'We become like what she says': identity positions in foreign domestic helpers' workplace narratives

For the 350,000 migrant domestic workers (MDWs) who live in Hong Kong, the workplace is also their home. It is stipulated in the law that MDWs must live with their employers. This works well for some who have a good relationship with their employer but for others, it is a source of tension, anxiety and depression. In this talk, I draw on a corpus of more than 500 narratives about MDWs’ lives and experiences that I have collected over the past 12 years at two shelters in Hong Kong and among migrant worker returnees in Indonesia and the Philippines. The focus is on the women’s narratives about abusive employers and about conflicting identities. The MDWs see themselves as helpers who have come to Hong Kong to help their families and their employers and to serve God through their work. The employers, on the other hand, see MDWs as commodities who can be traded and ‘sold’ like faulty goods if they do not live up to the employer’s expectation. I use examples from the women’s workplace narratives to show how language is performative: MDWs’ confidence is destroyed through the employers’ demeaning discourses, but language also has the capacity to restore and support the women in constructing new and hopeful stories about themselves. The talk also discusses how we as applied linguists can use our research to address pertinent social issues.