Symbolic Vindication: How employers of migrant domestic workers present ‘fairness’ within potentially exploitative relationships

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 01. Migrant domestic workers

Abstract

Middle class lifestyles often depend on the labor of migrant domestic workers (MDWs). Current scholarship argues that the extraction of MDW labor is facilitated by the creation of precarious conditions, allowing employers to dominate their MDWs in legal, financial, and social dimensions. While we know of various employer justifications for these arrangements, we know much less about how employers view their own roles. Through a Goffmanian analysis of original data, generated through interviews with white-collar Singaporeans who employ MDWs, I argue that employers are uncomfortable with saying they use MDW labor. Subsequently, they engage in a process I term symbolic vindication to recoup their presentation as ‘fair’ employers – they establish that employer-MDW relationships should be evaluated based on the MDW’s reasons for leaving, whilst indicating that since they are currently employers, they cannot be ‘unfairly’ utilizing MDW labor. These findings have notable implications for how we understand employers as cultural actors within this system that creates and sustains migrant precarity.

Author

• Isaac An-Jie Lam, University of Southern California