Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media 9781138092778, 9781315107301

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Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media

This book explores the transnational mobility, everyday life, and digital media use of childcare workers living and working abroad. Focusing specifically on Filipina, Indonesian, and Sri Lankan nannies in Europe, it offers insights as to the causes and implications of women’s mobility, using data drawn from ethnographic research examining transnational migration, work experiences, family, and relationships. While drawing attention to the hidden, largely invisible, and marginalized lives of these women, this research reveals the ways in which digital media, especially mobile phones and the Internet, empower them but also continue to reinforce existing power relations and inequalities. Drawing on a wide range of perspectives from media and communications, sociology, cultural studies, and anthropology, the book combines theoretical perspectives with grounded case studies. Youna Kim is Professor of Global Communications at the American ­University of Paris, France, after the London School of Economics and Political Science where she had taught since 2004, after completing her PhD at the University of London, Goldsmiths College. Her books are Women, Television and Everyday Life in Korea: Journeys of Hope (2005, ­Routledge); Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia (2008, ­Routledge); Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters (2011, Routledge); Women and the Media in Asia: The Precarious Self (2012); The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (2013, Routledge); Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society (2016, Routledge).

Routledge Advances in Internationalizing Media Studies Edited by Daya Thussu, University of Westminster For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.

13 Modernization, Nation-Building, and Television History Edited by Stewart Anderson and Melissa Chakars 14 Media across Borders Localizing TV, Film, and Video Games Edited by Andrea Esser, Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino and Iain Robert Smith 15 Asian Perspectives on Digital Culture Emerging Phenomena, Enduring Concepts Edited by Sun Sun Lim and Cheryll Ruth R. Soriano 16 Digital Politics and Culture in Contemporary India The Making of an Info-Nation Biswarup Sen 17 European Media Policy for the Twenty-First Century Assessing the Past, Setting Agendas for the Future Edited by Seamus Simpson, Manuel Puppis, and Hilde Van den Bulck 18 Everyday Media Culture in Africa Audiences and Users Edited by Wendy Willems and Winston Mano 19 Children and Media in India Narratives of Class, Agency and Social Change Shakuntala Banaji 20 Advancing Comparative Media and Communication Research Edited by Joseph M. Chan and Francis L.F. Lee 21 Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media Youna Kim

Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media

Youna Kim

First published 2017 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Taylor & Francis The right of Youna Kim to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data CIP data has been applied for. ISBN: 978-1-138-09277-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-10730-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

To OH, SOOAN and OH, JEILL

Contents

Acknowledgments 1 Minorities and the Digital Media From Digital Utopia to the Everyday 8 Digital Media and Everyday Life 12 Documenting the Undocumented 15 2 Global Nannies: A Global-Historical Perspective Feminization of Migration: Nannies from the Global South 19 Why Women Move: Development as Freedom 23 Remittances for Development: Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka 29 New Nannies of Europe 36 Paris: The Other Side of the Global City 41 3 Mobile Phone for Empowerment? Work Life, Power and Freedom Mobile Phone as Social Capital 49 Disposable Life 52 Mobile Connection, Disempowerment and Inequality 54 4 Digital Media for Intimacy? Family Life and Transnational Mothering Intensive Mothering: Gender Inequality Unchanged 63 Intimacy and Digital Fatigue 65 Morality of Mothering 69 5 Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration Mediated Migration: “Paris is Beautiful” 79 Digital Media in an Emotional Sphere 83 Self-Expression Online: “I am Doing Nothing” 87

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viii Contents 6 The Care of the Self: “As a Woman, Not as a Mother or a Nanny” Self-Sacrifice: Money, Time, Leisure 96 Not Part of the Family 101 Gossip Community, Sexuality, and Erotic Capital 107 Digital Media as Affective Practice: “Doing Things Together” 114

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7 Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home Banal Racism in Everyday Life 129 Ethnic Media, Ethnic Enclave 139 Home Always There: “I’m Not Going to Stay Here Forever” 146

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8 Cosmopolitan Hospitality Whose Cosmopolitanism? 154 Hospitality as an Urgent Response 166

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Bibliography Index

175 201

Acknowledgments

In 2007 when I moved from London to Paris, my daughter was six years old. To better facilitate her integration into this new cultural environment, I sent her to an international bilingual (French/English) school located in an affluent area of central Paris. During her schooling and up to this moment of everyday life, I have had opportunities to interact with many Asian nannies at school gates, parks, on the street, inside grocery markets, churches, and elsewhere in their private lives. As a working mother with a childcare role, I spent lots of time in beautiful parks and playgrounds – the best place for children to enjoy themselves, and for nannies to get out of isolated homes and socialize. Knowing that I am a Korean woman, some Asian nannies expressed their awareness of the Korean Wave popular media culture, especially TV dramas and music, as a warm way to open conversation and get to know each other. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to all women in this project for sharing their precious time and intimate life stories that are not always easy to be told. I am also grateful to Anthony Giddens for his valuable advice and friendship, as always. Many researchers and their works have been influential and encouraging in this process, for which I remain grateful: Chris Berry, Nick Couldry, Adrian Favell, Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot, Gerard Goggin, Christian Joppke, Anandam Kavoori, Maria Kontos, Sonia Livingstone, David Morley, Alondra Nelson, Rhacel Parrenas, Antoine Pecoud, Raffaella Sarti, Francesca Scrinzi, Kyoko Shinozaki. Thanks to my dedicated PA and friend Diane Willian for helping me wherever I am. Felisa Salvago-Keyes, Christina Kowalski, Daya Thussu, and Erica Wetter at my publisher Routledge have been wonderfully supportive and cooperative, and the reviewers’ comments highly know­ ledgeable and pertinent. This book is dedicated to my family and special mentor. Youna Kim Paris, March 2017

1 Minorities and the Digital Media

Feminization of migration has emerged as a common livelihood s­ trategy to alleviate poverty and improve socio-economic, cultural, and fami­ lial conditions. Low-income female migrants have little choice about whether or not they live with their families, where they work, and where they call home (Silvey, 2006). Global mobility seems the best livelihood option and the only way to earn an income for the deprived and desperate. Increasingly often, women are on the move as never before in history. Millions of women from poor countries in the global South migrate to do the women’s work of the global North—female traditional care work that affluent women are no longer able or willing to do and many men either cannot or will not do (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). This global relationship mirrors the traditional relationship between the sexes; in the absence of help from their male partners, affluent women have moved into the labor market by turning over the care of children to women from the global South. In addition to childcare, nannies are engaged in other domestic work such as cleaning, cooking, ironing, or dog-walking, when requested by their employers in the flexi­ ble and contingent processes of domestic labor. In practice, boundaries between care activities and domestic services are often blurred; nannies are expected to embody a fictitious, ideal housewife providing coordination of the home. Global cities such as Paris and New York are home to global nannies and a proliferation of “the professional household without a wife” constituted by this new type of “serving class” (­ Sassen, 2009b). A  stroll through any Paris neighborhood will bear out a visi­ ble trend that more and more foreign-born women are pushing baby strollers (New York Times, 2010). This care work is disproportionately performed by foreign workers of racialized groups as “global servants of global capitalism” (Parrenas, 2001), not only because their labor is cheaper but also because they are poor and compelled to be more deferent and servile (Mozère, 2004). To omit this particular caring function of domestic labor, then, is to ignore the divisions of race and class in reproductive work ­(Anderson, 2000), the potential slavery and the relative disempowerment as the reproduction of racial stereotypes, widening class differences and social inequalities in global cities.

2  Minorities and the Digital Media There are between 50 and 100 million domestic workers worldwide (ILO, 2011). It is hard to pin down the exact numbers, since so much of the servant economy is underground, undocumented, and unregulated, and since this care work operates inside the private sphere of the home, where more potential for exploitation exists, often without formal labor contracts. Some of the world’s largest flows of un­documented, temporary migrant workers originate in Asia. In three Asian countries, namely the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, women are the majority of migrant workers (Campbell, 2006) and have constituted bet­ ween 60% and 80% of labor migrants since the 1980s (Anggraeni, 2006; ­Moukarbel, 2009; Parrenas, 2010; Ukwatta, 2010). Approxi­ mately 10  million Filipinas, 1.5 million Indonesians, and 1 ­m illion Sri ­Lankans work abroad in the domestic care sector, emerging as some of the largest groups of migrant laborers in the global economy. Asian female migrant workers are very mobile like tourists, becoming global nomads who have labored in multiple countries. Many Asian nannies in Paris worked previously in other countries of Asia or the Middle East ­ rabia, ­Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, ­Malaysia) before (e.g., Saudi A coming to Paris to care for the children of the French or of ­European and American expatriates in Paris. Some of these Asian nannies in Paris, who started to arrive in the 1980s, are the runaways fleeing abusive employers when their employers, usually from the ­M iddle East, ­vacationed in France (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009). Many others enter through tourist visas and then overstay the permitted period to remain in in­ visible employment inside private households. French immigration poli­ cies do not issue work permits for domestic care service and do not acknowledge it as a sector of employment for migrants, thereby leaving the status of legal employment to the discretion of employers (Briones, 2008; Scrinzi, 2011). However, many employers do not register their employees, further ensuing that forms of exploitation in relation to working conditions and wages remain largely hidden, ultimately with more power and control over their employees. The proportion of illegal migrants (sans-papiers) in the domestic care sector appears remarkably high (over 80%); they are among the most exploited and least protected groups of migrants (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Kontos, 2009). Both legal and illegal recruitment agencies, as well as informal social networks created by earlier migration of family members and friends and the use of mobile communication technologies, increasingly facilitate the flows of undocu­mented, irregular migrants who continue to move and struggle with multiple mobilities in search of work and stability. Importantly, digital media, mobile phones and the Internet in particular enable migrants to be simultaneously mobile and connected, anytime and anywhere. The widespread use of digital media, as an integral resource of everyday life, is leading to new practices and complex consequences in the mobile lives of minorities.

Minorities and the Digital Media  3 Can digital media help minorities improve their life conditions? How much is this connectivity by new technologies creating a sense of empowerment, contributing toward greater freedom and equality? Does it produce new spaces for intimacy in family life? To what extent is digital media use felt to be of value in extending a sense of self and social relationships? How does it construct feelings of home and belonging in the transnational lives of minorities, and what are the consequences for identity formation? Based on long-term ethnographic research on global nannies in Paris, this book explores how digital media affect the mobile lives of minorities in their complexity and paradox within major arenas of use in everyday life. While drawing attention to the hidden, largely invisible, marginalized minorities, this research reveals the ways in which digital media, especially mobile phones and the Internet, make differences in their lives but also continue to reinforce existing power relations and inequalities well beyond their control in various contexts of use. The core issue guiding this research revolves around the concern with power. ­Recognizing the significance of new technologies and mobile cultures within the existing social structures, this book argues for the double capacity of digital media use with both enabling and disabling consequences that are mediated by profoundly asymmetrical power relations in the everyday contexts of interaction. The multifaceted ways minorities use digital media technologies in everyday life are a reflection and articulation of the enduring structures and forces that shape their lives and social positioning in the ongoing struggle as marginalized subjects. Global nannies in Paris—widely traveled Filipina, Indonesian, and Sri Lankan nannies in a cosmopolitan center of Europe that appears to manifest a public embrace of cultural diversity and multiculturalism—are taken as empirical case studies to critically assess the complex and sometimes contradictory capacity and meaning of the digital media in the extremely imposing structural and material constraints on its invisible users. Global nannies make up some of the most socially marginalized, exploited, and vulnerable minorities in the world today (for details, see Chapter 2). Their work is frequently unrecognized, isolated, and hidden behind closed doors in private homes, while their voices are usually ­silenced. Inattention to the hidden women’s work and silences neglects their important contributions to an integral part of the economy, well-­ being, and social life of the larger interdependent world, both sending and receiving countries. When used in its statistical sense, the term ­“minorities” conveniently refers to subjects that are small in number (e.g., people of color) less than the majority (e.g., white), but this convenient umbrella label misleads those using the label to think of minorities as small not only in number but also in importance (Wilson et al., 2013). Silences and omissions as a tendency of analytical frameworks are a source of concern in light of the task of chronicling minorities of parti­ cular social groups already prone to invisibility (Burrell, 2012) and are

4  Minorities and the Digital Media bound up in global power relations and the marginalization that dominant narrations effect for particular subjects and histories (Hemmings, 2011). Minorities’ position as marginal refers to the kaleidoscope of real and perceived circumstances that cause them to feel disadvantaged or disempowered (Powell, 2014). Minorities can be disadvantaged in their actual life conditions but not always feel that way, as certain power resources can be imagined and appropriated. Some of the resources by which minorities, global nannies in this case, manage mobility and attempt to make themselves feel empowered—­ albeit temporary, fleeting yet routinized in everyday practices—are digi­ tal media such as mobile phones and the Internet. All nannies in this study have mobile phones, and more than half connect to the Internet through their mobile phones more than they do through computers, which are relatively expensive and cumbersome in the lives of global nomads. The mundane and pervasive use of an individualized portable device, like the mobile phone with Internet-enabled multimedia and mobile communications anytime and anywhere, entails consideration of new narratives of mobility and belonging, ritual practices, human existence and modes of being in the world. Its perceived role is so crucial that the absence or loss of the device can feel like a loss of life and self, a loss of connection to significant others and of the expression of love, a loss of core and potential relationships with their own spaces of flows. Given the centrality of the intimate technological presence that embodies social and emotional life, the issue here is not merely about physical access to technological resources (e.g., the traditional digital divide between the haves and the have-nots, and hence digital exclusion), but it requires a nuanced and critical understanding of the users’ relational access to digital media technologies and how they actually experience that access in everyday relational contexts of use that are not disconnected from but enmeshed with power dynamics. Multiple modes of power can be appropriated to deal with labor status, social alienation, insecurity, and anxiety about highly precarious lives as racialized, classed, and gendered minorities at the margins of multicultural society. Their everyday life, particularly under work conditions of isolation, exploitation, material poverty, and emotional imprisonment, renders them vulnerable and disempowered, while making their engagement with digital media even more significant and more central to everyday life and ongoing struggle for survival and development. One of the greatest hardships endured by the poor is a sense of isolation, and new communication technologies are expected to reduce that feeling and allow people connect to a wider world in ways unimaginable before (Wheeler, 2010). New communication technologies are of value to low-income people in the conditions of poverty and become integral to their well-being, relationships with other people, and sense of self (Horst and Miller, 2006). The construction of self and identity takes place in a context marked by the multiple and

