse; (2) narrative has a trajectory: it is expected to develop and ‘go somewhere’; (3) most narratives have a recognisable beginning, a middle, and an end; (4) narratives have at least one teller and sometimes more; (5) narrative uses displacement: language is used to refer to events that are (far) removed in space and time from the teller and the audience (briefly summarised from Toolan, 2001, pp. 4–6). All of the previous features are present in the returnee narratives that will be analysed in the following chapters, although not necessarily in the same narrative. It should also be noted that I  do not analyse narratives in their entirety in this book. Most of them would simply be too long, and therefore, narrative excerpts are used in order to make a particular point. This means that all of the five components mentioned previously are rarely found in one excerpt. Scholars of narrative have also pointed out that tellability is an important feature (Bruner, 1991; Shuman, 2005). A  story simply needs to be worth telling. Thornborrow and Coates (2005) argue that, at some point in the storytelling, “a story needs to reach a moment where the unexpected and unusual erupts from out of the mundane and predictable” (p. 11). In most of the stories that will be analysed in this book, tellability is not an issue. These stories are neither mundane nor predictable. Trauma narratives are, by their very definition, shocking and unpredictable, and the events they report on

How and why 19 are unacceptable (Shuman, 2005). But even the non-traumatic stories, which were narrated predominantly by the Filipino returnees (see Chapter 5), breach the unmarked script of everyday life and will therefore be deemed tellable. It is, of course, highly culture and context dependent what the marked or unmarked script of everyday life looks like, but even in a Filipino and Indonesian context, many of the stories that will be shared in this book are far from ordinary or mundane. Scholars have identified five key functions of storytelling (Medved  & Brockmeier, 2008). First, narratives are used to create cognitive and communicative coherence. People use stories to make sense of and synthesise personal experiences in the past, which may otherwise appear disconnected, disparate, and random (ibid. p. 61). Second, people use storytelling to distance themselves from past events, especially traumatic events. If a trauma victim can convert what she has experienced into story form, this may help her distance herself from the immediacy of the events (Bruner, 2002, p. 89). Third, narratives serve a communicative function in that they connect the storyteller to her audience so that the storyteller’s universe becomes shared. An obvious benefit of the sharing sessions that were used in this study is that they allow storytellers to bond and share their experiences and thus support each other in the process of telling stories that are difficult to tell (Hung, 2011). Telling their story could therefore be a first step out of the loneliness and isolation that many trauma victims suffer from. Fourth, storytelling serves an evaluative function: during the telling, the storyteller may be able to evaluate what happened to her and this may help her re-evaluate and explore alternative interpretations, as well as the possibility of an alternative course of action. Finally, narratives may serve an explorative function. Medved and Brockmeier (2008) argue that this function is about “probing and extending the horizon of human possibilities” (p. 67). By telling stories, trauma victims may be able to explore how their stories can be re-authored and alternative stories developed (Duvall & Béres, 2007). 2.1.1  Elicitation of narratives

The narratives that appear in this book are elicited narratives. This means the storyteller does not have to negotiate space to tell her story because she is invited to speak by another participant, usually the researcher (Thornborrow & Coates, 2005). As mentioned in Chapter 1, only three broad questions were used to elicit the storytelling, so all the narrators responded to one of these three questions when they told their story: 1) What was it like for you to be a migrant worker? 2) What was it like for you to come home? 3) What are you thinking about the future? In most of the sharing sessions, the returnees spent a considerable amount of time on question 1; some groups never made it to question 2 and 3 because they had so many stories to tell about their migratory journeys. Although the questions were designed to be fairly ‘neutral’ and not specifically elicit negative (or positive) narratives, it is fair to

20  How and why say that especially question 1 elicited predominantly negative stories. This, of course, reflects the actual experiences many of the returnees had had, but since stories of abuse and exploitation were frequently shared in the communities we visited1, we may also assume that there might have been an expectation that negative stories should be prioritised. Or the tellers might think that a negative migratory experience would not fall flat and receive the ‘so what’ response from the audience that any storyteller would do their best to avoid (Bruner, 1991). In the literature on narrative, scholars distinguish between elicited narratives (often with only one active storyteller) and collaborative narratives (often with two or multiple active storytellers) (Thornborrow  & Coates, 2005). However, that distinction is not always clear in the migrant worker returnee narratives in this study. In some sharing sessions, all the narratives were elicited by the researcher; in other sessions, the first couple of narratives may be elicited, but then storytellers would spontaneously jump in and tell their story, perhaps encouraged by a previous story. And while some stories had only one active storyteller, other stories were co-constructed with multiple storytellers who created the storyline together. However, even when a story seemingly had only one storyteller, audience members would still impact the story, implicitly or explicitly. The storyteller would receive support from other group members through minimal response (like ‘mhm’, ‘yeah’, ‘okay’, etc.), or through non-verbal cues like nodding and smiling. Or in the case of trauma storytelling, other women would provide support through touch, like holding the storyteller’s hand during a difficult phase of the storytelling or putting an arm around her shoulder. Ochs and Capps (2001) have proposed a continuum between what they call the default narrative with only one active storyteller at the one end, and a dynamic co-constructed narrative with multiple storytellers at the other. They claim that the default narrative, which has been studied far more than any other type of narrative, is actually quite rare in natural storytelling. This observation is, to some extent, confirmed in the returnee narratives that are analysed in this book. In many of the sharing sessions, stories were co-constructed, and there were no clear boundaries between the end of one story and the beginning of another. This pattern was more evident among the Filipino returnees where one person’s story would often be used as a springboard for another group member to share a similar (or different) story in relation to her migratory experiences. Thus, narratives became co-constructed, and group members helped each other construct their own and each other’s stories. In the Indonesian returnees’ storytelling, on the other hand, the narratives were more likely elicited by the researcher and less likely to be co-constructed. 2.1.2 Language use in the sharing sessions

In the sharing sessions recorded in Indonesia, most of the eliciting was done by an Indonesian female research assistant who was fluent in Bahasa Indonesia,

How and why 21 Javanese, and English. Because many of the women were not fluent in English, and because many of the stories involved painful self-disclosures, it was natural that the research assistant became more active in eliciting the women’s stories, whereas I kept in the background and took extensive notes. This was not an arrangement we had agreed on beforehand, but it became natural during the course of the sharing sessions. From time to time, the research assistant would provide a quick summary in English of what the women had been sharing, but the full picture of the stories only became evident to me when, many months later, I saw the translation of the transcribed recordings. Seeing the transcription sometimes made me realise that there were details in some of the stories I did not understand. Had the story been narrated in English, I may have asked clarifying questions, so it is fair to say that, in the Indonesian context, my role as observer had certain limitations: some aspects of some stories remained unclear to me even after they had been translated. Another issue that was important in the sharing sessions was to interfere as little as possible in the women’s storytelling. Even if a story was narrated in English, it is possible we did not interrupt with clarifying questions in case the story appeared incoherent out of fear that it may adversely impact the storytelling. I have argued elsewhere that trauma narratives sometimes tell themselves, as it were. This is evident in the fact that the storyteller often ignores questions from the audience, which suggests that she is so absorbed in the narrative and the emotional impact it has on her that she is less aware what is going on around her (Ladegaard, 2018b). However, the main reason for conducting the sharing sessions in Bahasa and/or Javanese in the Indonesian context was that the women were encouraged to share in the language they felt most comfortable in, and in East and Central Java, that language was almost always Bahasa (with occasional code-switching to Javanese and English). Prior to each sharing session, the women were told that they could speak in any language they preferred, and overall, I am confident this facilitated the sharing. The same message was given before the sharing sessions in Bohol, but the default language in the Philippines was always English, with occasional codeswitching to Tagalog or Cebuano. This is not surprising given that English is used as the predominant medium of instruction throughout the Philippines, and in Bohol, many people might prefer English or Cebuano to Filipino, which, although referred to as the national language, is based largely on Tagalog, the language spoken in and around the capital city Manila (Kirkpatrick, 2011). Filipino migrant workers are generally very fluent in English, and their superior language competencies are sometimes used by employment agencies as part of their marketability (Lorente, 2018). Because individual storytellers were allowed to pick the language they preferred, and the Indonesian returnees largely picked Bahasa and Javanese, and the Filipino returnees almost exclusively picked English, I ended up playing different roles in the sharing sessions. Although the aim was always to interfere as little as possible in the storytelling, it is fair to say that in the Philippines, I played a more active role and was able to ask more follow-up questions for clarification because the sharing

22  How and why was done in English. In Indonesia, on the other hand, I had to rely more on the local interpreter, and although she was carefully instructed about what she could and could not say (no leading questions, for example), it has to be acknowledged that the use of different languages in the sharing sessions may also have contributed to some of the differences we find across the two research sites. I do not think language choice has significant implications for the content of the narratives, but the fact that the Filipino returnee narratives are generally more interactive is arguably related to my ability to play a more active role in this context. 2.2. Narrative therapy Because of the key role narratives play in people’s social and professional lives, De Fina (2003) argues that the narrative genre makes it “particularly apt to become a locus of expression, construction and enactment of identity” (p.  11). McAdams (2008) argues along the same lines and points to narrative identity, which refers to the storyteller’s “evolving and integrative story of the self” (p. 242), as a key concept in the literature. Bruner (1990) points out that in the 1970s and 1980s, psychologists began to see the self as a storyteller and focus on the construction of narrative identity. Part of this narrative movement was an acknowledgement that the self is not static but socially constructed through storytelling (and other forms of discursive constructions). Narratives have therefore become essential in the interpretation of human experience, not just in psychology but across humanities and social science disciplines, “because experience itself becomes intelligible to humans only when they narrate it” (De Fina, 2003, p. 17). This social constructionist approach, which sees narrative as a situated dynamic discursive construction, argues that when people tell stories about themselves in relation to others, they also present and negotiate their social identities (Burr, 2015). In a social constructionist framework, stories are never given but constructed in context as mutual accomplishments between narrator, interlocutor(s), and audience. Thus, storytelling is constitutive of context, and the storytellers are social actors (Augoustinos et al., 2014). The returnee narratives were collected using the ethnography-ofcommunication approach (Saville-Troike, 2003), which recommends that researchers should carefully study the social context in which data are collected in order to include as much contextual information as possible to aid them in the interpretation of data. Staying with migrant worker families throughout Java was invaluable in terms of understanding their life stories and the circumstances that forced them to migrate. The four years I spent as a volunteer and researcher at the church shelter in Hong Kong also provided important background information that helped me interpret the returnee narratives. The stories were analysed using a narrative therapy approach (White & Epston, 1990) in combination with Toolan’s (2001) (socio)linguistic approach to narrative. Toolan (2001) argues that discourse analysts need to pay equal attention to

How and why 23 narrative structure and function, and by closely analysing the linguistic components of narrative, analysts can get access to important information about the narratives themselves and about the identity of the narrators. Any linguistic form – from lexical choice and phonological and prosodic features to complex grammatical structures and discourse units – can be indexical of the storyteller’s identity (De Fina et al., 2006). This does not mean, however, that everything storytellers say and do should be interpreted as identity construction. We do much more than ‘speak our identities’ (Mishler, 1999) when we tell stories; indexical relationships should therefore not be seen as given but, in accordance with the social constructionist approach, created and negotiated in the narrative context. A key assumption in narrative therapy is that we live storied lives (White & Epston, 1990). Therefore, people are encouraged to tell stories in order to make sense of past experiences, because our stories are believed to constitute us and shape our lives and our relationships (Brown & Augusta-Scott, 2007). Narrative therapy is informed by post-structuralism, social constructionism, and Foucault’s (1980) conceptualisation of power and knowledge. The focus is on identity as socially constructed and negotiated in the discursive context; it argues that all individual narratives are social narratives, which are shaped by contextual norms, cultural conventions, and by dominant ideologies of power. Narrative therapy draws on Foucault to demonstrate how people in positions of power and knowledge construct dominant discourses, which allow them to stay in power, and they achieve this through a language of subordination that constructs expert knowledge, apparent benevolence, and surveillance (Payne, 2006, p. 35). This echoes with the experience of many of the DMW returnees whose narratives are analysed in Chapter  4 and 5. They tell how they were belittled and humiliated by their employers’ demeaning discourses about them, and because they have been subjected to society’s dominant ideologies of power, they see themselves as “not worthy to be respected” (Ladegaard, 2013b, p. 50). Thus, DMWs’ stories and identities are circumscribed by their employers, and therefore, the sharing of narratives of abuse and exploitation becomes a means for the returnees to challenge the dominant discourses they were subjected to while working overseas and co-author more helpful stories (Brown & Augusta-Scott, 2007; Ladegaard, 2017c). One reason for combining narrative therapy with a sociolinguistic approach to narrative (such as Toolan, 2001) is that both approaches emphasise the importance of language. Michael White (1995), who developed narrative therapy with David Epston in the 1970s and 80s, argues: “words are the world” (p. 30), and he therefore recommends that we should pay close attention not only to the words people use in therapy but also how and why they are being used. He cautions that language is fraught with ambiguities and misinterpretations and full of culturally derived meanings that may distort the intended meaning (Payne, 2006). It takes conscious effort to rid oneself of these meanings, and this is where narrative therapy in combination with a sociolinguistic approach to narrative may be helpful in raising awareness in DMWs who have

24  How and why been bullied, exploited, or abused of how they have internalised their employers’ demeaning discourses about them (Simons & Mawn, 2012; Ladegaard, 2013b). An essential presupposition in narrative therapy is a problem-saturated description of past events: the narrator shares her (traumatic) experience and thus externalises the problem through storytelling. The reason for using ‘externalising language’ (Payne, 2006) is for the narrator to separate her identity from the problem she has experienced, and to subsequently reconstruct the trauma as an external event: as a product of circumstances, or caused by other people, as opposed to being attributable to the victim’s personality (ibid.). It is a typical reaction for DMWs who have been abused to turn the problem inwards and blame themselves for what happened to them. Many of the DMWs who had run away from an abusive employer and sought help at the church shelter blamed themselves for the abuse they had been subjected to. They claimed they had been mistreated because they were incompetent, did not speak Cantonese, and did not know anything about Chinese cooking, and therefore they saw themselves as unworthy of their employers’ respect (Ladegaard, 2013b). Many of the migrant worker returnees in East and Central Java told similar stories, and for these women (and men), storytelling may help them take the first step in repairing damaged identities (Nelson, 2001) and propose alternative stories for their future. Trauma destroys the self (Herman, 2015), and migrant workers who have been subjected to abuse and exploitation need to rediscover their own resources and, in the process, also rediscover their potential for recovery and healing (Hung, 2011). Narrative therapy may provide migrant workers with “experiences in which they can give voice to their traumas, evaluate their interpretations, reconsider their identity conclusions, and re-author their lives from victimhood to survival and beyond” (Duval & Béres, 2007, p. 233). We did not see this healing process during our short visits to villages in Java, but we know that many of the traumatised women we talked to sought help from the local NGOs after our departure. Thus, we are hopeful that for some migrant worker returnees, our visit provided a chance for them to tell their story, and this may have initiated a long and probably painful journey towards recovery (Ladegaard, 2020b). 2.3 Migration linguistics A relatively new area of study within the broad interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics – referred to as migration linguistics – has emerged recently. Because it is relevant for the topics that are explored in this monograph, I shall briefly outline its rationale and position my own research vis-à-vis this new field of study. Some of the major publications that paved the way for migration linguistics as an independent area of study (without using the term) include Ingrid Piller’s anthology Language and migration (2016), Suresh Canagarajah’s edited handbook, The Routledge handbook of migration and language

How and why 25 (2017a), and Tony Capstick’s Language and migration (2020). Canagarajah (2017b, p. 2) argues that further exploration of the language/migration nexus has emerged as a natural consequence of the ‘mobility turn’ or ‘mobilities paradigm’ across several social science disciplines (cf. Faist, 2013). People are mobile, but so is language, either accompanied by people or in virtual forms. Thus, “mobility has challenged the static, objective, and bounded ways in which we perceived social and communicative activities” (Canagarajah, 2017b, p. 7), and this calls for new approaches to the study of language and other semiotic resources in mobile contexts, as well as new attempts to theorise language as a mobile resource (Piller, 2016). The term ‘migration linguistics’ was coined by Borlongan (2019), who also provides a synopsis of the discipline (Borlongan, 2023). He defines migration linguistics as “the interdisciplinary and multidimensional study of the various aspects of language within the dynamic process of human mobility. It is a systematic study of migration, focusing on how language effects and likewise is affected by the whole migration process” (Borlongan, 2023, online prepublication). Canagarajah (2017b) also emphasises the interdisciplinary nature of the study of language and migration and highlights the following methodological innovations (pp. 17–18): multisited ethnography: multiple locations are studied to look at the continuities and connections in communicative practices; mobile methods: participants, artefacts and semiotic resources are followed through multiple locations and times; participatory research: participants are treated as co-researchers (as opposed to research subjects) (see also Consoli & Ganassin, 2022b); and mixed methods: multiple quantitative and qualitative methods are used in combination to capture simultaneity. While research in applied linguistics has been informed by theories and methodological frameworks from other humanities and social science disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, geography, and anthropology, other disciplines have not always acknowledged that applied linguistics could also benefit their scholarship (Canagarajah, 2017b). Applied linguistics has often been seen as a service discipline and not valued for its own intellectual contributions (ibid, p.  18). Scholars in migration and language therefore want to encourage a greater degree of sharing and collaboration across disciplines, which they believe will facilitate interdisciplinary synergies. As Canagarajah (2017b, p.  21) argues: “the separation of scholarly fields is itself a result of territorialisation and boundary making designs of modernity, which mobility problematizes.” He therefore advocates ‘border thinking’ (Mignolo, 2000) which “engages the liminal spaces between disciplines and paradigms for knowledge making” (Canagarajah, 2017b, p. 21). Scholars have argued that topics falling within the broad area of sociolinguistics can be considered more or less linguistic and more or less sociological in their focus (Hellinger & Ammon, 1996). Thus, the idea of a continuum is proposed with sociological studies that use language only as an instrument to study society at the one end, and linguistic studies that draw on methods from sociology but focus purely on the study of language at the other. The same

26  How and why idea can arguably be applied to migration linguistics. If we look at the range of topics included in The Routledge handbook of migration and language, for example, some are clearly focused on language, while others are more focused on migration. In terms of positioning the research in this book on this continuum, I see myself as closer to the migration end of the continuum. I acknowledge the importance of language as “the indispensable agent of migration as the whole process could be made (im)possible because language is used to bridge, to connect, and to mediate through all the other determinants and variables involved in the migration process” (Borlongan, 2023; see also Ladegaard, 2020a). However, I see the use of language (discourse) as instrumental more than the object of study. Discourse informs us about DMWs’ lives and experiences, and discourse analysis is therefore an important means to get access to the women’s lived experiences. On the other hand, I  consider the migrant worker narratives the most important contribution this book makes to the literature. Therefore, the linguistic features of the storytelling and what they signify are given (much) more prominence than what is typical in anthropological and sociological studies of migration. Note 1 This was particularly evident in the Bohol communities where stories of abuse and exploitation were shared in and across communities. In each and every community we visited, we heard about these stories which served at least two functions: first, they prepared the women for their migratory journeys and taught them that they should not put up with mistreatment from their employers; and second, they informed the women what they should do if it happened to them.

3 Struggling to reconnect Identity transformations1

Going home is something (domestic) migrant workers have been anticipating for years – some with dread, some with anticipation (Constable, 1999). Unlike professionals, who can choose to settle overseas because their skills are sought after in the global economy, domestic migrant workers cannot get permanent residency and therefore eventually have to go home. In Hong Kong, the court has established that DMWs are not ‘ordinarily resident’ and therefore do not qualify for permanent residency, even if they have worked in the city for the better half of their lives. The term ‘ordinarily resident’ is semantically vague, and neither the government nor the courts have clarified why other non-local residents working as professionals in the city are classified as ‘ordinarily resident’ while DMWs are not. The nature of their contract, which requires them to leave Hong Kong after each two-year contract and go back to their home country before they can renew their visa, has been mentioned as an issue. But since the government has decided that these terms must apply to all DMW contracts irrespective of how long they have worked in the city, it is essentially the government that has determined that DMWs do not qualify for permanent residency. In their analyses of public discourses about DMWs in Hong Kong, Constable (2007) and Ladegaard (2011a) found repeated reference to migrant workers’ occupation of public space in Hong Kong as a cause for concern for local people. The underlying assumption is that DMWs have no right to their own space; they are perpetually alien no matter how long they have lived and worked in the city (see Khan, 2022). A  recent example, which was brought to the media’s attention, illustrates this problem. In a Legislative Council meeting in May 2018, pro-Beijing lawmaker Eunice Yung from the New People’s Party complained that on Sundays, their weekly day off, domestic helpers “sit, eat and sleep on the ground, thus affecting the daily lives of the public, the operation of shops and the environmental hygiene in public places” (Cheung, 2018). She urged the government to address the problem so that domestic workers could “avoid causing a nuisance to others in Hong Kong” (ibid.). Apart from the racist undertones in Yung’s complaint: DMWs are a nuisance adversely affecting hygiene in the areas DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005-3

28  Struggling to reconnect where they congregate on their days off, there are also deeper psychological implications of these statements. When migrant workers are constructed as out of place, or as transgressing place-appropriate conduct, this effectively contributes to their dehumanisation and moral exclusion. As Opotow (1990, p. 1) argues: “Those who are morally excluded are perceived as nonentities, expendable, or undeserving.” Thus, excluding DMWs from the societies in which they live and to whose prosperity they have made significant contributions becomes justifiable. They cannot make any claim to space, private or public, in Hong Kong, and when they go back to their homelands, they are also strangers. As Constable (1999, p. 225) puts is, “when they return to the place where they were born, they will be [. . .] in a different space and therefore remain, in a sense, in exile.” The analyses in this chapter focus on migrant workers’ experiences of coming home. The stories that will be analysed were narrated in response to the general question: What was it like for you to come home? Three recurring themes appeared in many of the coming-home narratives: 1) the concept of ‘home’ and how the returnees felt they no longer belonged in the same way they did before; 2) the concept of ‘family’, emphasising how the dynamics in the family had changed leading the returnees to feel insecure about their own position in the family; and 3) the concept of the changing ‘self’, emphasising the need for the women to reinvent themselves in order to ‘fit in’ and find a place for themselves in this new and unfamiliar place called ‘home’. For all three concepts, coming home involves reconceptualisation and redefining ‘home’, ‘family’, and ‘self’ in ways that align with their migratory experiences (Ladegaard, 2019). 3.1 Redefining ‘home’ In the first example, six DMW returnees from Central Java are discussing what it was like for them to come home. For these women, home is not only where the heart is but, perhaps more importantly, where the husband and the children are, so any disruption of the matrimonial order also disrupts their conceptualisation of what home is. The women have compared their overseas experience to years of fasting, and coming home is like idul fitri, celebrating the end of the Ramadan. This is the background for Dindra’s remark in line 1. (transcription conventions in the Appendix). Example 1 (Central Java) Dinda, 36 years, 2 years in United Arab Emirates, 2 years in Malaysia, 2 years in Kuwait, back since 2007; Wani, 39  years, 2  years in Taiwan, 2  years in Hong Kong, back since 2012; Harum, 38  years, 2  years in Saudi Arabia, 2 years in Taiwan, 3 years in Hong Kong, back since 2007; Mita, 36 years, 9 years in Singapore, 2 years in Hong Kong, back since 2013; Nini, 48 years,

Struggling to reconnect 29 4  years in Singapore, back since 2006. A  female interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in Bahasa, English, and Javanese). 1. Dinda: but there are also many who come back and divorce (Bahasa) 2. [general laughter] 3. Wani: divorce and marry again (Bahasa) 4. Interpret: has anyone experienced it? (Bahasa) 5. Mita: yes [laughs] the first husband [laughs] (Bahasa) 6. Harum: this is her second husband (Bahasa) 7. Mita: now it’s the second husband, when I first left, he was left 8. behind and married again (Bahasa) 9. Nini: left behind, marry again (Bahasa) 10. Interpret: she’s experienced it before (English) [quietly to researcher] 11. Mita: so I have to [laughs] I try to [laughs] (English) 12. Nini: so many cheating husbands (Bahasa) 13. Mita: the first husband already divorced again, has one son (English) 14. FW: was that because you were a migrant worker? (English) 15. Mita: yeah, because I worked there, so my husband cheated, take 16. other women [laughs] take a beautiful girl [laughs] (English) 17. Dinda: also the same with me (Javanese) 18. Wani: Indonesian migrant workers have many problems (1.5) 19. yeah, family problems because the husbands are left behind (Bahasa)

The multi-party discourse in Example 1 follows a number of narratives in which the women have talked about the pains of being overseas: the separation from their families, the loneliness, the anxiety involved in working for an abusive employer, and, the constant fear that their husbands may take another woman while they are away (Ladegaard, 2018a). Although most migrant women try to do long-distance mothering via social media (Waruru, 2022b), it is still a fact that when ‘the light of the home’ (Asis et  al., 2004) disappears, she also gives up controlling the home, and that leaves space for another woman to take her place. This problem was brought up at least once, sometimes repeatedly, in each and every sharing session, and there is no doubt it is a serious problem in migrant families. Nini’s comment in line 9 sounds almost like an adage: “left behind, marry again” suggesting that this phenomenon is an integral part of these women’s experiences. Note how Mita phrases the problem: “because I worked there, so my husband cheated” (line 15), and Wani concludes the discussion by saying “family problems because the husbands are left behind” (line 19). Initially, the women identify themselves as being indirectly responsible for their husbands’ infidelity2. In another sharing session in Central Java, Dita, a 33-year-old returnee who spent six years in the Middle East, puts it like this: “I heard it from other people [that her husband was cheating] but I was patient because I was the one who left him behind, I was patient, just being patient and I chose I would

30  Struggling to reconnect not divorce him” (original in Bahasa). Dita reiterates the need for patience and tolerance and turning a blind eye to her husband’s infidelity because she was the one who left him behind. Providing for the family is presented as women’s responsibility, and when the husband is unfaithful and families fall apart, migrant women also see themselves as being responsible. They have to be patient and live with infidelity because they chose to leave (see Silvey, 2006 for a similar finding). I have discussed the concept of choice in migrant women’s life stories elsewhere (Ladegaard, 2017a), and I  argue that migrant women do not have a real choice, or if they do, it is essentially a ‘choiceless choice’ (cf. Langer, 1980). If staying at home means not being able to provide for the children’s basic needs, migration becomes a necessity, not a choice. As Jovi, a 39-year-old Filipino returnee, put it in a sharing session with four other migrant women in Bohol: “the reason [for going overseas] is financial, because you see the future of your children (1.0) they don’t have a future unless you go, so in a sense yeah (1.0) it’s not a choice” (original in English). While the migrant women take responsibility for leaving their husbands and children, a process that necessitates a redefinition of the concept of ‘home’, they acknowledge the pain that is involved. As I indicated in my field notes, Mita is close to crying when she explains that her husband had other women and eventually married “a beautiful girl” (lines 15–16). The same applies to Mita’s previous statement in line 11: “I have to [laughs] I try to [laughs]”. She does not complete the turn, so we do not know what she intended to say, but possibly that she had to accept her fate, which is a common statement by Indonesian DMWs in the data (see Prusinski, 2016; Chan, 2018). The use of laughter is noticeable, and Mita uses it repeatedly (lines 5, 11, and 16). This is clearly not humorous laughter but, more likely, laughter used to conceal embarrassment, or to mitigate a (self) face-threatening act: admitting to her husband’s infidelity. It may also serve as a coping mechanism; laughter may be deployed as a means to deal with adversity without being destroyed by it (Mindess, 2007). When migrant women are forced to accept their husbands’ infidelity and their families being dissolved, they may use laughter as a means to confront traumatic events or difficult life circumstances without being destroyed by them and thus disarm calamity by laughing at it (Ladegaard, 2013a). The code-switching also deserves a comment. It occurs repeatedly in every sharing session and its multiple functions are discussed elsewhere (Ladegaard, 2018b). The sharing sessions are conducted mostly in Bahasa but with frequent switches to English, either for single statements or for longer excerpts of talk. Mita switches to English in line 11 in a sharing session done predominantly in Bahasa. It is possible the switch is triggered by the interpreter’s comment in line 10, but there might be other reasons since the comment was addressed very quietly to the interviewer. Perhaps speech accommodation

Struggling to reconnect 31 motivates the switch (Gallois & Giles, 2015): Mita wants to be more inclusive and switches to English to include the non-Bahasa speaking fieldworker. It is also possible that narrating emotionally difficult topics in another language allows the teller a greater sense of control over her emotions. Tehrani and Vaughan (2009) suggest that switching to the less emotionally charged L2 may provide emotional distancing, which can be an important means for a distressed person to make sense of her emotions and past experiences. Thus, the use of English may help Mita to present a less emotional account of events (Martinovic & Altarriba, 2013). The next example deals with another common theme in the returnee narratives: an experience of reverse culture shock and alienation from the home community. Example 2 is from the same group of women as in Example 1 (original in Bahasa). Example 2 1. Nini: it [the community] seemed different as well (1.0) in the past it seems 2. like we didn’t talk much but now people in the village talk a lot 3. Mita: yeah 4. Nini: if you wear this they talk about you, if you wear that they talk 5. about you [laughs] 6. Mita: people here are still not wearing trousers but when I got back// 7. Nini: //wearing trousers// [laughs] 8. Mita: //every day I wore// trousers in Hong Kong [laughter] 9. Nini: I wore pants this short [indicates on her legs] 10. Dinda: yeah, and then the neighbours talk about you (1.0) I mostly 11. stayed at home for one month after I came home from 12. overseas (1.0) in the past it was rare for people here to 13. wear trousers [laughs]

This short piece of multi-party discourse follows Dinda’s account of what it was like for her to come back to her family and feel like a stranger: “when I was in my house I was like a stranger, never attached to anything, never being called mama, never, she only called her father.” Dinda’s story is a painful recollection of the alienation she felt when she returned after six years overseas: her daughter did not recognise her, and she felt detached from things she used to treasure. Then the women discuss how they were received in the village, and although the encounter is humorous with frequent outbursts of laughter (lines 5, 7, 8, 13), it is still an account of women who have acquired different cultural norms and therefore no longer feel they ‘fit in’. They indicate that the people in the village have become narrow-minded and prone to gossip (line 2), and no matter how the returnees behave, they feel they are being talked about (lines 4–5). This story operates at two levels. It is a story about culture clash: wearing trousers in a traditional Muslim community where women normally wear

32  Struggling to reconnect

Photo 3.1 After only two weeks of training, this 19-year-old woman was sent to Jordan to work, but she received only half the salary she had been promised.

dresses and hijab. But it is also a story about change of cultural norms as an inevitable consequence of migration and the ostracism and alienation it leads to in the home communities3. The gossip singles the women out; they have become outsiders. It does not matter what they wear, they will still be considered as outsiders (lines 4–5). Thus, they experience what Stack (1996) concludes about African Americans reclaiming the rural South in the USA: “You can go back. But you don’t start from where you left. To fit in, you have to create another place in that place you left behind” (p. 199). The next example also deals with gossip in the village and how the women deal with it. Two returnees from East Java discuss what it was like for them to be deported from Hong Kong because they had overstayed, and come home with a baby and no husband. Example 3 (East Java) Rahti, 24 years old, 2 years in Hong Kong, 3 years in Singapore, back since 2012; Sarah, 25 years old, 5 years in Hong Kong, back since 2012 (original

Struggling to reconnect 33 in English, except lines 5–6). A female interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present. The sharing session was recorded at Rathi’s house. 1. FW: could we talk a little bit about what it was like for you to come home? 2. Rahti: before I was scared because, I’m scared that my neighbours talk, 3. but I’m okay, they don’t talk about me now because here is a new 4. house 5. FW: okay [. . .] 6. Sarah: are you the one who bought this? (Bahasa) 7. Rahti: no (Bahasa) yeah, sharing (English) with my father (Bahasa) 8. I pay this house, uhm: build this house together with my father 9. FW: okay, good [. . .] 10. Rahti: but in his school, they talk about me, ‘how is the father?’, ‘where 11. is the father?’, ‘where does he work?’ (1.0) then I just say ‘his father 12. is working in Hong Kong’ (1.0) ‘is he not coming here?’, I said ‘he 13. may be coming’

As we saw it in the previous example, the returnees are very concerned about their neighbours’ gossip (line 2). As it would be the case in any community where everybody knows everybody, reputation and social standing are of paramount importance in these Javanese villages. If the women break the dominant social conventions, which are often focused on moral behaviour, there will be gossip about them (Chan, 2018). Rahti and Sarah have indeed violated social conventions in that they have returned to Indonesia with a mixed-race child and no husband. This is arguably the ultimate sin in these communities and leads to social exclusion and, in some cases, expulsion from the village (Ladegaard, 2019). Some women that we visited had been relegated to houses outside the village, or distant relatives had taken them in, or they were hidden away from prying eyes at the back of their parents’ house. For these women, the only way to ‘atone’ was to go overseas again to work, and thus provide an income for the family (see Example 5). But Rathi has found another way: she has been able to build a house, and this has stopped the gossip (lines 3–4). The appearance of a new modern house is often seen as evidence of a successful migratory journey (Chan, 2018), and in Rathi’s case, this has eventually silenced the neighbours. Even Sarah appears to be impressed. She code-switches to Bahasa to ask Rathi if she really bought the house (line 6). Sarah’s switch to Bahasa in an English-dominant interview could be motivated by a wish to protect Rathi’s face by asking a potentially face-threatening question in Bahasa, and thus exclude the English-speaking fieldworker. Rathi initially gives a negative reply in Bahasa (line 7); she then changes to an affirmative reply in English (“yeah, sharing”, line 7), and finally switches back to Bahasa to complete the turn. The intrasentential switch to English might be an attempt to make her affirmative

