In Service and Servitude

Foreign Female Domestic Workers and the Malaysian "modernity" Project

Author: Christine B. N. Chin
ISBN: 9780231109871

In Service and Servitude explores the relationship between contemporary domestic service and the pursuit of the "good life" in an era of global economic transformation. The author offers an interdisciplinary approach to examining the in-migration of foreign domestic workers in Malaysia.The book uses Malaysia as a case study of the role played by foreign domestics in a rapidly industrializing Asian country. Christine Chin discusses how the state elites and the middle classes come to rationalize the demand for-and treatment of-domestic workers while pursuing the country's modernity project, designed to create a stable, developed, multiethnic society. She shows how different and competing pressures on the regional, national, and household levels leave Filipina and Indonesian domestics open to mistreatment and abuse, most directly by employment agencies and employers. Chin argues that late-twentieth-century efforts to expand open markets and establish global free trade, encourage the expl

Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publish Date: 1998-01

Subjects: Business & Economics / Labor, Political Science / International Relations / General, Political Science / Political Process / General, Social Science / Women's Studies, Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Cross-Cultural Center (Location: Feminism (FEMM)), Women's Center (Location: Class/Economics)