Minorities and the Digital Media  5 intersecting axes of power and inequality that operate simultaneously in a digitally connected world and within which everyday life is embedded. Women of minority groups are positioned in serialized structures of gender, race, and class, which do not determine identities among them but produce similarly positioned experiences and intersecting voices that have affinity with one another and similar perspectives of other social positions and events (Young, 1997). For the minorities, the formation of identity can be imagined as a particular organization of social and material forces of marginal power in the real world. It is a space of power, nonetheless, made not only of victims but also of actors producing their own meanings (Hall, 1991). This book will importantly recognize and analyze how power relations and structures shape digital media cultures in everyday contexts. New digital technologies do not radically create new conditions or change power relations already in existence. Rather, they are created by existing social and cultural contexts that are diverse and stratified ­(Everett, 2008). New technologies arise from the existing patterns of hierarchy in relation to class, race, gender, and so on, while they also enable new practices to open up new spaces of identity politics (Poster, 2001). To whom will technologies give greater power and freedom, and whose power and freedom will be reduced by them (Postman, 1992)? It is indicated that the gap between Internet users and non-users is no longer associated with race and gender (Rice and Katz, 2003) and that racial minorities and disadvantaged groups in multicultural societies are more likely to access, or show greater motivation to use, digital media technologies to compensate for their lack of social capital and power (Gustavo, 2012; Library Technology Reports, 2012). The growing numbers of working-class, specifically low-income, migrants utilizing networks indicate that the Internet and mobile communications are being transformed from an elite privilege for the upper classes into basic instruments necessary for human existence, as these technologies are becoming more widespread and more closely integrated with the lives of all people (Qiu, 2009). However, this transformation in increased levels of technological access does not necessarily reduce socio-economic inequality but makes it more explicit by supporting the power and interests of the wealthy more than helping the poor. In this relational context, the abilities of the poor and the disadvantaged to experience access and make deliberate choices or feel a sense of empowerment are not completely separate from, but also conditioned by and reconfigured in relation to, the privileged others in power. Mobile digital technologies can intensify, rather than bridge, differences between the powerful and the disadvantaged by reinforcing the continuity of traditional power structures and enduring patterns of communication, or by producing potential new inequalities (Van Dijk, 2012). To realize the dreams and promises of the digital media to empower all users, then there is a need

6  Minorities and the Digital Media to challenge that context of socio-economic inequality and asymmetrical power (Curran et al., 2012). As this book will demonstrate, although new technologies are seen as offering potential for good life and societal improvement and can supposedly empower the marginalized to claim a space in relation to self-identity, community, home, and belonging, these great expectations are not always easily met in the lived experiences of racialized, classed, and gendered minorities. In a technological age, people’s ruling ideal of good life—quality of life constituted by dimensions of personal freedom and choice, well-being, leisure, intimacy, and ­happiness—seems to be inextricably bound up with technology and the means it offers to control the external world (Brey et al., 2012). Freedom is a process of becoming, of being able to see and understand difference within unity, and resisting the tendency to reproduce the hierarchies and inequalities embedded in the world (Davis, 2012), or fundamentally calling things into question and revolting, not changing or succeeding (Kristeva, 2002). Liberal discourses of technology and unbridled freedom in a utopian form of futurology tend to obscure hierarchical social structures and identify freedom merely with free enterprise or celebrate autonomous subjects freed from traditional constraints, thereby wittingly or unwittingly masking the fundamental issue of freedom and inequality. In a sense, mobile phones and the ­I nternet are a sublime set of techno­logies expressing a mythology, a belief in what could take place, rather than realized achievements (Mosco, 2004). What is commonly considered a liberating new technology today and its assumed transformative feature, such as the always-on connectivity of mobile digital devices, promises to empower users to have more choice or enhance human freedom, facilitating larger and more diverse networks and hence social and economic development (Rainie and Wellman, 2012), but it can also diminish individual freedom and even lead to enslaving conditions under the force of social influences in a world based on connectivity. It is thus important to give simultaneous recognition to the centrality of individual freedom and to the force of social influences on the extent and reach of individual freedom. Expansion of freedom is both the primary end and the principal means of development (Sen, 1999). In other words, development is a process of expanding the overall freedoms of people to lead the kind of lives they have reason to value and to enhance the real choices they have in all spheres of life. Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. The innate characteristics of digital media are often seen to be able to provide new possibilities for freedom of choice in the conduct of everyday life, and the presumption is that those choices, freely made and enhanced by such technological access, will lead, individually and collectively, to a more satisfying and

Minorities and the Digital Media  7 productive existence and enhanced quality of life (Silverstone, 2005). The perpetual connectivity and mobility with which mobile phones and the Internet impact the mobile lives of minorities is a useful case for critically understanding such technological capacity for freedom and development in everyday life. Based on ethnographic research on the lives and experiences of global nannies in Paris, this book considers the mundane, banal yet profound presence of digital media in everyday life; in the multifaceted contexts of work life, power and freedom (Chapter 3), family life and intimacy (Chapter 4), particularly mother-daughter relationships (Chapter 5), personal life, leisure and the self (Chapter 6), social relationships, belonging and identity in multicultural society (Chapter 7), and finally, reflections on what this digital experience means in a world of cosmopolitan humanity (Chapter 8). Like all previous technologies, the potentials of the digital media are context dependent, not determined by the technologies in their own right, and the consequences of techno­logical benefits are mediated by structural power relations and the social positioning of users. This book moves beyond the assumed power of technological determinism in the lives of users, but it moves closer to the users’ relational, situational, embodied experiences of being digital. It reveals that the use of digital media as integrative resources is embedded in, and functions together with, other structures of oppression to shape the very nature of what it means to be human, of human relations, the possibilities of social interaction, lived experiences, and identities of minorities. Far from freeing the minorities, social constraints and marginalization on the basis of race, class, and gender or a similar affiliative structure can also be reproduced in new digital cultural realms and thus sustain, rather than transcend, social and cultural divisions, intersecting forms of identity marker and interwoven inequalities so prevalent in social worlds. Paradoxically, boundaries of exclusion and inclusion for a feeling of belonging can be marked out, drawn and redrawn, and reinforced through the everyday practices of digital media use and on­going processes of differentiation in identity construction. Although digital media use by minorities is indeed increasing, this is not in itself reason to be optimistic about technology’s ability to empower minorities, as technological worlds create cultural difference, inequality, and dominant values of social worlds in the webs of worldly and materialized power (Bauchspies et al., 2006; Nakamura, 2008). This book uncovers how racialized, classed, and gendered minorities such as global nannies deal with the hierarchical formations of cultural difference and how they attempt to expand their sense of self and the very small social world they physically inhabit as this world intersects with the complex and indeterminate world of digital media that goes beyond utopian technological determinism and becomes an ordinary and integral constituent of everyday life.

8  Minorities and the Digital Media

From Digital Utopia to the Everyday Digitalization of everyday life, the micro-coordination of the everyday through mobile digital technologies, becomes a routine part of contemporary experience, with high levels of access to mobile phones and online communications. Anecdotally, at least those in the West appear to be fully immersed in all things digital and ubiquitous media cultures (Hand, 2008). The term “digital” media in general refers to the new media that incorporate interactive, two-way communications—and to some extent performative aspects of communications—and involve some form of computing as opposed to the previous technologies such as radio and television (Manovich, 2001; Jensen, 2010; Logan, 2010). Digital media forms are re-mediating the familiar (Bolter and Grusin, 1999), re-­purposing or hybridizing all existing and highly developed media forms of communications, and the shift of focus within digital media to individualized networked practices and greater use of mobile technologies lead to new preoccupations (Dewdney and Ride, 2014). Fluid, individualized connectivity and freedom characterize these new techno­ logies that do not render all other forms of the media obsolete (Chun and Keenan, 2006). An important driving force in the development of digital media is the goal of total connectivity—the ability to access all, in all places, at all times—increasingly afforded by mobile phones and other portable web-access devices (Messaris and Humphreys, 2006). The mobile phone moves to the center stage as a device crisscrossed by media flows, cultural forms and content, borrowing and cross-­fertilizing from audio and radio cultures, television cultures, print cultures, I­ nternet, and other emerging media cultures (Goggin, 2006). The role of the mobile phone is rapidly developing since the late 1990s (Glotz et al., 2005), and Internet use as an everyday phenomenon expanded from the mid1990s onward, and mobile Internet users are projected to surpass desktop Internet users (Castells, 2013). Moreover, the spectacular growth of social media from 2004 onward is expected to profoundly change social relations and communications. There is a tendency to attribute the word “mobile” to digital devices, with a subsequent tendency to expect a cultural shift along with this technological transformation when a geographically fixed medium becomes mobile (Farman, 2012). Historically, digital media have given rise to utopian and dystopian perspectives and the elevated hopes and fears associated with them ­( Jensen, 2010). The celebration of the transformative potential of digital techno­logies is a dominant discourse in which the rise of digital utopianism and particular utopian visions loom large. It is argued that being digital does give much cause for optimism with very ­powerful ­qualities— de-­centralizing, globalizing, harmonizing, and e­ mpowering—that will result in its ultimate triumph (Negroponte, 1995). ­According to this optimistic argument, traditional centralist views of life will become a

Minorities and the Digital Media  9 thing of the past, and digital technologies can be a natural force drawing people into greater world harmony, allowing them to release from the limitations of geographic proximity and gain understanding across boundaries in the digital world. Digital technologies are viewed as the symbols of transformation and the tools of new forms of relationality and community, potentially changing the nature of the self. The digi­tal age is characterized by the emergence of alternative communities and identities freed from the constraints of everyday life because visual markers of race, class, gender, and physical appearance are not apparent in online space (Rheingold, 1993). In this anonymous, open, and fluid space, people may break free from the conventions of the real world and freely explore alternative selves and emancipated subjectivities (Turkle, 1995). Identity formations are linked to the emancipatory power of technologies, and interacting subjects or explorers could take on multiple, flexible identities freed from the limits of material existence. Inter­activity, as a distinctive and constitutive feature of digital media, is envisioned as empowering (Manovich, 2001). Much of the early and still ongoing utopian optimism envisions that the new digital world would radically transform everyday life and create more active and empowered subjects with greater control over their lives. Thanks to mobile techno­ logies, enabling concepts like access, freedom, connectivity, boundless space, mobility, and the compression of distances are regularly invoked to reinforce an empowering and transformative force. In an age of transnational migration, the shrinking of distances through new communication technologies leads to the realization of the world society and the emergence of Internet-based forms of global togetherness (Greschke, 2008). New technologies’ de-centralized and less hierarchical nature of networked interaction feeds the hope of promoting the power of progressive transformation and development in the world beyond all conditions. It is thus hoped that the emancipatory power of new technologies will serve to break down traditional power structures and solve inequality in social relations. The potential benefits are believed to be empowering to mobile and networked individuals, including the weak and marginal. The Internet in particular has tremendous potential to achieve greater social equity as well as empowerment for those on the margins of society (Mehra et al., 2004). Much of the utopian visions of digital technologies are oriented toward placing a promise upon the notion of empowerment. In short, the history of digital media shows that technologies as empowering tools promise much but have many unintended consequences (Hanson, 2007). This utopian enthusiasm has been polarized by a less ubiquitous but equally relentlessly dystopian skepticism that sees the dark side of digital media technologies. Although people are inclined to be enthusiastic about technological change and believe that its benefits will eventually spread evenly among the entire population, a skeptical and dissenting

10  Minorities and the Digital Media voice is sometimes needed to moderate the din made by the enthusiastic multitudes as new technologies alter the structure of people’s interests, the character of symbols, and the nature of community—the arena in which thoughts develop (Postman, 1992). The clash between digital enthusiasts and digital skeptics is evident, with the former heralding a new golden age of access and participation and the latter bemoaning a new dark age of mediocrity and narcissism, condemning the shallowness of digital content and viewing it as signaling a dumbing down of culture (Carr, 2010). These extreme utopian/dystopian visions are unhelpful in understanding what actually happens when new technologies are adopted, and when reality is nuanced and messy, with opportunities and challenges (Boyd, 2014). The hyperbole surrounding these deterministic predictions bears little relationship to the technology used; while these visions are often presented as a mutually exclusive paring, they both express a partial truth; the consequences of technological use are situated at some point along a continuum from utopia to dystopia (Howcroft, 1999). Much work on digital media, whether in utopian or dystopian modes, falls back into technologically determinist forms of explanation—a tendency that should be avoided if one wishes to understand the complexity of the marvelous dimensions of new technologies (Morley, 2007). Rather than determining social consequences, the technological is a constitutive part of society (MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999); technology, human action, and social context are inseparable phenomena, each influencing the others and mutually shaping social consequences (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2006) and human life forms that are neither determined by nor freed from technology (Deuze, 2012). Technological determinism is based on a belief or expectation that technologies possess intrinsic and transformative power to affect all humans in all conditions or to bring about progress of society and better quality of life. In a sense, roots of people’s impatience when it comes to technologies may arise not from anxiety, but rather from the expectation that technologies will, almost naturally, become better (Jones, 1997). The anticipation and excitement characteristic of the current era of digital consumption (Belk and ­Llamas, 2013) and extreme enthusiasm for technology or technological sublime (Nye, 1994) further heighten feelings and expectations for progress in human conditions. However, forms of life that people mastered before the coming of new technology shape their expectations as they begin to use a new instrument, and on the whole, most of the transformations that occur in the wake of technological innovation are actually variations of very old patterns (Winner, 1986). New practices do not so much flow directly from new technological inventions as they are improvised out of old practices and in their concern to preserve a familiar social order and power (Marvin, 1988). Since social scientists, like other enthusiastic observers, are struck more by the new than the familiar,

Minorities and the Digital Media  11 it is not surprising that new digital technologies are believed to signal most momentous change (Webster, 2001), and there is a need to move beyond the belief in their alleged newness (Kember and Zylinska, 2012). The moment one accepts new digital technologies, one is located within a technological progressivism that prevents critical thinking about ­technology-knowledge-power (Chun and Keenan, 2006). There is a tendency to hold the faith in a positive link between technological advancement and human well-being, but the kinds of things people are apt to see as technological entities become much more interesting and problematic if one critically begins to observe how broadly they are involved in conditions of social and moral life (Winner, 1986). Even if modern household technologies, including home computers and telephones, seemed at first to offer women lives of comfort and leisure, women with a gendered role of care at home can find themselves being overworked and perpetually exhausted, struggling to keep up with ever-higher standards and expectations raised by the technological systems (Cowan, 1983). Not only gendered morality but also ideologies of racial difference and class conflict are central to new digital technologies that reinforce social divisions and continue to clash with the existing power structures affecting individual spatial mobility (Nakamura, 2008; Lovink, 2011; Wilkie, 2011). Racial minorities often see in digital media a means to escape racial prejudice, but the powerful majority can use them just as often to re-frame the boundaries of social behavior and reinforce white superiority (Sinclair, 2004). Against color-blind, egalitarian, utopian impulses of the digital revolution, differences between races, classes, and genders, and hence social inequality, are rather expanded and intensified by interactivity in the digital world. Every technology is a complex world of contradictions, and such complexity should be understood in the specific contexts of everyday lived experience. This book’s approach to the digital media is not technology-centric, but it directs our attention to everyday lived experience embedded in social structures and power relations in which technology operates in its complex manifestations. Technologically determinist forms of speculation miss qualitative ethnographic approaches to the study of technology as experienced in the everyday. Technological determinism is empirically unsatisfactory, for it fails to recognize the many social processes of everyday life by which people themselves shape the significance and consequences of technological use (Livingstone, 2009). Focusing on the intrinsic power of technology obscures other important forces at play and neglects situated and embodied experience, experiential and habitual dimensions of the everyday, while supporting a utopian vision of unconstrained freedom and power through disembodied mobility and self-generating subjectivity operating independently of real-life material conditions and constraints. The contingency and unevenness of materiality is an ongoing process within which humans as social actors

