Among women Migrant domestics and their Taiwanese employers across generations

Among women

Migrant domestics and their Taiwanese employers across generations

Lan

Pei-Chia

Lan, Pei-Chia

Author

University of California, Berkeley

Center for Working Families

University of California, Berkeley. Center for Working Families

Sponsor

text

working paper

Berkeley, CA Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley 2001 2001 monographic

Berkeley, CA

Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley

2001

monographic

English eng

English

eng

electronic application/pdf 26 p. born digital

electronic

application/pdf

26 p.

born digital

Increasing numbers of middle-class dual-earner households in Taiwan have hired low-cost migrant women from the Philippines and Indonesia to handle the tasks of housework, childcare, and elder care. They seek domestic help not only because of the time bind between work and family, but also to retrieve some autonomy from the authority of their mothers-in-law. Domestic employment in this case reveals inequalities between maids and madams along class and racial lines as well as hierarchy between women across generations. This paper examines how contemporary Taiwanese daughters-in-law hire migrant domestic workers to negotiate their relationships with their mothers-in-law. Four modes of triangular relationship among the three women are presented: (1) The daughter-in-law seeks market transfer of the filial duty and develops comradeship with the workers vis-à-vis the authority of the mother-in-law. (2) The daughter-in-law maneuvers domestic employment to resist the mother-in-law's intervention in the conjugal family and may become another authoritative figure reproducing oppression over the migrant worker. (3) The daughter-in-law manages to smooth tensions between the mother-inlaw and the migrant worker on a daily basis. (4) The elder living apart from her children develops personal bonds with the migrant caregiver, who becomes fictive kin across ethnic boundaries.

Pei-Chia Lan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Working Families, UC Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in sociology at Northwestern University and will be an assistant professor of sociology at National Taiwan University in fall 2001.

Berkeley Center for Working Families Working Paper No. 30

Berkeley Center for Working Families Working Paper

No. 30

Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States" (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/)

wfn_bwpaper_37.pdf

MChB English eng

MChB

English eng

English

eng