34  Struggling to reconnect answer more subtle; she does not want to be seen as bragging, and the switch to English could be a mitigating device. In line 8, she switches back to English to reaffirm that she really did pay for the house, and in doing so, she is again addressing the English-speaking fieldworker. However, despite the material success of Rathi’s migratory journey, she is still subjected to gossip at her son’s school where people want to know about the father (lines 10–13). Thus, the shame associated with having a child out of wedlock is ever present in these women’s lives no matter how successful their migratory journeys have been, and this has forever changed their concept of ‘home’. Another salient theme in the sharing sessions is how DMW returnees need to redefine their role in the family upon their return to the home country. 3.2 Redefining ‘family’ By far the most common theme in the returnee narratives is the pain experienced by migrant mothers when their children reject them. Excerpt 4 is from another sharing session in Central Java with six returnees. Example 4 (Central Java) Jasmine, 46 years old, 3 years in Saudi Arabia, 3 years in Dubai, back since 2006; Icha, 30  years old, 4  years in Singapore, 2  years in Malaysia, back since 2010. Four more women, a female interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present in this sharing session (original in Bahasa). 1. Jasmine: sometimes the youngest one when I got back did not want to 2. be with me, the youngest one, only with her father like that [. . .] 3. perhaps she’s already in the second grade when I came back, 4. not yet started school when I left 5. Interpret: uh-huh 6. Jasmine: after I got back, for one year when she’s asking for money 7. for school, she’s not asking me but only her father like that 8. Interpret: uh-huh 9. Jasmine: very distant from me like that 10. Icha: //do not want us// 11. Jasmine: //when she cried// she did not want help from me, only from 12. the father (1.0) how does it make you feel as a mother? 13. sometimes I cried, then if, even when she’s eating she 14. refused to be fed by me 15. Interpret: uh-huh 16. Jasmine: sometimes when her father went to the rice field, to the 17. farm like that, she didn’t want to come in, only stand in 18. front of the door like that (1.0) so it was like that, 19. the feeling [cries]

Struggling to reconnect 35 20. Interpret: yes (2.0) how long was it until you could finally, she 21. wanted to be close to you again? 22. Jasmine: until now she seldom asks anything from me like that, 23. it’s always her father like that (1.0) the child is [cries]

Painful stories of children rejecting their mothers when they return abound in the sharing sessions. What is atypical about Jasmine’s story is that the rejection seems to be permanent: eight years after her return, the daughter still turns to her father and ignores her mother (lines 22–23). The feeling of rejection is so deeply ingrained in Jasmine that she cries when she remembers that her daughter did not even want to be in the house when her father was not there (lines 18–19), and when she acknowledges that the rejection is permanent (line 23). Pratt (2012) refers to the long-term separation between migrant mothers/wives and their children/husbands as “the destructiveness of distance” (p. 46), acknowledging that long-term separation often has detrimental consequences for the family, even if the women succeed in sustaining their families financially (Zhao et al., 2018). But if their contract is terminated prematurely, or they work for an abusive employer and therefore have to run away, they usually come home with nothing – also a common scenario among the Indonesian women in this study. Migration has forced migrant families to redefine traditional gender roles. Parreñas (2005) discusses how men’s traditional role as breadwinners and women’s role as ‘the light of the home’, which should radiate the home and hold the family together, have been reshaped by migration. Women’s role as breadwinners might have given them more status in the community and a greater sense of pride in their accomplishments, such as allowing the family to build a new house (cf. Example 3). But the drawback is the separation from their children. Despite some women’s attempts to engage in long-distance mothering via modern communication technology (Waruru, 2022b), their absence from home still causes frustration and misery (Vanore et  al., 2022). Children of migrant mothers often feel abandoned, and they do not understand that when their mothers leave them, they do it to sustain them (Ladegaard, 2018a). Parreñas (2005) found that it was easier for migrant children to accept their mother’s absence from home, and their attempts to engage in long-distance mothering, if they knew that the mothers also suffered from the separation. The shared suffering creates bonding, and their mother’s suffering would signal to the children that they were missed and therefore loved. Asis et al. (2004) argue that migration has forced migrant families to relativise the concept of family. For migrant mothers, this process might entail reprioritising traditional family values so that putting their children through school and college, or lifting the family from poverty, become more important than being physically present in their children’s lives. Relativising is perhaps a more manageable process for adult family members than for children who do not

36  Struggling to reconnect understand the compelling reason for parents to leave home. There is ample evidence to show that migrant mothers suffer emotionally from long-term separation, but they understand why these sacrifices are necessary (Ladegaard, 2018a). Young children, on the other hand, do not understand the need, nor the emotional turmoil created by their mother’s absence, and this may explain why the emotional separation sometimes remains even years after the mother’s return. The negative impact of the mother’s migration may be exacerbated by other vulnerabilities in migrant worker families, such as divorce, poverty, and grandparents’ inability to provide proper care (Zhao et al., 2018). The next example shows a mother’s attempt to redefine ‘family’ after she overstayed and was forced to leave Hong Kong and the Nepalese man she loved and with whom she has two children. The sharing session was recorded in Rika’s home in Central Java. Example 5 (Central Java) Rika, 33 years old, 8 years in Hong Kong, 2 years in Singapore, 2 years in Malaysia, back since 2012. A female interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in English). 1. Rika: there [in Hong Kong] we have a family, they are (1.0) people 2. think we are there playing around, playing with another man 3. but (1.0) for me it’s not like that, we are just (2.0) I’m living 4. with one man with love and we are making a family 5. FW: yeah, yeah 6. Rika: actually we want to do that but in a way my husband is sick, 7. that’s why I cannot live [with him] I chose my children, 8. because I chose a future for them, not, not happiness for us 9. because I feel pain, pain, always painful that I separate from 10. him and then make another life (2.0) go back to Indonesia for 11. (1) my kids to go to school [sobs]

Rika met her Nepalese boyfriend in Hong Kong, and they fell in love; she got pregnant and was subsequently fired from her job. Instead of going back to Indonesia, she decided to overstay, but this also meant staying in Hong Kong illegally, with all the problems this entails. She considers her Nepalese boyfriend her husband (line 6) and what they had together in Hong was ‘a family’ (line 1). In subsequent lines not reported here, she tells us how people in the village talk about her and her mixed-race children: “they call me cheap and ask how I can play [around] with a man, many times they ask me to do something.” But Rika maintains that what they had was a family because it was based on love with one man: note the stress one and love in line 4 indexing the ideal conditions for a family. Upon her return to Indonesia, she finally gives in to pressure from her family to ‘do something’, and she marries an older cousin in order to provide ‘a family’ for her children.

Struggling to reconnect 37 Thus, Rika is forced to redefine the notion of ‘family’ and give in to social pressure and a marriage of convenience. Despite her love and affection, she leaves her Nepalese boyfriend because the children have no legal status in Hong Kong and therefore cannot go to school (line 11). Like many other migrant mothers, Rika brings the ultimate sacrifice – her own happiness – to provide for her children and secure them a better future (lines 8–10). She embodies the ‘choiceless choices’ migrant women are faced with: that their identity positions are fixed and the only viable identity position left for them is that of the sacrificial mother, daughter, and wife (Yeoh & Huang, 2000). Rika’s life story adequately illustrates Constable’s (2014) point that Hong Kong’s migrant worker laws define domestic workers as ‘just workers’, not as women who fall in love and have babies and therefore have a desire to form a family and be with them. Rika’s conflict is unsolvable: she is banned from working in Hong Kong because she overstayed, and in the local community, she is ostracised for bringing home two mixed-race children and no husband. Faced with extreme poverty, she sees no other way than to become a migrant worker again so that at least she can provide financially for her children. She has signed up for a two-year contract in Singapore and will leave her children with her new husband. She engages in what Constable (2014, p. 216) has called “the migratory cycle of atonement”: migrant women who give in to their emotions and form families with men they love eventually have to give up their dream of love and a happy family and, driven away by poverty and prejudice in their home villages, embark on a new journey that forces them to reinvent themselves as sacrificial migrant mothers in the hope that this will allow them to atone for their ‘transgressions’. Another salient theme in the coming-home narratives is how the returnees’ experience of family changes if their migratory journey has been a failure. The anticipation of a happy homecoming has helped them get through their trials and tribulations while working overseas, but many migrant workers are not paid their due wages and come home with nothing. Example 6 is from a sharing session with seven migrant worker returnees. They are discussing what it was like for them to come home. Example 6 (Central Java) Putri, 43 years old, 2 years in Taiwan, back since 2008; Riana, 45 years old, 10 months in Kuwait, back since 2007; Pertiwi, 35 years old, 4.5 years in Singapore, back since 2013; Musa (male), 29 years old, 2 years in Brunei, back since 2005. A female interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in Bahasa, except line 5–6, and ‘the family’ in line 12). 1. Putri: the people back home, they were just happy that we were home again 2. Riana: lucky, lucky to be home again (1.0) still alive, that’s already a

38  Struggling to reconnect 3. blessing 4. Putri: so if we want to file a lawsuit that seems impossible, [it] seldom 5. [happens] because the family are grateful [10 turns left out] 6. FW: can I get back to your family? what was it like to come back to 7. your husband, wife, children? (English) 8. Interpret: so how was it to return to your husband, wife, children? (Bahasa) 9. Putri: happy, happy (1.0) yeah, happy 10. Riana: happy to be together 11. Putri: but it’s like this, ma’am, I came back to Indonesia with nothing, I 12. was happy to be with my husband, yeah of course happy, together 13. with the family (English), the family (Bahasa), yeah, happy (1.0) 14. but then we worked for nothing so it was fruitless, worthless (1.0) 15. so how does it feel? there are two feelings, you want to meet the 16. family and be successful but you go back home to the family 17. without anything, so two feelings there 18. Musa: for me, there are two factors when you go back home, for those who 19. are successful, definitely yes, happy to be with the family and the 20. family will share in your happiness 21. Riana: because you can help the family 22. Musa: can help the family, but like me, my dream was to get money for a 23. business but it turns out to be the opposite (1.0) I was happy to 24. meet the family but deep inside my heart, I was not happy, not 25. happy because I was not a success, ma’am

Two dilemmas which are common in the Indonesian returnee narratives are brought forward in this example: first, the discrepancy between how the returnees and his/her family members feel about the return, and second, that a successful return is contingent upon the migrant worker’s ability to help the family by bringing back financial gains (Chan, 2018). Prior to this except, the returnees have shared their painful migratory experiences: Riana’s agent sent her to Kuwait to work on a tourist visa, and when the police found out, she was imprisoned, stripped naked, and beaten by the prison guards; and Musa was promised a job in a factory, but when he arrived in Brunei, it turned out he had to do farming on a profit-sharing basis. For the entire time he was there, the crop yielded no profit, according to the farmer, so he left after two years of hard labour with debt (line 23). Thus, the migrant workers have been tricked by their agents and/or employers and might, in some cases, have been able to file a lawsuit (line 4). But because the family considers it a blessing that they are back and appear to be alive and well (lines 2–3), the returnees consider it impossible to get justice “because the family are just grateful” (line 5). They feel the family will not recognise their sufferings, and this creates a rupture in the relationship. As Putri says in subsequent lines not reported here: because the family’s attitude “forces them to keep quiet about their sufferings, that’s why we’re talking now when we have a chance.” The second dilemma outlined in Example 6 is the ambiguity experienced by the returnees when their migratory journey was unsuccessful. They are happy

Struggling to reconnect 39 to be reunited with the family (lines 9, 10, 12–13); Putri reiterates the sense of a happy reunion with the family by repeating the word ‘happy’ (line 9), and by mentioning the key word ‘family’ in both English and Bahasa (line 13). As Gumperz (1982) argues, code-switching can be used for reiteration in order to emphasise an important point or a key word. If migrant workers are successful and return with money, they are happy, and the family will share in their happiness (lines 19–20). Helping the family is the key to success (line 21), and this help often takes a very tangible form, as we saw in Example 3. By building a house, or refurbishing their house, migrant workers can demonstrate to the family and the community that they have worked hard and been successful (Chan, 2018). But if they come back with nothing or, even worse, with debt (line 23), the returnees cannot be happy because they feel that, just like their migratory journey has been a failure, they have been a failure (line 25). As Riana testifies later in her story, after her imprisonment in Kuwait, the ultimate humiliation is coming home with nothing. Despite her sacrifices and personal suffering, she comes home with her clothes wrapped in an ugly piece of cloth from prison, not even a suitcase. And when her son asks, “mom, where’s the money”, she says: “I took the money from my pocket, just coins (1.0) this is my money [sobs].” Thus, an unsuccessful migratory journey leads not only to financial devastation in the family, but it creates rupture, disharmony, and distance between family members. The returnees blame themselves for their lack of success, and the inability to bring back money ultimately affects their self-esteem (cf. Musa’s comment: “I was not happy, not happy because I was not a success”, lines 24–25). This means that migration forces migrant women and men not only to redefine familiar concepts like ‘home’ and ‘family’ but also to reinvent themselves because their pre-departure ‘self’ no longer fits into the home context (Zhu Hua, 2017). 3.3 Redefining ‘self ’ The next example is from a pre-departure sharing session in Hong Kong where six Indonesian women, who have been deported for overstaying, talk about going home. The women got pregnant while they worked in Hong Kong and are anxious about returning to their villages with a child and no husband, and there is continuous crying throughout the sharing session. The women have brought their children who are playing in the room while the women tell their stories. A 2-year-old boy is appealing for attention from the fieldworker, which leads to the comment in line 1. Example 7 (Pre-departure, Hong Kong) Sujatmi, 29 years old*), 5 years in Hong Kong; Rathi, 29 years old, 3 years in Hong Kong, 2 years in Singapore, 2 years in Malaysia. Four more Indonesian women, a female interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker (FW) were also in this sharing session (original in English).

40  Struggling to reconnect *) The agent faked her age to get approval for her to go to Hong Kong. Her real age is 24. 1. FW: you’re a beautiful kid, so beautiful, so beautiful oh [laughs] 2. Sujatmi: thank you 3. FW: yeah, he’s lovely, lovely 4. Sujatmi: but this beautiful kid cannot break my parents’ heart, they 5. cannot, they don’t want (1.0) ‘you just, don’t say anything 6. if you don’t come back with your husband (1.0) I’ll hug you 7. if you do but if not, don’t come to my house’ 8. FW: really? 9. Sujatmi: my father, yes 10. FW: what are you going to do then? 11. Sujatmi: I don’t know 12. Rathi: me also, my papa ask me ‘you can go back to Indonesia 13. if you bring your husband (1.0) but if you [do] not bring 14. your husband, don’t come’ xx I don’t know what I do but 15. I just keep quiet and then ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ [. . .] because 16. Muslim people [who are] not married cannot have a baby, 17. very (1.0) a shame, a shame

Sujatmi and Rathi’s stories are typical for the Indonesian women in the data who became pregnant out of wedlock: they are not wanted back home unless they bring a husband. The compliment expressed in line 1 is perhaps an attempt to counter the women’s narratives of shame and disgrace. What

Photo 3.2 Many Indonesian DMWs’ actual age is different from the age in their passport. The agency faked their age in order to meet the minimum age requirement in the receiving country.

Struggling to reconnect 41 preoccupies them more than anything is how they will live with the shame of bringing back a mixed-race child and no husband. Some of the women are banned from their parents’ house (lines 7, 13–14), and when I  visited these women eight months later, I was shocked to see that some of them had been relegated to abandoned houses outside the village, or distant relatives had taken them in. As Rathi testifies, the headline over these women’s lives is shame (line 17), and the only thing they can do is to keep asking for forgiveness (note the repeated use of ‘sorry’ in line 15) and keep quiet when they are being mocked and humiliated. The women who return after years overseas are fundamentally different from the women who left. Many have been humiliated, or their contracts have been terminated, some have been in prison for overstaying, and some were abandoned by the men who made them pregnant. Sujatmi’s Pakistani boyfriend turns out to be married with two children in Pakistan, and Rathi’s African boyfriend married a Chinese woman many years his senior in order to get residency. The women need to reinvent themselves, and the only identity position available to them is that of a shamed woman who needs to find a way to atone for her transgressions. For these returnees, the only way out is the migratory cycle of atonement, which will allow them to make amends by providing a stable income for their family. As Constable (2014, p. 232) argues: With their dreams of a better life, money is the lure that initially draws women into global migration and exposes them to its potentially corrupting or liberating transgressions. It is also the means through which such gendered transgressions can be remedied, forgiven and absolved, or mediated. The next example is from Sinta’s narrative. Unlike many of the Indonesian women in the data, Sinta signed up to become a migrant worker herself because she wanted to get away from her husband who was physically abusing her. When she arrived at the airport, the local agent searched her luggage and took out all the religious symbols she had brought: her mukena (to cover her head during prayer), prayer beads, and the Koran were taken away from her. The message was that she was going to Taiwan, a non-Muslim country, and she was told not to practice her religion. Example 8 (Central Java) Sinta, 38 years old, 4 years in Taiwan, 4 months in Korea, back since 2008. A female interpreter and a male fieldworker were also present. The sharing session was recorded in her home in Central Java (original in Bahasa). 1. Sinta: I went into my room several times to pray (1.0) I prayed 2. without mukena because it had been taken away [. . .] then 3. I got caught, one day the employer called me and I did not 4. answer because I was praying (1.0) then I was reported to 5. the agency ‘Sinta went into her room to pray’, like that, and 6. I said ‘I was only praying’, then I was scolded, ‘I pay you a large

42  Struggling to reconnect 7. salary not to pray but to work’ [. . .] after that I was not allowed 8. to close the door to my room and I was not allowed to go into 9. my room during the day until a CCTV camera was installed 10. so that they could monitor everything I was doing

Domestic migrant workers’ religious faith is often a salient identity position for them (Ladegaard, 2017b). This is what sustains them; it helps them survive their trials and tribulations and overcome their anxiety and homesickness. For some, it adds perspective to their suffering; it comforts them to know God is in charge and will not allow them to be tested beyond their means. Their faith becomes the interpretive framework they apply to their diasporic lives; it provides meaning when there is none, and it gives suffering a purpose: to bring them closer to God. Therefore, depriving Sinta of her religious symbols and preventing her from praying amounts to an attack on her identity. The phrase she uses (“I got caught”, line 3) suggests that she is being framed as a criminal involved in illicit activities. She is forced to reinvent herself as a non-religious person, or she is reduced from a ‘person’ with needs and desires to a ‘worker’ who is in Taiwan for the sole purpose of fulfilling her employer’s needs (cf. “I pay you a large salary not to pray but to work”, lines 6–7). The installation of CCTV cameras to monitor her every move (lines 9–10) is another violation of her rights and a common means for employers to control their domestic workers. Surveillance becomes a way for employers to reduce DMWs to docile bodies (Foucault, 1975) or to household commodities who can be “inspected, bought, traded, owned, generally objectified, and treated as economic investments” (Constable, 2007, p. 51). It deprives them of their humanity, the first step in the destruction of self and the beginning of a trauma narrative that many DMW returnees can tell (Ladegaard, 2015, 2018b). The last example to be analysed in this chapter is from a pre-departure sharing session in Hong Kong (the same context as Example 7) with six Indonesian women who have been deported for overstaying. The women are talking about the double lives they need to live after they have become pregnant out of wedlock and have given birth. Example 9 (Pre-departure, Hong Kong) Utama, 36 years old, 4 years in Hong Kong, 7 years in Singapore; Mawar, 33 years old, 7 years in Hong Kong, 2 years in Singapore; Sujatmi, 29 (24) years old, 5 years in Hong Kong. Three more Indonesian women, a female interpreter, and a male fieldworker (FW) were also in this sharing session (original in English). 1. Utama: before I’m thinking of Hong Kong as home, this is for me, I can go 2. with my boyfriend, I can stay forever with him (1.0) for me it’s good

Struggling to reconnect 43 3. for myself (1.0) but if I cannot this is for me a bad↑ experience, I’ll 4. remember it for [the rest of] my life [laughs] when I go anywhere 5. I have to take care, very careful before I meet anyone, that’s my 6. experience (1.0) I’ll remember all my life [laughs] 7. FW: yeah, yeah, right 8. Utama: I’ll never↑ xxx [crying] if this world could turn, I’ll delete again 9. FW: mhm 10. Utama: I’ll never choose this life 11: Mawar: me too 12. Utama: but what can we do? 13. Sujatmi: the worst thing for me is, even my life here in Hong Kong is under 14. pressure (1.0) because mostly uhm my husband’s family is here, his 15. brother-in-law is here, so you know, I cannot go outside because xxx 16. and his girlfriend, everybody know me and if I bring the baby 17. everybody know that it’s his baby (1.0) so he told me, ‘I take care of 18. you, I give you a house, I give you everything but you must stay at 19. home’ (1.0) after delivery and I go out from Pathfinders’ shelter, at 20. least 6–8 months I cannot go anywhere because I’m scared, when I 21. meet somebody, ‘uh: whose baby is this one?’, I say ‘my boss’ baby’, 22. ‘but why is his face like your boyfriend’s?’ (1.0) one guy said like 23. that, my husband got so angry

These women’s stories adequately reflect the need for some DMWs to reinvent themselves. Utama testifies to her happiness before she got pregnant: Hong Kong felt like home. She was happy with her boyfriend, and her life was good for her (lines 2–3). But her pregnancy changed everything. She does not say who the father of her son is. It could be her boyfriend (line 2), but prior to this excerpt, she tells the group that her male employer used to come into her room when she was asleep to look at her and touch her: “He’ll do anything like this you know xxx he touch my (1.0) you know.” Women who have been sexually assaulted often find it hard to verbalise the experience, and this may explain the linguistic patterns we see in this example, including incomplete utterances (“he’ll touch my (1.0)”) and hesitation markers and fillers (“you know”, “like this”) (see Ladegaard, 2014 for more examples). We do not know if Utama was sexually assaulted, but we know that the pregnancy changes her life forever. She says twice that she will remember it for the rest of her life (lines 4 and 6); she cries and makes a metaphorical statement: “if the world could turn, I’ll delete again” (line 8). It is similar to the idea of turning back the clock: to relive the past and if that were possible, she would delete the pregnancy from her life and never choose the life she currently has (line 10). Thus, Utama’s language signifies the shame associated with out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and the identity transformation this has led to at the intersections of necessity and desire (Baynham, 2017). Sujatmi’s story illustrates the same point. Prior to this excerpt, she tells the group that her Pakistani boyfriend, who she met in Kowloon Park outside

44  Struggling to reconnect the mosque on her days off, is kind to her, and when he asks her to repay his kindness, she does not know what this means, and she does not know that intercourse can lead to pregnancy. When the employer finds out that she is pregnant, her response is: “you’re fucking everywhere, you get pregnant in my↑ house with a dirty Pakistani.” She is fired and is able to survive in Hong Kong only because a migrant worker NGO (PathFinders) takes her in. The relationship with her boyfriend is serious; she refers to him as her ‘husband’ (line 14), signifying that they may have held a private ceremony in the mosque (or elsewhere) where they got ‘married’, but the ceremony has no legal status. Despite the boyfriend’s promises that he will look after her and build a house for her (lines 17–18), she is left alone and forced to live a double life. It turns out that the boyfriend is married and has a family in Pakistan, and because some of his family members are in Hong Kong, Sujatmi has to hide her son inside the shelter, and when she goes out, she must lie about his identity (line 20). Thus, the pregnancy has forced her to reinvent herself; she has to lie about her identity as a mother, and because neither her boyfriend nor her family in Indonesia will support her, she is alone in the process of redefining herself as a single mother, shamed by her actions and fearful that others will discover her double life. 3.4 Concluding remarks Emotions associated with homecomings are often ambivalent and include aspects of both disenchantment and satisfaction (Stefansson, 2004). A mismatch between the imagined and the experienced homecoming is often mentioned in the literature, and it is widely reported that coming home is more difficult and emotionally destabilising than going out. This may also be true for (domestic) migrant workers who have worked for affluent families in developed countries and are going back to rural communities in developing countries with no electricity or running water. As Stefansson (2004, p. 10) argues: it is often when confronted with the homeland, and in particular with the stayee population of this place, that they fully realise such changes and the extent to which they have been influenced by new social norms, urban living, and independence. This experience was expressed in several sharing sessions where the returnees discussed how they find the social norms of the local community restrictive and old-fashioned (Oxfeld & Long, 2004). They do not ‘fit in’ and therefore become the objects of gossip in the village (Chan, 2018) – something that was mentioned repeatedly by the participants in this study. Most return migration research focuses on voluntary re-migration, either by first generation expatriates who were forced away by war or poverty and

Struggling to reconnect 45 choose to go home after the war has ended (Stefansson, 2006), or by secondgeneration immigrants who choose to go to their parents’ homeland to explore concepts of ‘belonging’, ‘place’, and ‘home’ (King & Christou, 2010). Migrant worker returnees go home for a different reason: they have no choice. When they left, they were pushed away from their hometowns by poverty and their desire to give their family a better future. When they return, many do so either because they are forced away by circumstances (like unwanted pregnancy), or because staying in the countries where they have spent a better part of their lives is not an option. Thus, migrant workers’ identity positions are enforced. It would be wrong to argue that they cannot discursively position themselves. Some of them do fight back: they engage in discourses of resistance and openly object to their employers’ attempts to demean them (Ladegaard, 2017a), or they gradually improve their relative position and working conditions through stepwise migration (Paul, 2017). However, overwhelmingly, DMWs are positioned by others. As Lin (2008, p. 1) argues, it is usually the powerful who are entitled to and have both more and the right kinds of capital and resources for constructing for themselves advantageous identities. Although people who find themselves in subordinate positions can attempt to construct positive identities for themselves in their struggles to gain recognition, it is often the dominant regimes of the powerful that dictate the identity game to them on the basis of a rigged and stacked text. The examples in this chapter have demonstrated that migrant workers’ identity game is often dictated by others. These ‘others’ may be a patriarchal community that condones men’s infidelity, labels women as wanita tuna susila (prostitutes) if they fail, and excludes them from the community if they bring back a mixed-race child and no husband. The ‘others’ who dictate the identity game may also be their families for whom they are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice: to leave them in order to sustain them (Ladegaard, 2018a). In their diasporic lives as well as in their return journey, migrant workers demonstrate “a keen awareness of a fractured identity separate from and yet tied to the family back home, and a troubling gap and tension between taking care of the family and caring for oneself ” (Lai, 2011, p.  580). This dilemma comes out even more clearly in the next chapter, which analyses narratives about the traumatising consequences of long-term abuse and exploitation. Notes 1 Some of the examples in this chapter were previously published in Reconceptualising ‘home’, ‘family’ and ‘self’: Identity struggles in domestic migrant worker returnee narratives. Language & Intercultural Communication 19(3) (2019), 289–303.

46  Struggling to reconnect 2 As we shall see in Chapter 6, the women in this sharing session became increasingly bold as the sharing progressed, and ended up criticising their husbands for the widespread infidelity and its ensuing problems in the community. 3 The clash of cultural norms was also brought up in a sharing session with a group of male migrant worker returnees in East Java in 2022. Asked about the negative consequences of migration for the community, the men mentioned – as their first item – that women from the village who went to work in Hong Kong would wear short sleeves and short dresses when they return, and this would have negative impact on moral standards in the community.

4 Haunted by ghosts Remembering trauma1

I put the title of this chapter ‘Haunted by ghosts’ in my field notes as I was listening to the Indonesian returnees’ storytelling in Central Java. It was striking that several of the women were suffering from traumatic experiences, and some groups never made it past the first question: What was it like for you to be a migrant worker? Even years after their return, many of the returnees were still visibly and audibly affected by traumatic experiences they had when they worked overseas, and had not been able to put the experience behind them. This chapter is dedicated to these women. I hope the analyses of their stories will help us understand them better and perhaps bring us one step closer to explaining the inexplicable question that many witnesses to human-inflicted trauma storytelling ask themselves: Why did they put up with it? And why did they stay with an abusive employer? Before we turn to the analysis of examples, we shall briefly look at trauma storytelling as a genre. 4.1 Trauma storytelling No matter what content, form, and circumstances are involved, trauma narratives are always difficult to tell because, as Shuman (2005) argues, “The tellability of [these] trauma narratives is compromised by the unacceptability of the events. These are stories about things that shouldn’t happen rather than about things that didn’t happen” (pp. 19–20). Trauma storytelling is unsettling per se: it is unsettling for the storyteller who must relive traumatic experiences and the emotional impact it had on her, but also for the listener who needs to make sense of stories that may seem incoherent and even contradictory (Harter et al., 2005). Hydén and Brockmeier (2008, p. 10) propose the term ‘broken narrative’ to explain trauma storytelling, which they define as “an open and fluid concept, emphasizing problematic, precarious, and damaged narratives told by people who in one way or another have trouble telling their story.” Another way to conceptualise trauma narratives as ‘broken’ is that they often have voids in the narrative flow (Brockmeier, 2008). The problem for trauma storytellers is that everyday language cannot adequately convey the experience, and this creates a gap between the experience on the one hand, and the language available to account for it on the other. This means, as Langer (1980) argues in his DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005-4

48  Haunted by ghosts discussion of life in the Holocaust death camps, that when we interpret trauma narratives, “we must bring to every ‘reading’ of the [Holocaust] experience a wary consciousness of the way in which ‘free words’ and their associations may distort the facts or alter them into more manageable events” (p. 224). Most existing research on trauma narratives has been done by health professionals, who usually pay little or no attention to language. These studies typically use interviews or written accounts of trauma, and the focus is usually on post-traumatic stress disorder and other health-related problems (see O’Kerney & Perrott, 2006 for a review). In a discourse analytic study of trauma narratives, the emphasis must be on language and what it signifies vis-à-vis the teller’s experience (Galasinski & Ziolkowska, 2013). In previous research drawing on more than 300 narratives recorded at a Hong Kong church shelter for DMWs, many of whom had been abused, I have argued that trauma narrative should be conceptualised in terms how the experience affects the teller, rather than considering the seriousness of the offence as a criterion (Ladegaard, 2015). I argue that the women’s linguistic and emotional response to their experiences should determine whether and to what extent the narrative should be defined as traumatic. However, this criterion is not unproblematic because, as Trinch (2013) argues, a story may not contain any visible or audible signs of trauma (such as crying, wobbly voice, and incoherent storytelling), but the experience may still have been traumatic for the teller. In her analysis of rape narratives, Trinch (2013) emphasises that counsellors and analysts may focus so much on “women’s pain, suffering, and victimization at the expense of understanding rape when it is reported in the absence of any perceived psychological damage” (p.  289) (emphasis added). This is an important point which future research on trauma narratives should take into account2. Based on an in-depth analysis of 41 DMW trauma narratives, I have suggested that the four criteria later might be used as an initial indicator of trauma in storytelling. However, this should not exclude other narratives that do not show (all of) these characteristics (Ladegaard, 2015, pp. 194–195): 1) There is continuous crying throughout the telling of a narrative, or repeatedly during the storytelling. 2) The trauma leads to some form of existential crisis. The narrators question the meaning of life, their faith in God, or even their very existence. Suicide is sometimes brought up as the only way out. 3) Traumatic experiences are narrated repeatedly. The narrator returns to her traumatic experiences at least twice during the course of the telling, which suggests that it is experienced as an emotionally unfinished event which requires repeated attention. 4) The overriding emotion in trauma storytelling is fear. The women testify repeatedly that they were always afraid while working for an abusive employer. There are similarities between the characteristics mentioned previously and the features noted by Foa et al. (1995, p. 682) in their research on rape victims

Haunted by ghosts 49 receiving therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They argue that repetitions, desperate thoughts, disorganised thoughts, unfinished thoughts, and negative feelings are typical features of trauma storytelling. We should also add, as already mentioned, that trauma narratives are characterised by voids in the narrative flow (Brockmeier, 2008): disfluencies, pauses, and hesitations as well as incoherence, or even contradictions, in the storyline (Ladegaard, 2017a). Harter et al. (2005) use the term ‘chaos story’, which they define as “an incoherent pastiche of observations and characters that is often uncomfortable to witness” (p. 18). Health professionals tend to use physiological and psychological symptoms as an indicator that a patient is traumatised, and they have mentioned that trauma victims often suffer from PTSD including insomnia, anxiety, and intractable depression (Herman, 1998), and/or depressionrelated symptoms like traumatic grief, extreme sadness, suicidality, weight loss, and fatigue (Briere et  al., 2015). As the subsequent analyses demonstrate, some of these characteristics are also present in the narratives that will be analysed in this chapter, but because the research reported here makes a contribution to the language of trauma storytelling, the focus will be on the linguistic, paralinguistic, and structural characteristics of the narrative rather than on the women’s physiological symptoms. 4.2 Fear and trauma Rika is a 33-year-old domestic helper from Central Java who had worked 12 years in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore (see Example 5). I met Rika through PathFinders, who gave her temporary accommodation and medical aid after she had become pregnant and lost her job. Rika’s story is typical of the Indonesian first-timers in the data set: she worked 14 hours every day, she did not get enough food, and her salary was only 70% of the minimum wage, but she was too scared to complain because she desperately needed the job. After working in Hong Kong for four years, she met her Nepalese boyfriend, and when she became pregnant, she lost her job but stayed illegally in the city in order to be close to her boyfriend. After another child and serious problems with the boyfriend, she turned herself in to the authorities and was deported. When I met her in Indonesia, she had given in to pressure from her family and married a cousin to avoid the shame of being a single mother. Prior to Example 10, Rika has told us that she overstayed in Hong Kong, and she knew this meant she was liable to go to prison. Example 10 (Central Java) Rika, 33 years old, 8 years in Hong Kong, 2 years in Malaysia, and 2 years in Singapore, back since 2013. A female interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in English). 1. FW: so you overstayed in Hong Kong? you didn’t have a regular 2. employer?

