At Home but Not at Home: Filipina Narratives of Ambivalent Returns

Abstract

Hong Kong is one of the wealthiest cities in Asia, a center of world trade, a place of many comings and goings. It is an international hub, whose social and cultural landscape is heterogeneous, hybrid, and transnational. Included in Hong Kong's population of 6.4 million are over 130,000 Filipino workers, representing the territory's largest non-Chinese minority. In the 1970s there were but a few hundred Filipinas who worked as domestic helpers for expatriate employers in the colonial city.1 Their popularity quickly grew among the burgeoning middle-class Chinese population, which found it increasingly difficult to attract local Chinese women to do paid household work. By the 1990s well over 10 percent of Hong Kong's population employed workers of some sort. Women of numerous other nationalities are included among the foreign workers (among them Thai, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, Indian, and Malaysian), but by far the largest group is women from the Philippines. The majority of Filipinas are between the ages of 20 and 40, most are Roman Catholic, and approximately a quarter are married. Contrary to many locals' expectations, Filipina workers do not come from the poorest or least educated sector of the Philippine population. The vast majority have attained more than a high school education, and some belong to middle-class families. They come to Hong Kong on two-year contracts, holding temporary work permits that are administered by the Philippine Overseas Employment Association and the Hong Kong labor and immigration departments. By far the largest group of employers today are local Chinese, many of whom have recently joined the ranks of Hong Kong's