12  Minorities and the Digital Media are immersed (Coole and Frost, 2010), and the digital media world is a complex socio-material phenomenon (Gillespie et al., 2014). The materialization of technological visions should be understood in everyday contexts that matter significantly in the ways in which people experience and feel about digital media—how they struggle to define and locate themselves, if there are improvements in human conditions, what these improvements mean and for whom. Connected users find technology good for building new communities and deepening the existing relationships (Howard and Jones, 2004), but the relationships can also be reduced to mere connections, with the consequence on humanity deemed lost (Turkle, 2012). Understanding digital media means understanding humanity (Siapera, 2012). The digital can be a fruitful means for reflecting upon the meaning of humanity, what it means to be human, what it means for people to use technology with heart by engaging their own values and commitments (Nardi and O’Day, 1999), and how to maximize human happiness (Fuchs, 2008). While becoming a constitutive part of humanity, the digital is producing too much culture that renders people superficial or alienated (Horst and Miller, 2012). Global connections are everywhere in the digital age, but aspirations for global connection come to life in friction (Tsing, 2005). Far from producing utopian kinds of community and relationality, the digital can effect non-relations, non-communities, community without community, even as relationships are increasingly mediated by the digital and people are encouraged to imagine that such technologies keep them ever more in touch in everyday life (Gere, 2012). Human life in a digitally connected culture is complex, indeterminate, and unsettling as digital media routinely enable and constrain the practices of everyday life, the prosaic world of banality and significance in its invisibility.

Digital Media and Everyday Life The significance of everyday life, its particular character and distinctiveness, is taken to be a context for understanding the dynamics of digital media use by marginalized minorities in this book. Everyday life in the digital society is constituted through the actions and meanings that individuals and groups produce in their interaction both with each other and with the technologies that enable that interaction, and thus an understanding of that process requires focused attention on meaning and significance (Silverstone, 2005). It is in the everyday that the functional and the cultural dimensions of digital media are worked through, by various ways in which people engage with and incorporate technologies into the familiar, ordinary, and more or less secure routines of their everyday life, while constructing relationships and meanings within it. The unique character and significance of media technologies should be understood within the everyday social context in which engagement and

Minorities and the Digital Media  13 meaning take place (Kim, 2005). Digital media are continuous with and embedded in other social spaces, not just happening within a virtual world that is somehow disconnected from the everyday, but also happening within mundane social structures and relations that they may transform but cannot escape (Miller and Slater, 2000). Analyses of everyday life, familiar and unremarkable micro-processes, allow a nuanced articulation of the dimensions of structural macro-influences and the depth of their impact on the world as people know it (Scott, 2009; Kalekin-Fishman and Low, 2010). Understanding the hidden aspects of social life that are often labeled mundane and unimportant enables people to explore unarticulated ideas, begin dialogues, and shift power (Bauchspies et al., 2006). Four dimensions, at least, can be highlighted concerning the signi­ ficance of everyday life and its relationship to media use (Kim, 2008), digital media in particular. First, everyday life is the domain where economic and material as well as cultural and symbolic resources are made available or not in order to engage meaningfully with the surrounding world. In the ordinariness of the everyday, the different portions of power and resources, their presence or absence, and the significance of such difference and inequality largely shaped by social structure are most keenly felt in their invisibility. Everyday life is thus a site of struggle. The everyday is a contested and opaque terrain where aspects of life lie hidden, especially those lives of minorities that have traditionally been left out of historical accounts (Highmore, 2002). The trivial and petty side of life, the humble and disappointing aspects of social praxis, the suffering and the “misery of everyday life” (Lefebvre, 1971) are a battleground in which a dialectical relationship between the dominating and the dominated is displayed in tension. This tension is inevitable in struggling to manage the unwanted influence of domination, in making meaning and order as well as pleasure of everyday life. Second, it is also the domain of everyday life where the individual and collective capacities of people to create their own life world are realized and achieved through everyday practices, albeit with different power and resources. In everyday life, genuine “creations” are achieved, those creations people produce as part of the process of becoming human; the human life world is not defined simply by historical, ideological, and political super-structures, by totality or society as a whole, but rather by this intermediate and mediating level of everyday life or the “power of every­day life” (Lefebvre, 1971). Society is not a closed totality, and individuals have the opportunity to scrutinize or revolt against norms (Kristeva, 2002). Human agency may be frail, especially among those with little power, but it is used daily and mundanely. However circumscribed by material and social conditions, it nonetheless attempts to remake these conditions (Holland et al., 1998). Everyday life is both structured and structuring, making and remaking meaning, while acknowledging its dynamics and

14  Minorities and the Digital Media possibilities for transformation. Everyday life becomes the site for, and the product of, the working out of significance (Silverstone, 1994). Digital media are among the sources of the creations, the working out of significance in everyday practices. People create their own life world and make history but in conditions not of their own making, and this process is enacted with and through cultural practices ­(Grossberg, 2010), the organization of embodied, materially mediated practices as well as establishment of social order (Schatzki et al., 2001). The significance of media cultural practices can be understood as a creative, dynamic, and transformative process, often involving active and intended engagement. Practices exist as performances (Shove et al., 2012), and power is performative as people continuously script and revise their lines of actions in pragmatic and meaningfully distinctive ways from the background of cultural meanings (Alexander, 2011). Identities are improvised from cultural resources at hand that guide, legitimate, and encourage the self in practice (Holland et al., 1998). Digital media are appropriated as cultural resources for performing agency and action, for accumulating or resisting power, in order to create a sense of empowerment, development, and meaning of identity. The circulation and movement of meaning, or mediation ­(Martin-­B arbero, 1993), involves a constant yet dialectical transformation of meaning with consequences, whether intended or unintended, signi­ficant or insignificant. The capacity to make sense of the world, create everyday life, and sustain as well as challenge its meaning has become dependent on the mediation of digital media that is increasingly present in the daily exigencies of people and integrated into ongoing ways of living and being. Third, within the sphere of everyday life, people create and sustain their own experiences, both lived and mediated, in many different and specific ways. Life experience has become an experience in the presence of media technologies (Couldry, 2012). Digital media are central to contemporary everyday experience—as a mediating, not determining, process through which people constitute and reconstitute experiences in their distinctiveness within a shared, yet contested and highly differentiated, social space governed by different levels of power, resources, and constraints. This often invisible and taken-for-granted category of experience should be made visible and confronted to understand how subjects are constituted as different, how they operate differently, and how they contest the workings of given ideological systems; in other words, to politically rework the “project of making experience visible” (Scott, 1992) and make marginalized identities more visible from their hiding places that obscure power (Alcoff, 2006). The purpose of this project is to manifest this easily ignored hidden world that has been suppressed and to open new possibilities of the challenges of the experiences and activities in the ordinariness of the world.

Minorities and the Digital Media  15 Finally, within the sphere of everyday life, ordinary and taken-forgranted experiences and activities emerge as a significant and defining characteristic of social transformations. Studying the micro-processes of everyday life invites ways to understand human practices as producing both continuity and change (Pink, 2012). Macro-processes of structuration are reproduced within the micro-operation of everyday interaction of individual subjects (Giddens, 1984). To understand a contested process of social and cultural change and a fundamental characterization of the nature of such change, it is necessary to look at and understand what people are doing in their everyday lives and in their relationships to the digital media—where and how meanings are created and contested, structures are accepted and challenged, and the possibility of change emerging in that tension. The everyday is a site for significant action, and media use is seen to be at the heart of the “politics of everyday life” (De Certeau, 1984) through its poaching, tireless, invisible, quiet but potentially transformative activity. Digital media expand the power of people to help shape their everyday environment, and may hold the potential for change, but do not guarantee any particular outcomes (­ Jenkins et al., 2013). For marginalized minorities, quotidian struggles for human agency and resistances to the conditions of their formation do not necessarily mean engaging in direct confrontation and open battle against the powerful or grand gestures of revolutionary change. Quiet, private, quotidian struggles are not always explicitly resistant but ­nevertheless contest the existing structures of power and organize everyday lives through contingent processes of technological use, while sometimes reproducing and reinforcing the conditions of marginalization. This book documents and analyzes such paradoxes of digital media use in everyday life by undocumented and marginalized nannies in Paris.

Documenting the Undocumented As a long-term qualitative project on the experiences of global nannies, this book draws on ethnographic interviews and observations with 140 Filipina, Indonesian, and Sri Lankan nannies in Paris. Data were collected from 2008 to 2014 through informal interactions, in-depth follow-up interviews, observation, and participant observation. This ethnographic work started with many informal encounters with nannies in the wealthy neighborhoods of Paris, chatting with nannies in parks or playgrounds seen as major nanny hangouts, then continued with indepth individual interviewing and observing, as well as participating in their private gatherings when invited, such as visiting places of worship on nannies’ days off, joining birthday parties, picnicking, cooking, and watching online TV together. Extensive participant observation of such practices was an effective way to gain deeper insights into their circumscribed lives and experiences, and how digital media fit into their

16  Minorities and the Digital Media worlds. Due to their isolated, lonely, and invisible labor inside private households, nannies tend to be more social and friendly in public spaces, usually in parks or playgrounds while guarding their wards on weekdays and in churches on Sundays. A process of snowball sampling was used as key informants further introduced their friends, sisters, and mothers, who also worked as nannies. Interviews were not always easy to arrange since they tend to work long hours and their time and movements are limited or sometimes restricted by their employers. Most interviews took place outside the homes of the nannies, but a few were conducted in private rooms of live-out nannies. Each interview lasted 1 to 2 hours, with flexible follow-up interviews whenever they became available. At least three follow-up interviews were conducted to ensure a consistent flow of relevant data. Interviews were open ended and unstructured, supplemented by some fixed questioning on the social and cultural backgrounds of the participants. The interviews started with broad bio­ graphical questions on their experience of migration, family life, feelings about the conditions of their work, and the use of the digital media in everyday life. The overall process of the interviews was sustained deliberately as open ended and unstructured in the sense that they were not asked the same questions but encouraged to talk and develop their particular interests and views on the subject. In this way, the direction and structure of the interviews were determined freely by the nannies themselves in their own words and rhythms. When interviewees looked uncomfortable about the conversations being audio-recorded, verbatim notes were taken on condition of anonymity and confidentiality. Through a long-term ethnographic study, life-story narratives were collected from these nannies, many of whom (over 80%) were undocumented, irregular migrants at the time of research. Some women did not want to disclose their legal status and income level that were felt to be highly sensitive and precarious. Many nannies considered themselves to have low incomes, typically between 600 and 1200 euros a month for full-time employment (depending on provision of a service room), or 8 to 10 euros an hour for part-time jobs. Participants’ ages ranged from the 20s to the 50s. More than a half of the Filipina nannies, and younger generations in their 20s and 30s, had relatively higher ­educational backgrounds or qualifications from college or teachers/nurses training school. Some of the nannies came from various social and educational backgrounds including engineering and pharmacy. Nannies tended to enter Paris clandestinely through tourist visas arranged by recruitment agencies or tourist agencies that assist with undocumented migration. Undocumented labor migrants here do not have to be viewed as entirely separate from tourists or other kinds of lifestyle travelers, although they cross borders in order to find work. Illegal migrants (sans-­papiers) in the domestic care sector are usually concentrated in Paris. Many women in their 30s to 50s were mothers with left-behind children in the

Minorities and the Digital Media  17 impoverished villages and cities of their homelands, but in a few cases, their children were born on French territory. For undocumented women, motherhood or presenting their identity as a mother can play a major role in obtaining regularization of their status (Brouckaert, 2012). Open-ended biographical questions about transnational migration, work experiences, family, and relationships elicited intensely emotional responses, simultaneously indicating that there was a surprising lack of opportunity for them to be able to talk about their sense of ­disempowerment—the important yet often unacknowledged suffering, inequality, and predicaments of human existence. The nannies who ­participated in this study wanted to tell their stories of travel biography, what brought them to childcare work afar, and reflected on memorable incidents, private struggles, survival strategies, livelihoods, and the aspects of the relationship that were important to them, while naturally narrating how and when they used the mobile phone and the Internet in search of a form of stability, belonging, and pleasure in their mobile lives. It is ever-more difficult to tell a story of the lived experience of social space without also telling a story of the experience of media space (Couldry and McCarthy 2004), the intersecting mediated experience of digital media that increasingly organize and saturate everyday life and practice. It usually happened that they would vent feelings kept unsaid or repressed and at times paused in the midst of talking when painful emotional stories of loss and failure were revealed, although trans­national migration appeared to yield material benefits in general. Most transnational experience in migrants’ lives is embroiled in continuing emotional adjustments (Chamberlain and Leydesdorff, 2004), and deep storytelling especially from marginalized immigrants who ordinarily find themselves with no voice is as important to emotional survival as their strategies for healthcare and recovery (Lambert, 2013). Storytelling implies the shaping of the story as well as the sharing of it with others afterward (Lundby, 2008), which can allow a degree of empowerment, creativity, and human agency and simultaneously facili­ tate ongoing work in identity. As an important marker and conduit of the self, storytelling supports the continued construction of a healthy, individual identity, and emotions expressed in the process of story­telling should be recognized in the construction of coherent narratives of the self. The women’s outpouring of emotions is a fragmented, partial, expressive mark of the self. The stories migrant women tell about themselves in various contexts of traveling and circumstances give access to an understanding of their subjective experience of migratory trajectories and social relations or their reflexive understanding of the self (Kim, 2011). An important consequence of storytelling is learning about the subjective meanings that rela­tively marginalized individuals, such as nannies in this study, attach to their everyday experiences and actions, their social structural situations and constraints at the interface of

18  Minorities and the Digital Media macro- and micro-processes of human existence. It is important to document and understand not only the material realities of human existence, but also human subjectivities, the ways in which people position themselves within social circumstances in which they are situated (Bourdieu, 2002). Offering unrecognized and undocumented experience, nannies wanted to be heard and to find possibilities for recognition and respect in interpersonal interactions. Working in private homes often isolated from communities, their common experience of lack of recognition and respect pertaining to work in the domestic care sector is a significant factor undermining the self-esteem of domestic care workers and social justice (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; Kontos, 2009; Chamberlain, 2013). Non-judgmental and active listening can make space for silenced, invisible, marginalized minorities to be able to tell their own stories from their particular place in the world. Through the process of storytelling, without always knowing why their stories matter, they felt valued in this rare empathetic encounter. Individual stories may not be seen as immediately constituting proper evidence for the generalizations subsequently made, but qualitative ethno­graphic materials start as experiences and then gradually become material from which the researcher makes generalized statements and claims (Horst and Miller, 2006), while capturing and interpreting the patterns and meanings that emerge from the data and everyday practices. The essential vocation of interpretative research is “not to answer our deepest questions, but to make available to us answers that others… have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what [wo]man has said” (Geertz, 1973: 30, Italics, added emphasis). This work has striven to include and to be included. Given that a great many portrayals of cultural truths have reflected Western domains of white experience, the stories of the undocumented and marginalized nannies here attempt to help us understand what is going on in the world and in themselves. Throughout the book, all names of the nannies have been withheld to protect their identity.

