Stories of Filipina Workers

These "maids" are both wide used in Hong Kong and widely abused both by their Chinese employers and by the government regulating their work. The Filipina domestic prole non only deserves more enjoy and humane interposition than she generally receives from her Chinese employer in Hong Kong, she is also a complex, spirited, open-hearted brain full of life, intelligence, and insight into herself, her employers and her relationship with them, and her often trying circumstances. In addition, Constable shows that these women are more powerful (or at least(prenominal) less powerless), less oppressed, and often far from the "stupid" wiped out(p) foreigners held in such low esteem by the Chinese in Hong Kong.

Constable relies largely on interviews with workers, with Filipinas who run a mission for Filipina workers having difficulties in Hong Kong, and with labor activists among the women, as well as on her observation of these women at work and outside of work. In addition, the author utilizes "archival materials, popular literature, editorials, and articles" in local periodicals, as well as earlier studies of the same humble (xiii). The personation she draws is nothing like the stereotype expressed by intimately Chinese employers, including one whose bias piqued Constable's interest in the subject in the first place:

"Filipinas . . . are very stupid." . . . These "maids" silent little Chinese, could not follow the simplest instructions, and were "dirty and lazy."

She believed, moreover, that Filipinas' morals were questionable. "Why else," she asked rhetorically, "would they willingly leave children and husbands can buoy in the Philippines?" (vii).

Constable, Nicole. Maid to Order in Hong Kong. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1997.

Constables writes that her specific foci are

In fact, as Constable shows, Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong are profoundly moral, and the reason they come to Hong Kong

This book suggests that domestic workers are not simply passive objects of conquering, nor are they active subjects who successfully go through themselves and their labor. Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong neither simply resist oppression nor accept it. . . .

These apparent contradictions suggests that the question of resistance cannot be unflinching by appealing to simple phenomenological logic (13).

By far, the almost intriguing subjects in the book have to do in some way with the relative power of the workers and their employers as elements of a labor struggle. Their "employers" are not merely the individual or family they work for, but also those institutions which control their lives through laws, regulations and discipline, including the fight agencies and the state. Above all, and to her credit, Constable resists and urges others to resist, any simplistic conclusion with respect to the workers' responses to the difficulties of their work. Each individual worker must be seen as an individual who uses different combinations of coping mechanisms, resistance ploys, accommodation, etc.:

As complex as the workers' resistance/accommodation patterns may be, however, thither is simply no doubt that the lives of these women are thoroughly controlled by those for whom they work and by the state and agencies which oversee their work, including agencies in the Philippines which fig out them for work in Hong Kong. Part of this control is simply for the pastime of control, rather than for the specific results of the specific
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