50  Haunted by ghosts 3. Rika: I feel so scared, so scared, so scared that (2.0) also the life of their 4. father is (2.0) very difficult and also xx thinking of the children (4.0) 5. and I want to go back but also so scared because when I go, maybe 6. they’ll catch me with the kids, if (1.0) if I go to er: prison that’s my 7. (1.0) my (3.0) I cannot think how (1.0) how to separate from the kids if 8. (1.0) if I go to prison, then when my children go, they say, some 9. people said they cannot bring the kids they will separate us, then I feel 10. like, so scared [10 turns left out] 11. FW: you said you left your husband? 12. Rika: yeah, when the (1.0) when the first time is (1.0) I don’t (1.0) I’m (1.0) 13. I’m so scared when I leave him, then when he needs something then 14. we’re not with that (1.0) I’m so scared because later he tried suicide 15. and yeah I’m so scared about that and then (2.0) I have something like 16. trauma and I, you know I feel like so stressed 17. FW: yes 18. Rika: when I separate from him, my pain is all coming, before I (1.0) I put 19. all inside my heart (1.0) my (1.0) heart that xx and many people give 20. me support there, they said ‘you must be strong for your kids’ [sobs] 21. because I (1.0) I’m so (2.0) and so xx when he need (1.0) that one the, 22. I cannot, also he don’t have money to buy and then what he feel like 23. (2.0) and then I also feel (1.0) feel, what, pain, I also feel pain, he’s 24. also [in] pain [sobs] 25. FW: yeah 26. Rika: then I’m thinking I go back to Indonesia xx for my kids, for their 27. future [sobs]

There is no doubt that Rika is a woman in great distress. She left the man she loved in Hong Kong because she could no longer deal with his drug abuse and because she was terrified of being caught by the police and imprisoned for overstaying (lines 5–6). She has heard that if she is imprisoned, she will be separated from her children, and that is her ultimate fear (lines 9–10). Note that she talks about her fear repeatedly throughout the example. The compound ‘so scared’ is used eight times in this part of her narrative (lines 3, 5, 10, 13, 14, and 15), and in line 3, she uses it three times for emphasis. Her emotional distress is further emphasised by repeatedly referring to the pain she feels (lines 18, 23, and 24), and she also says that she is traumatised (line 16). Repeated crying also provides evidence of her emotional distress (lines 20, 24, and 27). Labott (2001) argues that crying in psychotherapy can be conceptualised as “a language through which individuals communicate their suffering and also as a curative process” (p. 219). She analysed the functions of crying in authentic psychotherapy sessions and concluded that crying occurred when the patient had a great deal of unexpressed or unfinished emotion from earlier traumas in her life, a great deal of stress and upset in her current life, when she accessed earlier painful memories in her storytelling, and when she felt safe in the situation (p. 222). All of these conditions apply to Rika’s story: the repeated references to the fear she experienced when living illegally in Hong Kong imply

Haunted by ghosts 51 unfinished emotions; the stress in her current situation is evident in earlier parts of her story (not cited here) where she talks about being ostracised from the local community, her shame of being a single mother, and her constant financial worries; and repeated crying suggests that she is accessing painful memories, but also that she feels safe in the context in which she tells her story. Another feature of Rika’s storytelling, which indicates that she is traumatised, is that her story is broken and has voids in the narrative flow (Brockmeier, 2008). There are several pauses, some of them lengthy (e.g., lines 3, 4, 7, 12, 15, 19, 21, and 23), and incomplete utterances: “that’s my (1.0) my (3.0) I  cannot think how” (lines 6–7), and “I’m so (2.0) and so when he need (1.0) that one the, I cannot” (lines 21–22). Having lived 12 years in English-speaking cities, Rika is fluent in English, so the disfluency in this example is not a proficiency issue but more likely because her emotional distress prevents her from telling a coherent story. It is important to add that while incomplete utterances and (lengthy) pauses are also common in ‘normal’ conversation and ‘natural’ storytelling, their cognitive and emotional manifestations are different in trauma narratives (Ladegaard, 2015). The key issue is the mismatch between the personal experience of traumatic events and the language available to account for it. In his analysis of narratives by 9/11 survivors, Brockmeier (2008, p.  21) argues that the more ‘ordinary’ and familiar the language of trauma narratives is, “the more it loses the horror of what it attempts to capture.” Thus, trauma storytelling appears incoherent, and sometimes inconsistent, not so much because the teller is uncertain about which words to use but because a vocabulary that accurately captures the experience and the emotional impact it had on the teller is missing (Ladegaard, 2015). The next example is an excerpt from Netra’s story. She was forced into an arranged marriage when she was 18 years old but left shortly after the wedding to work in Singapore and later in Hong Kong. She got pregnant by another man while working in Hong Kong and lost her job, but she decided to remain in the city illegally, partly to be close to her Filipino boyfriend and partly to avoid the shame she knew she would face if she returned to Indonesia. Example 11 (East Java) Netra, 31 years old, 10 years in Hong Kong, 2 years in Singapore, back since 2013. A female interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original mostly in English). 1. Netra: so now I cannot go out, [I’m] just only staying at home, just take 2. care of my baby (1.0) if I want to go out of course I’m not happy, 3. not you know // uhm, maybe // it’s not only him [the baby] maybe 4. I have // maybe I want // you know talk talk talk like that 5. FW: is that people here in the community talking? what are they

52  Haunted by ghosts 6. talking about you think? 7. Netra: it’s really really hard uhm: ‘you are // you // you still have a 8. husband in Indonesia but why do you // you have a baby with 9. another man’, like that (1.0) ‘you are a married woman but why 10. do you do like this? it’s very bad’ (1.0) I just keep quiet, just stay 11. at home, if I need something I just ask my father or my sister to 12. to buy for me (2.0) so I don’t go out for seven months [. . .] 13. FW: so what was it like for you to come back? 14. Netra: my husband here [does] not accept him, and he’s right↑ then uhm: 15. I want to leave my baby in Hong Kong but if // because PathFinders 16. say it’s really the family here [who] can support him, and I cannot 17. see him anymore so that’s why I bring my baby to Indonesia 18. because I’m so worried and so scared that I cannot see my baby 19. anymore [. . .] I’m so messed up, I don’t know what I can do

Netra’s entire story is essentially a story of failure, shame, and fear, and there is evidence in the storytelling that she is traumatised: it is incoherent with repeated self-interruptions and false beginnings (lines 3, 4, 7, and 8), suggesting a teller who is struggling to make sense of what happened to her (Brockmeier, 2008). When she got pregnant in Hong Kong, she decided to stay because her Filipino boyfriend promised that he would look after her and the baby. However, like Rika in Example 10, she lives in constant fear that she will be arrested for overstaying, so she eventually turns herself in to the authorities. She is sentenced to 11 months in prison for overstaying and is subsequently deported from Hong Kong. And to make things worse, while she is in prison, her boyfriend asks her, “Why is my baby so white?”, so he does a paternity test, and it turns out he is not the father. Although they remain friends, he breaks off the relationship and stops supporting her financially, and this means Netra’s only means of survival is to go back to Indonesia. She knows she will come back as a shamed woman, but she is unprepared for the complete ostracism that awaits her. Her husband and his family, who live in the village, have disowned her, and her parents hide her away at the back of their house, away from the neighbours’ prying eyes. She knows there is gossip about her (line 4), she knows “it’s very bad” (line 10), and she is marred by shame and guilt about what she has done. She thinks her husband is right about not accepting her son (line 14), and in the face of the accusations against her, she keeps quiet and isolates herself from the community (line 10–12). In subsequent lines not reported here, she tells us that her son cannot play outside the house because the other children have been told they can throw stones at him. She is also afraid what her husband might do to the child, so to keep him safe and avoid humiliating gossip, she cuts herself and her son off from the community. Netra knows that she has “messed up”, and she does not know how to move forward with her life (line 19). Chan (2018, p. 88) argues that “shame, or the threat of shame, strongly shapes the motility and mobility of villagers

Haunted by ghosts 53

Photo 4.1 Migration has led to a reversal of gender roles in many Indonesian families: women go overseas and become breadwinners, and men become stay-athome dads.

[in Java]; it conditions their decisions to stay, migrate, or return.” Rika (Example 10) and Netra are both shamed women. They are ostracised, metaphorically and literally, from their communities, and when asked what they think about their future, they both say that they have no choice but to go overseas again. This is seen as a way not only to make money for the family but also to make amends and atone for their transgressions. Chan (2018) claims that the honour or shame that befalls upon a family is closely associated with female family members’ reputation and moral behaviour. Thus, disgraced women feel compelled to leave the community in order to salvage their own and their family’s honour. Interestingly, as Chan (2018) also points out, notions of honour and shame in these Javanese sending communities are gendered. While men’s infidelity is excused because their wives left them to work overseas (see Example 1, Chapter  3), women’s sexual transgressions will lead to stigmatisation and dishonour for not only the women but also their families (Bennett, 2005). Thus, men’s sexuality is recognised as “intrinsic to a sense of masculinity” (Chan, 2018, p. 102), but women who transgress moral boundaries and have

54  Haunted by ghosts extramarital sex are labelled as immoral others and ostracised from the community (see also Example 14). Another prominent theme in the trauma narratives is the sense of betrayal that comes from false accusations. 4.3 False accusations and trauma The next example is from a sharing session with six DMW returnees in Central Java. One year after her return, Harum is still struggling with the aftermath of working for an abusive employer. The interpreter has just asked if anybody would share their story about being a migrant worker, and line 1 is the beginning of Harum’s story. Example 12 (Central Java) Harum, 44 years old, 6 years in Taiwan, 2 years in Malaysia, and 2 years in Singapore, back since 2013. Five other returnees, a female interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present. Original in English and Bahasa. 1. Harum: I often feel sad when sharing my story, when I’m remembering 2. this (1.0) imagine it was heavy rain and I was kicked out from the 3. house (Bahasa) 4. Interpret: okay so she // (English) 5. Harum:      // there was no evidence that I steal [sobs] (Bahasa) 6. Interpret: no evidence (Bahasa) 7. Harum: have no evidence, until the police (1.0) examined me twice and 8. the one who was in the house, in the house, also examined me, but 9. I knew that was only her reason to kick me out (2.0) did not find 10. any evidence (Bahasa) 11. [12 turns left out, during which the interpreter asks for clarification] 12. Interpret: did you get your compensation? (Bahasa) 13. Harum: yes (B) but only, did not get one month’s salary and ticket (English) 14. FW: very common story unfortunately, yeah, sorry to hear that, yeah 15. (English) 16. Harum: that’s mhm: I’m working to take care of the baby, cleaning the house 17. is (1.0) must be very very clean (English) 18. FW: mhm 19. Harum: eh: twelve o’clock midnight, still washing cars in the car park (1.0) I’m 20. sleeping sometimes one o’clock two o’clock and I wake up five thirty (English) 21. FW: mhm 22. Harum: and then [they do] not give me enough food like that, so I’m always 23. hungry there [sobs] (English)

Before Harum shared her story, Mawar told us that her Hong Kong employer accused her of stealing a necklace and reported her to the police. A male police officer searched through all her belongings and then took her to

Haunted by ghosts 55 the bathroom and ordered her to strip naked. If an employer can prove that the domestic helper has stolen from the family, she can terminate the contract without paying the compulsory compensation (one month’s salary and airfare back to the home country). As evidenced in several of the stories recorded at the church shelter, this is common practice in Hong Kong in case the employer wants to terminate the contract prematurely (Ladegaard, 2017a). Part of the sadness and frustration Harum experiences as she remembers what happened to her is being falsely accused of committing a crime she did not commit. She cries as she remembers how she was body searched by a male police officer (line 7) and eventually kicked out of the house during a rainstorm (lines 2–3). Harum then shares with the group what it was like for her to work for an abusive employer for almost a year. She cleaned every room in the big house several times every day (lines 16–17), and she had to look after a baby while doing her other duties (line 16). At midnight she was sent to the car park to wash the cars (line 19), but she still had to be ready for work next morning at six am (line 20). Harum also shares with the group that she was worn out from hard labour and from working extremely long hours while suffering from constant hunger (lines 22–23). Hunger is a dreadful, all-encompassing experience, which, as many DMWs at the church shelter testified, consumes their thoughts day and night (Ladegaard, 2017a), but it is equally traumatising that domestic helpers are being denied basic human needs like food, rest, and sleep and thus positioned by their employers as less than human (Tileaga, 2005). They are perceived as expendable household commodities: they are treated like workers, not people with legitimate rights to eat, rest, and relax, and the consequence is a gradual reduction of self. As Brison (1999) argues: “victims of human-inflicted trauma are reduced to mere objects by their tormenters” – a process which she refers to as “the undoing of the self by trauma” (p.  41). Trauma victims suffer from low self-esteem; they are physically weakened by lack of food, rest, and sleep, and mentally weakened by lack of recognition, respect, and fellowship with other human beings (Nisrane et al., 2019). The use of code-switching in this example also deserves a comment. Bahasa was the dominant language in most of the sharing sessions in Java, including the present one, but Harum switches to English in line 13. It might be caused by the reference to ‘one month’s salary/notice and return ticket’, which is almost part of migrant workers’ register, and therefore it might be convenient to borrow these lexical items from English. Communication accommodation (Gallois & Giles, 2015) may also be a motivating factor. Research has shown that speakers accommodate to their interlocutors’ (perceived) linguistic and communicative behaviour, and it is possible that, although responding to a question in Bahasa, Harum is implicitly addressing the English-speaking fieldworker in order to appeal for his sympathy (Ladegaard, 2018b). The next example is from Sari’s narrative. She worked four years in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Like Harum in Excerpt 2, she worked extremely long hours on little food and was eventually accused of stealing a necklace

56  Haunted by ghosts from her employer. She was subsequently arrested by the police, put in jail, and deported from the country with a criminal record. Example 13 (East Java) Sari, 34 years old, 4 years in UAE, back since 2012; Utama, 32 years old, 6  years in Saudi Arabia, back since 2010. Three other returnees, a female interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in Bahasa and English). 1. Sari: when I go back [from hospital] they say there’s a necklace missing, 2. they say I took it but I never took it (Bahasa) 3. Utama: what was taken? 4. Sari: I continued to stay there to prove that I didn’t take it [sobs] then 5. later on I heard a story while she was talking to her relative, she said 6. that the necklace was missing before I came (Bahasa) 7. Interpret: mhm 8. Sari: then I said [to the employer] ‘the necklace was missing when I came 9. back from hospital but actually before I came here, before I worked 10. here, it was already missing, perhaps you used the money for your 11. mother’s surgery’ I said (1.0) I was there trying to be loyal and patient, 12. to prove that I’m innocent [sobs] but thank God there were 13. consequences, there was punishment from God [sobs] (Bahasa) 14. [15 short turns left out during which the interpreter asks clarifying 15. questions] 16. FW: has anybody helped you talk about this after you came back? (English) 17. Interpret: okay when // (Bahasa) 18. Sari:     // yes [sobs] I’ve talked but I also sometimes have difficulties 19. expressing [myself], difficult like that (Bahasa) 20. Interpret: okay, it’s not easy for her to share her story, she’s tried but it’s 21. kind of not easy [quietly to FW] (English) 22. Sari: the trauma is so deep [sobs] (English) 23. FW: yeah, how many years now? (English) 24. Sari: three years (English) 25. FW: three years ago, okay (1.0) yeah okay, how do you feel now? (English) 26. Sari: I think everything is the same, what, what I feel is, until now is 27. the same [sobs] (English) 28. FW: just take your time right (6.0) (English)

Sari is probably the most visibly distraught of all the migrant worker returnees in the dataset. She cried continuously while telling her story, which lasted approximately 15 minutes. Even three years after her return to Indonesia, nothing has improved, and she is still struggling with the aftermath of trauma (line 22 and 26). Sari has to stay with her employer’s mother while she undergoes surgery in hospital. She looks after her for ten days, feeds her, and sleeps on the

Haunted by ghosts 57 floor next to her bed, but when she returns from the hospital, she is accused of stealing an expensive necklace (lines 1–2). The female employer came up with a story and got another domestic helper in the household to support her, and together they framed Sari for the theft, even though the employer admitted to a relative that the necklace went missing before Sari joined the household (lines 5–6). It is this profound sense of betrayal and injustice from two women who are supposedly her Muslim sisters that plunges Sari into depression. If we look at the turn-taking sequences in this example, it is noticeable that Sari ignores a question from Utama (line 3) and interrupts a comment from the interpreter (line 17). This is not because she is impolite but more likely because she is so focused on her storytelling that she forgets the people around her (Ladegaard, 2017a). The problem is her emotional turmoil, which is also evident in the lines immediately following Example 13: “it’s always like this when I raise it [the trauma], also I cannot, I cannot, right? (1.0) the pain is the same, I go home I’m sick (2.0) I cannot xx [sobs]”. This is another example of a broken narrative with voids in the narrative flow (Brockmeier, 2008), or, as Frank (2013) argues with reference to the chaos story narrated by ‘the wounded storyteller’: “If chaos stories are told on the edges of a wound, they are also told on the edges of speech. Ultimately, chaos is told in the silences that speech cannot penetrate or illuminate” (p. 101). The first part of Sari’s narrative is in Bahasa, but in line 22, she switches to English. Speech accommodation might play a role, as we saw it in Example 12. The fieldworker has just asked a question in English (line 16), and the interpreter has translated into English (lines 20–21), but it is also possible that the emotional impact of the storytelling is an issue. Tehrani and Vaughan (2009) argue that switching to a less emotionally charged language, usually a second (L2) or foreign language, might lessen the emotional impact involved in narrating trauma. The authors provide evidence that using an L2 brings about some degree of psychological detachment so that the storyteller can talk about traumatic events without being overwhelmed by grief. However, Sari’s emotional response (sobbing) in lines 18, 22, and 27 suggests that the switch to English did not lessen the emotional impact. But Sari’s narrative, as well as several other examples in the data, suggest that code-switching and emotional expression are aligned. When Sari and the other women retell particularly difficult and emotionally charged experiences, they often switch from Bahasa to English, but we do not know whether this is an attempt to create emotional detachment or an attempt to increase the quality of the emotional content of the experience by narrating it in the language in which it happened (Tehrani  & Vaughan, 2009; Ladegaard, 2018b). What is particularly distressing about Sari’s story is that even three years after her return to Indonesia, she is still visibly distraught and unable to put her traumatic experiences behind her. The trauma is ‘so deep’ (line 22), and nothing has changed in her emotional state since she came back (line 26). Sari has been troubled since her return,

58  Haunted by ghosts and she is in need of therapy and perhaps medication, but these services are not readily available in rural Java (Ladegaard, 2020b). 4.4 Sexual assault and trauma One shocking discovery while collecting stories in Java was how many of the women had been, or might have been, sexually assaulted. The first example is provided by Sinta, who was first mentioned in Example 8 (Chapter 3). She was raped by a senior-year student when she was 17 years old, and because her parents found out about it, and “in the village it was kind of like a great dishonour for women who are no longer virgins”, the parents agreed that they should get married. It is hard to imagine what a young woman who is forced to marry her tormentor must have felt, and as it happens, the abuse continues after they are married. She is beaten and raped repeatedly, but “even though I was beaten, I remained silent until eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and asked for permission to go away.” Although the husband has moved to Jakarta by then, and Sinta hears from a neighbour that he is living with another woman, she still has to ask his permission to work overseas. She signs up to become a domestic helper, initially in Korea and subsequently in Taiwan, and since her husband has now divorced her, she is free to go. Sadly, she is not treated well by her Taiwanese employer who takes her passport, forces her to work up to 16 hours a day, forbids her to pray, installs CCTV cameras in all the rooms, and follows her around the house when she works and repeatedly criticises her work. Example 14 (Central Java) Sinta, 38 years old, 4 months in Korea, 4 years in Taiwan, back since 2008. A female Indonesian interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker were also present (original in Bahasa). 1. Sinta: one day when I was frying pork, the youngest son, he stuttered 2. when he talked, he came and he wanted to get a drink (1.0) then 3. he put his arm on my back, I was surprised so I looked up ‘oh 4. it’s you’, and then I laughed, and the female employer saw it 5. and she reported me to the agency (1.0) ‘I don’t want Sinta to 6. work here, Sinta and my son are not equals’, so the agent came, 7. ‘hey Sinta, if you want to be a prostitute, you shouldn’t work here, 8. you can find another job if you want to be a prostitute, you 9. are a bitch’ 10. Interpret: was it a local agent? 11. Sinta: it was an Indonesian agent, his name was Mr Lin from [city], he 12. worked with all the Indonesian workers because they needed a 13. translator 14. [25 turns left out during which Sinta explains that the agent promises 15. to find her another employer and takes her to the agency in his car]

Haunted by ghosts 59 16. Sinta: I was sitting in the back, and on the way he stopped the car and asked 17. me to sit in the front, he said ‘Sinta, the agency is haunted, you should 18. sleep in a hotel and I’ll accompany you’ (1.0) then he asked, ‘do you 19. have a husband? your breasts are big, do you want to or not?’ oh my 20. God, I did not respond, then the car stopped, and I was forced, I was 21. touched, I was slapped on the cheeks, he pulled my hair, and he ripped 22. my clothes off [sobs] I was not raped there, but he was very violent 23. [sobs]

At the time of this interview, Sinta and her second husband are co-chairs of a local migrant worker NGO. They play a prominent role in informing migrant workers about their rights and preparing them to fight for themselves when they go overseas. Sinta says that her own naivety when she went overseas, and her gruelling experiences in Taiwan, have prepared her for this role. Because of the rape and abuse she was subjected to in her marriage, she is already a shamed woman who has learned that silence is the only coping strategy for a woman in her predicament. She says repeatedly during her one-hour long narrative that when confronted with new injustices and humiliations, “I just keep silent.” Chan (2018, p. 113) argues that silence can be the only way that migrants and their families can cope with shame, or the threat of shame, and silence can also be a way to allow others to endure shame, rather than being subjected to explicit stigma and gossip. Nothing in Sinta’s story suggests that the son’s touch (line 3) has any sexual connotations. She laughs when she recognises him, and the employer misinterprets this as flirtation, and for the second time in just a week, she calls the agency and accuses Sinta of trying to get into a relationship with her son (line 6). We do not know what the employer told the agent, but when he arrives, Sinta is positioned as a prostitute and a bitch trying to take advantage of her employer’s son (lines 7–9). This echoes with Chan’s (2018, p.  110) conclusion that shame and honour in the sending communities in Java are closely associated with women’s reputation and moral behaviour, not with men’s. Sinta endures the attempted rape by her agent because she has to, but it is evident that the event is still haunting her. Seven years later, she cries as she recounts what he did to her (lines 22–23), and she cries continuously when she remembers how she was beaten by her first husband while she was pregnant, and how scared she was that the child would be harmed. But paradoxically, she uses the agent’s attempted rape against him when he takes her to the airport to send her back to Indonesia, and this is the first sign that Sinta has it in her to fight against her oppressors. First, she pleads with Mr Lin: “I pleaded not to be sent back home, I asked for help, I already have a lot of debt at home because my parents sold land, and I still could not send any money [sobs].” The pleading has no impact on the agent, but as they walk to the check-in counter, she lets out all her pent-up emotions and yells at him: “I do not want to be sent back home. If you send me home, I’ll scream right here and tell the

60  Haunted by ghosts police what you did.” This does the trick, and Mr Lin promises to find her a new employer. Sinta later refers to this incident as her first victory against the people who subjected her to years of exploitation and abuse, and this victory may be one reason she gets in touch with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) when she moves back to Jakarta. In IOM, she meets empowered migrant women who teach her to stand up for her rights. She receives training through IOM, and this is also where she meets her second husband. They share the same passion: to empower migrant workers, and this is what brings them to Central Java where they run a local migrant worker NGO. The women sometimes do not openly admit to being raped or sexually assaulted because of the shame that accompanies (attempted) rape or sexual assault. However, when that happens, there are sometimes indicators in the discourse suggesting that the storyteller was sexually assaulted or raped. The next excerpt provides an example. It is from a pre-departure sharing session with five Indonesian domestic helpers in Hong Kong (Chapter 3, Examples 7 and 9). All the women became pregnant out of wedlock but decided to stay and have their babies in Hong Kong, mainly to avoid the shame involved in bringing home a baby and no husband. However, DMWs who overstay are liable for imprisonment for up to two years and a fine of up to HK$50,000, and they will eventually be deported and prevented from working in Hong Kong, usually for two years. Rathi is telling the group that the baby’s father is an African asylum seeker who left her before the baby was born to marry a Chinese woman in order to get residence status in Hong Kong. Like the parents of the other women in this group, Rathi’s father insists that “until I see the baby’s father, don’t bring him [the baby] to Indonesia”, and this means she has no idea where to go when she is deported. Feelings of shame and guilt are extremely strong in Indonesian sending communities, particularly if these feelings are related to women’s sexual behaviour (Chan, 2018). This leads to a very strong sense of failure, which was present in all the women’s narratives in this sharing session. About five minutes into her story, Rathi tells us that she is traumatised. Example 14 (Pre-departure, Hong Kong) Rathi, 29 years old, 3 years in Hong Kong, 2 years in Singapore, 2 years in Malaysia. Four more Indonesian DMWs, a female Indonesian interpreter, and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original predominantly in English). 1. Rathi: me, traumatised already as domestic helper because uhm (1.0) 2. the first time I’m working in Singapore, I have, my employer is 3. really very bad 4. FW: yeah

Haunted by ghosts 61 5. Rathi: and then after that I worked here [Hong Kong], it’s also very bad 6. FW: uhm 7. Rathi: so I, I’m scared to be a domestic helper 8. FW: okay, yeah 9. Rathi: yeah, in Singapore before my boss want to kill me with a knife 10. FW: oh my goodness 11. Rathi: yeah, and then uhm (2.0) the second one here [Hong Kong] the 12. boss, the (1.0) sir (2.0) and then always, I don’t know, he’s maybe 13. not working, and then like (1.0) stressed 14. FW: uhm 15. Rathi: and then sometimes he ask me more (2.0) something like that, 16. ask me to do this one (1.0) it’s not my job but he ask me to do it 17. FW: okay 18. Rathi: so (1.0) if I work, if I go back to Indonesia and then I want to 19. uhm (1.0) I don’t want to become a domestic helper (1.0) I will 20. find another job but it’s not domestic helper 21. FW: yeah, yeah, right 22. Rathi: because I’m really scared already

Like Rika (Example 10) and Sari (Example 13), Rathi also says she is traumatised (line 1) because she worked for “very bad” employers. Her employer in Singapore threatened to kill her (line 9), and there is reason to believe that she was sexually assaulted by her male employer in Hong Kong. Although she does not say directly that she was raped or assaulted, there are several linguistic and paralinguistic cues suggesting that she was. First, she hesitates, and there are several pauses suggesting she is searching for the right words (lines 11–13, 15–16, and 18–19), she has false beginnings and hedges (lines 11–13), and she mitigates the employer’s behaviour in advance by saying that he was unemployed and stressed (lines 12–13). She continues by saying that he sometimes asked for more (line 15), and she uses a euphemism (“to do this one”, line 16) followed by a mitigating statement: “it’s not my job but he ask me to do it” (line 16), which may serve as an attempt to excuse her role in the assault or mitigate her feeling of guilt. Nobody should have to make excuses for being sexually assaulted, but although the victims are not to blame, they still blame themselves for what happened. As Brison (2002) argues: “it can be less painful to believe that you did something blameworthy than it is to think that you live in a world where you can be attacked at any time, in any place, simply because you are a woman” (p. 13). This is also what transpired through the sharing sessions at the church shelter where some young Indonesian domestic helpers testified that they were sometimes asked to provide sexual services to male family members. Needless to say, the experience is associated with embarrassment, shame, and guilt, and therefore, the women are usually reluctant to talk openly about it (Ladegaard, 2013a). As it happens in Rathi’s story, the ‘confession’ is presented piecemeal and gradually, and sex is rarely mentioned explicitly due to the shame that surrounds the experience. As we saw it in

62  Haunted by ghosts previous cases, Rathi’s overseas work experiences are associated with fear more than anything (lines 7 and 22), an emotion which still has impact on her and has made her vow that she will never be a domestic helper again. The final example is from Riana’s story. She spent ten months in Kuwait, but because of a clerical error made by her Indonesian recruiter, she came to Kuwait on a tourist visa, which does not permit employment. When she finally runs away from her abusive employer, the authorities discover that she has been illegally in the country, and she is arrested.

Example 15 (Central Java) Riana, 45 years old, 10 months in Kuwait, back since 2007. Four female and two male Indonesian migrant workers, a female Indonesian interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker were also present (original in Bahasa, except lines 4–5). 1. Riana: I was not paid for three months, for three months I was not paid, I 2. called the agent, and the agent said ‘yes later I will ask your employer’ 3. [3 turns left out] I was not paid for three months, I was asking for my 4. salary, it was not given (1.0) then my employer said ‘when we are 5. away, there is no need for you to go out’ [English] even the garbage 6. could not be thrown out [3 turns left out] if the employer went out 7. the door must be locked, if there are people knocking on the door, 8. I couldn’t open, just like that (1.0) after three times I doubted it, 9. then I called the agent, I was not allowed to go out, even to throw the 10. garbage was not allowed, the employer said [they were] afraid there 11. are police (1.0) then the agent said ‘don’t be afraid, the most important 12. thing is you must do what your employer has told you’ [4 turns left 13. out] after three months I was [still] not paid I called the embassy and 14. [they] said ‘just come here but use a taxi’, just like that [3 turn left out 15. during which Riana explains that her employer had taken her passport] 16. before they [the embassy] could make a temporary passport, I had 17. already been caught by the police (1.0) then I was brought to the police 18. station, for three months and 13 days I was in prison in the police station 19. Interpret: you were in prison? 20. Riana: because according to the police, ‘you’re not guilty, the mistake was 21. made by the office in Indonesia’, they said it like that, but I was 22. stripped naked and beaten with a rattan 23. Interpret: why were you stripped naked, ma’am? 24. Riana: [they were] afraid I was hiding weapons, or something like that

Riana spent only ten months in Kuwait. When she meets us, she has been back in Indonesia for seven years, but she is still visibly distraught, and in subsequent lines not reported here, she tells us that she has been traumatised by the experience. An important part of Riana’s humiliation is that she did not get

Haunted by ghosts 63 paid. Note how she repeats that she was not paid any salary for three months (twice in line 1, line 3, and 13), which highlights the importance of the issue. Lack of money is the reason they leave their families to earn a living overseas, and not being paid is therefore seen by many migrant workers as the ultimate betrayal and humiliation. It was brought up repeatedly in sharing sessions at the shelter that they came to Hong Kong to make money for their families, and as long as they get paid, they will accept almost any humiliation (Ladegaard, 2017a). Underpayment, or even non-payment, is shockingly common, particularly among Indonesian first-timers. In a survey of 2,500 DMWs in Hong Kong, Chiu (2005) found that 50% of the Indonesians in his sample were underpaid. And if we add to that the large number of receiving countries that do not even have a minimum wage for migrant workers, the problem becomes even more pertinent. Underpayment/non-payment belittles migrant workers and denies them the recognition their work deserves (Taylor, 1994). It has serious consequences for DMWs’ lives, first and foremost financially because it prevents them from sending money home and adds to their debt, but it also contributes to their ‘reduction of self’ (Brison, 1999) by denying them due recognition for their work. There are many other examples of blatant abuse and exploitation in Riana’s story. She is locked inside the house and not permitted to open the door (lines 7–8), her employer keeps her passport to make sure she does not leave the country (line 15), and as she flees her abusive employer’s house, she is arrested and imprisoned for not having a valid employment visa (lines 17–18). Although she is completely innocent since it was her agent that sent her to Kuwait on a tourist visa (lines 20–21), she is imprisoned, stripped naked, and beaten (line 21–22). Riana never explicitly says that she was sexually assaulted, but later when she recalls the event, she cries, and there is no doubt she was shamed and humiliated for being forced to strip naked in front of two male police officers. In subsequent lines not reported here, she repeats three times that she is ‘traumatised already’, and she vows that she will never work as a domestic helper again. After three months of non-payment, Riana calls the agency to which she has paid extortionate fees and asks for help, but like so many other DMWs who seek help from their agents, she is told to be obedient and do what the employer asks her to do (lines 11–12). Controlling domestic helpers, telling them to be obedient, and restricting their freedom are ways of exerting authority and ensuring that they will never be able to claim any power in the family, or in the receiving countries in which they live (Foucault, 1980). Later in Riana’s story, she tells us that the ultimate humiliation for her is coming home to her village with nothing. If migrant women are unable to bring back any financial gains, they are considered failures and tend to be subjected to gendered moral blame: the assumption is that they did something wrong, and therefore their migratory journey failed (Chan, 2018). As Pertiwi, a 35-year-old returnee who worked four years in Singapore, says: “I came back

64  Haunted by ghosts

Photo 4.2 Hong Kong has more than 1000 employment agencies where predominantly Indonesian and Filipino domestic helpers are being advertised and ‘traded’.

to Indonesia with nothing, I was happy to be together with my family, but when we work there and there is no success, it means the journey was fruitless and worthless.” 4.5 Concluding remarks Out of a corpus of 73 narratives by Indonesian migrant workers (67 returnees and six pre-departure interviewees), as many as 1/3 of the women displayed signs of being traumatised if we use the four criteria mentioned previously: repeated crying, repetition in the storytelling to account for emotionally unfinished events, fear as the overriding emotion, and signs of an existential crisis. Based on these numbers, it is likely that hundreds (possibly even thousands) of traumatised migrant workers return to Indonesia every year with no immediate prospects of healing. They need professional counselling, and perhaps other kinds of medical support, to be able to put their traumatic experiences behind them and move on with their lives (Prusinski, 2016; Collins & Stringer, 2022). This is supported by a news report in The Jakarta Post (‘Returning migrant workers dogged by mental problems’, 26 June  2012).

