CiNii Books - In service and servitude : foreign female domestic workers and the Malaysian "modernity" project

This text explores the relationship between the global trend toward open markets and Malaysia's state-supported "maid trade" in which Filipina and Indonesian women are imported as consumer goods. A native of Malaysia living in the United States, the author was visiting her family in Kuala Lumpur when she discovered a servant chained by her ankle in a neighbour's back yard. The neighbours claimed they were only making sure the servant wouldn't steal food while they were away. In her investigations, Chin discovered a widespread difference among educated, middle-class Malaysians to the deprivation and sexual exploitation that Filipina and Indonesian domestics are commonly expected to endure as part of their job. The book explores how the shared interests of state elites and the middle classes rationalize mistreatment of domestic workers because the women are useful in the state's "modernity project", designed to create a stable, economically developed society. Chin argues that the "premodern" exploitation of migrant domestic workers is at odds with the global expansion of open markets and free trade, and should not be legitimized in pursuit of the "good life".

Volume: : pbk ISBN 9780231109871

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In Service and Servitude explores the relationship between contemporary domestic service and the pursuit of the "good life" in an era of global economic transformation. The author offers an interdisciplinary approach to examining the in-migration of foreign domestic workers in Malaysia. The book uses Malaysia as a case study of the role played by foreign domestics in a rapidly industrializing Asian country. Christine Chin discusses how the state elites and the middle classes come to rationalize the demand for-and treatment of-domestic workers while pursuing the country's modernity project, designed to create a stable, developed, multiethnic society. She shows how different and competing pressures on the regional, national, and household levels leave Filipina and Indonesian domestics open to mistreatment and abuse, most directly by employment agencies and employers. Chin argues that late-twentieth-century efforts to expand open markets and establish global free trade, encourage the exploitation of transnational migrant workers, and that such exploitation should not become an acceptable part of pursuing the "good life."

Table of Contents

List of Tables Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Arranging and Rearranging the Interior Frontiers of Society 3. "Boys, Amahs, and Girls": Domestic Workers of the Past and Present 4. The Malaysian-Philippine-Indonesian Maid Trade 5. Infrapolitics of Domestic Service: Strategies of, and Resistances to, Control 6. Modernity Via Consumption: Domestic Service and the Making of the Modern Malaysian Middle Classes 7. Conclusion Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

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In service and servitude : foreign female domestic workers and the Malaysian "modernity" project

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