2 Global Nannies A Global-Historical Perspective

Feminization of Migration: Nannies from the Global South Feminization of migration has emerged as a common livelihood ­strategy, and remittances have become one of the largest sources of development, well-being of families, everyday necessities, and human and capital investment (Murrugarra et al., 2011). Remittances are regarded as an important source of capital for development in the global South, and the feminization of labor migration is represented as injecting more momentum into developmental potential (Rosewarne, 2012). As an integral practice in livelihoods, migration offers rare choices to poor women with a hope for upward socio-economic mobility. The potential for such migration to deliver significant development dividends to their home communities is substantial because of its large scale (Hugo, 2009). Millions of women from poor countries increasingly cross the globe and work as nannies to alleviate poverty and meet the basic needs of their families, particularly the needs of children. Deprived and desperate migrant nannies leave their own children in the care of female family members, while experiencing intense longing and sadness across transnational distance. Nannies from the global South bring their employer families in Europe and the USA real maternal affection, no doubt enhanced by the heartbreaking absence of their own children in the poor countries they leave behind (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). This is the often invisible, female underside of transnational mobility, whereby millions of women in the global South migrate to do women’s care work in the private homes of the affluent North. There are more than 200 million migrants in the world (Murrugarra et al., 2011), and according to ILO estimates, there are between 50 and 100 million domestic workers worldwide who are overwhelmingly migrants and women of color (ILO, 2011). Because of the increasing demand for domestic care service in the global North, half of the world’s legal and illegal migrants are believed to be women, and the proportion of women among migrants is likely to rise. Although information on illegal migrants is not easily available, illegal migrants travel in equal,

20  Global Nannies if not greater, numbers (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). Some of the world’s largest flows of temporary migrant workers originate in Asian countries, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. In these three Asian countries, women are the majority of migrant workers, and many are poor mothers making tough decisions to leave their children behind to earn remittances in the global economy (Campbell, 2006). Seventy-two percent of deployed Filipino workers are women, among whom 37% declare themselves to be married, but this figure is probably an underestimate since many married migrants pretend to be single to facilitate their migration (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009). An estimated 10 ­million Filipinas work abroad in the domestic care sector. The ­Philippines deploys an average of 1 million workers annually to more than 130 countries in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, making them one of the largest groups of migrant laborers (Parrenas, 2010). Indonesia, too, is one of the largest countries of origin of female migrant workers who are mainly employed in domestic situations. Approximately 70% of the workers leaving Indonesia are women, and about 1.5 million Indonesian domestic workers are employed abroad (Anggraeni, 2006; Silvey, 2006; Hugo, 2007; Sihombing, 2013). In Sri Lanka, women constitute between 60 and 70% of migrants, and the majority of these women have at least one child (Ukwatta, 2010). As women radically join the labor migration process, the figure sometimes increases to almost 80%. There are about 1 million Sri Lankan women working abroad as domestic workers (Moukarbel, 2009). Since so much of the servant economy is underground, no one knows the exact numbers, and available data may be considerable underestimates (Ehrenreich, 2003). One striking feature of this border-crossing movement is the growing number of undocumented, irregular labor migrants and the temporary and circular patterns of migration, which is in part facilitated by social networks of migration community, kinship and friendship ties (Constable, 2002; Murrugarra et al., 2011) and also by economic resources possibly achieved by the earlier migration of other family members (Parrenas, 2001). Once an occupation traditionally associated with poor rural women who migrated to urban areas in search of work, paid domestic work is now a transnational occupational niche for millions of women from Asia’s less well-off countries including the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka (Huang et al., 2005). The invisible human ecology of care may start in a poor country and end in a rich one or may link rural and urban areas within the same poor country. This phenomenon is called a “global care chain” (Hochschild, 2002), a series of personal links among women across the globe based on the paid or unpaid work of caring. An older daughter from a poor family in a thirdworld country cares for her siblings (the first link in the chain) while her mother works as a nanny caring for the children of a nanny migrating to a first-world country (the second link) who, in turn, cares for the

Global Nannies  21 children of a family in a rich country (the final link). This global care chain phenomenon reflects major social changes, including the changing nature of migration today and increased movement of women seeking income opportunities that lead to issues involving documentation and unregulated labor (Williams, 2011). The trend toward the global care chain of nannies continues on an unprecedented scale, while the underground, servant economy proliferates in global cities. Global cities like Paris and New York are home to a variety of irregular migrant groups and undocumented transnational lives. The strategic importance of well-functioning professional households for the leading globalized sectors in these cities entails a new type of “serving class” for effectively handling household tasks (Sassen, 2009b). In the absence of help from male partners, affluent women maintain and succeed in careers by depending on low-income migrants from poorer regions to provide childcare and homemaking (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). Affluent families do not have, or do not want to make, the time and inclination for childcare and homemaking. The lifestyles of the wealthy parts of the world are made possible by a global transfer of the services and emotional resources associated with a woman’s traditional role from poor countries to rich ones. A division of labor between men and women that was once critiqued as a gender issue at a local and national level has now gone global, intersecting with race and class at the transnational level. Paid domestic work in private households is disproportionately performed by racialized groups (Anderson, 2000). It is usually considered to be an activity of low economic value that should be done by lower classes or racial outsiders (Boris and Parrenas, 2010). Care work is seen to be demanding, demeaning, and dirty and predicated on othering the care worker’s body (Huang et al., 2012). Reinforcing racial and class differentiation, many employers prefer to hire poor migrant workers, not only because the labor is cheaper but also because they are more compelled to perform a traditional deference and servility (Parrenas, 2001; Mozère, 2004; Maher and Staab, 2005). It is the worker’s personhood, rather than her labor power, that the employer attempts to buy, and the worker is thereby cast as unequal in the exchange (­ Anderson, 2000). These trends that underpin the growth of the domestic labor sector reveal broader global inequalities, gender inequalities, asymmetrical class relations, racism, and all these inequalities and interlocking, relational systems of difference are then reproduced and reaffirmed routinely in private homes (Stiell and England, 1997; Cox, 2006; Busch, 2013). ­M igrant domestic workers are fulfilling a role that is crucial for the reproduction of the female employers’ status in contrast to their degraded and profoundly unequal status. The role of migrant domestic workers, and the pervasiveness of this pattern around the globe, is critical to keeping afloat the lifestyles, the cultures and the economies of receiving countries, but the importance of their role has received scant attention

22  Global Nannies because the caring that takes place in private homes is seen as women’s work (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007; McDowell, 2009). In addition to childcare, racialized and poor migrant nannies are usually asked by their employers to engage in other care work, such as cleaning homes or “wiping up the drippings of the affluent” ­(Ehrenreich, 2003), ironing, light cooking, grocery shopping, or dog-walking. In practice, live-in nannies in spatial proximity are under more pressure to work in a combination of different types of domestic care, despite their fundamental differences, to provide better integration and well-­ functioning home. In a similar vein, it is common to see the widespread adoption of the flexible use of housemaids as nannies, as this is an in­ expensive and easily accessible choice of alternative childcare (Roumani, 2005). Often, this invisible work inside the private home characterized by isolation and lack of emotional support involves various forms of exploitation and vulnerability—poor working conditions, excessive work hours and low wages, verbal and sometimes physical abuse by their employers, and a low level of individual and collective bargaining power, which leaves them disempowered (Campbell, 2006; McDowell, 2009; ILO, 2011, 2012). The conditions and treatment of migrant domestic workers are virtually identical across time and space (Moukarbel, 2009), and despite different contexts of reception in global cities, they encounter similar dislocations and experiences of exploitation mostly because of their shared role as low-wage laborers (Parrenas, 2001). ­Domestic care work is a sector that remains largely unregulated and uninspected by nation states, as it is considered part of the private sphere of the home (McDowell, 2009; Bommes and Sciortino, 2011). Much of the domestic labor force exists outside state regulation, with little or no legal protection and often without formal labor contracts as determined by employers’ circumstances and whims. No data exist to calculate precisely the number of migrant domestic workers who confront violations of labor rights and other human rights, but gaps in the labor code and restrictive immigration practices heighten their risk of abuse (Human Rights Watch, 2008). These workers are among the most exploited and least protected groups of migrants. They seek an escape from poverty at home only to find themselves treated as disposable labor abroad (Lan, 2006). Slaves today are cheap and disposable, and modern slavery is not about legal ownership of a person, but it is the complete control of a person chosen by vulnerability, for economic exploitation (Bales, 1999). Because domestic care work is largely based on irregular, temporary migration and operates outside state regulation, the focus of support for migrant women workers fails to deal with the systemic exploitation and disadvantage associated with temporariness (Rosewarne, 2012). Today, exploitation in this global relationship may reflect a new era in colonial relations, one in which the main resources extracted from the global South are no longer natural resources, gold and agricultural

Global Nannies  23 products, but female traditional care work. Wealthy countries now seek to extract something harder to measure and quantify, something that can look very much like love (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). Wealthy and privileged families in the global North now import maternal love and care—the new gold (Hochschild, 2002). The globalization of love, or the displacement of emotion, is often upward in wealth and power. It is implicated in the social construction of commodified intimacy, or more precisely, the intersections of money and intimacy in everyday life (Boris and Parrenas, 2010). Migrant women are important sources of labor in the commoditized in-home childcare sector (Busch, 2013). In many cases, recruitment agencies help to activate and maintain labor migration, and some of these agencies are illegal enterprises that assist with undocumented migration (Parrenas, 2001; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007). The commodification of the migratory processes by recruitment agencies and capitalist practices also contributes to the exploitation and vulnerability of migrant domestic workers (Tyner, 1999; Briones, 2008). The processes of gender and labor inequalities, gendered patterns of labor recruitment and discipline, and commodification of reproductive labor in the global economy articulate with other structures of subordination to shape lived experiences of work and livelihood, exploitation and struggle around the world (Mills, 2003). Based on their position and shared experiences, migrant domestic workers are recognized as the global servants of global capitalism (Parrenas, 2001). More and more of the world’s migrants are mothers who leave their families in the villages of the South to take up jobs caring for families in the North, which involves a fundamental erosion of the commons of the South by the commodified markets of the North, with the nature of the important hidden injury of global capitalism (Isaksen et al., 2008). Children in poor countries of the South pay the price. Migration has become dark children’s burden and their mothers’ burden as well, and this care drain or care crisis raises the question of the equitable distribution of care (Hochschild, 2002).

Why Women Move: Development as Freedom Why are women forced to move? Poor women in the global South are forced to make such heartbreaking and paradoxical decisions, essentially leaving their families in order to save them. It is important to understand the conditions of the sending country that compel them to leave, including the structural factors and the lack of governmental welfare for education, health, and social services, exacerbating poverty and perpetuating the export of care labor (Campbell, 2006). Relative poverty is thus one of the starting points for global care chains (Hochschild, 2002). Poor migrant workers have little choice about whether or not they live with their families and where they work (Silvey, 2006). For many, migration is not a free choice, but the only livelihood option, the only way

24  Global Nannies to earn wages for family survival and development. Migration is generally prompted by women’s decision to escape poverty and support the families they have to leave behind (Philippine Reporter, 2010). Women do not necessarily like the separation from their families for years, but they accept it out of family duty, fatalism, and resourcefulness (Rowe, 2003). Economic vulnerability and limited economic opportunities for women—especially those married with children, unemployed in the formal sector, and living in rural areas—drive them to seek employment abroad (Gamburd, 2008; Moukarbel, 2009). A careful examination of virtually any historical era reveals a consistent propensity toward geographic mobility among men and women who are driven to wander by diverse motives, but nearly always with some idea of material improvement (Massey et al., 1998). Although perspectives on the relationship between migration and development have historically been hetero­ geneous and swung back and forth between optimism and pessimism, between agency and structural constraints (De Haas, 2010), women’s migration is viewed to reduce poverty, and remittances are often critical to sustaining development and the well-being of migrant sending households, to paying children’s school tuition, to enabling families to build homes and buy socially valorized goods to raise their socio-economic status in the community (Murrugarra et al., 2011; Rosewarne, 2012). Walking through a rural village in the sending country, one can generally tell, by the quality of the house, whether or not someone in that family has worked abroad (Rowe, 2003). Simultaneously, remittances sent by migrant mothers directly shape children’s economic well-being. Even though migrant mothers are structurally more disadvantaged than migrant fathers, mother-away families are often thriving economically because of mothers’ extreme sacrifices that reflect gendered social expectations (Abrego, 2009). Evidence indicates that the attainment of education for their children is a central motivating factor for women’s labor migration, as migrant mothers believe that higher education is a step toward upward social mobility and a way to secure a better future for their children (Parrenas, 2005; Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Ukwatta, 2010). Paradoxically, they make strategic decisions to separate for a significant period of the growing-up of their children in order to advance the economic welfare of their children and family. Other important economic considerations are the wage differential between places, particularly between nations, that continues to motivate women to escape poverty through migration (Murrugarra et al., 2011; ­Zavella, 2011). In Asia, increasing gradients of difference between nations, in the pattern of growth or lack of growth, in the workforce, in income and poverty levels, and in patterns of governance, have been important drivers of the labor migration (Hugo, 2006). The uneven economic development in Asia has led to new migration movements such as the feminization of migration. Global inequalities in wages are