Haunted by ghosts 65 The reporter, Burhaini Faizal, claims that the psychological pressure migrant women experience while they work overseas causes depression, psychosis, and suicidal tendencies. The report also claims that the number of returnees suffering from various mental health issues is increasing. Another important problem is the fact that the perpetrators are not brought to justice. The women (and men) in this study suffered because of human-inflicted trauma. Although victims of a human-inflicted trauma, who attempt to seek justice through legal channels, may initially experience a form of ‘revictimisation’ when the case is reopened, there is potential that if the perpetrator is brought to justice, this will positively impact the victim’s chances of healing (Herman, 2003). As Hung and Denborough (2013) argue: “Justice and healing are closely linked. A strong sense of injustice can hinder healing” (p.  26). An essential component in the healing process is that the perpetrator is punished. The victim’s healing process is usually long and painful, but she may get a sense of closure that will likely advance her healing if the perpetrator gets to pay for what they did (Brison, 2002). Sadly, however, there was no closure for the women who participated in this study. As far as I know, none of the perpetrators who assaulted the migrant women in this study were brought to justice. Herman (2003) alludes to the difficult decision that victims of human-inflicted trauma need to make: whether or not to take a sexual assault case to court. However, this in a non-issue for the Indonesian women in this study, and they therefore have to rely on other resources for healing. The only possibility for help that exists in rural communities in Java is at the grassroots level. In many of the sharing sessions, the women shared encouraging stories of support and compassion in the community, and they would support a storyteller and help her through a difficult part of her narrative. There were also stories of friends and neighbours, or volunteers in the local migrant worker NGO, who supported a woman in distress and helped her through a difficult time. As Hung (2011) argues: “Linking individuals to a collective can make individual and social action more possible” (p. 30). We were also told that stories of abuse would spread from one community to the next and serve as warnings for other women not to seek employment in a particular country or city. Such stories would deter some women from going, others from going back, and they would prepare other women for the problems they might encounter, and tell them which NGOs they could turn to for help. But there were also stories of women whose migratory journey had been a failure, who became the objects of gossip, and who felt condemned by family members and neighbours (such as Rika in Example 10 and Netra in Example 11). This happened, in particular, if they had violated social norms, such as becoming pregnant out of wedlock, or they did not bring back any monetary gains (Chan, 2018). Failed migratory journeys were seen by some women as evidence of ‘bad fate’ (Prusinski, 2016). Narrative therapy argues that stories have the potential to initiate a process of healing (White & Epston, 1990; Brown & Augusta-Scott, 2007). The

66  Haunted by ghosts stories we tell are sources of identity: they tell others who we are and who we would like to become (Cortazzi, 2001). Narrative therapy claims that storytelling has the capacity to change our lives, but help is required in order for the storyteller to construct more positive and constructive stories about herself. Some of the women whose stories were analysed in this chapter had been home for years but had still not been able to put their traumatic experience behind them, possibly because they did not receive the help they needed. A key component in recovery from trauma is relationships (Hung, 2011). As Herman (2015) argues, The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. (emphasis added) (p. 133) This quote may explain why so many of the migrant worker returnees in this study are still struggling with trauma years after their return. They have not been provided with the relationships that could facilitate healing. In many of the sharing sessions in Java, the returnees mention that the family are just happy that they are back, and they do not want to talk about what they experienced overseas. The assumption is that they are “lucky to be home again (1.0) still alive, that’s already a blessing”, as Riana says (Example 6, Chapter 3). The implied meaning is that they should not dwell on the past, and this is particularly true for the women who have been sexually assaulted. More often than not, they do not want their husbands or other family members to know about it, so a lawsuit does not happen, as Putri claims in the same sharing session, because the family just wants them to be grateful. As the interpreter sums up what the returnees have said in the sharing session from which Example 6 is taken: “according to the culture and also like the parents and family, they just say ‘thank God you’re already back and you’re alive’, that’s the culture.” It is not unusual that ‘culture’ is used to explain all behaviour, even when other variables like religion, social class, or educational background, may be more salient (Zhu Hua, 2019). But whatever the reason, DMWs come back to a reality where negative experiences are glossed over, and the returnees are expected to be happy and grateful and reporting only on successful migratory journeys (Chan, 2018). As Nisrane et al. (2019) argue about the Ethiopian domestic worker returnees from the Arabian Gulf in their study: “returnees used sense-making and benefit-seeking, both for themselves and their families, as strategies for coping with exploitation experiences” (p. 12). However, these coping strategies also create a culture of silence where the victims of human-inflicted trauma keep their stories to themselves (Puvimanasinghe et al., 2014).

Haunted by ghosts 67 Another reality in rural Indonesia is that there are few doctors and virtually no professional counselling services, and this also makes it more difficult for the returnees to get help. Therefore, we have to think about other ways to assist these women in their healing. I propose three possible avenues that may be considered. First, we should insist, as Brison (1999, p. 48) does, that “saying something about traumatic memory does something to it.” This means that it is always meaningful to encourage trauma victims to talk about their experiences. After each sharing session where painful experiences had been shared, we encouraged the women to talk to one of the volunteers in the local migrant worker NGO, and we know that some of them did that. The research tells us that there is no miracle cure, and the healing process will probably be long and painful (Harter et al., 2005), but, as narrative therapy argues, by telling and retelling traumatic experiences, repressive discourses may be questioned or even silenced, and with time, the victim may be able to rewrite her story from victimhood to survival and beyond (Duvall  & Béres, 2007). This does not always require professional counsellors but can happen in conversations with volunteers from migrant worker NGOs, neighbours, or friends. Scholars have pointed out that empathy is important (possibly even more important than psychological training) and might go a long way towards facilitating healing (Shuman, 2005; Ladegaard, 2020b). Second, we should reject the assumption that traumatic experiences can and should be converted to coherent stories. Studies have found that lifethreatening and all-inclusive traumatic experiences cannot be transformed into a traditional temporal framework for storytelling with a before and after but will, more likely, as Langer (1991) proposes, stand outside of time: “frozen, static, ever-present and not forgotten” (cited in Harvey et al., 2000, p. 294). Most people do not want to hear trauma victims’ accounts of atrocities. They prefer coherent stories that make sense and which move from “a state of suffering and pain to one of wholeness and recovery” (ibid.). But, as we have seen in this chapter, these are not the stories Indonesian migrant worker returnees tell. Trauma narratives are unsettling per se, and we must learn to listen and hear what they tell us, also when the stories do not conform to our expectations and when they do not align with the theories and the cultural plots we are familiar with (Shay, 2003). Finally, we may want to consider different ways to engage with trauma storytelling. In their work with traumatised African refugees in Australia, Puvimanasinghe et al. (2014) found that participants sometimes suppressed thoughts and actions related to the trauma because sharing these experiences had negative impact on their sense of self and their self-confidence. Therefore, these researchers suggest that in work with trauma victims, we may have “to move beyond words to listen to the silence and blank spaces of the stories untold” (ibid. p.  70). They argue that “non-verbal techniques such as visualization, progressive relaxation, mindfulness, and religious rituals facilitate[d] psychological healing” (ibid. p. 88). The non-verbal techniques they used could take

68  Haunted by ghosts many forms, including ‘theatre of the oppressed’ and ‘art therapy’. The benefit of these non-verbal techniques is that they “could be more culturally familiar and hence more acceptable; or they circumvent[ed] the need to be exposed to emotional turmoil in order to heal” (ibid. p. 88). Helping traumatised migrant worker returnees in rural Indonesia may also require alternative approaches and interpretations. This chapter has provided more evidence of the rampant abuse and exploitation of DMWs that happens all over the world, not least in the Middle East (Jureidini & Moukarbel, 2004; McGeehan & Keane, 2008; Demissie, 2018; Nisrane et al., 2019). The findings in this chapter have wide-reaching ramifications that need to be studied in more detail in future research. A recent study of mental health issues in Hong Kong found that Filipino DMWs had more than a 25% depression level, as opposed to 2.9% in the city’s general population (Cheung et al., 2019). The authors explain the significantly higher levels of depression among domestic helpers by referring to their victimisation, which increases the likelihood of depression and leads to low self-esteem, which also makes them less likely to escape violence and abuse (see also Lai & Fong, 2020; Choy et al., 2022). As the stories in this chapter have confirmed, Indonesian migrant workers are more likely to be exploited and abused than Filipinos (Ladegaard, 2017a), and we may therefore assume that this problem is even more pertinent among Indonesians. This chapter concludes by recommending that future research on trauma should include more discourse analytic work (cf. Galasinski  & Ziolkowska, 2013). I have argued elsewhere that it is harder to cover up linguistic ‘leaks’ in trauma storytelling than psychological ‘leaks’ that are revealed through traditional clinical instruments, such as questionnaires or interviews (Ladegaard, 2020b). This also means that discourse analytic research has the potential to introduce other forms of ‘treatment’, such as compassionate responses to trauma: to suffer with the storyteller rather than just showing empathy (Shuman, 2005). Notes 1 Some of the analyses in this chapter were previously published in ‘Codeswitching and emotional alignment: Talking about abuse in domestic migrant workers returnee narratives’ Language in Society 47(5), 693–714; and in ‘Talking about trauma in migrant worker returnee narratives: Mental health issues’ In B. Watson & J. Krieger (Eds.), Expanding Horizons in Health Communication: An Asian Perspective (pp. 3–27). Springer. 2 The Trauma Narratives Project, which is still in its initial phase, is expected to shed light on these important questions, and also to bring us closer to a more balanced and contextually sensitive definition of trauma narrative. So far, 131 trauma narratives have been collected, and one preliminary conclusion seems to be that while most of the migrant workers who were interviewed will admit to being traumatised, some will deny that the label applies to them (but not to others), which suggests that there is stigma associated with the concept.

5 Spurning exploitation The empowered migrant worker

While Indonesian migrant workers’ narratives of return outline overwhelmingly negative experiences of exploitation and abuse, the stories told by the Filipino returnees in this study are mostly positive. And while most Indonesian migrants do not want to go overseas again, the Filipino returnees are happy to go again should the opportunity arise. This chapter focuses on some of the positive stories, most of which were recorded among the Filipino returnees in villages across Central Bohol. 5.1 The good employer The literature on DMWs’ experiences in the diaspora has been dominated by stories of exploitation and abuse (see, for example, Jureidini & Moukarbel, 2004; Huang  & Yeoh, 2007; Ladegaard, 2017a; Nisrane et  al., 2019; Lai  & Fong, 2020; Choy et al., 2022). These and many other studies also share a common concern for DMWs’ precarious lives and for the dilemma they find themselves in being emotionally tied to, and yet geographically and sometimes also psychologically distant from, their families back home (Lai, 2011). But, as many of the excerpts in this chapter will show, there are examples of DMWs who have positive stories to tell about their years as domestic helpers overseas. A recurring feature in these stories is that the women had good employers, as the next example shows. Example 16 (Bohol) Maria, 69 years old, 33 years in the UK, back since 2005. A male fieldworker (FW) and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also in the sharing session. 1. FW: so what was it like for you to be a domestic worker? 2. Maria: I worked in London, I was very happy out there, because I (1.0) 3. they are all very nice to me 4. FW: okay, no problems // with your employment? 5. Maria:      //no problems, no problems (1.0) they always 6. asked me to go around Europe, or the Middle East, I’ve been there

DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005-5

70  Spurning exploitation 7. [. . .] I managed the old lady’s family (1.0) I’m the one who managed 8. everything [. . .] and they’ll bring me money to pay my companions, 9. you know who work with me, like nurses or or 10. FW: okay, okay, so you were in charge // of the household? 11. Maria:                // yes, I’m the one who’s in charge 12. FW: [. . .] how old was your daughter when you left? 13. Maria: ah: my son 14. FW: oh sorry, son, sorry 15. Maria: when I left he’s only around (1.0) five years, and when I came back 16. his son is already a nurse [laughs] 17. FW: any problems while you were away? 18. Maria: ah: no problems because ah: I don’t have any problems really↑ 19. FW: oh, fantastic 20. Maria: it’s not like the others that you can hear (1.0) it was a very very 21. good experience for me (2.0) I miss London very much

While Maria’s British upper-class employer cannot be said to be typical, the feeling of satisfaction and happiness that she recounts is typical among the Filipino returnees in the Bohol communities. Like Maria, many of them held influential jobs where they managed a large household and had important responsibilities (lines 7–8 and 11). The responsibility that came with their jobs provided a sense of accomplishment that many of the Bohol women took pride in. In one of the villages I visited, several of the returnees I met had worked for foreign diplomats in Tokyo. At the time, direct hire was possible, so when a migrant worker from Bohol heard that another diplomat family in the neighbourhood needed a helper, she would contact them and recommend a cousin, a sister, or a neighbour from the Bohol community. As Georgina (64  years old), who lived 30 years in Tokyo and managed to find work for a large number of the women in the community, says: “You have to share your blessings.” The interviewer’s questions in this example also call for a comment. Sometimes researchers need to see the transcripts of the interviews/sharing sessions they have participated in to see how they may inadvertently have impacted the participants’ answers, or, as in this case, that the use of repeated questions suggests that they may have expected certain answers that they did not get (Ladegaard, 2022a). The fieldworker seems to expect to hear about problems, so when the answer to his question in line 4 (“no problems with your employment?”) is negative, he repeats it shortly after in line 17 (“any problems while you were away?”), and the implicit assumption is that there must have been problems for Maria, as it is the case for many DMWs. The repetition of the question may explain Maria’s rather adamant reply: “I don’t have any problem really” in a rather loud high-pitched voice, followed by an assuring comment that her story is not like other stories you hear about DMWs’ lives, and repeating what she said in lines 2–3: that it was a very good experience (cf. the heavily stressed repeated use of very, line 20) (see further on researcher reflexivity in Chapter 7).

Spurning exploitation 71 In the next example, Evangeline, a 61-year-old Filipino returnee, has a similar story to tell. Example 17 (Bohol) Evangeline, 61  years old, 3  years in Canada, 3  years in Hong Kong, and 9 years in the USA, back since 2004. A male fieldworker (FW) and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also in the sharing session. 1. FW: what was it like for you to be a domestic worker? 2. Evang: yeah, to be a domestic helper in Hong Kong (1.0) I’m happy to 3. work with my employer because they are European people, from 4. Belgium, not, not Chinese people so I stay there for three years, then 5. suddenly sir and ma’am they decide to retire, they go back to 6. Belgium, and ma’am Josephine told me: ‘Evangeline, why don’t 7. you go back to the Philippines and stay with your own family?’ 8. then I said: ‘oh, it’s so sad, I was planning to look for another 9. job (1.0) it’s because of my children, you know’, and then ma’am 10. Josephine said: ‘no problem Evangeline, you go home and stay with 11. your own family, and we are the ones to support your children to 12. finish their study until [they are] 18 years old’, so they did 13. FW: wow 14. Evang: [. . .] so they all went to college, so I decided to go back to try to 15. find a job again, because it’s so hard for me, you know 16. FW: how many children do you have? 17. Evang: four (1.0) the eldest he finish his studies in commerce, but he works 18. in accountancy, then the second one is the same, accountancy, and 19. the third one xx he studies law, then the youngest he’s a registered 20. nurse in Abu Dhabi, so I’m very blessed, blessed by God, all of 21. them are successful to finish their studies [. . .] I’m so happy now, 22. why? Because God is very good to me, I find my employers are 23. very kind and concerned about me

Although Evangeline’s employers may be exceptional in that they offer to pay for her children’s education after she has finished working for them, it was not uncommon that the Bohol women’s employers would make contributions towards their helper’s pension or continue to give generous presents for birthdays and Christmas, even after the employment had finished. Evangeline sees it as evidence that her employers are kind and concerned about her wellbeing (lines 22–23), but she and the other Filipino returnees also see it as evidence that they are blessed by God (lines 20 and 22). Their Christian faith provides them with an interpretive framework that helps them not only to see their successes as God’s blessing but also to interpret their suffering as part of God’s plan with them. As the women at the Hong Kong church shelter testified repeatedly when injustices were committed against them, or when they could not bear the long-term separation from their children: they interpreted these

72  Spurning exploitation life events in the light of biblical promises. They reminded themselves and each other that God would not allow them to be tested beyond their means (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:13), and that God would eventually intervene and put an end to their sufferings (Ladegaard, 2017b). In response to the fieldworker’s question in line 1 what it was like for Evangeline to be a ‘domestic worker’, it is interesting that she herself uses the term ‘domestic helper’ for self-reference (line 2). This could, of course, be a coincidence, but it is noticeable that the women, not just in the returnee narratives but also in the 300+ narratives recorded at the church shelter in Hong Kong, consistently refer to themselves as ‘domestic helpers’. ‘Domestic worker’ is the preferred term in the migrant worker literature (as well as in the Hong Kong migrant worker NGOs), as it is argued that the term ‘helper’ does not recognise domestic work as ‘work’ and therefore has negative connotations (Constable, 2014). However, how individuals or groups of people choose to refer to themselves has important identity implications (Milani, 2010). It suggests positive self-identification, and I  have argued elsewhere that the term ‘helper’ taps into how DMWs see themselves and how they want others to see them. They see themselves as women who have made sacrifices in order to help others: their families, their country, and the people of Hong Kong, and by doing so, they are serving God and thereby a higher purpose in life (Ladegaard, 2017b). So, when scholars insist that DMWs should not be referred to as ‘helpers’, they are arguably denying them an important identity position (although this was no doubt not the intention). Evangeline’s claim in lines 2–4 that she is happy to work for her employers in Hong Kong because they are European and not Chinese taps into a common stereotype among domestic helpers: that Chinese employers are strict and hard to please, whereas Western employers are more lenient and will treat them better (Paul, 2011). However, although migrant workers themselves use ethnicity to distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ employers, some of their own stories contradict this dichotomy. The stories told by DMWs at the church shelter in Hong Kong show that abusive employers are by no means exclusively Chinese. They come from all walks of life and represent multiple nationalities: Australia, France, Switzerland, South Africa, the UK, the USA, and even the Philippines. There are two stories in the 300+ narratives from the church shelter about abusive employers who are Filipino. They came to Hong Kong as domestic helpers, married a Chinese man, and became abusive employers themselves (Ladegaard, 2017a). Thus, there is little evidence in DMWs’ storytelling to support Evangeline’s stereotype that her Belgian employers are good because they are European. Paul (2011) found a similar dichotomy in her study of Filipino migrant workers in Singapore and argues that their motivation for engaging in this stereotyping process is what she calls ‘identity triangulation’. This refers to a scenario where domestic helpers are “constructing their Filipino self-identity

Spurning exploitation 73 through simultaneous and dialectal racial distancing from the Chinese and alignment with whites/Westerners” (emphasis added) (Paul, 2011, p. 1080). This distancing-alignment process happens primarily on the basis of perceived values and religious affiliation, a finding that was confirmed in the narratives from the church shelter where Chinese employers are constructed as Buddhists or non-religious, and Western employers are constructed as Christian and therefore more closely aligned with the Filipino helpers’ self-categorisation. By engaging in this identity triangulation, Paul (2011) continues, the women are “not only distorting and essentializing the character of all Chinese and whites/Westerners, but also the Filipino character” (p. 1080). However, this creates a cohesive universe with distinct ingroups and outgroups, and with distinct boundaries between them, and several studies have found that this provides a world view, however simplistic and fictitious it may be, that people find it easier to relate to and act in (see, for example, Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Hogg, 1993; Ladegaard, 2011b). Evangeline feels that her migratory journey has been successful because she managed to finance her children’s university education. More than anything, DMWs go overseas and sacrifice their own happiness in order that their children will get a better life, as the next examples show. 5.2 “For the good future of the children” It is a general pattern in all the returnee narratives that domestic workers go overseas to work because of their families. Silvey (2006) reports that the Indonesian domestic workers in her research claim they go overseas to satisfy their consumer aspirations and desires: they leave home to make money for new clothing, jewellery, satellite TV, and kitchen appliances (p. 32). However, none of the migrant workers I met gave the desire to acquire material gains as a reason for going overseas. The wish to build a house was mentioned by some as a long-term goal that had also motivated them to go overseas, but overwhelmingly, the reason was a concrete need and a desire to help their families, not least to give their children a better future. The first example is from Evangeline’s narrative (see Example 17), and the question she responds to is what it was like for her to come home. Example 18 (Bohol) Evangeline, 61  years old, 3  years in Canada, 3  years in Hong Kong, and 9 years in the USA, back since 2004. A male fieldworker (FW) and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also in the sharing session. 1. Evang: with my husband, we’re both okay, it’s because of our financial 2. problems that I go, you know, we understand each other (1.0) we

74  Spurning exploitation 3. sacrifice, you know, so one thing you have to sacrifice to get to 4. the goal of our life 5. FW: and what was the goal of your life? 6. Evang: well, I think for me, I felt success because all of them finished school 7. (1.0) that’s the only thing that I can give them, for the good future 8. of the children

Unlike many other DMW returnees, Evangeline’s homecoming was relatively unproblematic. Prior to the previous excerpt, she explains that the children were already in college when she came back from her last journey, and her American employer allowed her to call her husband once a week, so their relationship did not suffer. Another reason she and her husband were able to maintain a close relationship despite the separation is mutual understanding (line 2), and acknowledging that sacrifices are needed if they want to achieve their goals in life (lines 2–4). And the overarching goal for Evangeline and her Filipino peers is education for the children, which will allow her to give them a better future (line 7–8). She feels her migratory journey was a success, first because she had good employers (Example 17, lines 22–23), and because all her children finished school (line 6). Chan (2018) argues that the difference between failure and success for Indonesian migrant workers is whether or not they were able to bring back money. It is also true for the Filipino returnees that the ability to build a new house, for example, is seen as a concrete example of success, but much more than any material gains, the children’s successful completion of their education is the ultimate evidence of success (line 6). As Evangeline says later in her story: Example 19 (Bohol) 1. every time I hear the voice of my children [on the phone], I really feel 2. myself tearing up (1.0) especially when they said: ‘Oh mama, I graduated, 3. I have an Honours [degree]’, I’m so happy, I’m so very proud (1.0) ‘oh, 4. that’s good, at least the money I spent on you is not going bad’ (1.0) 5. because I’m really working so hard, just for them, for all my family The sacrifice for migrant women is the ‘destructiveness of distance’ (Pratt, 2012), which, as the Indonesian returnees testified in Chapter 3, has resulted in a large number of broken migrant families because the husband takes a mistress while the wife is away (Ladegaard, 2018a). But this did not happen to Evangeline’s family; despite the loneliness and homesickness, which she accounts for prior to the previous example, her migratory journey was a success: the money was not wasted (line 4), and her hard work for the family paid off (line 5). In another sharing session with two Filipino returnees, Gloria, a 43-year-old migrant worker and a mother of four who spent two years in

Spurning exploitation 75

Photo 5.1 Many children in sending communities grow up without one, or even both, of their parents because they work overseas as migrant workers.

Dubai and two years on a cruise ship, sums up the Bohol migrant women’s ambition very aptly. In response to my question ‘What are you thinking about the future?’, she says without hesitation: “A  future for my kids, a future for them, because it’s very hard to get a job if you’re not educated, so this is the main thing, the most important is my kids.” Although the Bohol returnees generally take pride in their successful migratory journeys and do not regret that they went overseas, there is some resentment among some of the returnees because the separation from close family members continues after their return. Thus, coming back does not necessarily mean that they get to spend time with their children or grandchildren, as the next example shows. Example 20 (Bohol) Bernila, 52 years old, 8 years in Singapore, 5 years in Japan, back since 2004. Six other migrant worker returnees and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present.

76  Spurning exploitation 1. Bernila: I had to leave Japan and come back so that’s it 2. FW: so you came back because you had to, not because you wanted to? 3. Bernila: I had to, because I hadn’t found another employer but I still don’t 4. want to come back home because, my family // I already lost my 5. husband and all my kids are already // two of my kids are in 6. America and one is in Dubai so when I come back to the Philippines 7. (1.0) there’s nothing. I’m alone so I’d rather stay in Japan if I could 8. find another employer and make money

Bernila’s story led to other stories about similar scenarios in this sharing session: the women left when their children were young in order to provide for their education, and by the time they finish working overseas and move back to the Philippines, the children have graduated and left for work overseas. Two of Bernila’s children work in the hospitality industry and were lucky to get good jobs in California, and one works as a nurse in UAE. Even with a university degree, it is difficult to find work in the Philippines, and if they find work, the salary is too low to support a family. At the church shelter, many Filipino DMWs testified that they began their career as nurses, midwives, or teachers in the Philippines but realised that even two salaries were not enough to support their children’s education, or pay the medical bills for an elderly family member. Therefore, they decided to go to Hong Kong and work as domestic helpers, which would allow them to quadruple their salary. One of the stories that was recorded at the church shelter is from Mandy (Ladegaard, 2017a, Chapter 3). She was educated as a computer engineer in the Philippines, but when her father got ill, she could not pay the medical bills and pay for her sibling’s education on her meagre salary, so she decided to go to Hong Kong and work as a domestic helper. But what she had not realised was that this also meant a loss of her professional identity. In the Philippines, she was ‘poor but proud’, as she puts it, but working as a domestic helper meant a social demotion which, in combination with an abusive employer, eventually plunged her into depression. Her parents had spent their savings to get her an education in a good school, and she could not bear to tell them what she was really doing in Hong Kong, so she told them she worked as a tutor. What Mandy and other Filipinos experience when they go overseas to work as domestic helpers is a reduction as self. As Yeoh and Huang (2000) argue: “[what] triggers a crisis of identity for many is not only removal from the familiarity of the homenation but the rapid reduction of ‘self’ to immigrant (as well as ethnic, classed and gendered) ‘other’ in the host nation” (p. 424). Therefore, going overseas to work as professionals, as Bernila’s children did, makes good sense in that it allows the immigrant to protect his/her professional identity. However, the drawback is perpetual separation between parents and their children. An important reason that Filipino DMWs tend to have better overseas experiences than their Indonesian peers is their ability to fight back when confronted with unfairness and discrimination. This is the focus of the next section.

Spurning exploitation 77 5.3 Fighting back Although the Filipino returnees suffered much less from abusive employers compared to their Indonesian peers, there is plenty of evidence to show that they have had their fair share of ‘bad employers’, as they call them. In each and every sharing session in the Bohol communities, at least one person shared stories of abusive or exploitative employers, but the women’s response to abusive employers is what makes their stories stand out. The next example is from a sharing session with four Filipino returnees. Example 21 (Bohol) Carmelita, 66 years old, 23 years in Japan, back since 2004; Cecilia, 68 years old, 17 years in Japan, back since 2011. Two other migrant worker returnees, a male fieldworker (FW), and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also present. 1. FW: what was it like for you to be a domestic helper? 2. Carmel: I had to change employer every two years (1.0) some are better 3. than others 4. Cecelia: she fought with the first one 5. Carmel: she said, ‘you stop working when I’m out of the room’ (1.0), 6. it’s not true (2.0) [. . .] you know sometimes the employer is 7. like that, even if you’re right, they will make you wrong 8. Cecilia: yes, exactly 9. Carmel: for me, I have to write it on the calendar and I have to count 10. how many times I get hurt [laughs] I had to complain (1.0) 11. keep a record, because many times I get hurt 12. FW: yes, aha 13. Carmel: one time, the last time we fight, she said ‘I was in the living 14. room with my husband, so I was reading the newspaper, I hear 15. you flushed the toilet but you did not wash your hands’, so I 16. dropped the pillow, because I was fixing the bed, I said like that, 17. ‘ma’am I have been working for how many years in Manila, all 18. foreigners, but I did not meet anyone like you, you are divorced 19. and tomorrow night and the coming days when you use the toilet’// 20. Cecilia: //she’s sharing the bathroom with the children// 21. Carmel: //one bathroom with two rooms, my room and the children’s 22. Cecilia: the children use the toilet, they sometimes forget to flush, or they 23. did not flush, so what she did was she just flushed, she did not use 24. the toilet 25. Carmel: yes, right, I just flushed

Carmelita is a very outspoken and direct person, and when she is unfairly accused of wrongdoing, she fights back. In her long elaborate narrative, she explains how her Japanese employer follows her around the house and criticises her all the time. Initially, she takes the criticism to heart and tries to

78  Spurning exploitation make amends until she realises that even when she is right, the employer will claim she is in the wrong (line 7). So she decides to make a record of how many times she is accused of making mistakes (lines 9–11) and confront the employer. Carmelita’s response is unusually blunt; she not only defends herself but engages in openly face-threatening acts against her employer: she mentions that she has worked for several foreign employers, thereby implying that they somehow belong to a higher class of employers (cf. Evangeline’s categorisation into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ employers in Example 17), or perhaps emphasising the diversity of her past employers and how the current employer is worse than all of the previous ones (lines 17–18). She also refers to the employer’s divorce (line 18), probably to humiliate her since the remark is completely irrelevant to the storyline. In many Asian contexts, including many parts of the Philippines, being divorced is stigmatised (Abalos, 2017). The implication behind Carmelita’s remark may be that divorced people are morally flawed, and therefore, the employer is in no position to tell her helper about right and wrong. Carmelita and Cecilia are neighbours and close friends, and this may explain why Cecilia is an integrated part of Carmelita’s storytelling. She provides additional information (line 4), supports the narrative by giving minimal response (‘yes, exactly’, line 8), and adds on to the narrative through a supportive interruption in order to provide what she may see as missing information (line 20). She even explains the point of the story: that Carmelita just flushed the toilet but did not use it (line 22–24), and thus, she helps her friend get her message across that the employer’s attempt to humiliate her helper by exposing her as unhygienic failed. This is an example of joint storytelling (Georgakopoulou, 1997), in which the audience provides cues and supportive comments and helps the storyteller interpret events and get her message across. This was a typical feature of the storytelling in the Bohol communities, but it was rare in the Java communities (see further in Chapter 6). Carmelita’s message, which is conveyed loudly and clearly more than once in her narrative, is simple and unambiguous: “you have to complain, if you have the right to complain but you don’t (1.0) if you just talk, talk, talk, nothing will happen.” The repetition of key nouns and adjectives to signify emphasis is a typical feature of DMWs’ storytelling (Ladegaard, 2017a). In Carmelita’s narrative, it may also be an attempt to indirectly blame DMWs who do not speak up. The uncompromising message she delivered to her employer after months of criticism and humiliation provides an example for other domestic helpers to follow. In response to the fieldworker’s question about how she fought back, she provided the answer in Example 22. Example 22 (Bohol) 1. FW: how did you // what did you say to her [the employer]? 2. Carmel: no because I said ‘if you’re like that, I will go back to the

Spurning exploitation 79 3. Philippines, I will not die here in your house’ (1.0) and she said 4. ‘let’s sit down and talk’, and I said, ‘nothing to talk about, just 5. get me the ticket, I want to go home’ (1.0) so after that she was 6. very good for a while [. . .] she also said ‘why did you not cook 7. lunch for us?’, so I said ‘you look in the fridge, is there anything 8. there to cook?’ [laughter]

Carmelita’s key message is that after she put down her foot and threatened to go back to the Philippines, the employer was ‘very good for a while’ (line 6). Foucault (1980) argues that power is generally not monolithic but is exercised through a net-like organisation. It is usually not a simple case of a powerful oppressor and a powerless victim, but many aspects of power are working together simultaneously: gender, class, ethnicity, and profession, as well as educational and linguistic resources. DMWs may be relatively powerless because of their gender, ethnicity, social class, and their status as cultured others, but at least the Filipino DMWs in the data have linguistic and educational resources they can draw on for empowerment (Ladegaard, 2020a). In a sharing session at the church shelter, a group of Filipino helpers proclaim: “we are proud that we come here and we have a degree”, and they mock their Chinese employers for not being able to speak English, a significant status marker in Hong Kong (Ladegaard, 2017a, pp. 170–171). Thus, they engage in reappropriation of their ingroup pride by exercising some power over their employers, at least in intragroup settings, and by claiming a positive identity for themselves (Cervone et al., 2021). However, Carmelita and many of the other Bohol migrant women also engage in reappropriation in intergroup settings, and this makes the power and the respect they gain even more significant. The secret, at least for Carmelita, is that she is not afraid, and never was afraid, of any of her employers, as she reiterates repeatedly in her narrative, and Cecilia confirms: “You speak your mind, it’s really the kind of personality she is.” Not all battles are as successful as Carmelita’s. Jovi, who was in a sharing session with six other returnees in central Bohol, was not given enough food and had to fight every step of the way. The fieldworker has just asked what it was like for them to be domestic workers, and Jovi is the first person to tell her story. Example 23 (Bohol) Jovi, 39  years old, 2  years in Singapore, back since 2006. Six other DMW returnees, a male fieldworker (FW), and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also present. 1. Jovi: in the beginning it was very exciting (1.0) I went to Singapore, um: 2. in the beginning the employers are very um: very strict (1.0) they 3. were not giving me food

80  Spurning exploitation 4. FW: they were not giving you food? 5. Jovi: no, I survived because of friends, and also some Indonesians also 6. give me food, but I didn’t know them but because they knew what’s 7. my situation, they give me food (1.0) the food they will put in the 8. garbage, yes it’s true, they will heat it first, then they will call me: 9. ‘amiga, come down, I put the food here, it’s very hot’, and then they 10. will put it inside the garbage bin, wrapped in plastic, so I go there, just 11. like a cat, just walk like a cat so the employer would not notice [. . .] 12. FW: did you tell her that you were hungry and you wanted food? 13. Jovi:  yes (1.0) actually one of my friends bought me a rice cooker with 14. steamer, and then I buy rice and just cook it in my room, when I cook 15. the rice the smell of the rice will go out and she come upstairs to my 16. room at four o’clock because that’s the time I have to cook 17. FW: at night? 18. Jovi: four in the morning, yes, and then she’s very (1.0) arrogant, very arrogant 19. and she almost get my rice cooker and throw away the food, so I told 20. her ‘I’m not coming to Singapore to die, I came here to survive, to 21. survive my situation in the Philippines, but I never think I should go to 22. Singapore to die’, I told her that and she just said ‘I don’t care’ (1.0) 23. and I said ‘okay if you don’t care then you’d better buy me a ticket, 24. then I’m going home’ (1.0) but she don’t want to [. . .] so I stay and 25. in the morning the woman gave me a piece of bread

The hunger that Jovi talks about is not the hunger of missing a meal, as Primo Levi puts it in his account of life in Auschwitz (cited in Langer, 1980), but the constant hunger that comes from living off food scraps and never having a proper meal. Jovi is so hungry that her friends leave food in the rubbish bin for her to pick up (lines 7–8). Even Indonesian DMWs that she does not know are familiar with her situation and give her food disguised as rubbish. This shows, first, the solidarity that exists between DMWs; whether they are Filipino or Indonesian, Christian or Muslim, they support each other. Second, the incident shows how providing food for a fellow human being in need can be misconstrued as an offensive act that has to be concealed “so the employer would not notice” (line 11). The Indonesian helpers have to pretend they throw the food in the bin (line 10), and Jovi uses the simile of a cat, sneaking silently along the walls in order not to be discovered (line 11), when she picks up the food. In subsequent lines not reported previously, Jovi recounts that when she cooked spaghetti noodles, the employer counted the noodles she was allowed to have for herself. And even when Jovi cooks rice for herself in her room, the employer interferes (line 19), suggesting that Jovi is not allowed to have human needs. This echoes with another narrative recorded at the church shelter in which Marinol, a 38-year helper from the Philippines, remembers how she complained to her employer that she was hungry and was told: “you did not come here to eat, you come here to work” (Ladegaard, 2017a, p. 97). Another participant in the Bohol sharing session asks

Spurning exploitation 81 if Jovi’s employers were poor, and Jovi explains that they were very rich: the employer owns a taxi and mini-van company as well as a restaurant. Thus, money is not the issue, and it is more likely that depriving DMWs of food is a way to demean and humiliate them and remind them of their lowly status and vulnerability (Bales, 2012). The constant hunger ads to their humiliation, and it positions them as less than human (Tileaga, 2005). Like animals scavenging for food in the waste bin, domestic helpers in affluent cities like Singapore and Hong Kong are starving and need to rely on charity from others to keep alive. However, unlike many of her peers who are afraid to speak up, Jovi confronts the employer. She has come to Singapore to survive the dire situation she and her family were facing in the Philippines, so she tells the employer to buy her return ticket so that she can go back (lines 23–24). Interestingly, the next day the employer gives her a piece of bread (line 25), which may be an indirect apology. It is noticeable that Jovi refers to her employer as ‘the woman’ (line 25), and it may be to signal social distance and misalignment. In contrast, when she refers to the male employer, an Iranian businessman who she says is “really nice” and gives her extra food when he is in Singapore, she uses his name, ‘Mister Reza’ or ‘Sir’. However, she does not want to be associated with her female employer and refers to her as ‘the woman’ to emphasise her social and cultural otherness. Before Jovi leaves the house, she makes sure the female employer knows what she thinks about her, as the next example shows. Example 24 (Bohol) 1. Jovi: when I was in the house, I tell the employer, the woman, ‘some day 2. when you go to the Philippines and I’m there, I’ll invite you to my 3. shanty’, I’m not saying house but shanty, ‘I’ll invite you to my shanty 4. and give you more food than I ever had in your house’ 5. FW: you said that to her? 6. Jovi: yes, and then she turned around and at three in the afternoon she gave 7. me a piece of pizza [laughter] 8. FW: really? [laughs] 9. Jovi: yeah, really, I wrote it in my diary and I draw a little pizza [laughter]

In this last part of her narrative, Jovi discursively constructs herself as the disgraced and humiliated employee who gets the last word by portraying herself as gracious: she vows to invite the employer to her shanty and feed her well. She humbles herself by referring to her abode as a shanty rather than a house (line 3), and thereby she implies that poor people can show hospitality and generosity. Thus, the employer’s wealth and status are downplayed; she is categorised as belonging to the group of ‘bad employers’, and, by comparison, Jovi is portrayed as morally superior (Paul, 2011). Jovi and her peers engage in reappropriation of their ingroup pride (Cervone et  al., 2021): in this intragroup context they get the upper hand, at least momentarily, over

82  Spurning exploitation Jovi’s rich Korean employer who is ridiculed for her meanness, as evidenced by the laughter of approval from the audience (lines 7, 8, and 9). And Jovi’s boldness pays off: she is given a piece of pizza, which suggests that she got her message across. This is an illustration of Foucault’s (1980) point that power is always relational and interactive and not, as it is sometimes presented by DMWs themselves, monolithic and unilateral. Floribeth, a wise 64-year-old migrant worker returnee from Bohol, is another example of a woman who was able to fight back when she was being treated unfairly. Example 25 (Bohol) Floribeth, 64 years old, 20 years in Singapore, back since 2003. A male fieldworker and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also present. 1. Floribeth: so one day I talked to my Chinese employer, my ma’am, because 2. she saw me talking with other servants, the servants of the neighbour 3. and she said ‘what are you talking about?’, and I said ‘ma’am they 4. said that your old servant, your previous maid, you don’t give her 5. enough food’ like that, and she said ‘no Floribeth, don’t you know 6. that we give them financial allowance, but they never spend the 7. money, instead they eat our food’ (2.0) and I said ‘I don’t mind 8. if you give me financial allowance, it’s okay but I think it’s better 9. if you buy food for me, I eat only fish and vegetables and I eat a 10. lot of rice (1.0) so they agree they will buy food for me, and every 11. time they go to the market they say ‘what do you want us to buy?’

