The Emotional Politics of Representations of Migrant Domestic Work in Lebanon

Abstract

This article undertakes a filmic and cultural analysis of representations of migrant domestic work in Lebanon, with reference to Sara Ahmed’s theorization of the sociality of emotions. It focuses on documentaries, TV programs and news bulletins featuring migrant domestic workers (MDWs). These representations bring to bear intensely emotional situations that capitalize on conflict, loss, and attachment. According to Sara Ahmed, emotions are social and cultural practices that shape individual and collective bodies and legitimize political decisions. In this article, we look at the ways in which the mise-en-scène of encounters involving MDWs, their employers, and other agents, provide for viewers emotional scripts that legitimize certain political positions. We suggest that these mise-en-scène encounters shape domestic work as a site of abuse perpetrated by ‘bad’ employers, as a site of horror inhabited by ‘tragic’ victims, and as a site of loving relations performed by ‘good’ employers. In doing so, we argue that they inflate the privatized and sensationalized dimensions of domestic work and depoliticize this field of labor. The exception to this trend is the documentary A Maid for Each that unflinchingly addresses the moral bankruptcy of Lebanon’s migration and labor regimes.