Global Nannies  25 particularly striking and migratory care work is generally seen to be an opportunity for educated women, as indicated in various anecdotes about ­Filipinas. For instance, a college graduate from the Philippines can make at least five times more as a domestic worker in an affluent country of Asia (e.g., Hong Kong) than as a schoolteacher in her home country (Rowe, 2003). A Filipina domestic worker in an advanced ­Western ­country (e.g., Canada) can make about the same per month that the average Filipino earns in a year (Campbell, 2006). Because of the wage differential, a college-educated schoolteacher and mother of five in the P ­ hilippines migrates to the USA to work as a housekeeper for a wealthy Beverly Hills family and as a nanny for their two-yearold son (­ Hochschild, 2002). Similarly, a schoolteacher in the Philippines migrates to work in Paris to escape the permanent poverty of her family (Briones, 2008). Many Filipina domestic workers in Rome claim that a bank manager in the Philippines does not earn as much as they do (Parrenas, 2001). Most of the female migrants had some sort of work experience prior to migration, but the wage differential is a strong incentive for them to seek work in more fortunate parts of the world. Increasingly, young women in less advanced countries of the South are choosing careers as nannies in the affluent homes of the North, rather than as professionals, teachers, or nurses in their home countries. Often, this migration of women with college educations or professional experiences is contradictory class mobility, as they become members of the most inferior and occupationally segregated ethnic groups in the receiving country (Pratt, 1999), but this contradiction is resolved when the women themselves stress the material rewards of migrating—so much greater than what they would receive working as professionals back home ­(Parrenas, 2001). Increasing global inequality, including wage inequality, between developed and developing countries is a major contributing factor to the rapid growth of undocumented, irregular migration among domestic workers (Briones, 2008). The North-South divide continues to encourage migration flows, and reducing North-South inequality is the real key to effective migration management (Castles, 2004). However, economic disparities such as relative poverty and wage differentials are not enough to explain the conditions for women’s labor migration to occur. Although migration is clearly related to differentials in wages and employment, economic disparities appear to be a necessary but not sufficient condition, and traditional explanations need to be modified to give more weight to non-pecuniary factors and also to expectations, necessarily subjective, about the future (Massey et al., 1998). Apparently, relative poverty plays a major role in the process of migration, but interestingly, migrant women often do not come from the poorest classes of their societies; indeed, they are typically better educated than male migrants (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). Not only well-documented economic factors but also non-economic factors,

26  Global Nannies a range of gender issues, personal reasons, and hidden motivations, constitute significant driving forces for women’s migration. By migrating, for instance, educated women may escape the gendered social expectation that they care for siblings and elderly family members, or they may expect to free themselves from the oppressive situation of bad marriages and abusive husbands, thus possibly subverting traditional family structures and practices and gaining some sense of freedom. Responses to the question of why women move concern issues of gender inequality in the sending country, including domestic violence and abandonment, gendered labor market segmentation, and the unequal division of labor in the family, as well as the breakdown of relationships (Parrenas, 2001). Women’s decisions to migrate are a complex amalgam of economic necessity and problems caused by the gender ideologies that fundamentally impinge on women’s lives and prevail in their society (Gaffar, 2008). Traditional discussions on the causes of migration, which largely focus on economic determinants and overlook specific gender issues and power relations, cannot fully explain the structural and nuanced causes of independent migration for women. There are also significant reasons for embarking on migration as part of a journey of the self, construction of new subjectivity within transnational experiences. In a sense, migrant women are entrepreneurs of themselves, enterprising their lives through limited yet active choices in the absence of help from state or community, calculating their actions of migration in terms of a kind of investment in themselves and in their families and reflexively shaping their own life history or travel biography in neoliberal societies of the destination (Mozère, 2004; Pratt, 2012). As part of identity-based mobilization, migration may encourage women to remake themselves and place themselves at the center of their biography or “reflexively organized life narratives” (Giddens, 1991). Potential migrants may calculate costs and benefits of migration and particularly wage differentials at home and abroad to determine their destination and take some control of their lives. Increasing mobility undertaken by young single women with high expectations can be seen as a shift to partial individualization (Kim, 2012) as they self-organize specific life plans to develop their lives and give priority to the fulfillment of their needs, desires, and aspirations, while sustaining family ties back home, rather than weakening or separating from them. Educated women are likely to be enterprising and adventurous enough to resist the social pressures to stay home and accept their lot in life, and some female migrants from the global South do find something like liberation, or at least the chance to become independent wage earners (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). Significantly, digital media technologies, the Internet and the mobile phone in particular, are intimately linked to the increased mobility and individuality of the current phenomenon across the globe. To better understand why so many women leave their countries of origin, it is

Global Nannies  27 important to recognize that digital media technologies crucially mediate, not determine, the large scale of human movement today. The establishment of an informal labor market in the private sector and the new economy arises amid today’s revolution of, and increasing use of, information and communication technologies, giving rise to a new pheno­ menon manifesting itself all over Europe—feminization of employment and the comeback of domestic workers for childcare and homemaking in the private sphere (Lutz, 2002; Perrons, 2002). In Europe, the domestic service labor market depends on recruitment agencies and globalized employment networks by use of the Internet, while the globalization of care systems creates new patterns of institutions, transnational flows, and large interactions (Fauve-Chamoux, 2004). Global labor market restructuring through commodification of care, outsourcing of household tasks, and the increasing dominance of services primarily in the liberal market economies of Europe and the USA as well as Asia affects new ways of working by a diverse and mobile workforce, creating both new opportunities for mobilization and new social inequalities transnationally in global cities (Gottfried, 2009). Recruitment-related websites in the commodification of female migration serve as an important socialization process that also contributes to the vulnerability and exploitation of migrant domestic workers (Tyner, 1999). The Internet has, without a doubt, made the task of looking for a nanny or a nanny job easier than it once was, but this technological mediation also renders new migrants more vulnerable because they set up their own employment placements independently on the Internet (Lutz, 2008). The technological features of personalization, portability, and ubiquitous connectivity of the Internet, or the Internet-enabled mobile phone, facilitate independent, individualized, yet networked mobility, as the connections afforded by the technology link people at any place, at any time (Curran et al., 2012). Technological progress, including the role of the media and other means of communication, can substantially contribute to expanding human freedom, although freedom depends on other influences as well (Sen, 1999). The use of digital media technologies is affecting the extent of perceived freedom in the modality of time-space constraint and changing the character of migration, with an emphasis on possible mobility and perpetual connectivity at the same time. In a mobile digital era, the nature of migration is not necessarily linear or neatly characterized by departure-settlement between origin and destination, but possibly circulatory, continuous, settled within mobility, or stuck in diaspora, while the meaning of return migration (e.g., going home after a period of sojourning abroad) does not always convey the same sense of closure and completion as in past generations (Kim, 2011). Women’s spatial mobility in South-North labor migration, as facilitated and sustained by digital connectivity and networking, can further create a strong yet unpredictable pattern of circularity in North-North labor migration and

28  Global Nannies thus the formation of provisional diaspora, transforming the experience of migration into something more indeterminate, more free, and more precarious. Although migration is not always and inevitably a progressive process, migration may be expected by women to be a rare and empowering means to better exercise agency and development, and migrant women may stay mobile or sojourn like global nomads in order to develop their lives and identities in transnational spaces. Fundamentally, it should be emphasized that migration becomes a principal means of the exercise of development, of individual freedom. For many women from poor conditions of the South, migration is driven by a deep desire for development, for substantive freedom to enhance the quality of their lives away from poverty, deprivation, little choice, and little opportunity. Development is a process of expanding the real freedoms of people to lead the kind of lives they have reason to value (Sen, 1999). Despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies freedoms to vast numbers of people living with persistence of poverty, unfulfilled needs, and oppression. There are many new problems as well as the old ones, including extensive neglect of the interests and agency of women and the sustainability of economic and social lives. Overcoming these problems is a central part of the exercise of development. The removal of substantial unfreedoms is constitutive of development, and individual freedom should be seen as a social commitment (Sen, 1999). Migrant women themselves can define what lives they value and choose migration as a potential means to exercise development and to enhance individual human freedom they hope to enjoy as well. While recognizing migrant workers’ experience as dynamically produced through the interconnection of their migration with development processes, it is necessary to evaluate and promote migrant workers’ capabilities along with sustainable livelihood choices at the immediate, individual migrant worker level, as well as at state and global levels (Briones, 2009). This perspective may call for a reconsideration of the migration-development relationship in state policy deliberation. What is needed, therefore, is not a top-down development with goals defined a priori by state governments, practitioners, or funders, but instead an open-ended process of public deliberation that puts the plurality of views of the people—the migrants and their families, whose lives are affected—at the heart of the development process (Kleine, 2013). The primary concern with the North-South flow of monetary remittances that migrant workers send to their homelands, or this North-South, monetary-centered approach to development is too limited, for it fails to heed the multiple effects of migrant workers’ transnational economic and non-economic activities, and thus underestimates migrant workers’ agency and their influence at multiple levels through their transnational living (Guarnizo, 2003).

Global Nannies  29

Remittances for Development: Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka Philippines Developing nations in the global South are increasingly facilitating migration as a way of generating remittances and securing sustained remittances for the development of national economies, and the P ­ hilippines serves as a paradigmatic example (Solomon, 2009). Foreign remittances are the Philippines’ largest source of income, bringing in $21 billion a year, or more than half its national budget (New York Times, 2011). The Philippines is the fourth-largest recipient of remittances in the world, after India, China, and Mexico. In the Philippines, 34 to 53% of the overall population depends on migrant remittances for their daily subsistence (Parrenas, 2010). Remittances are mostly from migrant domestic workers, and care is the Philippines’ primary export. Through the migrant domestic workers’ economic contributions, the country’s primary export is identified as a global commodity of care (Campbell, 2006). Recog­nized as a valuable commodity by private and public institutions that form international networks for migration and employment, migrant domestic care workers are important contributors not only to the economies of the countries that receive them, but also to their own countries through the growing volume of remittances sent home (Huang et al., 2005). As a result of the benefits of remittances, the Philippine government has created the iconic representation of its mostly female overseas workers as the nation’s “modern-day heroes,” and this in turn facilitates the nation-building project of the Philippines to enter the global market economy as an export-oriented economy (Parrenas, 2001). Designated export-based nations in the global labor market, such as the Philippines, do not simply seek investments of transnational corporations and export products or goods, but they also export the bodies of their citizens to a growing extent in order to induce foreign currency into their economies. Beginning the early 1970s, the Philippine government embarked on labor export as a development strategy to deal with its debt crisis, largely a consequence of structural adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund (Lindio-McGovern, 2004). Labor export has since become a major feature of globalization in the Philippines. The Philippines’ labor export scheme inaugurated in 1973 has grown each year and resulted in nearly 25% of the labor force working abroad, and the institutionalization of this labor export policy has led to the increasing de-territorialization of the Philippine state (Solomon, 2009). Since the 1970s, the number of workers annually exported has increased steadily. While fewer than 50,000 in the early to mid-1970s, the number of overseas contract workers annually deployed jumped to 266,243 in

30  Global Nannies 1981 and escalated to more than 700,000 in 1994 (Parrenas, 2001). Today, the Philippines deploys an average of 1 million workers annually or an average of 3,000 workers per day, and about 10% of its population works overseas (Parrenas, 2010; Madianou and Miller, 2012). In recent years, the majority of Filipino migrant workers have been women. In 1991, 59% of deployed Filipino workers were women, and recently women account for more than 70% of annually deployed migrant workers (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Parrenas, 2010). This figure does not include those who go abroad unregistered or through irregular means. Notably, a great number of migrant Filipinas are mothers, who have had to migrate to provide for their children economically but who must at the same time leave these very same children behind in the Philippines. No other country in the world exemplifies the phenomenon of distant mothering as clearly as the Philippines (Madianou and Miller, 2012). An estimated 30% of Filipino children live in households where at least one parent, most often their mother, works abroad, and migrant mothers regularly remit money and send Western consumer goods to their child­ ren growing up without their physical presence (Campbell, 2006; OFW News, 2010). In the case of the Philippines, this division of care labor emerges in the direct recruitment of its citizens to provide care labor to more advanced capitalist nations in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East. Filipina domestic workers are prototypical global women. They are all around the world, with high concentrations in countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They are normally employed under two-year contracts, but increasingly some extend their stay for longer periods of time. While recruitment agencies and social networks do direct, maintain, and over time increase migration flows from the Philippines, migration is also directed by other forces, such as economic resources possibly achieved by the earlier migration of other family members that enable individuals to afford the option of migration to countries of the West (Parrenas, 2001). Moreover, the Philippine government’s fundamental role in the symbolic construction of the positive imagery of migrant workers as new national heroes has significantly popularized the idea of labor migration and promoted its process (Rodriguez, 2002; Encinas-Franco, 2013). The political discourse of new national heroism has been effective in that majorities of overseas Filipino workers view themselves as heroes of the nation. However, they also view themselves as making sacrifices for the ­ rotect nation and have concerns about government commitments to p their rights and interests (Solomon, 2009). Neither fully integrated in receiving nations nor completely protected by the Philippines, they are at best partial citizens (Parrenas, 2001). The ways the ­Philippine state attempts to deal with the vulnerabilities of women workers are shaped by a formation of a gendered moral economy linking family, religion and nationalism with ideals of economic competitiveness and

Global Nannies  31 entrepreneurship that seemingly lead to the disempowerment of women workers ­(Guevarra, 2006). In other words, such strategies for minimizing women’s vulner­abilities reflect a neoliberal framework that promotes economic competitiveness and entrepreneurship and seeks to empower them to embody an ethic of responsibility as citizens, workers, and women. The state discourse of empowering women workers is not only about producing economically productive workers, but also about generating good wives, mothers, and women through the discursive construction of the family in the Philippine economic and legal system. The state economy promotes the formation of split-apart families, but the state also attempts to achieve patriarchal order amid the increasing outflow of women migrants and uses the patriarchal nuclear family as a symbol of national identity (Parrenas, 2003). The moral disciplining of women within the nation and across transnational distance continues to aggravate the subordinate and weak status of the women in the global economy. Particularly, there are structural constraints and organizational pressures concerning the physical absence of migrant mothers from the home. ­M igration takes women outside of the confines of the home, thus disrupting the ideology of female domesticity—the notion that women are better suited than men to do household chores. The integration of the transnational families of migrant mothers into the Philippine public sphere imposes a pressure to uphold conventional gender norms and re-enact normative gender behavior via the public sphere’s rejection and society’s disapproval of this household structure (Parrenas, 2005). ­A lthough the large-scale labor migration of women from the Philippines may appear to positively suggest a gender transformation, and although the nation certainly depends on migrant remittances as the largest source of income from overseas, migrant women nevertheless remain subject to symbolic violence both in their places of work and through conventions of Philippine femininity (Barber, 2000). Despite their increasing participation in the global economy as new national heroes, migrant domestic workers experience various forms of vulnerability and alienation, ranging from the commodification of migrant labor export, familial alienation, political and cultural alienation, to partial belonging, and these forms of disempowerment are structurally produced and contested in the context of neoliberal globalization (Lindio-McGovern, 2004; Guevarra, 2006). Indonesia As one of the largest countries of origin of female migrant workers, I­ ndonesia manifests itself along with the Philippines in the feminization of migration. The majority of documented and undocumented labor migrants from Indonesia are women who are employed in the domestic care sector (Loveband, 2004; Hugo, 2007). Remittances associated with