Prior to this excerpt, Floribeth tells us that when she first arrived, the female Chinese employer was quite demanding and critical, and during her first months in Singapore, she was uncertain whether she could stay. Then the neighbour’s domestic workers tell her that the previous helper in the household left because she did not get enough food, and they wonder how she can stay with this employer. This provides Floribeth with an opportunity to confront the employer and tell her that there are rumours that she did not treat their previous Filipino helper well (line 3–5). Although the employer denies the allegations, it gives Floribeth the opportunity to make clear that she expects to get enough food. She also says, in subsequent lines not reported here, that if she is treated well, she will stay and she will work hard, but if not, she will not hesitate to go back to the Philippines, and the employer will have to go through the hassle of finding another helper. Floribeth puts her foot down: she makes it clear what she wants to eat (and that she does not eat noodles), and she indirectly asks to be treated with respect. By telling her employer that there are damaging rumours about her in the neighbourhood, she has, in subtle ways, challenged her power and made her vulnerable. She has been made to understand that if Floribeth is not

Spurning exploitation 83 treated well, she will fight back and no doubt further damage the employer’s reputation in the community. And it paid off! She later says they “treated me like their own family members”. This may be wishful thinking, or even a standard expression that DMWs frequently use (Ladegaard, 2017a), and if we critically examine what that entails, we would find that family members are normally not treated like that (Parreñas, 2014). Floribeth is required, for example, to be back from her leave days at 6 pm in order to cook for the family, and when she had a major fall in the house, she was not immediately taken to the hospital. However, she still puts them in the ‘good employers’ category, and she worked for the family for ten years. Towards the end of Floribeth’s narrative, the focus is on the life she has had as a domestic worker, and she herself establishes a link between having a good life and speaking up. The notion of a ‘good life’ was brought up by Floribeth prior to this excerpt, so the fieldworker’s question in line 1 is not a leading question. Example 26 (Bohol) 1. FW: so did you have a good life? 2. Floribeth:  yeah, I have, even for my second employer, the Swedish one, 3. I can be very blunt with him you know, they treated me like a 4. member of the family (1.0) my neighbour // the maid of my 5. neighbour there she say ‘Floribeth, you are very lucky’, I say 6. ‘why lucky?’ and she say ‘you’re able to supply everything for 7. your kids and then you’re given a day off’ xxx I take her to the 8. agency, they have so many conditions there for how many months 9. you need to work, no days off for six months, I think, there are many 10. conditions, and they cannot receive the whole amount of salary, 11. ‘this is wrong’ I say (1.0) I was always very lucky thanks to God, 12. I have never been far away from him even if I’m far away

Seeing the question in line 1 (‘so did you have a good life?’) in writing, and reflecting on its suitability, I wonder whether these kinds of questions should be asked at all. Although Floribeth introduced the term prior to this excerpt, it acquires a different meaning when used by a privileged academic from the Global North. The conversation with Floribeth was characterised by honesty and genuine engagement: she was a remarkable and brave woman who had had an adventurous life, and talking to her was both enjoyable and educational for me. She had been respected by her different employers, and she had demonstrated that it is possible to be content as a domestic helper, even if you have to live a major part of your life separated from your loved ones. But is it fair for somebody, who can choose to go abroad or not to go abroad and who has never had to be separated from his young children, to ask a domestic helper, who has had no choice but to go abroad and endure separation from her children and husband for 20 years, if she has had a good life? I do not have the

84  Spurning exploitation answer, but I think it is important researchers keep discussing positionality in research interviews and acknowledge that, by means of the questions we ask, we are part of the narratives we collect, and we should keep discussing how our research agenda can become more ethically responsible and empowering for our participants (Consoli & Ganassin, 2022a; Ladegaard, 2022a) (see Chapter 7). It is noticeable that in her response, Floribeth links ‘the good life’ to her bluntness (lines 2–3). She has been able to speak up and perhaps therefore is treated like a family member (lines 3–4). Other helpers envy her who is able to make money and is treated well (lines 6–7), and because she suspects that the agency is not abiding by the law, she takes her neighbour’s domestic helper to the agency to confront them. A weekly day off has been compulsory by law in Singapore since 1 January 2013, and it is unlikely that it is legal to cancel the weekly rest day for the first six months. And although the minimum wage for DMWs in Singapore varies depending on the helper’s country of origin, it has never been legal for the agency to retain part of her salary. Thus, Floribeth has also been an advocate for other DMWs to help them fight for their rights (line 11). However, she is not just an outspoken person but also very humble, so she gives credit to God for what she has been able to accomplish (lines 11–12). There are generally not many happy stories among the Javanese returnees, but Yulia, a 38-year-old domestic helper from Central Java, provides an exception. And it is noticeable that her relative success is linked to her ability to speak up. In the next excerpt, Yulia explains why she became a domestic helper. Example 27 (Central Java) Yulia, 38 years old, 12 years in Hong Kong, back in Indonesia temporarily to give birth to her second child. A male fieldworker (FW) and a female Indonesian interpreter (Interpret) were also present (original in Bahasa and English). 1. Interpret: excuse me, ma’am, is there a relationship between you going 2. overseas and getting divorced (Bahasa) 3. Yulia: no (1.0) yeah, to be honest (Bahasa) because uhm: (English) 4. Interpret: you don’t have to tell me anything, just // (English) 5. Yulia: I’ll speak in English because otherwise my husband will know 6. about this (English) 7. FW: yeah, sure (English) 8. Yulia: before I choose to go to Hong Kong // because my ex-husband 9. is Chinese (1.0) the family treat me well, my husband also treat 10. me well but he has other ladies [laughs] (English) 11. FW: all right, mistresses, yeah? (English) 12. Yulia: yeah, mistresses, so I decided to divorce him and go to Hong 13. Kong (2.0) I will prove to him I can survive without him (English)

Spurning exploitation 85 Yulia’s story is very different from the Javanese women who shared their experiences of their husbands’ infidelity in Chapter  3. They blame themselves for what happened: “I  was patient because I was the one who left him behind”, says Dita, and therefore she decided not to divorce him. The assumption behind the interpreter’s question in line 1–2 is that the separation caused the break-up of Yulia’s first marriage, but that is not the case. She switches to English because she does not want her current husband, who is doing repair work in the house during the interview, to hear about it (lines 5–6). The last part of her turn: “otherwise my husband will know about this” suggests that he may not even know she has been married before. The infidelity makes Yulia decide to divorce the ex-husband and go to Hong Kong (lines 12–13), and the reason she gives provides compelling evidence that she is a strong and determined woman. She wants to prove to him that she can survive without him (line 13), which shows her commitment to being independent and self-reliant. This determination becomes even clearer in the next part of Yulia’s story. She is back in Indonesia on holiday and needs to renew her Overseas Workers’ Card (Kartu Tenega Kerja Luar Negeri, or KTKLN) before she returns to Hong Kong (original in Bahasa; underlined words in English). Example 28 (Central Java) 1. Yulia: then before I departed, because at that time I did not have // the 2. rules of the KTKLN changed lately so I had to renew, and I made 3. it and had to do the medical and I went to see the doctor and I was 4. pregnant [. . .] then they said they would not give me permission 5. (1.0) ‘this is not possible, I will not allow this’ (1.0) then I was just 6. angry because I had already paid a lot of money and spent a lot 7. of time, and without the KTKLN I cannot go [. . .] when I got to the 8. airport in Jakarta it turned out it was okay, they did not ask if I 9. was pregnant (1.0) when I arrived there [in Hong Kong] I just 10. called the agent and I said, ‘I’m pregnant but I don’t want to 11. terminate the pregnancy, I want to stay here until [I’m] seven months 12. [pregnant] so don’t encourage the employer to terminate me, if you 13. do I’ll sue you’, I said it like that, people there are afraid if you 14. know the law

Yulia’s story is exceptional among the stories recorded in the Java communities. She is renewing her contract with her employer in Hong Kong, and she is back in Indonesia for two months to renew her visa and her KTKLN, which was a requirement at the time for DMWs to be allowed to work overseas but has since been abolished. Part of the KTKLN application is a medical examination, and it turns out she is pregnant. She apparently conceived shortly after she came back to Indonesia, and her husband is the father, so she is not devastated about the pregnancy. When she is told by the Indonesian authorities that she cannot go to Hong Kong if she is pregnant, she knows it is against the law,

86  Spurning exploitation and she protests and vows that she will not allow it (line 5). This is extraordinarily bold given her position as an uneducated woman in a traditional Muslim community where women are not expected to speak up. But her boldness pays off, probably because the authorities realise that Yulia knows about her rights, so she is eventually allowed to fly to Hong Kong. The battle continues when she arrives in Hong Kong. Her agent there also needs to know that she is aware of her rights, so she tells him/her in no uncertain terms (lines 12–13). The law in Hong Kong is very clear that pregnancy is not a legitimate reason for termination of contract. If the employer terminates the employment, and the helper can prove beyond reasonable doubt that she was fired because she was pregnant, she can sue the employer for illegal termination of contract, and, as many examples have shown, she is likely to win the case. The agent knows this, as do many employers of DMWs. On a social media site for employers of domestic helpers in Hong Kong, a group of employers discuss this issue (Ladegaard, 2022b). A helper has not returned to her employer after her weekly day off, and while there is no evidence whatsoever that the helper is pregnant, the employers draw on racially motivated prejudice to associate DMWs with immoral behaviour and construct a fanciful narrative in which the helper went out with a foreign man on her day off, had sex and got pregnant, and will therefore be a burden to the employer. Thus, employers engage in online othering of DMWs and foreign men who are discursively constructed as racial and cultural others with loose moral standards (Robles & Shrikant, 2022). And the advice given to the helper’s employer is

Photo 5.2 A Chinese recruiter from Hong Kong is interviewing DMWs at a training centre in Central Java. Each helper is identified by a number.

Spurning exploitation 87 therefore to fire her straight away before it is known whether she is pregnant so that there will be no legal repercussions. Yulia knows the law, and that creates fear in people who are prone to exploit powerless people (lines 13–14). Abusive relationships thrive on the fear and ignorance of the oppressed (Freire, 2005), and only by knowing their rights will DMWs be able to fight back. It is noticeable that Yulia is the only woman in the Indonesian data who got pregnant while working as a DMW in Hong Kong and was able to fight for her rights. Part of the reason is that she is married and got pregnant by her husband while she was on leave. The other women whose stories were recorded in this study were single mothers who got pregnant out of wedlock and therefore had to bear the shame of returning to Indonesia with an ‘illegitimate’ child and no husband (Ladegaard, 2019). But perhaps more importantly, Yulia stood up for her rights as she did before when her first husband was unfaithful to her (Example 27). She explains later that when she first arrived in Hong Kong, she was given a pamphlet that explained DMWs’ rights under Hong Kong law. She also tells us that she contacted PathFinders and Christian Action, two migrant worker NGOs who work to inform DMWs of their rights and help them if they encounter problems, before she called the agent. Thus, she knew that the law was on her side, and this gave her the confidence she needed to make demands. Yulia concludes this part of her story by saying: “if you encounter a problem, don’t be afraid, that has become my guideline” (original in Bahasa). This is a powerful testimony from a woman who, through trials and tribulations, has been able to claim a voice for herself, both in relation to a powerful agent and employer and in her home community where women generally do not have a voice in public. Part of the reason she has been able to garner respect in her local community is her relative wealth. She has worked in Hong Kong for ten years, which has allowed her to buy land and build a modern house with electricity, tiles on the floor, and running water, and this has generated respect and admiration among her neighbours, friends, and relatives (Chan, 2018). However, it is arguably Yulia’s ability to combat fear that is the main reason for her success. In a study of the relationship between abusive supervisors, fear, and defensive silence in a large manufacturing company in the Philippines, Kiewitz et al. (2016) found that it is the fear of abusive superiors that compels employees into silence. They also conclude that a perceived contextual ‘climate of fear’ further exacerbates employees’ tendency to remain silent, and that “the power gap between superior and subordinate becomes an enabler of abusive supervision in that power overrides any circumstances that might mitigate or rectify the abuse” (ibid. p. 737). If we draw a parallel to the relationship between DMWs and their agents/employers, this could also be characterised as a climate of fear where the perceived power gap is so large that it likely to override any mitigating and rectifying circumstances. Kiewitz et al. (2016) also speculate on circumstances where employees may break the silence despite their fear, and they argue that subscribing to values that attach more significance to protecting others than protecting oneself may help employees break the cycle of silence (p.  740). This arguably also applies to Yulia’s case: like

88  Spurning exploitation other domestic migrant women, her focus is on her family rather than herself, and this awareness may aid her in combating fear and fight against negative stereotypes and discrimination against DMWs (Palmer, 2020). 5.4 Concluding remarks An important point in the work of Michel Foucault (1975, 1980) is that power is always relational. It cannot be studied in isolation but only as a contextual phenomenon; or, in line with the social constructivist approach that has informed the research in this book, as a discursive and thus relational construction. Traditionally, power has been conceptualised as a negative force: as something that dominates, controls, and manipulates, but another important point in Foucault’s theorising about power is its positive potential. It can control, restrict, and manipulate, but it can also be a force that empowers and produces knowledge. Thus, power is always present in human relationships, both in its restraining and its productive effects (Flaskas & Humphrey, 1993). Foucault also argues that in any power relationship, there is the ever-present possibility of resistance. And like power itself, resistance is also relational: a discursive construction that cannot be studied outside the network of relationships in which it occurs. Flaskas and Humphrey (1993, p.  44) sum up Foucault’s position on power like this: From Foucault’s position, if the effects of power are to be challenged, they can only be challenged from within the power relationship itself, and it is the idea of the always-present potential for resistance that offers some optimism for change in oppressive power relationships. I have previously questioned the ‘always-present potential for resistance’ in the relationship between domestic helpers and their employers (Ladegaard, 2017a). How can a domestic helper with a ‘broken self’ (Brison, 1999), who has been silenced by trauma, regain her voice and her subjectivity and challenge an employer who has almost unlimited power over her? Or where should an Indonesian DMW, who has never had a public voice in her local community, and whose husband or father decided for her that she should work overseas as a domestic helper, find the self-confidence and the courage to challenge an abusive employer or agent? The stories that have been analysed in this chapter provide evidence that it is possible, but the stories that were analysed in Chapter 4 show that it may not be a realistic possibility for all. If we look at the successful stories of resistance in this chapter, and the lives of their storytellers, we might be able to identify a number of factors that help DMWs challenge their powerful employers and agents and garner some respect. First, virtually all the women in the data set who were able to resist their abusive employers and fight back were mature women with children. Thus, Kiewitz et al.’s (2016) conclusion mentioned previously is likely to apply: that the people

Spurning exploitation 89 who are able to break the silence despite their fear and speak up against abusive employers are those who subscribe to values that attach more importance to protecting others than protecting themselves. The women who fought back all had one goal above all other goals: to give their children a better life, and they were pursuing that goal whatever the cost. Christina, a 58-year-old mother from Bohol who spent 17 years in Japan, speaks for many when she says: “I left for my children to continue school, because if I stay we cannot afford college (1.0) my husband is only a tricycle driver, so only for my children.” Second, the women who were able to speak up were all firm believers in God. The Bible provided them with the interpretive framework with which they could make sense of their suffering and their success. They referred to God’s justice, which they believed would eventually prevail, and they believed that God was ultimately in charge of their life story whatever happened (Ladegaard, 2017b). Jovi, a 39-year-old Filipino domestic worker, aptly sums up the philosophy of life that most of the Bohol returnees abide by: “trust in God and trust in yourself (1.0) but you have to look forward, don’t let anyone bring you down” (see the full excerpt in Example 37, Chapter 6). For these women, their trust in God is closely related to their trust in themselves, and that combination allows them to look forward and not allow anyone or anything to bring them down. Lastly, the DMW returnees who were able to speak up and fight for their rights were self-confident and proud. They knew that they had done good things they could be proud of: they had been helpers, in the positive sense of the word, for their own families, for the families they worked for, and ultimately therefore been servants of God in everything they had done (Ladegaard, 2017b). Maya, a 51-year-old Bohol returnee who worked ten years in Singapore, sums up her accomplishments like this: “I’m very proud, I’m so proud because working as a domestic helper, I helped my employer, they helped me, they helped my children go to school, so I can say I’m proud to be a domestic helper.” Jovi supplements: “and working as a domestic helper, we know how to speak English, I’m so proud of that.” A  sense of pride and accomplishment was evident in the Bohol women’s narratives, and it was related to the women’s ability to help. There is also ample evidence in the stories that the women are proud of their education, and about the fact that they are often better educated than their Asian female employers. Speaking English is a status marker which not only signifies education but also sometimes gives Filipino domestic helpers the upper hand over the Asian employers who sometimes do not speak (much) English (Ladegaard, 2020a). Their ability to speak English is also used by employment agencies to make Filipino DMWs more marketable (Lorente, 2018), and this also contributes to their sense of pride and accomplishment and strengthens in-group identity.

6 Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving?

If we look across the returnee narratives recorded in Java, it is noticeable that most of them are stories of abuse and exploitation. They are testimonies from people who are struggling to survive. Many of them have to deal with the aftermath of trauma, as we saw it in Chapter 4, but even the stories that are not explicitly traumatic – that is, the narrator does not display any immediate signs of being traumatised – are not happy stories. They provide evidence of a trend I have suggested before: that Indonesian DMWs are more susceptible to abuse and exploitation than Filipinos (Ladegaard, 2017a). This chapter aims to first sum up the issues that many of the Indonesian returnees are struggling with and then sum up the issues and challenges that concern the Filipino returnees in Bohol. 6.1 Exploitation In response to the first question put to all the participants (What was it like for you to be a migrant worker?), many of the Indonesian returnees shared stories of blatant exploitation, which would constitute labour law violations in countries that have protection for migrant workers. Sadly, however, many receiving countries have virtually no labour laws that protect migrant workers from exploitation. The first example is from a sharing session in Central Java with six returnees. Example 29 (Central Java) Melati, 28 years old, 2 years in Malaysia, 2 months in Hong Kong, back since 2007. Five more migrant workers (four female, one male), a female interpreter, and a male fieldworker were also present (original in Bahasa). 1. Melati: in the morning I woke up at five o’clock, cleaned the house, swept, 2. mopped like that, later on at seven o’clock I was asked to go to the 3. factory, then I was in the factory until five o’clock, then I go back 4. home to do the cleaning again (1.0) I helped with cooking, mopped,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005-6

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 91 5. cleaning again lah: (1.0) then I washed clothes and sometimes at 6. night I was asked to work overtime in the factory again, or 7. sometimes they brought back work for me, I slept at one o’clock, 8. sometimes two o’clock at night, woke up at five o’clock in the morning 9. (1.0) even the meals were never // I never had enough food, I was 10. given just a little bit like that (1.0) after one year I asked if I could 11. go back home, I could not stand it any longer, but the employer did 12. not allow it, they said that if I wanted to go home they would not pay 13. any salary and the air ticket [. . .] I was confined inside the house, if 14. I wanted to call home, it was not allowed, if I wanted to send a letter 15. it was not allowed, I was confined inside the house, not allowed to 16. go out on my own

Melati worked in Malaysia under slave-like conditions for two years. Her workdays were up to 20 hours, and although she was brought in to do domestic work, the employers used her as cheap labour in their next-door factory. This practice is illegal since her visa only allows her to work as a ‘domestic servant’, the official term used in Malaysia. The problem in Malaysia (and many other receiving countries) is that DMWs are excluded from the Employment Act. This means that workers’ rights regarding termination of contract, maternity benefits, work hours and rest days, and benefits related to termination and retirement do not apply to domestic servants (Khan, 2022). This puts them in a vulnerable position; even if they should have the stamina and the confidence to sue the employer, it is unlikely that they would win the case because the law is unilaterally on the employer’s side. Another problem that applies to Melati’s case, and many similar cases (see Ladegaard, 2017a for examples), is that she is so worn out by hard excessive labour, lack of sleep, and too little food that she becomes weak and even more vulnerable and therefore is less likely to take action against the employer. Brison (1999) argues that once a person has lost her voice and subjectivity and been reduced to silence by her perpetrator, she becomes an object, or worse, she is “made into someone else’s speech, the medium of another’s agency” (p. 47). There is evidence that this happened to Melati: after one year, she says she cannot bear it any longer, but she does not resign and insist she wants to leave; she asks for the employer’s permission to leave, which is not granted (lines 10–12). Melati is also cut off from potential help and support from fellow domestic workers or family (lines 13–16), and this, in combination with the factors mentioned previously, explains her helplessness and inaction. In his analysis of testimonies from Holocaust survivors, Langer (1991, p. 85) introduces the notion of ‘blameless inaction’. He argues that the very idea of doing nothing is so alien to the self-reliant Western mind, which is dominated by the idea that individuals control their own fate (cf. Skeggs, 2008), that we sometimes confuse it with fatalism or indifference. Langer (1991, p. 85) says: “The very concept of blameless inaction by former victims is foreign to the ethical premises of our culture, where

92  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? we sometimes confuse inaction with cowardice, or indifference.” I argue that ‘blameless inaction’ is the appropriate term to apply to Melati and many of the other Indonesian returnees, including Ismaya who was in the same sharing session. Example 30 (Central Java) Ismaya (male), 30 years old, 4 years in Singapore, 2 years in Malaysia, back since 2010. Five more migrant workers, a female interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in Bahasa, except the fieldworker’s question in line 1). 1. FW: what does a male migrant worker do? 2. Ismaya: I worked in Singapore, I worked on a boat (1.0) my job // 3. basically I never slept (1.0) the problem was I can’t say I 4. worked from morning till night, because I could not see the 5. time or the weather, I did not know the time, never knew the 6. time (1.0) if for example I started working at two o’clock daytime, 7. I’ll finish around morning time the next day, without sleeping, 8. sometimes I only slept once every two days, and then I slept for 9. only three hours, or at the longest six hours only 10. Interpret: what was your job? 11. Ismaya: on a boat, fishing [. . .] I was always on the boat, lived on the 12. boat (2.0) 19 months, the first trip was 19 months, the second one 13. was 22 months (1.0) so after 19 months I saw dry land and stepped 14. on the ground and then we sailed again, and it was 22 months until I 15. stepped on the ground again [. . .] I worked every day for 19 months 16. Interpret: without a holiday? 17. Ismaya: we had two days for Chinese New Year, but that was arranged on 18. the boat

Ismaya is another example of a migrant worker returnee who worked under slave-like conditions for six years. He had no contract and therefore could not complain about violations of the terms of his employment. He worked under deck and never saw daylight, and this explains why he was uncertain about the hours he worked (lines 5–6). During his first 19-month hire, he only had two days off for Chinese New Year, and he never left the boat, even when they docked to unload the fish. The workers were not allowed to leave the boat at any time, presumably because the employer knew that they would not come back if they were allowed to disembark. A question I was tempted to ask but did not was why he agreed to do a second term. The answer is most likely ‘blameless inaction’: like Melati, he had lost his voice and his subjectivity and been reduced to silence by his masters (Brison, 1999). The evidence is less obvious in the discourse, but there is contextual information to support this interpretation. Ismaya was a marked man; he did not cry like many of the women, but he looked like a defeated man: he did not smile once during the

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 93 70-minute sharing session, and his stare was empty or his eyes downcast, as I wrote in my field notes. Shortly after my visit to Java, news reports started to surface about the Thai fishing industry using slave workers from developing countries, who were kept in captivity, not given enough food, and not allowed to sleep. An article in the New York Times refers to them as ‘sea slaves’ (Urbina, 2015). Several other news reports follow, and it turns out that the problem is widespread, and these slave boats are found not just in and around Thailand but throughout the entire South China Sea. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) organises an international conference on Labour Exploitation in the Fishing Sector in 2016 to discuss the issue, and they subsequently publish a paper, Forced Labour and Human Trafficking in the Fisheries1, to officially recognise the problem and suggest possible ways to handle it. ILO’s Global Action Programme2 was the response to this crisis, and while this programme addressed some of the issues, recent media reports suggest that the problem persists (see Yea & Palmer, 2021). Ismaya was an early victim of sea slavery in the Asian fishing industry, a horrifying experience that may have marked him for life. His experience echoes with Bales’ (2012) comment about modern-day slavery, which, he says, “focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people in the traditional sense of the old slavery but about controlling them completely” (p. 4). In the new slavery, Bales (2012) continues, the question is not “’Are they the right color to be slaves?’ but ‘Are they vulnerable enough to be enslaved?’ The criteria of enslavement today do not concern color, tribe, or religion; they focus on weakness, gullibility, and deprivation” (p. 11). As Ismaya later tells us, from his youth he was driven by a desire to start his own business, but he knew he could not raise the money in Indonesia. So when recruiters came to his village, he signed up believing that this would be his chance of making the money he needed. He only ever made pocket money from his labour, and when he finally managed to get away after six years, he barely had enough to buy a return ticket to Indonesia. Another theme that came up, both directly and indirectly, in many of the sharing sessions in Java was how the husbands of DMWs tried to control their lives and, at the same time, had little respect for their marriage vows. 6.2. Controlling husbands The first example is from a sharing session in Central Java with six female returnees, all of whom were quite talkative and willing to share their experiences, even if they were painful. It is the same group as in Example 1 (Chapter 3). Example 31 (Central Java) Wani, 39 years old, 2 years in Taiwan, 2 years in Hong Kong, back since 2012; Mega, 46 years old, 3 years in Singapore, 5 years in Taiwan, back since 2008;

94  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? Nini, 48 years, 4 years in Singapore, back since 2006; Dinda, 36 years old, 2 years in United Arab Emirates, 2 years in Malaysia, 2 years in Kuwait, back since 2007; Mita, 36 years old, 9 years in Singapore, 2 years in Hong Kong, back since 2013; Harum, 38 years old, 2 years in Saudi Arabia, 2 years in Taiwan, 3 years in Hong Kong, back since 2007. A female Indonesian interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in Bahasa and English). 1. Wani: when I departed the family was in good condition, praise be to 2. God, all was good (Bahasa) 3. Mega: but when the money is spent, the remittances finished then // (Bahasa) 4. Nini: // some are like that (Bahasa) 5. Dinda: most of them are like that (Bahasa) 6. Mita: the wife send money home and the husband is enjoying life 7. with other girls (English) 8. FW: so that happens? (English) 9. Mega: a lot (Bahasa) 10. Wani: it’s such a problem (Bahasa) 11. Interpret: how many cases do you know of? (Bahasa) 12. Dinda: many (Bahasa) 13. Wani: many (Bahasa) 14. Nini: so many (Bahasa) 15. Mita: so many here (Bahasa) 16. Harum: most women go abroad because they have a problem with the 17. husband, mostly (Bahasa) 18. Mita: how many are united after the separation? I mean how many go 19. back to the husband, how many per cent are like that? (Bahasa) 20. Dinda: it’s rare (Bahasa) 21. Mita: they mostly go to another country to work because the husband 22. is no good, sometimes they’re fighting, not enough money, and 23. he plays with other girls (English) 24. FW: yeah, okay (English) 25. Nini: and meanwhile we work hard to make money for the family, 26. and then sometimes something like this happens at home [laughs] 27. the money for dating is spent (1.0) cheating, happens a lot [laughs] 28. (Bahasa) 29. All: [laughter]

The sharing session from where Example 31 is taken was very lively and possibly one of the most honest of all the sharing sessions in Java. All the women in this group were actively involved in the storytelling, and it is noticeable how they engage in what Georgakopoulou (1997) has called joint storytelling. Wani begins by testifying that all was well with the family when she left (lines 1–2), but the implication is, as she later reveals, that it did not stay that way. Mega takes her storyline further (line 3) by implying that when there are no more remittances, the husband will file for divorce, as they explain in subsequent turns not reported here. She does not complete her turn because Nini

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 95 interrupts her with a mitigating statement that only some husbands are like that (line 4), but Dinda immediately corrects her by saying that this would apply to most of them (line 5). In lines 6–7, Mita spells out what the problem is: that while the women are overseas making money to sustain the family, the husbands have fun with their mistresses (Ladegaard, 2018a). She switches to English to make this rather blunt statement, and she does it again in lines 21–23 to make another equally blunt comment: that the husbands are no good. It is possible that she wants to include the English-speaking fieldworker more in the conversation, so she switches to accommodate to him (Gallois & Giles, 2015), but it is also possible that committing a potentially face-threatening act (FTA) in a second or foreign language is seen as less offensive. Like swearing, which is easier for most people to do in a second or foreign language because it creates emotional distance to the offensiveness of the act (Dewaele, 2010), FTAs may also be easier to commit in a language which is less emotionally charged for the speaker. Despite the fieldworker’s question in English (line 8), the women continue the sharing in Bahasa (lines 9–15) by confirming repeatedly that infidelity is a very common problem. As the discourse progresses, the women become more explicit about the problem and who is to blame for it. At the beginning of this sharing session, the same topic was discussed (see Example 1, Chapter 3), and while the women initially were more likely to blame themselves (Mita says, ‘Because I worked there, so my husband cheated’), they now become more direct about the nature of the problem: they have to work overseas to support the family, but the husbands spend the money on other women and eventually divorce them (lines 25–27). Mita even claims that hardly anyone reunites happily with her husband after the wife’s return (line 18–19), and the only viable option therefore is that she goes overseas to work again (line 21). Thus, the husbands of the Java returnees essentially control the life of their wives. The women feel compelled to go overseas again because they cannot see that a happy family life is possible after the husbands’ infidelity. The next example is from a sharing session with 12 women in East Java. They were supposed to be in two groups, but because the previous sharing sessions in another village ended up being much longer than expected, we were delayed, and the spokesperson for the group (also the hostess of the event) decided that the two groups should be put together. We began by eating together, and the women started sharing while we were eating. About half an hour into the storytelling, Endah receives a phone call, and the women start talking amongst themselves in Javanese. Example 32 (East Java) Ulima, 39 years old, 8 years in Hong Kong, back since 2008; Endah, 36 years old, 3 years in Saudi Arabia, back since 2008; Uira, 41 years old, 4 years in Saudi Arabia, back since 2004; Aulia, 46 years old, 9 years in Taiwan, back

96  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? since 2012; Permeta, 30 years old, 6 years in Taiwan, back since 2014; Susil, 34 years old, 6 years in Hong Kong, back since 2013; Taman, 43 years old, 13 years in Saudi Arabia, back since 2010. Five more returnees, a female interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in Javanese, Bahasa and English). 1. Ulima: her husband (1.0) her husband called (Javanese) [to the interpreter] 2. Endah: he told me he’ll be back at two o’clock and I’m not there (Javanese) 3. Uira: what time is it? (Javanese) 4. Aulia: was he angry? (Javanese) 5. Permeta: excuse me, ma’am (Bahasa) [to the interpreter] 6. Susil: I didn’t have any experiences when I worked abroad, I did not 7. go out at all (Bahasa) 8. Aulia: it’s five o’clock (Javanese) [loudly] 9. Permeta: can you please be quiet, you haven’t shared your story yet (Javanese) 10. Endah: my husband has called [laughs] [to the interpreter] (Bahasa) 11. Interpret: okay, yeah (1.0) her husband called [to FW] (English) 12. FW: okay, sure (English) 13. Endah: we did not get any reward but I get my husband’s anger, that’s 14. not good ma’am (2.0) excuse me ma’am, I have to go (Bahasa)

Photo 6.1 This Indonesian woman managed to build a house after working in Saudi Arabia for one year. Her first employer tried to rape her.

