Diasporic Dreams, Middle-Class Moralities and Migrant Domestic Workers Among Muslim Filipinos in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This paper is about middle class Muslim Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, their discourses about and relationships with migrant domestic workers in that country. For this group of people, Saudi Arabia is not simply a temporary stopping point to a better future elsewhere. Rather it is also a place where certain middle class aspirations may be realized in the present and where their religious affiliations as Muslims may be seen as enhancing rather than detracting from those dreams and imaginings. As part of a large and diverse diasporic community of Filipinos, middle class Filipinos routinely interact and socialise with other working class Filipinos.They often provide succour and support for those among their compatriots who labour under the most difficult and legally unprotected conditions. Some employ migrant domestic workers in their homes, many of whom are irregular or in common parlance takas (escapees).At the same time, they reproduce and reinforce many of the gendered stereotypes of domestic workers that often suggest moral failings of one sort or another. The simultaneous embracing of and distancing from domestic workers reflects the anxieties of those, particularly women, whose tenuous hold of middle class status is accomplished through but also at risk by the precariousness of their sojourns abroad in the Kingdom.

Gendering pastoral power: masculinity, affective labour and competitive bonds of solidarity among Filipino migrant men in Saudi Arabia

“…In general it is only middle class professionals who are entitled to apply for an accompanying visa for spouse and dependents (Johnson 2010). Men who were able to provide for their family and secure their physical proximity were seen as truly successful.…”

“…In terms of land based migrant Filipinos, Saudi Arabia remains one of the few destinations where men still outnumber women (approximately 55% to 45%) and occupationally is one of the most diverse, making class a significant feature of migrant life in that place (Johnson 2010). Religion too is an important differentiating factor.…”

“…] The relation between master and sharecropper was not based on great disparities of wealth and resources (Bourdieu 1990, 127). Similarly it is the precariousness of middle class status and their material and, in the Saudi context, juridical proximity to working class compatriots in terms of their foreign resident status, which in some sense makes necessary the virtues of care (Johnson 2010). The relations between dominate and subordinate men does not in any way presuppose docility on the latter's part even when the authority of the former is 'exercised in the form of protective authority over those who entrust themselves to him (Benveniste 1973, 84ff, cited in Bourdieu 1990'.…”

Gendered Migrations and Global Social Reproduction

“…Where migrant workers marry non-migrants by whom they are employed in the destination country, this can provide a route to class mobility. Moreover, cross-class alliances based on shared ethnicity may occur (Johnson 2010;Però 2008) alongside the class distanciation often seen between differently classed migrants from the same country.…”

Gender, Sexuality, and the State in Southeast Asia

“…Anthropologists of Southeast Asia, by contrast, particularly if they engage in ethnographic research (as most do), commonly focus on non-normative genders and sexualities or at least are more inclined than historians and others to do so. This is readily apparent when one considers the importance of ethnographic material and theoretical interventions from Evelyn Blackwood (2010), Tom Boellstorff (2005, Sharyn Davies (2010), Peter Jackson (1997), Mark Johnson (1997), Martin Manalansan (2003, Rosalind Morris (1994), Dede Oetomo (1996), Megan Sinnott (2004cf. Blackwood and Wieringa 1999;Wieringa, Blackwood, and Bhaiya 2007).…”