32  Global Nannies labor migration have been hailed by many as the most direct form of development in Indonesia. The amount of remittances Indonesian migrant workers send home each year has grown rapidly in recent years, reaching $3 billion a year, but official remittances probably represent less than a half of the total, with large amounts sent through unofficial channels and brought back in cash and gifts (Hugo, 2007). In ­labor-abundant countries like Indonesia, migrant workers are considered state assets, and the government often valorizes and calls them the “economic heroes” of the nation (Setyawati, 2013). The view of Indonesian women’s labor migration as necessary is a relatively recent invention. In the 1980s, the Indonesian government began to integrate labor export into its five-year development plans, creating new agencies specifically focused on encouraging people in villages to work abroad to earn remittances that could reduce the national deficit. By the sixth five-year plan (1994–1999), the Indonesian government’s goal was to send 1.2 million workers overseas in the next five years, and between 2001 and 2004 approximately 1.5 million workers were formally placed in jobs abroad (Silvey, 2006). Currently, there are millions of Indonesian labor migrants employed overseas as domestic workers (Sihombing, 2013). Since the beginning of the Indonesian government’s labor export program, ­I ndonesian women have migrated overseas in large numbers to work as domestic workers. The generation of supplementary yet crucial remittances from labor migration came to be viewed as necessary only after women’s migration and higher levels of consumption became a widespread possibility (Silvey, 2006). New clothing, jewelry, gifts, satellite dishes, kitchen appliances, and remodeled homes, all purchased with migrant incomes, incite modern consumer desires and practices in everyday life. To some extent, new levels of consumption and emergent consumer desires in Indonesia have played a part in producing transnational labor migration and separations of women from their families, while the quest for higher incomes has relied on women departing from the state’s family ideal and traditional motherhood. Yet at the same time, in the face of moral discourses valuing Indonesian women’s role foremost as mothers and wives in transnational families, narrating cultural citizenship as motherhood becomes central to legitimizing a social performance of national identity and limits women’s socio-cultural status (Winarnita, 2008). Women’s moral virtue and gendered piety are deployed in attempts to direct and discipline women’s transnational labor migration (Silvey, 2007). Indonesian migrant women are predominantly employed in the ­M iddle East and Asia, in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and they further migrate to Europe and the USA for higher wages. Since the early 1990s, Malaysia has become the major destination for Indonesian domestic workers, and this trend relates to the relative success of Malaysia’s economic development program,

Global Nannies  33 providing more job opportunities and higher wages than are available in ­I ndonesia (Gaffar, 2008). Perhaps the world’s second-­largest, longterm undocumented migration flow, overshadowed only by the traffic between ­Mexico and the USA, is that between I­ ndonesia and ­Malaysia (Hugo, 2007). There are 300,000 Indonesian domestic workers in ­M alaysia, 130,000 in Hong Kong, and 90,000 in ­Singapore. Women workers from Asian countries do not constitute a homogeneous category, as important differences and hierarchical perceptions are evident among recruitment agencies as well as in the preferences of employers. The formulation and promotion by recruitment agencies of ­nationality-based stereotypes tend to channel migrant workers of different nationalities into different segments of the labor market (Loveband, 2004). For instance, there is a trend toward a hierarchical structuring between ­Filipinas and ­I ndonesians, with Indonesian caregivers often doing the more demanding jobs in their employers’ family homes. Even though Indonesian women are contracted to work as caregivers, a significant number actually work in various capacities as maids as well, and this seemingly controlled private sphere of work is open to manipulation and double exploitation of I­ ndonesian women workers. On the other hand, however, women workers from Asia such as the Philippines and ­I ndonesia are positioned higher than their counterparts from Africa such as Somalia and Ethiopia, as the former groups receive comparatively higher wages and are better positioned in the hierarchical perceptions and preferences of employers (De Regt, 2008b). With the deregulation of the transnational labor recruitment ­market, hundreds of Indonesian labor recruitment agencies function i­nformally as brokers in an increasingly government-regulated economy that sends documented migrants to countries of the Middle East and Asia (­ Lindquist, 2010). The state-induced efforts at regularizing transnational migration are intended to combat trafficking and illegal migration, but they can also lead to the legitimization of a migration scheme that has much in common with colonial indentured labor (Killias, 2010). In other words, this legal, state-sanctioned migration scheme leads domestic workers into legal yet bonded arrangements with the labor contract as an instrument of subordination; therefore, this scheme can rather induce illegal migration that can be seen as an act of deliberate resistance to the coercive system. Many domestic workers migrate through illegal migration channels including informal recruitment agencies. Overseas labor agencies or informal networks of middle men are widespread in Indonesia, encouraging illegal migration and catering to potential migrants who are unaware of, or intimidated by, the highly bureaucratic state recruitment process (Silvey, 2006). Transnational flows of Indonesian laborers are dependent on supposedly traditional patron-client networks in the global economy, wherein technologies of servitude as mundane methods are often intended to rationalize the training and delivery of migrant laborers and

34  Global Nannies construct the skills and attitudes necessary to conduct domestic care labor (Rudnyckyj, 2004). Institutional and physiological conditioning techniques, or technologies of servitude, are used at every stage of transnational labor migration to compel Indonesian domestic workers to accept exploitative working conditions, undermine a sense of autonomy, and inhabit spaces of invisibility and marginalization in the regulatory process of employment placement (Bennington, 2012). Women migrants in desperate situations face various forms of abuse, such as rape, sexual harassment, overwork and the underpayment of wages, even torture and death, calling for the creation of a more human and hospitable working environment (Silvey, 2006; Sihombing, 2013). Migration offers both opportunities and risks. On the positive side, workers send home billions of dollars in remittances, which in the best cases help to pull their families out of poverty, pay for medical care, fund the building of homes, and finance education while contributing to the economy of their country. In the worst cases, workers can lose their lives or are subject to forced labor and trafficking. Most migrants’ experiences fall somewhere in between (Human Rights Watch, 2008). The protection of labor migrants is often neglected by both origin and host countries. While valorizing migrant workers to maximize remittances and economic benefits for the nation, the Indonesian government’s protection scheme nevertheless falls short, especially in the aspects of educating migrant workers and defining the responsibilities of government agencies, as the state’s assumed presence in protecting its nationals is tied to its limited capacity to control migration flows (Setyawati, 2013). Sri Lanka Along with the Philippines and Indonesia, Sri Lanka is one of the three countries in Asia where women increasingly constitute the majority of legal and illegal migrants (Ukwatta, 2010). These women migrants are mainly employed overseas as domestic workers who now, in fact, surpass tea as a Sri Lankan export product. Sri Lanka receives $3.4 ­billion a year in remittances from migrant workers abroad, making it the second-­ highest form of foreign exchange, and twice the amount the country receives in foreign aid and direct foreign investment (Russeau, 2008). In many developing countries of the global South, including Sri Lanka, growth in remittances influences economic growth and vice-versa; a  two-way directional causality is found (Siddique et al., 2012). The Sri Lankan government, as with other countries in Asia, has actively encouraged the export of domestic care labor to maximize the economic impact of remittances (Jureidini and Moukarbel, 2004). Historically, the flows of labor migration and political migration have been intensified during the period of protracted conflict and in the context of war-­ affected economic development since the early 1980s (Sriskandarajah,

Global Nannies  35 2002). In the mid-1970s, the Sri Lankan labor force overseas, particularly in the Middle East, consisted predominately of male construction workers, but women radically joined the labor migration process and soon dominated the transnational flows (Moukarbel, 2009). Since the early 1980s the out-migration of Sri Lankan women for employment abroad has surpassed that of men. In 1981, 52% of Sri Lankan migrants ­ illion were women, and by 1994 the figure increased to 79%. Nearly 1 m Sri Lankan women labor overseas as domestic workers (Gamburd, 2009; Moukarbel, 2009). Of the approximately 200,000 Sri Lankans joining the international labor force every year, at least two-thirds are women, primarily heading to the Middle East, especially Lebanon, to work in the domestic care sector (Moukarbel, 2009; Ukwatta, 2010; Abu-Habib, 1998; Jureidini and Moukarbel, 2004). Sri Lankan women, along with Filipinas, constitute the largest population of female migrant workers in Lebanon, and since the late 1990s many migrants are opting for new destinations in Europe (Russeau, 2008; Shaw, 2010). In general, Sri Lankan migrant women are in their 20s to 40s, and the majority of these women are married with at least one child ­(Ukwatta, 2010). With few viable options at home, desperate women leave their children in the care of female family members during their absence for two-year labor contracts or longer absences when they opt for repeated migration. Gender and kinship are two important factors in determining the selection of the household manager and shaping supportive social networks while migrant women are away (Pinnawala, 2008). Women’s labor migration reorganizes and disrupts widely accepted, gendered attributions of parenting roles (Gamburd, 2008). Migration undertaken for the sake of the family and development may alter the functioning of the household, the bargaining power, and status of migrant women (Hewage et al., 2011). Remittances have developmental impacts largely on children’s health and education in the low-class fami­lies of rural areas, but they do not necessarily have positive and signi­ficant impacts on conspicuous consumption or asset accumulation (De and Ratha, 2012). It is evident that remittances from migrant women figure prominently in household livelihood strategies and make a significant contribution to the Sri Lankan economy, while raising critical issues about how to deal with the profound personal cost of migration (Turner, 2009; Shaw, 2010). The Sri Lankan government thus faces a dilemma. On the one hand, remittances from migrant workers are a crucially important source of foreign export earnings and livelihood strategies, but on the other hand, there is growing concern with the social effects of the labor migration on the children left behind by migrant mothers. Some countries in the region attempt to limit and ban the deployment of women migrant workers, but this simply channels them into underground and undocumented flows where more potential for abuse exists (Ukwatta, 2010).

36  Global Nannies Despite the contribution of remittances to Sri Lanka’s national economy, migrant workers receive only limited support from the state, labor unions, and feminist organizations in the paucity of organizing in Sri Lanka (Gamburd, 2009). The ways paid domestic work services are managed by the state, recruitment agencies, and employers in receiving countries hinder collective action for workers’ rights, and in the absence of other forms of activism, faith-based networks can fill the void and provide essential support to migrant workers in need (Frantz, 2008). Sri Lankan recruitment agencies target the poor and the desperate and often lure women by presenting a foreign country as a desirable place where they can earn high wages (Russeau, 2008). Many women go into debt in order to pay the fees for training, visa, travel expenses, and guaranteed work abroad. Most Sri Lankan domestic workers fall under the category of contract slavery, given the legal and employment conditions and entrapment they face (Jureidini and Moukarbel, 2004). As part of the feminization of migration and trafficking in human labor, both the employment relations and social status of these women render them extremely vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Migrant domestic workers are often poorly paid and are vulnerable to a wide variety of exploitative labor practices at home and abroad, such as recruitment agencies’ training on how to please their employers, and employers’ confiscation of their passports and other identity papers (Abu-Habib, 1998; Russeau, 2008; Gamburd, 2009). Moralistic state discourses, and the state and non-state interventions into the intimate and sexual lives of Sri Lankan migrant women, regulate and enforce transnationally the normative ideals of marriage and family (Smith, 2010). Emotional aspects of exploitation, including employers’ control over the feelings and sexual desires of workers, tend to constrain the workers’ sexual agency and extract more dedicated care work and loyalty for less pay. Live-in care workers are not permitted to exist as women in their own right; for instance, they are not allowed to love freely but are expected to put their private lives on hold for the duration of their labor contract while caring for the families of their employers (Moukarbel, 2009). The relatively recent and increasing diversification of the migrant workforce, or a shift from dominant destinations in the Middle East or Asia to new destinations in Europe, underscores the need for a better understanding of the relationships among gender, race, occupation, and migration outcomes in the transnational social field (Shaw, 2010).