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 97 15. Interpret: yeah (Bahasa) 16. Taman: with respect, ma’am, I also have to go (1.0) I’m sorry, ma’am (Bahasa) 17. Endah: we can continue next time (Bahasa)

This exchange, which interrupted the storytelling for a while, illustrates the women’s positioning in the community. Endah’s husband calls, and he is angry that it is close to dinner time, and she is not at home to prepare the food (line 13). The call brings Endah in a difficult position: she is keen to stay, if for no other reason than to get the souvenir3 the women had heard about (line 13), but she is not in a position to choose what to do. The situation is ‘not good’ for her (line 14), and she must leave. Aulia’s question in line 4 suggests that it is a likely reaction for a husband to get angry if his wife is not at home in time to cook dinner, and when she says very loudly that it is five o’clock (line 8), she might be indirectly suggesting that the interpreter should terminate the sharing so that the women can go home. Permeta reminds them that they are there to share their story (line 9), but Endah keeps telling the interpreter that her husband has called (line 10), and eventually, two of the women apologise and leave (lines 14 & 16). Susil’s comment in lines 6–7 is also quite revealing: despite having spent six years in Hong Kong, she claims that she has no story to share because she never went out. The women who participated in this sharing session had all spent many years overseas and had presumably developed some independence from their husbands. But when they return to the local community, whatever independence they might have gained needs to be sacrificed. In another sharing session in Central Java, the participants discuss whether they would consider being migrant workers again, and while most of the women have no desire to go, Pertiwi, a 35-year-old returnee who spent five years in Singapore, says, “I want to but I’m not allowed by my husband.” This could, of course, be to protect her, but this is not part of the conversation. There is no need for Pertiwi to explain further because if the husband does not allow it, she cannot go. The same principle applies to many of the women’s first contract. It was their husband or father who signed them up with a recruiter, sometimes even without asking them. One woman in a village in Central Java told me4 that shortly after her wedding, her husband informed her that he had signed an agreement with a local recruiter, and she was going to Hong Kong as a domestic helper. She left shortly after and completed two two-year contracts while sending remittances to the husband every month. She heard from neighbours that the husband was having an affair, and it was confirmed when he filed for divorce in order to marry his mistress who was expecting a baby. In the divorce papers, he cited her absence from home as a reason for divorcing her! 6.3. Shame, fear, and loneliness Another theme that frequently came up in sharing sessions in Java, particularly if the returnees’ migratory journeys had failed, was the shame and humiliation many of the women felt when they came home without any financial reward,

98  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? or worse, with an ‘illegitimate’ child and no husband. They often ended up in this situation because they were lonely and naive about how to navigate in the world outside of the protected home environment. In a pre-departure sharing session in Hong Kong, Setia tells us how she met her Pakistani boyfriend. Example 33 (pre-departure, Hong Kong) Setia, 29  years old, 5  years in Hong Kong. Five more migrant women, a female Indonesian interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in English, except for ‘mosque’ in line 5, which was in Bahasa). 1. Setia: then I met this guy there [in Kowloon Park] he’s from Pakistan, 2. he’s a Pakistani guy who also don’t know English, I know a little 3. English and he’s asking me ‘where’s the MTR [station]’ and I show 4. him and we become good friends, and every holiday he call me, ‘can 5. you meet me?’ we met in the mosque, then just walking around (1.0) 6. about six months we are good friends, then suddenly he say he fall in 7. love with me (1.0) he proposed to me inviting me to have dinner, 8. he bring me to the Mirador, but inside the restaurant they have a 9. hotel, right in the // 10. Interpret:        //guest house 11. Setia: guest house, yeah, but I don’t know that (1.0) then we order the food, 12. then I get the food, and we go there [the guest house] and he force me 13. to do that↑, honestly I’m // it’s raining outside, I don’t like to do it, but 14. he say ‘you don’t pity me, we are already friends, I will take care of 15. you’, everything, and we did↑ it [laughs] we did that, but nothing 16. happened, I’m not pregnant (1.0) but my ma’am, my employer, 17. every time she listen to me talking on the phone with that guy, then 18. she ask me ‘you have a boyfriend or what?’ and I say ‘no’, but the son, 19. every time I walk him to school, his school is in Tsim Sha Tsui, every 20. time I pick him up I meet him, so the son talk, ‘yeah, she has a 21. boyfriend, a black guy’, and then my ma’am terminate me (3.0) 22. FW: why? 23. Setia: because I have a boyfriend (2.0) and then I had to go to Macau to 24. wait for my visa

Setia is lonely and isolated after she moves from her village in Central Java to Hong Kong, so when a Pakistani migrant worker shows her attention in Kowloon Park, she develops a friendship with him. They are both Muslims, so the mosque is an appropriate and legitimate meeting place, and afterwards they walk around the park on Sundays. Then he declares his love, proposes, and takes her to a restaurant to celebrate (lines 6–8). What Setia does not know is that he has also booked a room, so he takes her to the nearby guest house and forces her ‘to do that’ (lines 12–13). She uses a common euphemism: ‘to do that↑’ (line 13), ‘to do it’ (line 13), ‘we did it’ (line 15), ‘we did that’ (line 15), and it is obvious she talks about

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 99 sex. She may use the euphemisms to avoid the embarrassment involved in openly verbalising a taboo subject. The phrase she uses, ‘he force me to do that↑’ with stress and rising intonation on ‘that’ (lines 12–13), suggests that she was raped, but, as she later admits, she did not know what it meant when he invited her into bed, and she did not know that this could lead to pregnancy. Although she does not get pregnant initially, she still loses her job just for having a (coloured) boyfriend (lines 21 and 23). This shows some employers’ attitude towards their domestic helpers: they see them as commodities that can be hired and fired as they see fit, not as human beings who have a right to engage in a love relationship with another human being (Ladegaard, 2022b). It also shows Setia’s naivety about her situation. This is a clear-cut case of unlawful termination of contract, and had she known labour laws in Hong Kong, she could have approached one of the migrant worker NGOs and asked for their help to sue the employer, and it is likely she would have won the case. But Setia knows nothing about her rights and puts up with abuse from both her boyfriend and her employer. After she has processed her visa application in Macau and is back in Hong Kong to begin a new contact, she finds out she is pregnant, and although the boyfriend initially promises to support her (lines 14–15), he lets her down and marries a local woman as this will grant him permanent residency in Hong Kong, something Setia cannot give him. She is alone again in a strange place, pregnant and without a job, and she stays illegally in the city because she is too scared to go home and admit to her parents that she is pregnant and not married. The next example is from Merpati’s story, which illustrates what may happen to a woman who returns to her community with an ‘illegitimate’ mixedrace child and no husband. She has literally been ostracised from the village and relegated to an old shack outside the community. When we arrived in the village asking for her, nobody knew where she was, or at least nobody wanted to guide us to where she was. Her brother had left his young daughter with her when he passed away, and because she could not provide for the girl and her parents, she left the girl with her mother and went overseas as a domestic helper. Example 34 (East Java) Merpati, 32 years old, 2 years in Singapore, 7 years in Hong Kong, back since 2013. A  female interpreter and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in English, except the interpreter’s question in line 18). 1. Merpati: you know people in Hong Kong are // I don’t’ know // very very // 2. everything I do is wrong (1.0) a little problem become very big, 3. I don’t like it but I just do it, okay, keep quiet (1.0) they are always 4. angry like that lah: (1.0) all I think about is how to find money,

100  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 5. eating is also hard but not the problem, just can’t find money (2.0) 6. and it’s very difficult to find a good employer (3.0) 7. FW: you didn’t have any good employers? 8. Merpati: [laughs] no, no good employers [. . .] the first one in Hong Kong, 9. I was underpaid because I don’t speak Chinese, and also I know 10. very little English (1.0) and also difficult because there in Hong 11. Kong I also don’t have any family (1.0) and also it’s very difficult 12. to find // I can do the job but I’m illegal so [laughs] so I don’t have 13. a visa already and then my baby is small [. . .] 14. FW: what happened when you came back? how did your family react 15. to you and the baby? 16. Merpati: because I only have // this is my family [laughs] my father, mother 17. is gone already [. . .] 18. Interpret: what are you thinking about the future? (Bahasa) 19. Merparti: I also need // my baby is getting bigger and she [the niece] need to 20. go to school, but this one is difficult, how to find a job, because 21. here uhm: I [do] not have any people, I’m alone [cries] 22. FW: yeah, it’s okay, right

The interview with Mertapi was arguably one of the most distressing we had. She was a disgraced woman, and her community made sure that she felt it. An aunt, her only living relative apart from her niece and daughter, had allowed her to live in an abandoned house outside of the village, but she had no income and no sense of community because nobody wanted to have anything to do with her (line 21). It was also loneliness (lines 10–11) and negative experiences with a series of bad employers (line 8) that brought her into the arms of her Bangladeshi boyfriend, who was an illegal migrant worker in Hong Kong at the time. Her agency told her that she could not get the minimum wage because she spoke no Chinese and little English (lines 9–10). Lorente (2018) shows how migrant workers’ language competence is used as a selling point in the marketisation of DMWs, and this example shows that the opposite also happens: that they are considered second rate and therefore paid less because they do not speak Chinese or English. This arrangement is a clear violation of migrant worker laws in Hong Kong, but, as Mertapi later says, she does not know anything about the law. All she cares about is making money (line 4), so she keeps quiet when her employers get angry and complain about her (lines 3–4). We do not know any details about her pregnancy, other than the boyfriend was also lonely so they kept each other company. He gets deported from Hong Kong before the child is born, and she does not know where he is and therefore cannot ask for child support. Merpati’s story has some of the characteristics of a trauma narrative: it is somewhat incoherent with several incomplete utterances or self-interruptions (lines 1, 12, 16, 19), and she is close to crying several times but uses what we might call a nervous laughter instead (line 12 and 16) (Mindess, 2007) until she finally breaks down in tears (line 21) and cries continuously thereafter. The headline I wrote in my field notes after our visit to Merpati’s house was ‘Hopelessness and despair’, because it was hard to see a way out of her loneliness, shame, and fear, and even harder to find a way for her to make money. She was

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 101 charged with overstaying in Hong Kong and therefore could not work there, but even if she could find an employer in another city, she had nobody to look after the children. There seemed to be no forgiveness for her transgressions in the community but also no way out of the community for her. I asked for her permission to pass on her name and contact information to a local migrant worker NGO, and I know she was contacted later by the leader and asked if she wanted to move into their shelter in Jember. The Bohol returnees had also experienced hardships and suffered from loneliness, but most of the sharing sessions there were relaxed, sometimes humorous and enjoyable and, at least for me, educational. Many of the women had positive stories to tell, and, unlike the stories shared by the Indonesian returnees, they were full of optimism, despite the difficulties they had been forced to face. 6.4 ‘But we will survive!’ Example 35 is from a sharing session with seven Bohol returnees, and the women are discussing what it was like for them to work as DMWs overseas and be separated from their family. Example 35 (Bohol) Rose, 42  years old, 10  years in China, back since 2011; Jasmine, 60  years old, 16 years in Finland and Sweden, back since 2007; Maya, 51 years old, 10 years in Singapore, back since 2006. Four other DMW returnees, a male fieldworker, and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also present. 1. Rose: it’s too hard [the separation] you don’t know what your children 2. are doing, if they will eat, or what they are doing at night, if 3. they can sleep, and in the morning if they will eat breakfast, 4. things like that, and especially when you hear something like 5. your son or daughter get sick (1.0) you almost want to fly home 6. straight away, just to look after them (1.0) when my eldest son 7. was two years old, their father died in an accident, so I’m a mother 8.  and at the same time a father, it’s very difficult, and then my 9. eldest sister will be the one to look after them and she’s also sick 10. so I have to shoulder her medicine and the meals for the children, 11. and then you get a letter that your son got into a fight in school 12. [laughs] it’s very difficult yeah, it’s really hard but you have to 13. survive [laughs] because you’re poor so you have to fight these 14. feelings yeah 15. Jasmine: for me, sir, after so many years I work as a domestic helper, and 16. to me it’s exciting to come back here, to my old job and my friends, 17. if you’re away from your family, it was not really bad for me, I 18. supported my parents but it was big help for us that I work (1.0) 19. financially I mean, it’s a really big help and after I stopped in 2007 20. I’m working in the farm with my husband, so that’s my life now 21. Maya: I’m a little divided, I’m happy to be back home but sad we don’t

102  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 22. have money here 23. All: yeah [laughter] 24. Maya: when we were working as domestic helpers, every month we had 25. money but here we’re happy because it’s our home but no money 26. All: [laughter]

Rose’s account aptly captures migrant mothers’ dilemma, especially if they are single mothers who are both the breadwinner and responsible for their children’s emotional needs. She worries about their needs, but Rose’s conclusion is clear: this is extremely hard but as a poor single mother “you have to fight these feelings” (lines 13–14). This is a powerful statement, which signifies that even the expression of emotions is socially correlated. There are feelings that poor migrant mothers cannot afford to have because this will prevent them from doing what they have to do: leave their children in other people’s care in order to sustain them. No other aspect of migrant mothers’ lives comes out so powerfully in their narratives as the pain caused by this dilemma (Asis et al., 2004; Ladegaard, 2018a). Other women in the group had less problematic migratory experiences. Jasmine does not have any children and could focus on making money for her parents, which was her reason for going overseas, and now she is happy to be back working with her husband on their small farm. And Maya aptly summarises another dilemma that all the women recognise, as signified by their laughter (lines 23 and 26): that going home means no income (lines 21–22 and 25). As mentioned in Chapter  1, a common feature in all the migrant villages that were included in this research is unemployment. For people in central Bohol, there are no employment opportunities, so the women survive on small-scale farming, or they rely on the remittances from children working overseas. The conversation about life in Bohol and how to provide an income continues in Example 36 with the same group. Example 36 (Bohol) 1. FW: so how do you make money here? 2. Rose: well, raising chicken, raising pigs, or raising a goat whatever, 3. that’s the only way we can survive 4. Maya: yeah, farming (1.0) we sell plants, crops, and get a bit of money, 5. Jasmine: we have a few coconut trees (1.0) that’s how we can make money 6. FW: yeah, okay 7. Jasmine: but we will survive sir [laughs] we’re very happy 8. FW: very happy, that’s good 9. Maya: but if there is another offer we may accept [laughs] if there is 10. a chance to go back 11. FW: so if you got a good offer you’d still consider going abroad? 12. Jasmine: oh yeah, for me yes I will (2.0) well, me and my husband we 13. don’t have any children anyway, so if there’s a chance I will 14. accept [. . .] if there is an offer, like my employer from before 15. if they will hire me, well, no time to say no [laughs]

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 103

Photo 6.2 After working overseas in households with washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and dishwashers, many migrant women come back to houses with no electricity and running water.

The only opportunity for making money for the Bohol returnees is through small-scale farming: selling crops and raising and selling livestock (lines 2–5). This provides very little income, but despite their poverty, the women reiterate that they are happy (line 7). However, given the opportunity to go overseas to work as domestic helpers again, many of the Bohol returnees claim that they would accept (lines 12–15). In all of the groups (including the current one), I asked if anyone was actively seeking employment overseas. Only two women confirmed that they were engaged with an agent trying to go overseas again, while most of them reiterated, like the women in Example 36, that given the right opportunity, they would go again, but they were not actively seeking work outside of Bohol. From an outsider’s perspective, this may seem surprising, but it is not our job as scholars to ‘assess’ or ‘understand’ the people whose lives we are studying using our own sociocultural norms. As always when I am baffled by what appears to be paradoxes and inexplicable questions, I turn to the women’s stories for answers.

104  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 6.5 Happiness is three meals a day! The next example is from the last part of a sharing session in Bohol, and the women are discussing what they are thinking about their future. Jovi, who was starved by her Korean employer while working in Singapore, is reflecting on what this experience has done to her. Example 37 (Bohol) Jovi, 39 years old, 2 years in Singapore, back since 2006; Rose, 42 years old, 10 years in China, back since 2011; Reyna, 59 years old, 3 years in Bahrain, back since 2005; Maya, 51 years old, 10 years in Singapore, back since 2006. Three other DMW returnees, a male fieldworker (FW), and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also present. 1. Jovi: I’m not thinking like uhm: I don’t put myself down, or my employer, 2. it’s just fear (1.0) yeah, just fear, I have to think positive, that 3. experience I have to look at it just like it’s only in the past, not in 4. my future, and if they will ask me if I’ll go back (1.0) as long as 5. it’s a different employer, then I will go (1.0) I know what to look 6. for but that’s because of that bad experience but I didn’t take it 7. personally, there’s no point, I just move on 8. Rose: not looking back is a big help 9. Reyna: [sings] let it go [laughs] 10. Rose: leave the past behind 11. Maya: leave the past, let come what will 12. Reyna: [sings] this is life 13. Jovi: this is our life here in Bohol [laughter] 14. FW: yes, but is it still a good life, is that what you’re saying? 15. Reyna: yes, still very happy 16. Maya: very happy 17. Jovi: as long as we eat three times a day [laughs] [. . .] and the way to 18. survive is just to pray, there is no other way but to pray (1.0) trust 19. in God and trust in yourself (1.0) but you have to look forward, 20. don’t let anyone bring you down, no way, you have to work and 21. chin up [laughs] just like that, and you have to be proud of it

Jovi’s testimony (lines 1–7) aptly encapsulates the Bohol returnees’ credo: do not put yourself down, which ties in with her statement later in this excerpt: “trust in God and trust in yourself ” (lines 18–19), and do not let others put you down. Fear is just an emotion that can be overcome, and the secret, Jovi argues, is not to dwell on the past but think positive and focus on the future. Jovi also emphasises how she intends to use the negative experience she had in Singapore if she were to become a DMW again. Now she knows what to look for (lines 5–6), and this testifies to a mature woman who has learned from negative experiences in the past and therefore now knows how to protect herself. The other group members join in with supportive

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 105 comments to show that they are aligned with Jovi’s message. Reyna even sings her supporting lines (9 and 12); she uses the tune and lyrics from the Beatles’ song “Let It Be”, but she replaces ‘be’ with ‘go’, perhaps to align with the key message in Jovi’s testimony. In line 12, the words are new but the credo the same: this is life, and the implied meaning, as Jovi underlines (line 13), is that this is life for domestic helper returnees in Bohol. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Reyna picks the tune from “Let It Be” to make these statements, as this song is also about hope and about acquiring wisdom through life’s ups and downs. The fieldworker’s question in line 14 is a follow-up comment to the discussion the women had just prior to this example (see Example 36) where Jasmine reiterates that they will survive despite their trials and tribulations, and she claims they are ‘very happy’ (Example 36, line 7). But it is still possible that ‘possessive individualism’ (Skeggs, 2008) lurks in the background of FW’s question suggesting disbelief that you can be happy as a poor migrant woman with no job, no money, and no status (see further on researcher reflexivity in Chapter  7). But Jovi’s answer provides both wisdom and perspective and might also provide an answer as to why the Bohol returnees are not actively seeking reemployment as domestic helpers. They have provided for their children’s education, which was the major goal for their migratory journey, and if they can eat three times a day, they do not ask for more. The second part of Jovi’s testimony (lines 17–21) is arguably one of the most powerful, realistic, and yet optimistic statements in all of the returnee narratives. She reiterates first that happiness for people in these Bohol communities is three meals a day (line 17), and second that prayer and trust in God will sustain them. And with this realisation comes pride and self-confidence (line 20). As somebody who knows what it does to a person to be put down and humiliated by her employer, she has survived the suffering and humiliation, and, in the process, she has become a proud and self-confident person who will not allow anyone to put her down again, as signified by the heavily stressed ‘no way’ in line 20. The next example also illustrates how the Bohol women are content with their lives and find meaning in the activities they are now engaged in. Example 38 is taken from the last part of a very inspiring sharing session/interview with Floribeth (Chapter 5, Examples 25 and 26). Example 38 (Bohol) Floribeth, 64 years old, 20 years in Singapore, back since 2003. A male fieldworker (FW) and Rodrigo, a community elder, were also present. 1. FW: I know you have your knee problems and you’re retired now but 2. if you could, would you go back to work as a domestic helper? 3. Floribeth: no more, no more chance of that, sir (1.0) I want to enjoy my last

106  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 4. years, I want to settle down (1.0) for a long time I never settled, 5. that’s why when I go back in 2003, I was asked to lead a Bible 6. study, so I said ‘okay’, I want to serve him and my neighbourhood 7. if I can, so no more // no more chance to work // I was asked by my 8. old employer, by the Chinese one, I was asked to come back, but I 9. said ‘sir, no more chance, no more, maybe my daughter’ (1.0) but 10. my daughter is very lazy because she (1.0) she grew up with yae yae

Floribeth worked as a domestic helper in Singapore for 20  years, and she affirms repeatedly that she has had a good life. She characterises her employers as ‘good and kind’ but this is arguably related to her ability to demand respect if she was not treated well (see Example 25 and 26). In the last part of the sharing session, we talk about the future, and she makes it clear that, although the family has no money, she does not want to be a domestic helper again. She was even invited to come back to her Chinese employer in Singapore because, as she later tells us, his wife – with whom Floribeth had to fight to gain respect – is not happy with the other helpers they have had: “After me, I don’t know how many servants they had, my sir say ‘Floribeth, the next servants are not like you.’ ” This recognition contributes to her pride and sense of accomplishment, but she is still adamant that she wants to stay in Bohol. In alignment with her Christian world view, she wants to serve God and her neighbourhood (line 6). The last line reveals another painful experience shared by many migrant mothers that their children were brought up by nannies and therefore do not share their parents’ values (line 10). 6.6 Concluding remarks My data set is not big enough to make any generalisations about Filipino and Indonesian (domestic) migrant workers, so these concluding remarks should only be applied to the women and men who participated in this research. As already mentioned, the participants in this study were recruited through local migrant worker NGOs, who are probably more likely to be in touch with migrant workers who have had problems while working overseas. Furthermore, when the invitation to participate in this research project went out in the communities, it is possible that women (and men) who had experienced problems, and would like to talk about them, were more likely to come forward. Thus, the observations and comments in this chapter should not be used to make any general claims about Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers. However, with this caveat in mind, it is striking that the Indonesian migrant workers in this study share stories that are surprisingly similar. They are stories about exploitation and abuse, and the narrator’s situation is characterised by

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 107 hopelessness. Also, very few of the Indonesian participants had any desire to go overseas again, and those who did were compelled to do it because there was no other way for them to support their children and, in some cases, atone for what was seen in the community as their (sexual) transgressions. Many were marked by traumatic experiences, and even years after their return, they were still struggling with the aftermath of trauma. The Indonesian returnees’ stories also showed that they had little or no awareness of their rights: they signed employments contracts they did not understand, they did not know that it is illegal to hire a domestic helper in Hong Kong and pay her below the minimum wage, and that pregnancy is not a legitimate reason for termination of contract. Whatever happened to them, they put up with it and kept quiet, like Merparti in Example 34. The stereotype of the quiet and obedient Indonesian maid is confirmed by Phillips (2021), who interviewed employment agencies in Hong Kong and Taiwan and looked at how they ‘advertise’ Indonesian and Filipino domestic helpers on their website. The three adjectives most frequently used to describe Indonesian helpers were ‘submissive’, obedient’, and ‘patient’, whereas Filipino helpers were seen as ‘smart’ but ‘troublesome’ because they would refuse too much overtime and would not forfeit their weekly day off (pp. 90–91). The Bohol returnees had also experienced trials and tribulations on their migratory journeys, but these experiences did not break them. They suffered what most migrant workers have to endure: homesickness, worries about their husbands’ infidelity and their children’s wellbeing, an almost insatiable need for more money in the extended family back home despite the regular remittances, long working hours, and loneliness (Ladegaard, 2018a; Nisrane et al., 2019). But unlike the Javanese migrant workers, the Bohol returnees knew about their rights, and when confronted with unfairness, discrimination, and labour law violations, they put up a fight to change their circumstances. They were not afraid of their employers, and if they felt they were treated unfairly, they sent a clear message to them that if they were not treated well, they would leave. It does not mean that their life was easy or free from pain. In almost every sharing session in Bohol, the returnees also talked about the painful separation from their children, and even years after their return, some of them cried when they remembered the sacrifices they had to make by leaving their children behind (Ladegaard, 2019). But these experiences did not break them. Through prayer and an unwavering faith in God, awareness of their rights and a strong sense of community and support from other DMWs, and determination to make it work, they were able to persevere and take pride in what they had accomplished for their families (Ladegaard, 2017b). In her discussion of identity and visibility, Skeggs (2008) points out that identity positions are not equally available to all. Some are able to present and negotiate favourable identity positions that will enhance their prestige

108  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? and recognition; others have to perform an inscribed identity, and they are misrecognised or negatively evaluated. Thus, the possibility to use race, social class, and gender as a resource to enhance visibility only exists for groups and individuals who are not negatively positioned by these categories. DMWs are positioned by their race and gender and, more importantly perhaps, by their social class. They are poor and therefore vulnerable and exploitable (Bales, 2012). They are social, cultural, and religious others who are positioned by negatively valued identity positions, and therefore, they become invisible in the societies where they work and to whose prosperity they have made significant contributions. As Skeggs (2008, p. 28) states in her conclusion: “visibility and recognition are not the central issues [. . .] it is the value that is given to the visibility that counts: it has to be valued authorised visibility” (emphasis in original). Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers do not have any valued authorised visibility in the societies where they live and work and where many of them have spent the better part of their lives. They are othered by their employers and by the local population and, more often than not, receive little or no recognition for their work (Ho, 2020; Ladegaard, 2022b). But the difference between the two groups is that the Filipino returnees have valued authorised visibility in their local and in their diasporic communities; the Indonesians do not. The Indonesian returnees in this study tell stories of lonely, isolated individuals who migrate to cities in foreign countries of which they know nothing and where they are ill-equipped to live and work. They have no network, no sense of community, and they know little about labour laws and the rights they have as DMWs, at least in some receiving countries. They also do not have a voice and visibility in the male-dominated communities from which they originate. Some of them experienced not to have a say about their own future because it was their husbands or fathers who signed them up to be DMWs, or they experienced to be devalued as wives because their husbands took a mistress while they worked overseas. So, the sacrifices they made on behalf of their families also cost them their marriage (Ladegaard, 2018a). Skeggs (2008, p. 28) argues that “it is only through relations with others that identity can be known”, and this may be the essence of the Indonesian returnees’ alienation and negative identity transformation, and the relative success of the Filipino returnees’ migratory journeys. The Filipino narratives are stories of community, sharing, and support, and therefore, stories of relative optimism. They are also stories of powerful women fighting against oppression and using whatever means available to them to fight for space and recognition in their diasporic communities (see Roces, 2022 for an example). The Indonesian returnees, on the other hand, tell stories of exploitation and abuse, which are arguably grounded in their isolation and loneliness, and in the fact that they are ill informed about their rights and about life outside their local

Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 109 villages. As Brown (2007, p. 19) points out: “at the center of externalizing, deconstructing, and reconstructing dominant social discourses is an exploration of the relationship between knowledge and power” (emphasis added). The Indonesian participants in this study did not have access to knowledge about themselves5 and their rights as migrant workers, and they were therefore unable to access the power and recognition that come with knowledge. Thus, the findings from this study have identified a need to further address Indonesian migrant workers’ plight. They, more than their Filipino peers, need to know how to survive in big cities. They need to gain access to knowledge about their rights, and they need to gain a voice and visibility so that they may eventually be able to speak up for themselves. Hooks (1994) argues that identity politics “emerges out of the struggle of oppressed or exploited groups to have standpoint on which to critique dominant structures, a position that gives purpose and meaning to struggle” (p. 88). The ideal ‘standpoint’ from where the struggle can be fought is arguably in the work done by migrant worker NGOs. They work tirelessly, in Indonesia, the Philippines, and overseas in the receiving countries, to raise migrant women’s awareness of their rights, to encourage them to speak up, and to identify ways for them to combat their fear. This is no easy task and will take time, but if we as scholars and students, intellectuals, and socially conscientious citizens want to support this development, we need to support migrant worker NGOs to continue their work (Catedral & Djuraeva, 2022). The task is even more pertinent now where new groups of DMWs appear on the scene, such as young women from rural areas in Cambodia who know even less about women’s rights and about the issues they are facing6. If we want to help prevent new stories of abuse and exploitation, we need to support the NGOs in their attempts to empower migrant women. Notes www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/policy-areas/fisheries/lang – en/index.htm 1 2 See www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/–ed_norm/–declaration/documents/ publication/wcms_429359.pdf 3 All the participants received a small token of appreciation for their participation in the research: a small Chinese purse with IDR20,000 (approximately US$2). This is the equivalent of what they would make for a day’s work in a palm oil factory, so the local NGO therefore suggested this amount to compensate them for their time. We did not tell the participants about this before the event, so the only way Endah in Example 32 could have known about it was if participants in some of the other villages, who had attended sharing sessions earlier, had told her. 4 While I stayed in one of the migrant villages in Central Java, I went for a walk one day, and I met the woman who apparently knew who I was. She told me her story, but I did not bring my recorder, so I can only relay the story as she told it to me. I did not write down her name but invited her to participate in one of the sharing sessions in the village. She promised that she would but never showed up, and when I came back to record her story, she was not at home.

110  Sinking and drowning, or surviving and thriving? 5 Statements made by some of the Indonesian participants who got pregnant out of wedlock suggest that they were unaware that sleeping with a man could lead to pregnancy. 6 A colleague from one of the local migrant worker NGOs I work with posed as a potential employer and called a Hong Kong employment agency and asked about the new helpers from Cambodia that had just been advertised on their website. The agent said that these women were highly recommendable because they were “obedient and naive and easy to control”.

