Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers

MAID TO ORDER IN HONG KONG: STORIES OF FILIPINA WORKERS

by Nicole Constable (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)

This book provides an in-depth historical account of the lives of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. It takes on a conflict, power and control perspective to exemplify the everyday lives of Filipina women domestic workers. Their stories reflect a sample of work relationships that the author attempts to characterise as the nature of domestic work in Hong Kong. However, credit must be given to the author for the detail and quality nature of the data collected. Further, the book covers almost all prespectives that touch upon the "lives"of these workers ranging from the decline of the Philippines' economy, which provided the push factor, to the unethical processes of domestic worker agencies, to the micro level of the interactions between employers and employees, and even to individual worker's feeling toward domestic work in Hong Kong. All these are presented in 9 well written and arranged chapters.

In general, these chapters can be grouped into three categories. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 deal with the theoretical and historical perspectives in which the book is framed. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 deal with the means of control starting with the employment agencies, moving to the employers and ending with the state. The final category of chapters includes Chapters 7, 8 and 9 which deals with how domestic workers themselves, either as a group in overt protect or as individuals in less confrontational forms of jokes and pranks, repulse oppression and control as they experienced in their work world.

Chapter I set the theoretical framework of the book which emphasizes on power, conflict and control in household work. The author draws upon important work to reflect upon the concepts of power, accommodation, discipline and control. These themes provided the impetus for explaining the stories of Filipina domestic workers. Chapter 2 moves to discuss the emergence of a regional trend of migrant workers in East...