New Nannies of Europe For nannies from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, it is a common pattern to labor in multiple countries of Asia or the Middle East before moving to work in Europe or other parts of the West (Pratt, 2012). As relatively recent and autonomous migrants, these new nannies have

Global Nannies  37 activated multiple flows of migration within wider spatial contexts of intersecting trajectories. Many women initially migrate to closer destinations in Asia or the Middle East, with a high concentration in countries like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that show the emergence of global householding (Huang, 2006; Lan, 2006). Some women migrate directly from their homelands to ­Europe, while others are brought to Europe by their wealthy employers, usually from the Middle East. The insertion of migrant nannies within an international division of reproductive work must be considered a global phenomenon, particularly in Europe (Bujan, 2009). There has been a substantial increase in demand for domestic care services throughout Europe, including France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Greece, Italy, and Portugal, and a significant proportion of these domestic workers are migrant women and non-citizens, many of them without docu­ ments (Anderson, 2000; Parrenas, 2008; Ireland, 2011; Nare, 2013; Oso and Catarino, 2013). The present situation differs in that domestic workers today are migrant women increasingly from Asia (Lutz, 2008). Being highly adaptable to the labor market, domestic care services have favored the emergence of new nannies and new conceptions of labor in Europe with the distinctive feature of precarious or short-term labor contracts (Fauve-Chamoux, 2004). The majority of migrant women who came to the immigration regimes of Western Europe between the 1950s and the 1970s were able to integrate into regulated labor markets, whereas recent female migrants including new nannies from Asia find openings mostly within irregular, short-term, and informal labor markets, such as domestic care services, in neoliberal Europe (Kontos, 2009). The presence of migrant women in the labor market fluctuates with welfare state and care regimes, immigration policies, labor markets, and the respective economic situations in domestic care work (Oso and ­Catarino, 2013). Employment of migrant nannies is a matter of supply and demand in the shifting market of Europe, and migration is to some extent caused by a permanent demand for migrant labor that is inherent in the economic structure of developed nations. It has to do with gender equality and the need to pay for care work that some European women are no longer able or willing to do (Triandafyllidou, 2013). There is a chronic need to look after young children and infants as women are increasingly working outside the home; at the same time, there are fewer adults to look after the elderly. Despite increases in the participation of women in the labor force, the availability of childcare arrangements and the division of housework between men and women have not changed radically. Many professional middle-class women in European countries are not waiting for the state or their partners to help them combine gainful employment and care work; instead, they prefer a different solution by paying someone to take care of their children and clean their houses (Lutz, 2008). European welfare systems are downsizing, and national

38  Global Nannies welfare states are trying to find ways of reducing the care costs associated with increased women’s employment and an aging society (Williams, 2011). In most European countries, private households share the burden with the state by contributing to the cost of care, as this is not entirely covered by either the state or private insurance funds (Triandafyllidou, 2013). Care services, for instance nursery places, are very expensive in Europe such as Britain and Spain, especially if women have more than one child, and care service hours do not always fit with work hours (Lutz, 2008). A privately hired nanny can flexibly do what a nursery cannot: look after children at home, take them to a park or playground, pick up older siblings from school, care for them until their parents get home, do light cooking, and so on. The nanny’s flexible care services may lead to the proliferation of “the professional household without a wife,” and in particular, low-wage care workers actually maintain a strategic infrastructure in major cities (Sassen, 2009b). Care becomes affordable only when low-wage migrant nannies step in as the necessary labor force to meet the care demand, and thus the richer world of Europe increasingly becomes dependent on new nannies from the poorer regions of Asia (Williams, 2011; Triandafyllidou, 2013). Nations with very low levels of welfare services, that is, nations that keep the care of the family a private female responsibility, particularly southern European nations such as Spain and Italy, have a greater presence of migrant domestic workers; in contrast, countries with social democratic regimes such as those in Scandinavia, where the benefit system is universal and provides large-scale institutional support for mothers and families, are less likely to rely on migrant domestic workers (Parrenas, 2008). It is only through the provision of a plentiful and affordable migrant labor force that welfare and care regimes in neoliberal Europe become cost-efficient and functional, as well as beneficial for the socio-economic interests of domi­ nant groups. The control and management of migration is not only about inspecting migrants on the move, but also about creating the conditions for human mobility to take place without disturbing the national order of things, without challenging state sovereignty, without hurting the ­socio-economic interests of dominant groups (Geiger and Pecoud, 2013). Migrant nannies are relatively unacknowledged, invisible, yet important contributors to the economies of the countries that accept them, often unofficially. In a sense, they are not unwanted flows prevented by the policies of states in Europe. This tacit acceptance of the inflows of undocumented domestic workers in European countries perpetuates the invisibility of these workers with regard to labor policy, while simultaneously denying them essential safety and security protections (Pannell and Altman, 2009). Undocumented migrant women in the increasingly complex migration regime of Western Europe are particularity vulner­ able to exploitation in the hidden workforce, in precarious and low-paid

Global Nannies  39 work outside the formal economy (Morokvasic, 1993; Poinasamy, 2011). A gap exists between immigration laws, government policies, and actual outcomes in the labor market, and this gap is perhaps most pronounced with regard to domestic workers, most of whom are undocumented women. The domestic care sector in many European nations is filled with irregular migrants engaged in informal employment or the black economy because they have no visas (Sarti, 2006). Eligibility for citizenship, after required years of legal settlement, is available in a few receiving nations including Spain (Parrenas, 2008). Regularization tends to create unstable, provisional legality rather than an enduring solution (Kontos, 2009). Partly due to the private nature of domestic care work, laws are not enforced and policies are not effectively adjusted to reflect the new realities of households’ demand for care labor. The prevalence of neoliberal models pushes toward the commodification of care and the marketization of care work as the most efficient way to respond to the care needs of households. The process of transferring the caring and cleaning chores from the domain of the home (where work is invisible and unpaid) to the labor market (where other people are hired to do this work or where these services are purchased through agents or offered through the state) is the process of commodification of care, which has been developed along with care policies, migration regimes, labor market expectations, and new practices ­(Williams, 2011; Triandafyllidou, 2013). Private and public institutions, as well as international networks involved in arranging employment contracts and migration passages, recognize migrant domestic workers as a valuable commodity (Huang et al., 2005). In the neoliberal market economies of Europe, the domestic service labor market depends mostly on ­recruitment agencies, and large employment networks dominate the recruitment systems including the Internet (Fauve-Chamoux, 2004; Gottfried, 2009). European women search for value for their money in a marketized childcare economy, but this calculating consumer logic can have miserable consequences for migrant nannies because those who are most vulnerable are seen as a greater value (Lutz, 2008). European societies are increasingly aging, thus generating higher needs for care for both children and elderly people. The role of domestic care services is important as a stage in the life course and as a self-­regulating parameter in demographically growing societies with generally late and selective marriages (Fauve-Chamoux, 2004). While there are demographic and economic reasons for an increased demand for domestic workers in private households, the reproduction of lifestyle and status, and the avoidance of gender and generational conflict over domestic work are also important factors (Anderson, 2000). The demand for domestic care services is a class-specific phenomenon related to a particular lifestyle, including the traditional gendered division of labor and a symbolic hierarchy of domestic tasks according to which certain tasks

40  Global Nannies are deemed too dirty for madams, or wealthy female employers (Nare, 2013). In Western industrialized countries, in spite of all emancipatory rhetoric, the domestic tasks of caring, cleaning, and cooking are persistently viewed as women’s work (Lutz, 2011). Redistribution processes within the same gender category are at play, with the consequence that this work is now outsourced by one woman to another—to a migrant woman from an economically disadvantaged country—and that the work still remains feminine-gendered. Feminization of employment in the new economy may lead to growing social and gender divisions in neoliberal societies of Europe where social and gender divisions are parti­ cularly wide (Perrons, 2002). Given the contradictions between employment and caring responsibilities, it is important to recognize emerging class differences and widening inequalities between women, as well as new class relationships in the home (McDowell, 2008), and better understand interconnected levels of inequalities in the gendered and racialized everyday experiences of migrant women workers (Williams, 2011). Assumptions about de-traditionalization and about the declining signi­ ficance of class and gender as structural constraints in neoliberal societies of Europe (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002) are being challenged by the reconstitution of class and gender. Migrant labor is cheap and flexible; migrant women are removed from their own families and are able to devote themselves to their employing family; moreover, their race and non-citizenship status as well as class differentiate them from their female employers in Europe (Anderson, 2000). Such devotion to their employing family, or to the familialization of work, implies the de-familialization of the migrant workers and the deprivation of the right to a family life (Kontos, 2013). Calling this group of migrant domestic workers “new maids of Europe” evokes questions about changes and continuities between the old maids, female servants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and those of the current era (Lutz, 2011). Maids represent an important link ­between the bourgeois lifestyle of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, and ­multiple axes of social inequality continue to be relevant in the sphere of domestic care work, albeit in new forms. Being a migrant and ­minoritized woman worker in the advanced global economy becomes the systemic equivalent of the offshore proletariat with its lack of power and lack of political visibility (Sassen, 2009b). This class mentality is still very much alive with a traditional kind of exploitation over slavery ­(Parisot, 1998). European employers with a caste-like class mentality do not easily move from a master-slave relationship to a modern one of ­employer-employee. Just as slavery produced runaway slaves in the past, many times these conditions today result in runaway maids, or workers remain stuck in a feudal-like situation (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007). The traditional master-servant relationship continues to represent a threatening model, also because private households cannot be controlled and

Global Nannies  41 do not always develop proper labor relationships (Sarti, 2006). Through the increasing dominance of services in the neoliberal market economies, commodification of care, outsourcing of domestic tasks, and the persisting master-servant relationship, social inequalities are reproduced transnationally in global cities such as Paris.

Paris: The Other Side of the Global City Asian nannies’ migration to France, concentrated in Paris particularly, is a relatively recent phenomenon resulting from a high demand for individualized private care among upper-middle-class families, as France has one of the European Union’s highest birthrates and an aging popu­ lation. In France, domestic care services are a growing sector of employment. The number of service companies offering home-based care services has increased rapidly—doubled between 2004 and 2005—and there are more than 1,000 service companies located in Paris and the surrounding areas (Scrinzi, 2009). This growth has largely been promoted by neoliberal policies in France, where state recognition of family interests rooted in its historical familialism is very strong. At the same time, women’s, and especially mothers’, labor force participation has always been high compared to other Western countries (Revillard, 2006). Since the 1980s, the state has provided cash subsidies for care and promoted the demand through tax exemptions that were initially granted only to non-profit associations and private employers. Since the late 1990s, however, tax exemptions have also applied to service companies offering home-based care services. Since 2004, service companies have operated as intermediaries between domestic workers and private employers, who pay them to carry out the administrative work of hiring of an employee (Scrinzi, 2009). To some extent, there has been a shift from individualized master-servant relations to the mediation of service companies, which, however, does not necessarily improve the status and conditions of employees (Devetter and Rousseau, 2009). The training of unemployed migrant women as domestic workers in Paris shows that racist ideologies unpleasantly operate within training practices for jobs, endorsing essentialist constructions of cultural difference (Scrinzi, 2011). These are not beautiful jobs in Paris, but are rather largely racialized and servile jobs that remain invisible on the other side of the global city. The service companies’ clients include dual-career households requiring not just cleaning and ironing but also caring and home-based tutoring for schoolchildren. In France, this high demand for domestic care services is presented less as a luxury or a status symbol than as a need for over-burdened families (Sarti, 2006). Yet, careful assessments reveal that the neoliberal state-supported outsourcing of women’s domestic care labor does not help to reduce work-life conflict faced by women and that it perpetually reinforces the unequal gender

42  Global Nannies division of domestic care labor by simply transferring it from more welloff women to less well-off women from the global South (Windebank, 2007), resulting in an increased segmentation of the labor market on the basis of a racialized, classed, and gendered organization of work (Scrinzi, 2011). Paris is one of the cities in which many low-income migrant women from the global South increasingly come to work as nannies without documents. A stroll through any Paris neighborhood will bear out a visible trend that has already made it into the statistics: More and more foreign-born women are pushing baby strollers in parks and caring for young children and infants in private homes (New York Times, 2010). However, the undocumented, irregular status of migrant domestic workers and their insertion into the underground economy suggest that available statistics do not offer precise data (Bujan, 2009). Exact numbers are hard to pin down since a large number of migrant domestic workers in France labor without documents. In France, the number of domestic workers has increased rapidly since the 1990s, for instance, from approximately 190,000 in 1990 to almost 350,000 in 2005 ­(Devetter and Rousseau, 2009). Today, an estimated 50,000 Filipinas work as migrant domestic workers in France, of which approximately 30,000 are concentrated in Paris, and only 6,000 are officially registered and documented (Meyewski, 2007; Fresnoza-Flot, 2010). While slightly increasing over time, the proportion of undocumented, irregular domestic workers appears remarkably high (over 80%). Some migrant women from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka arrive in Paris as escapees from the relatively harsh working conditions in the Middle East or from Middle Eastern employers who have settled in France or go to France for their vacations (Briones, 2008). Once in the country, the migrant women are able to remain hidden from immigration authorities by engaging in invisible employment such as domestic care work. This general trend is reflected in the historical trajectories of Filipina migration, for instance (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009, 2010). The first group of Filipina migrant domestic workers arrived in France from the Middle East at the end of the 1970s when their employers fled countries in a state of violence (e.g., Lebanon in 1975) and brought them to France. In the 1980s, this first group of Filipina migrants was joined by family members from the Philippines by overstaying their tourist visas, and France became a popular destination for many Filipina migrants primarily in the domestic care sector. Some women arrived in France directly from the Philippines, but many others came from other ­European countries such as Italy or from Middle Eastern countries where they were already employed as domestic workers. In the 1980s, more ­Filipina migrants came to France. They ran away from abusive employers, usually from the Middle East, who vacationed there and were able to escape with the help of other Filipina migrants they encountered in public

Global Nannies  43 places. Since the 1990s, false tourists have dominated the flux of Filipina migrants to France. In Paris today, many nannies from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka do not enter as direct hires. While not available to the very poorest who cannot afford to migrate, prospective migrant workers pay recruitment agencies between 10,000 and 12,000 euros to get tourist visas (Briones, 2008; New York Times, 2011). The fees charged by recruitment agencies, or travel agencies as they are referred to in the community, vary according to the destination of the migrant, and cost is not only determined by the distance between the receiving country and the sending country but also by the prospective wages of workers in the receiving country (Parrenas, 2001). The mushrooming of capitalist recruitment agencies and their abusive practices drive up the costs of migration significantly and can furthermore drive migrant workers into slavelike conditions due to the extortionate fees and debt-bondage in collusion with employers (Briones, 2008). The role of the trans­national intermediary such as recruitment agencies critically indicates that main problems in the migration processes and developmental outcomes are difficulties in access to remunerative migration opportunities and the high costs associated with migrating, and that reducing migration costs makes migration more beneficial and developmental for the poor ­(Murrugarra et al., 2011). Many nannies from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka who enter under cover of tourist visas tend to remain undocumented, irregular for many years in France. Unlike in Asia and the Middle East, these Asian workers in France are not part of any temporary contract migration scheme, and they usually find jobs in the domestic service sector through their existing social networks of families and friends or increasingly through recruitment agencies (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009). In France, the increase in individualized private care among upper-middle-class families and the reliance of such families on low-wage migrant women to provide that private care in a neoliberal framework are not actually mirrored in immigration policies (Parrenas, 2008). The state does not recognize domestic care services as a sector of employment for migrants, and immigration policies do not acknowledge independent female entry for domestic care work, forcing many female migrant workers to enter France through tourist visas (Briones, 2008; Scrinzi, 2011). In this context, the two distinct categories of tourists and labor migrants are not completely separate but intertwined, while accounting for the largest traveling groups. This also signifies the possible failure and risk of migration projects, which may end up taking the shape of repeated use of tourist visas or repeated attempts to cross borders without getting caught (Agustin, 2007). Migrant care workers in France are consequently subject to the insecurities of the informal economy as they do not qualify for work permits. French labor regulations do not address the need to issue