7 Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research1

In recent years, there has been an increased awareness that researchers need to critically reflect on their role as researchers, their relationship with the participants, and their responsibility for generating (and highlighting) specific findings in their data, and perhaps for ignoring other equally valid findings (see Consoli & Ganassin, 2022a). This is especially important for researchers who work for and with disenfranchised and marginalised groups, and in this chapter, I shall attempt to position myself in relation to the migrant worker participants in this study, reflect critically on my role as researcher and social activist, and discuss how we might be able to use our research for purposes that go above and beyond publication in academic journals. 7.1 Positionality and decentring In many humanities and social science disciplines, including applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, education, intercultural communication, and sociology, it is now widely recognised that researchers need to position themselves in relation to the participants whose lives, languages, and cultures they are studying (see, for example, Ladegaard  & Phipps, 2020; Sorrells, 2022). Positionality means recognising that we are located “within an intersecting web of socially constructed hierarchical categories, such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, and physical abilities, to name a few”, and how these social positions impact our relationship with others as well as the power we claim in these relationships (Sorrells, 2022, p.  14). With Alison Phipps, I have argued that if language (discourse) is to do its “social labour as speech acts (Austin, 1975) and to engage in social action interculturally”, then some degree of reflexive decentring of our positions as researchers and authors is required (Ladegaard & Phipps, 2020, p. 68). In my work with DMWs, I  know that I  speak from a position of power and privilege, and I trust that has been acknowledged in the previous chapters of this book. I am a white European full professor working at a leading university in Asia, and I know this is a position that comes with power and recognition – with voice and visibility according to Skeggs (2008). Also, as I hope the examples in this chapter will show, I learned from my mistakes as DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005-7

112  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research the projects progressed, and I stopped asking certain questions, realising that they exposed my naivety and ignorance about the participants’ lives and experiences (Ladegaard, 2022a). Despite my previous attempts to position myself in relation to the migrant women I studied and critically discuss ‘the relationship between the researcher and the participants’ (Chapter 9.4 in Ladegaard, 2017a), I have been criticised for failing to effectively discuss my positionality in the relationships I developed with the women (Marchetti, 2018, p. 755). Therefore, I  want to reiterate as forcefully as I  can that the unequal power relationship between the migrant women and myself is an issue that needs to be acknowledged in every step of the research process: from research design and data collection, to interpretation and application. This unequal power relationship comes across in multiple ways. Throughout the years I  have worked with DMWs, they have consistently addressed me as ‘sir’. I initially argued that this polite respectful term of address was an automated response operating below the level of conscious awareness, and that the women used it without attaching much meaning to it (Ladegaard, 2012, p. 464). The evidence for this interpretation was that the women used it even in the middle of painful self-disclosures while they were crying and being visibly distraught – a context which would arguably dictate a more informal address form – and when this did not happen, I  saw it as evidence that it was an automated response. However, I now see this interpretation as wishful thinking more than anything. Coming from Denmark, a country that is renowned for its promotion of egalitarian values, I have repeatedly asked not to be addressed as ‘sir’ and ‘Professor Hans’ in the attempt to erase social boundaries. And yet, this is exactly how I have been addressed throughout the years at the shelter and on my field trips. I do not think we can disregard the obvious interpretation: that ‘sir’ (also) signals deference and inferiority, and by using it, the women position themselves as having lower status (Wortham & Gadsden, 2006). However, while acknowledging unequal power relationships, we should also be aware, as Sorrells (2022) points out, that positionality is not a static concept: it may shift and change depending on context and interlocutor. In a lecture theatre full of students, or in a meeting room chairing a departmental meeting, I would assume a position of power and authority, and if I did not, it would be difficult to fulfil my role. But a sharing session with distressed migrant women is different. I would not see myself, and I would do my utmost not to position myself, as an authority in that context, but I may still be perceived as such by the participants. The problem is that the speech act that positions and acknowledges privilege also masks other aspects of identity, and it does not eliminate the underlying question in research with marginalised groups which is led by an educated privileged academic: “By what right might you stand here and address us?” (Ladegaard & Phipps, 2020, p. 68). Critical comments from academic peers, who have reviewed papers I  have written about my DMW research over the years, suggest that being a white man

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 113 working with Asian migrant women is perceived by some peers as problematic and therefore requires a high degree of legitimacy. Increasingly, I take recourse to my position as social activist to legitimise my research. The end goal is ultimately to use my research to benefit the DMWs who gave me their time and their confidence, and this will not happen if our research findings never make it beyond publication in academic journals and books. Needless to say, this does not mean that academic research is not important in itself. Generating new knowledge is always important and requires no further justification! But the social activism component of my work helps me justify to the women by what right I am standing there addressing them. I begin each sharing session by explaining this to the participants, and I am confident it increases the women’s motivation to tell me their stories. I am an academic, so one of my goals with the research is obviously to publish the findings. But it is not the end goal; the long-term objective of this research is social change. No one person can instigate change, but I  believe that if we work together: researchers, NGOs, lawyers, news reporters, social workers etc., we can push for long-term changes that will benefit (domestic) migrant workers. Positioning should also be concerned with whose voice matters (Catedral & Djuraeva, 2022). Or, as Sorrells (2022, p. 22) puts it: “whose language is spoken and whose language is trivialized or denied; whose actions have the power to shape and impact others, and whose actions are dismissed, unreported, and marginalized.” It should be obvious after reading the returnee narratives that were analysed in the previous chapters that migrant workers are denied voice and visibility in the receiving countries to which they have made significant contributions, and many of them also in their home countries to which they eventually have to return. Freire (2005) argues that dialogic participation of the oppressed can only be considered authentic to the extent that it can instigate real change and transform reality for oppressed people. Catedral and Djuraeva (2022) apply Freire’s argument to their own research as applied linguistics working with DMWs, and they claim: If we as applied linguists seek to include marginalized stakeholders, we must involve ourselves with transforming the material conditions from which they speak, so as to increase the likelihood that their speaking can bring about material changes. (emphasis in original) (p. 6) The important point here is that change should be brought about through migrant workers’ own speaking, and this is arguably one of the advantages of a discourse analytic approach to storytelling. The emphasis is on allowing migrant workers to speak for themselves and tell their stories, as opposed to the stories we as researchers might want them to convey about themselves. This is arguably also the way to decentre our own role as researchers and learn

114  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research to listen to our participants. I concur with Shay (2003), who has worked with traumatised war veterans’ storytelling, when he says: So before analyzing, before classifying, before thinking, before trying to do anything – we should listen. . . . All too often, however, our mode of listening deteriorates into intellectual sorting, with the professional grabbing the veterans’ words from the air and sticking them into mental bins. To some degree that is institutionally and educationally necessary, but listening this way destroys trust. (emphasis in original) (p. 4) Shay’s approach to his participants’ storytelling is admirable and something I  have aimed at adopting in my research. The stories of war veterans and (abused) migrant workers are “sacred stuff”, as one of Shay’s war veterans put it, and we should treat them with the respect and humility they deserve. 7.2 Reflexivity The problem with reflexivity is that it usually happens in hindsight: we reflect on our practices in the research process, and by doing that, we realise what we should (not) have done. For those of us who are engaged in research that requires data in the form of interviews, focus groups, or, as in my case, sharing sessions, we know that our actions, motivations, and subjectivities will impact the research we do (Sharma, 2021). The questions we ask, and how we ask them, as well as the questions we choose not to ask, will impact the interview data and the stories we collect. In other words: we as researchers are part of data. Our questions are not ‘objective’ or value-free; they reflect our values and norms and also what we would like to get out of the research interview/sharing session. Although we might be trying our best not to ask leading questions, even ‘non-leading’ questions can implicitly attempt to steer participants in a particular direction, or implicitly try to elicit a particular response. I mentioned an illustration of this in Example 16 (Chapter 5): by asking repeatedly whether Maria had experienced any problems while she was a migrant worker in the UK, the implicit assumption is that DMWs must have had problems when they work overseas away from their families. So, when Maria reiterated twice that she had had no problems, the answer was not taken at face value. The problem is that we are often unprepared for these problematic situations because there is no interview guide, which will prepare us for these unpredictable situations. Only experience and a willingness to learn from our mistakes can help us improve our research practices. I was trained as a quantitative sociolinguist in the early 1990s. The positivist empirical tradition was by far the predominant approach at the time, and nobody really questioned its feasibility (see, however, Cameron et al., 1992 for a critical discussion). I  believed that the researcher should stay

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 115 in the background, remain anonymous (or even invisible), and engage as little as possible in the data collection process in order not to unduly influence what the participants said and how they said it. You were advised to always have the observer’s paradox at the back of your mind and do your utmost not to ‘contaminate’ the data. I believe now that what it takes for us to question well-known ‘truths’ in any epistemological tradition is to experience its flaws and see (and hear) that what it attempts to accomplish is problematic at best. Thus, what it takes for us to reflect critically on the research process, and our role in it, is to see and hear what we as researchers say and do during data collection, and how our participants respond, and vice versa. The implicit assumption behind the positivist empirical paradigm is the belief that “reality exists separately from the knower of the reality” (Rabbidge, 2017, p. 962). This means that knowledge is seen as “objective and identifiable, and with the ability to represent generalizable truths” (ibid.). However, more recent research in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, and related fields has recognised that reflexivity is “a necessary practice through which researchers examine their subjectivities as key agents who shape the very social events they intend to investigate” (Sharma, 2021, p. 230). Drawing on Consoli and Ganassin (2022b, p. 1), reflexivity in the context of the current research is defined as the sets of dispositions and activities by which researchers locate themselves within the research processes whilst also attending to how their presence, values, beliefs, knowledge, and personal and professional histories shape their research spaces, relationships, and outcomes Needless to say, acknowledging the importance of our subjectivities in the research does not mean that the findings should be considered less ‘scientific’, nor should it affect the reliability or legitimacy of the research. But it means that researchers can hopefully be more honest about the research process and openly admit that they have an impact on the outcome of the research. We as researchers are not separate from but part of the knowledge production: researchers and participants co-construct reality together. This is not a problem inasmuch as it is acknowledged, but there has unfortunately been little room for openly addressing researcher subjectivities in journal articles and grant applications, let alone the mess we may inadvertently create in the research process (Rabbidge, 2017). I shall now look at some examples from the Returnee Narratives Project, which – when I saw the transcript – made me reflect critically on my role as a researcher and as a fellow human being who became a witness to human-inflicted trauma. The first example shows how we as researchers may, consciously or not, have different agendas from our participants, and how this may prevent us from hearing the story they want to tell (cf. Shay, 2003).

116  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 7.2.1 Conflicting agendas

The first example is from Rika’s narrative (see Examples 5 and 10). She overstayed in Hong Kong and was eventually forced to leave the man she loved and with whom she had two children and go back to Indonesia. At the beginning of the interview, she explains how she was underpaid during her first contract. Example 39 (Central Java) Rika, 33 years old, 8 years in Hong Kong, 2 years in Malaysia and 2 years in Singapore, back since 2013. A female interpreter (Interpret) and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in English). 1. FW: how much did you get? 2. Rika: I get only 2,300 and only one holiday [per month] 3. FW: for how long? 4. Rika: two years, and then they’ll give me a new contract but they won’t 5. give me more (1.0) then I want to go to Indonesia but my agency 6. make some problem, they say that when I finish my two-year contract 7. then my passport come back to me, but when I want to get the 8. passport they ask me for 3000 deposit, then I don’t have the money 9. (1.0) then I ask my employer to help: ‘please help me, I just want 10. the passport and I’ll come back again to work’ (1.0) but they don’t 11. help me and then, I feel so painful, then I run away from my 12. employer [wobbly voice] 13. FW: did you file a complaint against them to get the wages they owe 14. you? 15. Rika: no 16. FW: no, so they never got to pay? 17. Rika: no (1.0) because it’s my first time in Hong Kong and I don’t 18. know // no one helping me 19. FW: right, so you didn’t know you were underpaid? 20. Rika: I know but (1.0) 21. FW: oh, you knew, okay↑ 22. Rika: I know but I don’t want to do anything because I really need 23. the job

Underpayment is the norm rather than the exception for the Indonesian first-timers in my data. The agency and the employer convince Rika that because she is new and has no experience, she cannot get the minimum wage yet, but if she works hard, she may be able to get it after her first two-year contract. But when she is about to renew her contract, she is offered the same salary. The minimum wage at the time was HK$3,400, so she was offered a significantly reduced salary and only one day off per month as opposed to a weekly day off stipulated in the law. Rika is close to crying when she recalls how the agency required a deposit of HK$3,000 from her to get her passport back,

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 117 and how the employer refused to help (line 12). She cannot leave because she has no passport, so she accepts the underpayment and eventually goes back to the same employer. My question in line 13 is almost rhetorical. A woman in great distress who has just confessed that she is in pain would not have what it takes to file a complaint against her employer and agency. It is her first time in Hong Kong, and, like so many other first-timers who are subjected to various types of exploitation (Choy et al., 2022), she does not know where to go and who to turn to for help (lines 17–18). At this particular point in the storytelling, Rika’s distress is audible in the paralanguage (wobbly voice), and what she may need therefore are expressions of sympathy and understanding, not a question which indirectly blames her for letting the employer get away with underpayment. This is an example of the interviewee/storyteller and researcher having different agendas: Rika tells her story, as she has been asked to do, and she is visibly and audibly distraught as she recalls how she was treated. The researcher, on the other hand, is trying to ignite some kind of social indignation in the storyteller and get her to profess that she should not accept being underpaid. The researcher’s exclamation in line 21 – the stress on ‘knew’ followed by ‘okay’ with rising intonation – could be interpreted as an indirect expression of blame, although this was not intentional. Her answer in lines 22–23 epitomises the dilemma DMWs often find themselves in: they may know about their rights, but that does not mean they can speak up and make a claim to what is rightfully theirs. Their poverty makes them vulnerable and contributes to silencing them. Employers and agencies thus generate a sense of “unfreedom in the workplace”, manipulate DMWs’ emotions, and “create and maintain the power relations that make exploitation possible” (Collins & Stringer, 2022, p. 14). The misalignment of agendas becomes even clearer five minutes later in the storytelling when Rika tells us that she had to leave the boyfriend she loved in order to allow her children to go to school. Excerpt 40 is the continuation of Example 5 (Chapter 3). Example 40 (Central Java) Same context as Example 39 1. Rika: my husband is sick, that’s why I cannot live [with him] 2. I chose my children, because I chose a future for them, not, 3. not happiness for us because I feel pain, pain, always painful 4. that I separate from him and then make another life (2.0) go 5. back to Indonesia for (1.0) my kids to go to school [sobs] 6. FW: uhm (4.0) so do you think this was the right decision to go back? 7. Rika: I think // now I’m thinking it’s not (1.0) if I can choose again, 8. I don’t want to go

118  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 9. FW: okay, okay, so would you like to go back to Hong Kong or 10. another country and become a migrant worker again? 11. Rika: yeah (1.0) now I’m waiting 12. FW: yeah, so you already applied? 13. Rika: yeah, I already applied [21 turns left out] 14. Rika: last July I already applied to go to Singapore 15. FW: oh, Singapore, do they have a minimum wage? 16. Rika: yeah 17. FW: okay, so you know what you should be paid and not accept 18. anything less than the minimum wage? 19. Rika: yeah

Seeing the transcript of this dialogue, I  am concerned about the lack of sensitivity that comes across, and the ignorance behind some of the questions I am asking. Rika has confessed to being traumatised: she is in pain and cries as she explains that she chose her children’s future at the expense of her own happiness (lines 1–5). In light of this confession, the question in line 6 is irrelevant. Thinking about whether or not Rika regrets her decision to come back is not going to help her here and now. She has clearly communicated her distress and anxiety; in previous turns not reported here, she has mentioned trauma and depression, so asking her to think about whether she made the right decision is not helpful but could in fact further exacerbate her despair. The same applies to the question in line 9: would you like to go back to Hong Kong? I should have known that the question is purely hypothetical; she already told us that after overstaying, she surrendered to the authorities. This means she was deported from Hong Kong and is prevented from working in the city for a period of time (in Rika’s case, two years). The problem of misaligned agendas comes up again in lines 15–19. My indignation that Rika has accepted years of underpayment and other contract violations comes up in my advice (which could be seen as a reproach) not to accept a salary in Singapore that is below the minimum wage (lines 17–18). Traumatised migrant workers are not in a place where they can make strategic, sensible decisions about their future (Collins  & Stringer, 2022). Rika is in survival mode and only thinking about her children, and in that situation of extreme vulnerability and precarity, I failed to be a sympathetic listener who should pick up on cues in the discourse and align my agenda with hers. The power distance between the researcher and participant is highlighted in this example, and while this problem is impossible to erase, it is possible to show empathy and genuine concern and thus support the teller in her attempts to share her painful experiences (Shay, 2003; Shuman, 2005). Another issue that gives rise to reflexivity is when a participant in a sharing session reassigns roles to herself and the researcher, usually by asking questions and expecting the researcher to divert from his usual role as investigator and answer them.

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 119

Photo 7.1 A future DMW poses for a video shoot in front of a fake kitchen at a training centre in Central Java. The women have to show their hands are clean and no fingers are missing.

7.2.2 Reassigning roles

The idea of the sharing session is explained to the participants prior to each session. I emphasise that it is not a Q&A session: participants are encouraged to share their life stories and experiences with each other rather than just provide answers to specific questions. This also means, by implication, that the researcher should be part of the sharing and not just be assigned the role of investigator. Occasionally, however, a participant takes it upon herself to ask the questions and expect the researcher to share his experience or opinion. In Example 41, the women have just shared their initial stories, which are mostly stories of exploitation and abuse: underpayment or no payment, no statutory holidays, too little food, and not enough rest. Pertiwi is full of indignation about how she and her co-workers have been treated, and she wants to know why the employers’ illegal actions have no repercussions for them.

120  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research Example 41 (Central Java) Pertiwi, 35 years old, 4 years in Singapore, 2 years in Taiwan, back since 2013. Six other migrant worker returnees, a female interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in English for this part of the sharing). 1. Pertiwi: how about the contract, like this one, the contract is signed for 2. two years, then why after ten months, [she’s] sent back, no 3. salary, no money, how to do that? 4. FW: yeah 5. Pertiwi: like this one, how to do it? it must be illegal? 6. FW: yeah 7. Pertiwi: I want to know how they do this because // is any Indonesian 8. migrant worker better [off]? How many // how many like this one? 9. how many employers do like this one? 10. FW: yeah, it’s because the agent is not doing their job because the 11. agent only works for the employer 12. Pertiwi: like me in Taiwan, 3-year contract, then grandfather die after 13. two years, right? I want another employer but cannot, why? 14. [24 turns left out] 15. Pertiwi: so Indonesian migrant workers will suffer loss, we worked 16. there and have already deducted for agent’s cost, deducted 17. some amount, then they sent us back home, we did not get 18. money, the one who get the money is the employer and the 19. agent

Unlike many of her peers, Pertiwi is aware of her rights, and she wants to discuss why Indonesian migrant workers always lose out. The case she refers to in line 1 is that of Irene, who had signed a two-year contract with a Singaporean employer. She worked extremely long hours, had to cook and clean for eight people, got little food and rest, and was paid no salary for ten months. Then the female employer, who she describes as ‘evil’, dumps her in Batam, an Indonesian island 12 miles south of Singapore, with no money, and only because other domestic workers took care of her, was she able to survive and eventually go home. Pertiwi changes to English in a predominantly Bahasa-speaking sharing session, and this suggests she is addressing her question to me. But her initial attempts to reassign roles in the group so that she asks the questions and I provide the answers are met with little success. She wants to know why employers get away with illegal practices, but her two initial attempts (lines 3 and 5) are not really answered. So, she reiterates that this is a question for the investigator by explicitly stating: ‘I want to know’ (line 7). Pertiwi eventually gets a brief and somewhat evasive answer (lines 10–11) that it is because of the agent, but the answer is, of course, much more complex. An honest answer would have been that the system is seriously flawed,

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 121 and that it always seems to work in the employer’s and the agency’s favour, but I do not take on the role of the participant and co-producer of knowledge who is willing to share his own frustrations about the unfairness and discrimination that are typical of the labour export market in Asia (cf. Khan, 2022). It is likely that Pertiwi was looking for sympathy and understanding more than answers, but it is clear that she wants the researcher to take on a different role and contribute to the sharing, which he is reluctant to do. I want to finish with a more successful example, which is from a sharing session recorded in October–November 2022. The topic for discussion in this part of the sharing is the dilemma migrant workers face: if they stay at home, they will live in poverty with no prospects of their children getting a better future; if they go overseas to work as migrant workers, they might be able to build a house and give their children an education, but they will have to endure the pain of being separated from their loved ones for years on end (Ladegaard, 2018a). The participants discuss among themselves, and then Santoso turns to the fieldworker and asks for his opinion. Example 42 (East Java) Santoso (male), 42  years old, 3  years in Malaysia, back since 2000. Four female migrant worker returnees, a female interpreter (Interpret), and a male fieldworker (FW) were also present (original in Bahasa and English). 1. Santoso: I have a question (1.0) if Indonesians don’t want to go overseas, I 2. don’t know when it will come, if there’s no one who’s working there 3. what’s the solution? if the new generation is not going? (Bahasa) 4. Interpret: you mean Indonesians don’t want to work in Hong Kong? 5. (Bahasa) 6. Santoso: yeah, if there’s no new generation to continue? what’s the 7. solution? (Bahasa) 8. Interpret: he asked you a question (English) [turns to FW] 9. FW: mhm 10. Interpret: if Indonesians don’t want to go to another country, to go outside 11. Indonesia to work as domestic workers, what’s the solution? (English) 12. Santoso: [laughs] none (Bahasa) 13. FW: I don’t know (1.0) I don’t know (English) 14. Santoso: thank you [laughs] (Bahasa) 15. FW: I don’t think there is a solution, because if there was a solution 16. you would not go, right? (1.0) nobody wants to go overseas to 17. work away from their family if they have a choice (1.0) so I don’t 18. think there is a solution, sadly, no (English)

Prior to this excerpt, the participants have been asked if they would allow their children to go overseas to work. T

122  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research hey all agree that, if need be, it would be okay for them to become migrant workers but not domestic migrant workers. It was a common trend in the sharing sessions recorded in 2022 that migrant work was seen as necessary, and especially male migrant worker returnees had relatively good stories to tell about their time working in car factories in Korea. But female and male returnees agreed that they would not allow their daughters to become DMWs. Two of the women in this sharing session, who had worked in Hong Kong, were underpaid for their first contract, did not have a single day off for two years, and had to sleep on the sofa in the family’s living room. And the other two women, who did not suffer from contract violations, still had major issues to deal with because their husbands had affairs while the wives worked overseas, and they both went through a painful divorce (Ladegaard, 2018a). Towards the end of the sharing session, from where Example 42 is taken, they are discussing the ultimate dilemma in migrant workers’ lives: if they do not allow their children to work overseas, and they also do not wish to live in dire poverty, what is the solution since there are no employment possibilities in the home environment? This is, of course, an unsolvable dilemma reminding migrant workers that they are essentially unfree (Parreñas, 2021). Santoso seems to be aware of that since he admits in line 12, prior to my answer, that there is no solution, and the laughter may serve to mitigate the potential facethreat involved in asking a question to which there is no answer. My response in line 13 reiterating twice that I do not have the answer seems to satisfy him since he gives an acknowledgement in line 14. I think it is important we recognise that there is no solution to many of the dilemmas (domestic) migrant workers are facing. I also think it is vital that if participants want us to take on a different role in an interview/sharing session, that we take it on and offer them our take on a question, even if that means acknowledging that there is no answer. 7.2.3 Reflexivity in DMW research: concluding remarks

The previous section has highlighted how we as researchers need to reflect on how our actions (or inaction), our subjectivities, and motivations impact the research process and the findings. Whether directly or indirectly, and whether through action or inaction, we co-construct narratives with our participants, and this needs to be acknowledged in the analysis of data (Rabbidge, 2017). Sadly, in most social science and humanities disciplines where the problem is most acute, there is no tradition for openly addressing these issues. There is no room for misjudgement or messy details in journal papers or grant applications, and we therefore feel compelled to sanitise our accounts of the research process and its outcome in order to get published (Finlay, 2002). Encouraging more critical reflective thinking about the research process in academic publications will no doubt draw opposition from some scholars, but it is possible that “others will feel empowered by the realisation that not all research is so neat and tidy” (Rabbidge, 2017, p. 970).

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 123 The advantage of discourse analytic data is that it allows us to see (in the transcripts) and hear (in the recordings) “when various researcher subjectivities are enacted” (Sharma, 2021, p. 249). This means we can learn from the messiness of our research, not necessarily to avoid it in future research but to think more critically on our role in the data collection process. I have included the previous examples because I  think I failed to be an empathetic listener (Examples 39 and 40), or I failed to engage in genuine dialogue with my participants and share my views and experiences with them (Example 41). There are plenty of examples in the corpus of what I would consider successful interactions: examples where researcher and participants meet in empathetic dialogue and where some form of understanding is established. Looking at the transcripts from my earlier work at the church shelter, I noticed that I would often use minimal response items like ‘I see’, ‘I know’, and ‘I understand’, but after a while, I stopped using them, realising that I would never really see or know, and certainly not understand, what these women had experienced. But in order to engage in the research and social activism, I have to believe that it is possible to make a difference, however small and insignificant it may seem, and I am confident that empathy is instrumental. I concur with Shuman (2005, p. 5) when she argues Storytelling offers as one of its greatest promises the possibility of empathy, of understanding others. Empathy is one way that understanding can travel back toward the experience to recover the distance stories create when they are far from experience. Empathy offers the possibility of understanding across space and time, but it rarely changes the circumstances of those who suffer. The distance between the teller and the listener in this research project can, of course, not be ignored. But that should not lead to disillusionment for the listener because empathy may help recover the distance and allow narratives to travel across space, time, age, gender, social class, and ethnicity. Empathy does not change the teller’s universe, but it has the potential to create bonding. And although a white privileged academic may never truly understand an Asian domestic migrant woman’s life story, storytelling still provides an opportunity for “getting into the shoes of the other, long enough and profoundly enough, to see his or her reality” (Blight, 2002, quoted in Shuman, 2005, p. 150). And this is perhaps a realistic goal that all researchers can strive for! Part of the critical reflective approach to DMW research for me has been the potential for social activism, and this will be discussed in the next section. 7.3 Social activism in domestic migrant worker research Humanities and social science scholars have generally made little attempt to integrate their research agendas with current social and political issues. There are many reasons for that, some of them perfectly legitimate, and the aim

124  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research of this section is not to question scholars’ motives for getting, or not getting, involved in social and political activism. First, speaking up against social injustice, exploitation, and discrimination comes with considerably greater risks for some than for others. Academic freedom is a contentious issue, and even in places that boast freedom of speech, there may be laws in place with vague and ambiguous language, which may discourage academics from speaking up in the way they would like to. Second, academics in many parts of the world are under tremendous pressure and may need to prioritise their time. Academia has become a neoliberal endeavour with a one-sided focus on quantifiable measures of success: more publications, more grant income, more citations, and more student numbers. Therefore, we have to accept that some colleagues, particularly if they are early career researchers, need to focus their attention on research and teaching, which are largely considered their bread and butter. Thus, for some scholars, social activism may be a luxury they cannot afford. However, with the previous provisos in mind, there is still reason to question some of the well-known reasons for academics not to get involved in social activism. Mühlhäusler (1993, p. 123), an applied linguist, argues that the expertise linguists possess is too limited and too shaky to provide solid expert opinion in almost any area of linguistic application. This is simply not true, as evidenced by numerous applied linguists and communication scholars whose work has had significant impact on the way language is taught and used in classrooms, courtrooms, consultation rooms, and hospital wards around the world (see, for example, Rickford, 1999; Good, 2009; Costa & Dewaele, 2014; Watson & Krieger, 2020). And according to Harvey (1992), there has been a strong tradition within anthropology to warn scholars against getting involved in social advocacy work because it would allegedly distract researchers from their main objective and potentially jeopardise the research agenda. The idea that we need to distinguish sharply between research commitment and social engagement presumably stems from a time when the positivist empirical tradition reigned, but there is little evidence to suggest that this idea is tenable. One overriding principle, which could be applied across humanities and social science disciplines, is that if scientific knowledge is worth having, it is worth sharing, also beyond academia (Cameron et al., 1992). With Alison Phipps, I  have argued that the time is ripe to discuss how we move from talking about intercultural communication and social injustice to doing intercultural communication and promoting a social justice agenda (Ladegaard & Phipps, 2020, p. 70). This development is timely for several reasons. First, there seems to be a move in academia worldwide away from ‘research for research’s sake’ and a one-sided focus on the positivist approach, to increased appreciation of social impact, that is, how research can benefit stakeholders outside academia, and to an inclusion of participatory approaches. Evidence of this move includes the assessment and reward

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 125 of social impact in the various Research Assessment Exercises that have been introduced in countries around the world. This move suggests that Research Councils are aware that research funded by public money should also benefit the public. Second, the role of the public transformative intellectual, as presented and discussed by prominent scholars around the globe including Noam Chomsky, Henry Giroux, Achille Mbembe, Francis Nyamnjoh, and Edward Said, has been ignored for too long. The growing disparity in wealth, education, and opportunities between the Global North and the Global South (cf. Khan, 2022), as evidenced by the increasing number of refugees and forced migrant workers on the move, calls for scholars to recommit to a social justice agenda. Perhaps more than ever before, there is a need for much greater respect for the inherent dignity, needs and rights of all human beings; a willingness to engage with those who are perceived to have other cultural affiliations; a willingness to speak out against expressions of prejudice and intolerance; a willingness to defend those who are disempowered and disadvantaged; and a willingness to take civic or political action for the greater good if this is required. In short, active intercultural democratic citizenship is required. (Barrett, 2016, p. iii) In the remaining part of this section, I would like to reignite the debate about our role as critical scholars and public intellectuals, and discuss how social justice relates to concepts like ethics, advocacy, and responsibility. 7.3.1 The role of the critical public intellectual

Renowned linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky was among the first academics to enter the debate about what he sees as one of our primary roles as intellectuals in society. In his famous essay, ‘The responsibility of intellectuals’, he argues that because of the privileges we enjoy as academics, we have a responsibility to speak up. We need to expose the lies of governments, corporations, and powerful organisations and to analyse the causes, hidden motives, and intentions behind political and corporate decisions. Academics are in a position to do that, Chomsky continues, because of the facilities they have access to and the training they have received, which should help them expose “the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us” (Chomsky, 1987, p. 60). Chomsky is also a strong proponent of the intellectual’s role in critiquing and analysing ideology. He refers to Bell (1960) who argues that intellectuals in the West have lost interest in converting ideology into social levers. The creation of a pluralistic society and the welfare state has made us believe that

126  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research a radical transformation of society is no longer needed. Therefore, Chomsky (1987, p. 52) concludes, intellectuals are content with tinkering their way of life here and there and see no need to use their work to bring about radical social and political changes. Another strong advocate of the intellectual’s role as a critical public voice is Palestinian American literary scholar Edward Said. He claims: “there is no such thing as a private intellectual” (Said, 1994, p. 12). When we have put words on paper and published them, we have entered the public sphere and are responsible for honouring what he refers to as our ‘calling’ as intellectuals. This ‘calling’ should propel us publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d’être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug. (Said, 1994, p. 11) Public advocacy work is thus presented as one of our main responsibilities as intellectuals. We should have a “vocation for the art of representing” (p. 13), and this vocation should apply whether we teach, speak in public, write, or appear on TV. And the justification for our public advocacy work is the universal principle “that all human beings are entitled to expect decent standards of behavior concerning freedom and justice from worldly powers or nations, and that deliberate or inadvertent violations of these standards need to be testified and fought against courageously” (ibid. pp. 11–12). Said (1994) acknowledges that this is no easy task. While most people would happily “profess to a liberal language of equality and harmony for all” (p. 94), the challenge is how to apply this to actual situations and people. With Alison Phipps, I have argued that what we can do as academics is bring to the forefront the stories of disenfranchised groups who have been excluded from notions of equality, fairness, and harmony (Ladegaard & Phipps, 2020). If we have access to these stories, we are obligated to tell them and, by doing so, represent the people whose plight has been forgotten or swept under the rug. This is in line with another outspoken public intellectual, American Canadian education scholar Henry Giroux (2009), who argues that it should be our moral obligation as intellectuals to speak up for the weak and undefended, and to make them aware of their own power as individuals and social agents. While these scholars, and others with them, have flagged up our moral obligation as intellectuals, they generally leave it to the individual to put these principles into practice. Rickford (1993) suggests that our first obligation should be to take the research findings back to the communities whose data have helped us build and advance our careers. By sharing our

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 127 findings with them, they might become aware how their lives have been shaped by unfair discriminatory immigration laws and by other people’s prejudice against them (Burford-Rice et  al., 2020; Palmer, 2020). This could help them rediscover their own resources, which may have been damaged by other people’s prejudiced stories about them, and show them what they might be able to do as individuals and social actors (Giroux, 2009). Another avenue for empowerment of vulnerable groups is to offer skills or awareness training, whether in language and intercultural communicative competence needed for skilled refugees to reintegrate into the workplace (Ganassin  & Young, 2020) or in developing research-based advocacy on domestic migrant workers’ health (Kauer-Gill  & Dutta, 2020). It is also important that awareness training is not only focused on migrants and refugees; potential employers also need to be targeted (Greenbank  & Marra, 2020), as well as the media who often play an important role in disseminating negative stereotypes about minority groups like DMWs and refugees (Ladegaard, 2013c; Burford-Rice et al., 2020). Other scholars have recommended working closely with grassroots organisations in order to push for change at the policy level (Santos, 2014; Catedral & Djuraeva, 2022). This has also been my own approach. Nobody is better suited to propose and push for changes in migrant worker policies than the NGOs who work for and with (domestic) migrant workers every day, and who know the flaws and loopholes in existing policies. What an increasing number of scholars have advocated for in recent years is the belief that social action should be considered an integral part of the research paradigm (Zhu Hua, 2020). They echo what Thurlow (2013) argues about critical intercultural communication research: Critical Intercultural Communication demands a lived, followedthrough commitment to social justice, the redistribution of privileged resources (material and symbolic), and a reflexivity about the knowledges we ourselves produce and the privileged places we inhabit. Using our work to “call out” power is important, but merely speaking of difference – or writing about it – will never be enough. (emphasis in original) (p. 243) What this lived, followed-through commitment to social justice looks like will inevitably vary from person to person. My own advocacy work has focused on the media, the law, and creative work with a theatre production company, as well as supporting migrant worker NGOs whose work is arguably more likely to be sustainable and generate long-term impact (Catedral & Djuraeva, 2022). However, all advocacy work begins with an empowering research agenda, which puts our participants’ needs at the forefront of our activities.

128  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 7.3.2 An empowering research agenda

As it has already been suggested in previous chapters, I  defy easy categorisations into ‘the researcher’ and ‘the researched’ because it gives the misguided impression of a knowledgeable researcher who distracts information from powerless subjects, and later empowers them by giving them information about themselves they did not have. This is a simplistic understanding of advocacy and empowerment, and it is not how I  have experienced my encounters with migrant workers over the past 14  years. It is true that many of the migrant worker returnees I  met in Indonesia could be seen as powerless, but that is because they had been silenced by their employers’ (and other people’s) demeaning discourses about them. Melati, a 35-year-old DMW returnee who was interviewed in Central Java in November 2022, recalls how her second employer yelled at her non-stop for making even the smallest mistakes, and when asked how it made her feel, she says (original in English): Example 43 Melati, 35 years old, 13 years in Hong Kong, back since 2019. 1. the feeling is like useless, the confidence is really low, because it’s every day they 2. keep yelling, and we become what she says, like ‘why am I stupid?’ (1.0) and then 3. we cannot think, cannot focus because everything, like how we put the plate or 4. something, is wrong, so like ‘okay, I am stupid’ (crying)

Melati’s testimony aptly summarises what multiple DMWs have experienced: if you are being yelled at every day for eight months for making even the smallest mistakes, you eventually become what the employer says you are (line 2 and 4). You feel useless and lose confidence (line 1), and eventually you lose your voice and visibility and become powerless (line 4). As Lin (2008) argues: “Identity is always underpinned by recognition; ‘I am’ is a recognition of a dialogic relationship in which the way one is being recognised occurs with how one recognises oneself” (p. 12). It came out as a powerful testimony in many of the returnee narratives recorded in Java that employers who yell at their helper and find fault with everything she does eventually destroy her selfconfidence and her ability to act and thereby change her circumstances. She becomes powerless, an instrument for her employer’s repressive and demeaning discourse (Brison, 2002). However, despite this humiliating experience, Melati is far from powerless, and she managed to get away after eight months. She did what Brison (1999) argues is necessary in order to work through and remaster traumatic memory: “a shift from being the object or medium of someone else’s (the perpetrator’s) speech (or other expressive behavior) to being the subject of one’s own” (p. 39). Melati claimed that there had been a tragic event in the

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 129

Photo 7.2 A Chinese recruiter from Hong Kong is checking the tidiness and cleanliness of a future domestic helper at a recruitment centre in Central Java.

family in Indonesia, and she had to go back and help them, but she promised she would be back. She got back her passport and her phone, and she left the employer for good. She eventually got a good employer who allowed her to go to school, so she managed to get a bachelor’s degree on a part-time basis while working for the family and was able to get a job as a professional upon her return to Indonesia. Thus, while many DMWs have been silenced by inhumane treatment and other people’s prejudice against them, others are resourceful and strong and have used whatever resources they have to fight for their rights. Many Filipino domestic workers, for example, have been able use their educational background, their Christian faith, and their superior English language skills to their advantage: both in terms of boosting their selfconfidence and also in terms of improving their working conditions2 (Ladegaard, 2020a). I do not see DMWs as powerless per se, and we should therefore also question the assumption that they need to be empowered by the researcher (Cameron et al., 1992). However, compelling evidence in the form of more than 500 narratives (as of November  2022) shows that what often leads to powerlessness and vulnerability, even for resourceful migrant workers, is the fact that they do not have a voice in the societies in which they live and work. Their status as migrant workers, which will never lead to permanent residency, makes them perpetually alien and vulnerable and reminds them

130  Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research of their status as ‘guests’ who have to rely on the tolerance of their hosts (Vigouroux, 2019). Thus, there are severe structural constraints that work against DMWs and make it difficult for them to get the recognition they deserve, and this is where an empowering research agenda can make a difference by giving voice to their stories (Shuman, 2005). This is one of the great potentials of advocacy work. ‘Powerful’ and ‘powerless’ are relative concepts, and it would be wrong if we think that researchers are always in a position to empower their participants. Issues of power are complex and should be considered in context, and we should therefore not try to identify any group as powerless or powerful per se, but instead “be attentive to the complexities of power in situations into which we might be researching” (Cameron et al., 1992, p. 21). However, what is of paramount importance if we as researchers are to advance an ethical empowering research agenda for DMWs is that what we bring to the table is their stories reflecting their reality, not our attempts to retell their stories. Some accounts of DMWs’ lives and experiences contain very little evidence of what DMWs themselves have said about the issue, and a clear recommendation that comes out of this book is that DMWs’ own stories should be at the forefront of our activities and priorities. As Sorrells (2022, p. 283) argues, too often, people in positions of greater social, economic, and political power develop visions and actions with the intent of ‘helping’ disenfranchised groups. Yet if the voices, needs, and experiences of marginalized groups are not at the table, the process and outcome of the effort repeat and reinforce rather than rectify injustices. In reviewer reports I have received with feedback on journal articles about my DMW research, I  have been criticised for painting a picture of DMWs’ lives that is ‘one-sided and too gloomy’. I acknowledge that the focus in my papers has often been on the negative aspects of their lives, but my conclusions have always been based on solid evidence. The life stories of (forced) migrant workers and refugees are unsettling, and they often violate the expectations of their audience (Harvey et  al., 2000). However, if we want to help them in their journey towards recovery and recognition, we need to learn to listen to and learn from the ‘sacred stuff’ that is being shared by these women (and men) (cf. Shay, 2003). Notes 1 Some of the ideas that are outlined in this chapter have previously been discussed in Ladegaard (2022b) ‘Learning from the messiness of research: Reflexivity in sharing sessions with domestic migrant workers’, in S. Consoli and S. Ganassin (Eds.),

Reflexivity and social activism in migrant worker research 131 Reflexivity in applied linguistics research: Opportunities, challenges, and suggestions (Routledge), and in Ladegaard and Phipps (2020), ‘Intercultural research and social activism’, Language & Intercultural Communication 20(2), 67–80. 2 Many Filipino DMWs have been able to use the shortage of domestic workers in Hong Kong during the Covid-19 pandemic to their advantage and claim a higher salary than the minimum wage. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Filipino helpers with experience will currently ask around HK$6,000 as their starting salary, significantly higher than the minimum wage of HK$4,730 (September 2022).

8 Summary and concluding remarks1

The aim of this monograph has been to document (domestic) migrant workers’ experience of coming home. Several studies have looked at their life in the diaspora, but little research has been done on their return to the home country and the dilemmas they face in their attempts to reintegrate into their families and communities and recreate a daily life with spouses and children they have spent very little time with. I  shall first summarise the major findings, then discuss some of the implications of the research, and finally suggest the way forward in research and social policy work for and with (domestic) migrant workers. 8.1 Summary of main findings 1) Reintegrating into the home community is a challenge for all the migrant worker returnees in the study. The problem of reconnecting with children was brought up repeatedly in most of the sharing sessions. Some returnees felt disconnected with their children after their return, and in some cases, it took years before the children accepted them in the role as mothers and main providers of care (Ladegaard, 2019). 2) Although many DMW returnees compared their homecoming and reconnecting with their husbands to idul fitri, the celebration after the month of fasting, there were also painful stories about their husbands’ infidelity and subsequent divorce caused by long-term separation. The women go overseas to work for ‘the good future’ of their children, but they are painfully aware of the price they may have to pay: alienation from their loved ones upon their return while living with constant fear that their husbands may take a mistress (Ladegaard, 2018a). 3) The success, or failure, of migrant worker returnees’ migratory journeys is intrinsically linked with their ability to bring home financial gains. If they can be seen as ‘heroes of remittance’ in the community (Irawati, 2022) and, as a visible token of their success, build a house for all to see, they will receive honour and recognition in the village. But if their migratory journey fails and they bring back no monetary gains, they will feel like failures and interpret their failure as ‘bad fate’ (Prusinski, 2016; Chan, 2018). DOI: 10.4324/9781003263005-8

Summary and concluding remarks 133 4) The returnees who suffer the most are the women who bring back a child and no husband. They will suffer condemnation from the community (and from themselves), and they are not welcomed by their family but relegated to houses outside the village, or distant relatives take them in. For these women, the only way forward in the attempt to atone for their transgression is to go overseas again so that they can at least support the family financially (Constable, 2014). 5) The Filipino returnee narratives are consistently more positive than their Indonesian counterparts. The Filipino returnees talk of challenges with their employers and worries about the family back home, but they do not put up with exploitation and other forms of discriminatory behaviour from their employers. If they are not treated well, they will leave and seek new employment opportunities elsewhere. The data set is not big enough to make any general conclusions about Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers, but for the participants in this study, it is noticeable that the Filipinos are generally more mature, better educated, better connected, better informed about their rights, and speak good English. It is likely that these factors explain why their migratory journeys have been relatively more successful than their Indonesian counterparts’ (see Block, 2017 about social class and language in migration). 6) Given the right opportunity, most of the Filipino migrant worker returnees said they would go overseas again to work (although not many of them were actively seeking employment at the time of the interview). This is contrary to the Indonesian returnees, most of whom declared that they would not go overseas to work again although they were still living in dire poverty. The exception was the ‘disgraced’ single mothers who felt that only through remittances could they make up for their transgression. 7) In many of the Indonesian sharing sessions, the returnees shared painful memories of exploitation and abuse, and they showed signs of being traumatised. Some had been physically or sexually assaulted; others had suffered from inhumane working conditions including insufficient food and rest. Many of the traumatised Indonesian returnees showed no signs of recovery, even years after their return to Indonesia, which underlines the seriousness of the problem (Nisrane et al., 2019). 8) The sharing sessions in Bohol were characterised by optimism and hope. The women had a sense of accomplishment: they had managed to get their children through college and they felt therefore that they had been successful. They were proud of what they had accomplished, and many of them also testified that they had had exciting lives as ‘household managers’ overseas (Cheng, 2013). 8.2 Implications Based on extensive fieldwork in the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, including interviews with DMWs and their employers, employment

134  Summary and concluding remarks agencies, and government officials, as well as analyses of official documents and websites about DMWs, Phillips (2021) makes this rather dismal conclusion: Despite Hong Kong and Taiwan being some of the best destination societies for MDWs, despite home states’ (inconsistent) policy efforts on behalf of their workers, and despite decades of social society advocacy, the fundamental causes of the extreme abuse seen in the Middle East are still present in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The foundation may be more subdued and held in check by better regulations, but it is unmistakable. The gendered nature of the work, the persistence of the master-servant mindset, market opacity, racism, governments shirking responsibility, and the inconsistency of implementation [of migrant worker laws] all make for one of the most powerful lattices of disempowerment [.  .  .] the key lies not in the inevitability of abuse and exploitation, but in the potential for abuse to happen. (emphasis in original) (p. 187) Like many other studies on DMWs, the current research on their return to the home country concludes that domestic work is a vulnerable and precarious occupation. DMWs are not exploited and abused per se, but the potential for abuse is always there, which migrant workers themselves are acutely aware of. The factors mentioned previously by Phillips (2021) are also visible in the current research: the gendered nature of domestic work2, positioning domestic workers as servants who are expected to obey their masters without question, the opacity of rules and regulations pertaining to DMWs’ working conditions, and, as analyses of social media posts by Hong Kong employers of domestic helpers have revealed, blatantly racist attitudes and consistent othering of DMWs (Ho, 2020; Ladegaard, 2022b) all contribute to the extreme precarity of DMWs’ lives. Parreñas (2021, p. 150) argues that some scholars try to sweep positive stories of DMWs’ lives in the Arab region under the rug so as to not complicate the story of exploitation they want to project of the region. There were no positive stories in the current study about DMWs’ lives in the Arab region to sweep under the rug! I am not saying they do not exist, and I have no evidence from the present study of Filipino migrant workers in the region.3 But the Indonesian returnee narratives in this research sadly confirm the stories of abuse and exploitation in Middle Eastern countries that several other studies have found (Jureidini & Moukarbel, 2004; Sabban, 2004; McGeehan  & Keane, 2008; Demissie, 2018; Nisrane et  al., 2019). And, as Phillips (2021) argues, the fundamental causes that lead to abuse and exploitation are also present in liberal societies like Hong Kong and Taiwan, despite legislation intended to protect DMWs’ rights. Furthermore, as Phillips (2021) also points out, years of advocacy work seem to have had little impact on the lives and experiences of particularly Indonesian DMWs in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and elsewhere. The question is why? Jost et  al. (2012, p.  316) argue that a staggering number of people

Summary and concluding remarks 135 (decent as well as indecent) are prepared to not only passively accept but also actively justify and rationalise social systems that are seen as extremely unjust by outsiders. This means that a sense of injustice is hard to awaken, even in societies that see themselves as liberal, open-minded, and committed to social justice and fairness. Jost et  al. (2012) continue: “This raises the worrisome possibility that it is possible to have a stable, relatively conflict-free society even in the absence of attaining normatively defensible standards of justice and fairness” (p. 317). The authors refer to this mechanism as system justification theory and argue that it satisfies at least three psychological needs: the need to reduce uncertainty and create a stable and predictable world view; the need to manage threat and perceive your environment as safe and reassuring; and the need to create a shared reality with important others like friends and family members (ibid. p. 322). It is plausible that system justification theory would also explain why mistreatment of DMWs, and openly discriminatory behaviour against them, are widely accepted, ignored, or conveniently swept under the rug. The need for people to defend and justify the societal status quo is stronger than their indignation that some members of society are marginalised and discriminated against. Or, because DMWs are discursively constructed

Photo 8.1 Domestic helper trainees learn how to use a vacuum cleaner at a training centre in Central Java. Many of them have never used one before.

136  Summary and concluding remarks as cultural others, as menial servants, and as morally and culturally inferior, it becomes legitimate to exclude and dehumanise them (Ladegaard, 2013b, 2013c, 2022b). Thus, upsetting the current balance of social inequality would create ideological conflict, and social justification theory posits that, in most societies, the desire for social stability and for preserving the status quo would trump social indignation and adherence to social justice principles like equity and equality for all. While system justification theory provides plausible reasons as to why people in societies around the world turn to “stereotypes, rationalizations, ideologies, and legitimizing myths” (Jost et  al., 2012, p.  316) to preserve social inequality (between rich and poor, and between different ethnic and religious groups, for example), it provides little help regarding how these issues should be addressed. It is not enough to argue that we need to “help promote a world in which cooperation and adherence to justice principles [. . .] are not merely palliative fictions, but pillars of reality” (ibid, p. 324) without at least providing some ideas as to how we might do that. In the remaining part of this chapter, I am going to propose what a socially engaged research agenda for and with (domestic) migrant workers might look like. 8.3 A socially engaged research agenda for DMWs In ‘Notes towards a socially engaged LAIC [Language and Intercultural Communication]’, Phipps and Ladegaard (2020) conclude their Special Issue on Translational Research by arguing that any attempt to counter ‘communicative terror’, as it happened during the Third Reich in Germany, must begin by looking at language. In preparation for the Holocaust, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled (to mention a few) were discursively constructed as less than human, and this paved the way for legitimising the persecution and subsequent elimination of these groups. In his majestic work, LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich), Victor Klemperer (1947) documented, in meticulous detail, how the Nazi propaganda machine altered the German language to fit the Nazi ideology. Klemperer’s point is that marginalisation, ostracism, persecution, and subsequently elimination of certain groups do not begin with concentration camps but with language. As Thurlow (2013) argues: “a mastery of language is also a mastery of concealment – most notably the concealment of the mastery itself” (p.  242). Therefore, resistance to oppression also begins by questioning the ways in which language is used to manipulate meaning and to discursively construct certain groups as lesser humans, or even less than human (Borlongan, 2023). Klemperer’s work did not prevent the Holocaust, but it provided documentation and therefore acted as witness to the atrocities (and how they began) after the war. Thus, Alison and I argue that in the face of rising xenophobia and permissive racism against certain groups, what researchers can hope to achieve is not to turn the tide but “to document accurately and fiercely the good, the bad and the ugly of these times” (Phipps & Ladegaard, 2020, p. 218). This

Summary and concluding remarks 137 points to the importance of storytelling and bearing witness to DMWs’ suffering (Shuman, 2005). The Trauma Narratives Project has collected narratives from 131 migrant workers focusing on their experience of trauma and will hopefully provide further documentation of their suffering, what causes it, and what may facilitate recovery (Hall, 2011). But apart from documenting exploitation and abuse, and writing about it in scholarly publications, Alison and I also recommend that researchers should work towards a socially engaged research agenda. I summarise some of our main recommendations for an ethically responsible socially engaged research agenda subsequently (adapted from Phipps & Ladegaard, 2020, p. 219): • We must continually seek to include and represent those groups who are not the subjects of normative lines of enquiry, including (but not limited to) refugees and asylum seekers, trafficked sex workers, prison inmates, and (undocumented) migrant workers (MacDonald, 2020; Schluter, 2020). • Our work must be meticulous in documenting socially and communicatively destructive practices, whether in the media, in government policies, or in the practices of employment agencies or training centres for (domestic) migrant workers (Burford-Rice et al., 2020; Ladegaard, 2022b).

Photo 8.2 A Chinese recruiter at a training centre in Indonesia gives a speech to 60 new DMWs who have been selected to go to Hong Kong to work.

138  Summary and concluding remarks • Our work must decolonise and decentre, which should include critical reflexivity on our role as educated and powerful researchers working with disenfranchised groups (Nartey, 2020; Holmes & Dix, 2022). • Our research should lead us to engage in social action, advocacy, and activism as a result of the conclusions we draw, not as a lone endeavour but in close collaboration with others, such as migrant worker NGOs (Zhu Hua, 2020; Catedral & Djuraeva, 2022). • We should know when to speak up and when to keep silent. Although I  have strongly advocated for speaking up and thus fulfilling our role as public intellectuals, we need to acknowledge that, for the sake of safety and inclusion, we may sometimes need to keep quiet (Ladegaard  & Phipps, 2020). • We should avoid the temptation to overly clarify or seek coherence (when it is absent) as resistance may require obfuscation, even mess! (Rabbidge, 2017; Ladegaard, 2022a). • Our work may take us into spiritual activism, ritual performance, and ceremony – areas of engagement that are outside the comfort zones of Western epistemologies (Phipps & Sitholé, 2022; Zhou, 2022). • We need to consider the central role of ethics in each and every intercultural encounter in which we engage (or record) and the uses to which ethical frameworks may be put in pursuit of both research and social activism (Cameron et al., 1993; Sorrells, 2022). • Our work should operate on the edges of grief and as resources for hope! (Frank, 2013). • We should remember that there is no ‘pure’ place to stand, no argument that is a hundred per cent correct, and that researcher integrity may also be complicit and broken at some level. Without this humility, there can be no knowledge worthy of trust and no action that is truly engaged and engaging (Consoli & Ganassin, 2022a). The migration journey is an exciting story to tell, but for many, it is also a story fraught with danger, anxiety, and precarity. The journey is narrated in, through, and with language and thus provides important work to be done for language and communication scholars who are interested in migration (Canagarajah, 2017a). More importantly, the nexus of language and migration compels us to give voice to migrants who are often marginalised and silenced to allow them to be heard, cherished, and valued for the diversity they bring to the world (Borlongan, 2023). Notes 1 Some of the ideas presented in this chapter were initially discussed in Phipps and Ladegaard (2020): ‘Notes towards a socially engaged LAIC’ [Language and Intercultural Communication]. Language  & Intercultural Communication 20(2), 218–219.

Summary and concluding remarks 139 2 Most of the 24 male migrant workers interviewed in 2022 worked in car factories in Korea and Japan and generally had good stories to tell about their migratory journeys. Unlike the female DMWs, they were therefore willing to go overseas to work again. This highlights the precarity of domestic work: working alone inside the employer’s home, and at her mercy, is very different from working regular shifts in a factory. However, this is not to say that Indonesian male migrant workers are not also being exploited (see Chang, 2021). 3 None of the Filipino returnees who participated in this study had worked in the Arab region, whereas most of the Indonesian participants had worked in at least one country in the region.

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Appendix

Transcription Conventions Bold = pronounced with stress/emphasis Italics = Bahasa or Javanese [it’s a] = word(s) inserted by the transcriber to ease comprehension , = short pause, less than 0.5 second (2.0) = pause in seconds ‘give me that’ = reporting direct speech : (as in ah:) = the vowel sound is prolonged xx = incomprehensible // =  interruption (self-or other-interruption); //as I  said//= overlapping speech ? = question/rising intonation [. . .] = turn(s) left out ↑ = high pitch

Index

Abalos, J. B. 78 abuse and exploitation 20, 23, 24, 26n1, 45, 60, 63, 68, 69, 90, 106, 109, 134 abusive employer 3, 4, 24, 29, 35, 47, 48, 54, 55, 62, 63, 72, 76, 88 aftermath of trauma 56, 90, 107 agency 12, 14, 59, 63, 84, 91, 100, 116, 121 alienation 14, 31, 32, 108, 132 Asis, M. M. 29, 35, 102 asylum seekers 10, 137 Augoustinos, M. 22 Austin, J. L. 111 Bahasa 6, 20, 21, 30, 33, 39, 56, 58, 94, 121 Bales, K. 81, 93, 108 Barrett, M. 125 Baynham, M. 43 Bell, D. 125 Bennett, L. R. 53 Bethune House 4, 5 betrayal 54, 57, 63 Block, D. 133 Blommaert, J. 10 Borlongan, A. M. 13, 25, 26, 136, 138 Briere, J. N. 49 Brison, S. J. 55, 61, 63, 65, 67, 88, 91, 92, 128 Brockmeier, J. 19, 47, 49, 51, 52, 57 Brown, C. 23, 65, 109 Bruner, J. 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 Burford-Rice, R. 127, 137 Burr, V. 22 Cameron, D. 114, 124, 129, 138 Canagarajah, S. 1, 25 Cantonese 24

Catedral, L., 109, 113, 127, 138 Cebuano 21 Cervone, C. 79, 81 Chan, C. 7, 11, 30, 33, 38, 39, 44, 53, 60, 60, 65, 66, 74, 88, 132 Chang, A. S. 139 Cheng, H. F. 133 Cheung, J. K. T. 27, 68 Chinese 15, 72, 72, 100; cooking 24; employers 72, 73, 79, 82, 108; man 72; New year 93; woman 41, 60 Chiu, S. W. K. 63 Chomsky, N. 125, 126 Choy, C. Y. 68, 69, 117 Christian 73, 80, 106; Action 87; faith 71, 129 church: Anglican 4; shelter 3, 5, 22; shelter project 3, 4, 5, 11 Clifford, J. 6 code-switching 14, 21, 30, 33, 39, 55, 57 Collins, F. L. 64, 117, 118 condemnation 6, 133 Consoli, S. 25, 84, 111, 115, 138 Constable, N. 5, 11, 27, 28, 37, 41, 42, 72, 133 Cortazzi, M. 17, 66 Costa, B. 124 crying 39, 43, 48, 51, 64, 100, 112, 116, 128 cultural: affiliations 125; conventions 23; norms 31, 32, 46n3; otherness 81; plots 67 Damasio, A. 17 De Fina, A. 22, 23 dehumanisation and moral exclusion 28 Demissie, F. 68, 134

Index  153 depression 11, 49, 57, 65, 68, 76, 118 destructiveness of distance 35, 74 Dewaele, J.-M. 95, 124 discrimination 3, 10, 76, 107, 121, 124 discriminatory: behaviour 133, 135; immigration laws 127 discursive: construction 22, 88; context 23 disenfranchised: groups 15, 126, 130, 138; and marginalised groups 111; participants 15 disgraced 53, 81, 100, 133 domestic migrant worker (DMW) 87, 106, 113; contracts 27; export 2; Filipino 15; Indonesian 15, 88; research 12, 112, 121, 124, 130; returnee narratives 46n1; returnees 12, 23, 28, 34, 42, 54, 74, 89, 101, 128, 183; trauma narratives 48 Duvall, J. 4, 19, 67 emotional distress 14, 51 empathy 67, 68, 118, 123 empower 4, 14, 60, 109, 130 empowerment 5, 66, 79, 127, 128 English 6, 8, 15, 21, 22, 30, 31, 33, 34, 39, 51, 56, 57, 79, 85, 89, 95, 100, 120, 128, 129; enhancement classes 4 exclude and dehumanise 136 exploitation 66, 69, 90, 117, 119, 124, 133, 134, 137 Faist, T. 25 fear 64, 87, 88, 89, 97, 100, 104, 109, 132 fieldworker 39, 58, 72, 79, 121; English-speaking 33, 56; male 29, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43, 51, 54, 56, 58, 60, 62, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 82, 84, 90, 92, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 104–105, 116, 120, 121; non-Bahasa speaking 31 Filipino 21, 73, 74, 108, 109; boyfriend 51, 52; context 19; DMW 2, 15, 76, 76, 79, 89, 137n2; domestic helpers 63, 89, 107; domestic workers 129; expats 15; helpers 73, 79, 107, 131n2; migrant workers 2, 15, 21, 73, 106, 107, 108, 133, 134; returnee

narratives 133; returnees 14, 15, 21, 22, 30, 69, 72, 71, 74, 90, 108, 133, 139n3; self-identity 72; workers 15 Finlay, L. 122 Flaskas, C. 88 Foa, E. B. 48 forced migrant workers 125, 130 Foucault, M. 23, 42, 63, 79, 88 Frank, A. W. 57, 138 Freire, P. 87, 113 Galasinski, D. 48, 68 Gallois, C. 31, 55, 95 Ganassin, S. 127 gender roles 14, 35, 53 Georgakopoulou, A. 78, 94 Giroux, H. A. 127, 126, 127 Global North 1, 83, 125 Global South 1, 125 Good, A. 125 Goodwin, M. H. 18 Greenbank, E. 127 Gumperz, J. 39 Hall, J. M. 137 Harter, L. M. 47, 49, 67 Harvey, M. J. 67, 124, 130 Hellinger, M. 25 helper 2, 5, 72, 72, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 86, 88, 128; domestic 2, 5, 9, 10, 16n1, 49, 55, 57, 58, 60 – 2, 64, 71, 71, 76, 83, 88, 89, 97, 99, 101, 105 – 7, 129, 135 Herman, J. L. 24, 29, 65, 66 Ho, J. 108, 134 Hogg, M. 73 Holmes, J. 17 Holmes, P. 138 hooks, b. 109 Huang, S. 69 human trafficking 2, 10, 93 humiliation 7, 11, 14, 39, 63, 78, 81, 97, 105 Hung, S. L. S. 19, 24, 65, 66 Hydén, L. C. 47 identity 22, 23, 24, 42, 44, 45, 66, 76, 79, 108, 112, 128; game 45; implications 72; politics 109; position 37, 41, 42, 45, 72, 108; professional 76; self 76; struggles

154 Index 46n1; transformation 13, 14, 27, 43, 108; triangulation 73 immoral behaviour 86; lifestyle 7 Indonesian 20, 64, 68, 80, 108, 133; authorities 86; context 19, 21; data 88; DMW 2, 12, 15, 30, 40, 60, 81, 88, 90, 106, 107, 134; domestic helpers 61, 62; domestic workers 73; families 53; female research assistant 20; first-timers 49, 63, 117; government 2; helpers 81, 107; hospitality 8; interpreter 59, 60, 62, 84, 94, 97; island 120; maid 107; migrants 69, 119; migrant women 11, 65; migrant worker NGO 7; migrant worker returnee 68; migrant workers 5, 62, 65, 68, 69, 73, 108, 109, 133; participants 14, 107, 109; peers 77; recruiter 62; research sites 7; returnees 11, 15, 20, 21, 38, 47, 74, 90, 92, 101, 107, 108, 132, 133; sending communities 60; sharing sessions 133; women 9, 35, 39, 40, 42, 43; workers 15 infidelity 14, 29, 30, 46n2, 53, 85, 95 integrity 14, 15 intercultural communication 111, 115, 124, 127, 136 International Labour Organization (ILO) 1, 2, 93 Irawati, D. 132 Javanese 21, 33, 53, 84, 85, 96, 107 Jost, J. T. 134, 135, 136 Jureidini, R. 68, 69, 134 Kauer-Gill, S. 127 Khan, S. 27, 91, 121, 125 Kiewitz, C. 87, 88 King, R. 45 Kirkpatrick, A. 21 Klemperer, V. 136 Labott, S. 50 Labov, W. 18 Ladegaard, H. J. 1, 2, 5, 13, 18, 21, 23, 24, 26 – 30, 33, 35, 36, 42 – 6, 48, 49, 51, 55, 58, 61, 63, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 79 – 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 91 – 5, 95, 99, 102, 107, 108, 111, 112,

121, 122, 124 – 6, 132, 134, 136 – 8 Lai, M. Y. 45, 68, 69 Langer, L. L. 47, 67, 80, 91 Lin, A. M. Y. 45, 134 loneliness 19, 29, 74, 97, 100, 107, 108 long-distance mothering 2 – 3, 29, 35 Lorente, B. 21, 89, 100 MacDonald, M. N. 137 ‘maid servants’ 2 make money 12, 53, 63, 73, 84, 100 Marchetti, S. 112 marginalised 138; groups 5, 112, 130, 136; underprivileged and marginalised groups 5 Martinovic, I. 31 McAdams, D. P. 17, 22 McGeehan, N. 68, 134 media 93, 127, 137; social 86, 134 Medved, M. J. 19 mental: problems 11, 65; health issues 11, 65, 68, 70n1 Mignolo, W. D. 25 migration linguistics 13, 17, 24, 25 migration studies 17 migratory experiences 15, 20, 28; less problematic 102; negative 10; painful, 38 migratory journey 7 – 9, 33, 34, 37, 39, 65, 66, 73 – 5, 105, 132 Milani, T. 72 Mindess, H. 30, 100 minimal response 20, 78, 123 Mishler, E. G. 23 mistress 74, 97, 108, 132 moral behaviour 33, 54, 59 Mühlhäusler, P. 124 Muslim 41, 57, 80, 98; traditional community 31, 86 narrative 22, 23, 26, 28, 29, 37, 40, 45 – 51, 60, 66, 69, 72, 73, 84, 89, 102, 108, 122, 123, 129; returnee 5, 11, 12, 17, 18, 20, 22, 31, 34, 38, 70n1, 72, 73, 90, 108, 113, 115, 128, 132, 133 narrative therapy 13, 22 – 4, 66, 67 Nartey, M. 138 Nelson, H. L. 24 Nisrane, B. L. 55, 66, 68, 69, 107, 133, 134

Index  155 Ochs, E. 20 O’Kerney, R. 48 Oktavianus, J. 18 Opotow, S. 28 others 45; cultural 81, 108, 136; immoral 54; important 135; religious 108; social 108 Oxfeld, E. 44 Palmer, W. 88, 127 Parreñas, R. S. 35, 83, 122, 134 PathFinders 6, 7, 10 – 12, 44, 49 Paul, A. M. 2, 45, 73, 81 Payne, M. 23, 24 peer support 3, 4, 24, 29, 35, 47, 48, 54, 55, 62, 77, 92 Phillips, M. 1, 6, 13, 107, 134 Phipps, A. 5, 111, 112, 124, 126, 126, 136, 137, 138 Piller, I. 25 power relationship 15, 87, 88; unequal, 15, 112 Pratt, G. 2, 35, 74 pregnant 6, 10, 36, 40, 41, 43, 44, 49, 51, 52, 59, 60, 65, 86, 87, 99, 110n5; pregnancy 10, 44, 45, 86, 99, 100, 107, 110n5 Prusinski, E. 7, 11, 30, 65, 65, 132 Puvimanasinghe, T. 66, 67 Rabbidge, M. 115, 122, 138 racism 134, 136; racist attitudes 134; racist undertones 27 rape 48, 60, 61, 96; raped 58, 59, 60, 61, 99 recognition 55, 63, 106, 108, 109, 111, 128, 130, 132 reflexivity 70, 105 reintegrate 6, 127, 132 religion 9, 18, 41, 66, 93, 111 remittances 94, 97, 102, 107, 133 repression 3, 15 reputation 33, 53, 59, 83 resistance 3, 45, 88, 136 Rickford, J. R. 124, 126 Robles, J. S. 86 Roces, M. 108 Rother, S. 2 Sabban, R. 134 Said, E. W. 125, 126 Santos, B. S. 127 Saville-Troike, M. 22 Schluter, A. 137

sending communities 8, 10, 60, 75; Indonesian 61; Javanese 53 separation85 29, 35, 36, 71, 74, 76, 76, 85, 85, 94, 101, 107, 132 sexual assault 4, 13, 14, 58, 61, 65; sexually assaulted 43, 58, 60, 61, 63, 66 sexual transgressions 53, 107 shame 7, 11, 14, 34, 41, 43, 49, 51 – 3, 60 – 3, 87, 97, 100 sharing session 6, 7, 10, 11, 21, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 46n1, 46n3, 54, 61, 67, 69, 74 – 6, 80, 80, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 101, 104, 105, 106, 112 – 114, 119 – 22 Sharma, B. K. 114, 115, 123 Shay, J. 67, 114, 115, 118, 130 Shuman, A. 10, 18, 19, 47, 67, 68, 118, 123, 130, 137 Silvey, R. 30, 73 Sim, A. 2 Simons, S. R. 24 Skeggs, B. 96, 105, 108, 111 social: action 65, 111, 127, 138; activism 111, 113, 123, 124, 131n1, 138; activist 5, 111, 113; advocacy work 124; boundaries 112; class, 18, 66, 79, 108, 124, 133; discourse 109; engagement 124; exclusion 33; identities 22; indignation 119, 135; impact 5, 125; inequality 136; injustice 124; justice 125, 127, 135, 136; norms 44, 65; pressure 37 social and political 15, 17, 22, 124, 126 social constructionist approach 22, 23 sociolinguistics 13, 17, 25, 111, 115 Sorrells, K. 5, 111, 112, 113, 130, 138 Stack, C. 32 Stefansson, A. H. 45 storied lives 13, 23 storytelling 66 – 9, 72, 78, 94 – 96, 113, 114, 117, 123, 137; joint 78, 94 subjectivities 15, 115, 122 – 123 Tajfel, H. 73 Taylor, C. 63 Tehrani, N. 31, 57 termination of contract 3, 10, 14, 86, 91, 99, 107 therapeutic function 4, 10 Thornborrow, J. 18, 19, 20 Thurlow, C. 5, 127, 136

156 Index Tileaga, C. 55, 81 Toolan, M. 13, 18, 22, 23 trauma narratives 14, 18, 21, 42, 47 – 9, 51, 54, 68, 70n2, 100; project 4, 11, 12, 70n2, 137 Trinch, S. 48

wanita tidak bermoral 7 Waruwu, C. B. 6 Watson, B. 124 White, M. 13, 22, 23, 65 Wortham, S. 112 wrongful accusations 14

underpayment 4, 13, 63, 116 – 19 unfaithful husband 30, 87 Urbina, I. 93

Yea, S. 93 Yeoh, B. S. A. 37, 76

Vanore, M. 2, 35 Vigouroux, C. B. 130

Zhao, C. 35, 36 Zhou, V. X. 138 Zhu Hua 39, 66, 127, 138