44  Global Nannies work permits for migrant domestic workers, leaving the status of legal employment to the discretion of the employer. It is necessary for the employer to fill out the required application, and the employee’s salary cannot be lower than the minimum wage (e.g., amounting to a gross hourly rate of 9.61 euros as of 2015, or 1,457.52 euros monthly). However, few employers register their employees, further ensuring that exploitation in relation to wages and working conditions remains largely hidden ­(Briones, 2008). Even if the neoliberal state appears to be more earnest in its opposition to illegal migration, many undocumented migrants find jobs of a precarious and poorly paid nature because employers calculate that their own interests are well served by hiring undocumented workers (Hargreaves, 2007). In this way, employers bypass and simultaneously benefit from the stricter regulatory intervention of the state, for the fear of deportation prevents undocumented workers from complaining about poor wages and working conditions. Any governmental initiative requiring employers to legalize their domestic workers remains ineffective as many employers continue to hire cheap and flexible labor that, if documented, would mean higher wages and less control over their employees. A high level of dependency on employers is created because regularization is tied to the employers, and the lack of formal work contracts makes it fairly easy for the employers to dispose of their employees at their convenience (Kontos, 2009). Contingent on their employers’ willingness, Filipina domestic workers in France are said to wait an average of 8 years before regularization (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009). While being dependent inevitably on their employers for their work and legal status, migrant nannies are in a uniquely vulnerable position with weak bargaining power in the workplace, the isolated private household. Undocumented, irregular workers in France live with a perpetual feeling of insecurity and in the fear that they may one day become visible, before finally receiving an answer regarding their potential regularization (Brouckaert, 2012). The struggle of the sans-papiers—a collective of irregular migrants in France—contests their positioning within the neoliberal state frameworks that posit them as outsiders even while they are integrated into local sites of a global political economy (McNevin, 2006, 2009). ­I nvisible capitalism is related to the French government’s unwillingness to accept more legal migrants or at least ignore those who enter and overstay clandestinely (Samers, 2003). Despite rising demand in France, the state immigration policies largely leave unrecognized the crucial contribution of migrant domestic workers to national growth, as well as to the national well-being of households (Briones, 2008). Private households are the most important labor market for female sans-­papiers, undocumented domestic workers, who have already held jobs for many years and still struggle for their “voices and existence” (Chimienti and Solomos, 2011). The growing significance of irregular migration, and the existence of irregular migration as a structural phenomenon,

Global Nannies  45 indicates that undocumented migrant workers are able to live and work in the country for years, or even decades, without an official identity (Bommes and Sciortino, 2011). Even with the lure of regularization or residency status in a seemingly better place, the overall conditions of live-in nannies allow systematic exploitation by employers (Philippine Reporter, 2010). It is important to recognize that the more the employers belong to social elites with power in Paris, including those who have diplomatic status and immunity, the more difficult it is for exploited domestic workers to escape the unacceptable conditions of work (ITUC, 2012). The summer months are particularly popular with privileged foreign tourists coming to Paris, who are rich enough to stay for vacations accompanying their families and domestic workers. Interestingly, many of the abusive employers are associated with some of the premier international institutions of globalization (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007). Given the mobility’s power relations and inequalities that are often masked by the flow of people in the global city (Agustin, 2007), some people enjoy movement and others are apparently imprisoned by it as a result of sustained exploitation on the other side of the global city. Many Asian nannies in Paris live with their employers and struggle quietly while caring for the children of multicultural environments, including the children of the French, of European and American expatriates, and of foreign diplomats serving in France. Workers’ immigration status and whether or not they live with their employers significantly influence their living and working conditions (Anderson, 2000). These conditions are more challenging for migrant nannies who have no legal work permits and thus lack rights. Migrant workers are more affected by the persistent problems of exploitation, isolation, and marginalization than local workers. Care work takes place in the private home—an invisible place that notoriously escapes any control on the part of labor inspections and that by definition is not a formal workplace (Triandafyllidou, 2013). French employment law only partially applies because the employment relationship takes place in the private home of the employer (Devetter and Rousseau, 2009). In Paris as well as in other European cities, jobs in home-based care and cleaning services are poorly remunerated, unstable, and part-time, and these temporary and invisible jobs are largely taken on by migrant women, many of whom struggle with the experience of uncertainty and fear as well as separation from their families for years (Scrinzi, 2009). The modern-day slave suffers all the more for being invisible on the other side of the global city (Parisot, 1998). Given the invisibility, social isolation, and disempowerment of the labor process, the implications of the digital media in nannies’ everyday lives are complex and significant as survival strategies, emotional networks, and key cultural resources, which will be discussed in upcoming chapters.

3 Mobile Phone for Empowerment? Work Life, Power and Freedom

Given the potential exploitation, social isolation, and vulnerability of the labor process, what are the implications of nannies’ use of the mobile phone in work life? Is the mobile phone empowering or disempowering as a new form of social control? How much is this connectivity by the mobile phone creating a sense of empowerment, contributing towards greater autonomy and freedom? Based on long-term ethnographic research on global nannies in Paris, this chapter presents a case for the importance of the detailed investigation of everyday contexts and power relations to better understand the complexities of mobile phone use in work life. It importantly recognizes how power relations shape mobile phone culture, by analyzing how nannies’ work lives are experienced and articulated by the everyday use of the mobile phone in the social contexts in which they are situated, and how they are empowered or disempowered by the social structures that influence the technologically mediated sphere of work. It becomes evident in the analysis that the ways minorities use, feel, and think about mobile phones and what consequences the phone entails are multifaceted reflections of and responses to their marginalized social positioning and employment status. This approach negates any technological determinism that may assume mobile technology’s potential as an autonomous force to transcend social divisions and empower people. A technological progressivism surrounding new digital technologies, which foregrounds fluid, individualized connectivity, control, and freedom, prevents active and criti­cal thinking about technology-knowledge-power (Chun and Keenan, 2006). Amidst often optimistic and celebratory views of new digital technologies, it is important to critically understand how such techno­logies are empowering to which specific groups of people and under what circumstances and subsequently which people, in what contexts, are becoming happier or unhappier (Wellman and Haythornthwaite, 2002). The role of connectivity in the use of the mobile phone is integral to day-to-day management of work space and perhaps even more significant in this case, given the nannies’ particular employment circumstances and isolated work experiences in this invisible community. Little is known about how they struggle to deal with tensions and anxieties around

Mobile Phone for Empowerment?  47 the mobile phone that has become a major part of their existence and economic survival. A driving force in the development of digital media including the mobile phone is the goal of total connectivity—the ability to access everything, in all places, at all times (Messaris and Humphreys, 2006). The mobile phone has become important mainly because it facilitates the mundane aspects of daily lives, planning activities, and interactions, thanks to the micro-coordination enabled by almost perpetual contact (Ling, 2012). Mobile communication is different from other forms of ­interpersonal mediation in that mobile telephony provides people with individual addressability (e.g., calling individuals, not places or locations), so people are expected to be available to family members and friends via the mobile phone (Ling, 2008). More frequently, more easily, more portably than ever before, mobile phone users are perpetually accessible to others, even their employers to whom they might not want to be connected in private and personal space outside usual work time. These new characteristics of technology have created an expectation of instant communication and full accessibility 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and people expect more immediate responses to their needs ­(Hanson, 2007). Mobile communication is said to enhance the autonomy of individuals, enabling them to set up their own connections and empowering them to have more choice and greater control over their lives. How real is this autonomy? (Castells et al., 2007). How much does this technology actually modify power relations? Who benefits from this connectivity? With more mobility and more choices in how and when people communicate with one another, these technological advances are said to make people’s lives easier, but why do people continue to feel so much stress, anxiety, and unhappiness? (Hanson, 2007). There is a need to critically investigate emergent empirical realities and the materialization of promises and great expectations not always met in social contexts. The history of mobile digital technologies shows that technologies promise much but have many unintended consequences (Hanson, 2007). People often use mobile phones in the belief that these technologies will give users greater control over their lives; perhaps there is a resulting illusion of control that conditions people to have expectations that are often unmet. Relationships with digital possessions, or the specific qualities that individuals perceive the digital items to possess, are generally characterized as providing a sense of bounded control (Cushing, 2013). On one hand, the “anytime, anywhere” connectivity afforded by the mobile phone may well offer moments of individual control: in seeking employment opportunities, connecting with potential employers, and managing work life through micro-coordination. On the other hand, the connectivity of the mobile phone and its assumed autonomy can work in contradictory ways as a technology of regulation and surveillance causing the blurring of boundaries between work and leisure, the

48  Mobile Phone for Empowerment? policing of private and personal space, and the undermining of privacy and comfort of workers, including their right to be left alone outside work time. Technological innovation in mobile digital communications encapsulates the complex nature of contemporary work life. Innovation implies increased flexibility and freedom but also increased complexity and the problematics of change where the shadows of uncertainty and risk are always present (Liestol et al., 2004). Mobile digital technologies are creating new conditions, both solutions and problems, allure and anxiety. It is necessary to recognize the double life of technologies with this simultaneous capacity. One of the key issues concerns the way in which technological solutions often themselves create new problems for people, thus producing a valuable inventory of suspicion concerning the technological “solutions” (Morley, 2007). In an increasingly connected world, the concern is not how to get onto the connection, but how to get off (Shaviro, 2003). For instance, a nanny will never get it out of her life simply by turning off her mobile phone, as it will follow her anyway. Being “always on” is an allegedly wonderful thing, but it also means that her work is able to follow her wherever she goes; she is made available at short notice to her boss who suddenly needs more work or coordination for extra hours. There is a distinct pressure that compels the individual within the mobile and networked society to be connected and “always on,” to be a willing and connected node in the networked economy if the individual wants to keep a decent job (Hassan, 2008). There are fewer and fewer refuges in time and space where the individual can be outside the pull of the connection. The pressure to be connected exists at almost every level, and escape is nearly impossible. What it means to live in an increasingly connected and far more mobile world today is a complex and often a contradictory affair. This chapter will argue that, far from an instrument of empowerment, the mobile phone can work to reinforce already existing power relations and mundane social structures, leading to more unequal and enslaving relationships in work life. The mobile phone is not necessarily creating something autonomous or empowering, but rather introducing a subtle new trap, generating more work and exploitation and serving to consolidate the existing power of privileged social groups. As this chapter will demonstrate, nannies’ autonomy is increasingly constrained by the mobile phone with new and greater expectations that they should be connected and available for their employers, anytime, anywhere. The  everyday use of the mobile phone is not separate from, but fully interwoven into and operating within, the enduring structures of power in work life. Traditional power structures and existing patterns of hierarchy in relation to race and class are not undermined, but reproduced and re-inscribed in new technologically mediated forms—thereby generating a site of symbolic struggles, for connection and disconnection, and for control and resistance with the kind of productive tension that

Mobile Phone for Empowerment?  49 simultaneously reshapes the very meaning of the technology within the presence of power. Traditional social constraints are reintroduced and amplified by the almost perpetual contact of the mobile phone and its intrusiveness into private and personal space. This prevailing pattern can keep the weak and marginal even more disempowered. Mobile phone technology can empower people through facilitating communication, but the benefits of such empowerment are mediated by the social positioning of phone users (Lan, 2006). The seeming increase in freedom and autonomy in some aspects often comes with growing exposure to new forms of social control. Mobile phone culture opens up the dialectics of normative freedom with its normative constraints. This apparent paradox means that no notion of freedom is really absolute but necessarily takes the form of a normative structure, a familiar social order (Miller and Slater, 2000). Technologically determined or techno-centric liberal discourses of freedom tend to obscure how freedoms are always normative and constructed by social structures and power relations. This chapter will therefore argue that mobile phone use as mediated by the existing power relations can work to reinforce and even exacerbate, rather than transcend, existing inequalities and social divisions between privileged social groups and their serving class. This critical awareness of oppression and anxiety around the consequences of mobile phone use is a new and hidden feature of digital inequality that may not be immediately salient to those in power but is felt acutely by the weak and marginal. All nannies in this study have their own mobile phones and struggle to deal with new forms of oppression in the management of work life. Based on these findings, this chapter will further argue that mobile phone culture is less related to a conventional digital divide bet­ ween the haves and the have-nots or issues of access to technology itself, but it is more importantly about everyday contexts and power relations that influence the ways people use technology and construct a new layer of meanings and a set of social relations as reshaped and contested by digital possessions. This ethnographic study in the global city of Paris gives voice and visibility to marginalized groups of nannies working under conditions of material poverty and oppression and talking about various contexts of where they experience powerlessness in their everyday work lives as intersected with mobile phone use. In the text below, all names of the nannies have been withheld to protect their identities.

Mobile Phone as Social Capital I graduated college in the Philippines but it was very difficult to get a job. I worked in Taiwan, Dubai, and came to Paris because I heard Paris salary is high. … But for the first 3 months, I could not find a job. I lived in church for a while because I did not have a room. … I met a Filipina woman (nanny) inside a metro train. She

50  Mobile Phone for Empowerment? smiled at me and asked if I am a Filipina. I kept her number on my mobile phone and we got to know. She introduced me to my first job through her employer… I cannot live without my mobile phone. Everything is done by this. If a friend heard about a new job, she would call me. I went to work in Saudi Arabia, and moved to Paris with my boss family because they have a house here. … But I escaped and found a new job through an Indonesian nanny. I shared a room with three Indonesian friends, and now with one. We help each other… Once I lost my phone. I panicked! Everything is stored in my phone. Without it, I feel like losing my life. I know several women from my country (Sri Lanka). They live in service rooms (10 square meters, in the 7th floor without a lift). I am living one week here, one week there. Now I am looking for a job. … I have no money, no room for myself. But I have my phone with me wherever I go. Without it, I feel lost. All nannies in this study use mobile phones that are considered to be more convenient and affordable than landlines in the foreign country. More than a half connect to the Internet on their mobile phones, and the actual use of the mobile Internet is conspicuous in public spaces. The mobile phone, perhaps the first universally accessible information communication technology, is perceived as a necessity, a must-have for everyday life, rather than a luxury for those of higher socio-economic status. Indeed, it has become an essential attribute of human existence, as the most crucial communication tool for most nannies. The signi­ ficance of its presence or absence (“cannot live without my mobile phone,” “feel lost,” “feel like losing my life”) is often claimed with a sense of pleasure and insecurity in the lives of socially and economically vulnerable foreign workers. Not being able to live without the mobile phone, they feel a great fear of losing it, of disconnecting, albeit temporarily. With constant connection come new anxieties of disconnection, a kind of panic. The loss of a mobile phone can feel like a death (Turkle, 2011) or make nannies feel seriously disabled, if not totally isolated, in their social networks (Castells et al., 2007). For migrants living away from their homeland for years, the mobile phone becomes a vital tool as the only fragment of home they have left and as the only way to be reached by their family or boss (Bonini, 2011). Undocumented, irregular migrants may sometimes have no place to sleep and many indeed live in extreme spatial constraints, but they cannot afford not to have a mobile phone, their own space. They become more attached and dependent on their mobile phones, simultaneously more anxious of unintended disconnection, while surviving on the move (“living one week here, one week there”). This growing emotional attachment to the mobile phone is an inevitable consequence of the conditions of social deprivation and

Mobile Phone for Empowerment?  51 economic hardship, not only of the dependent relationship that has developed with technology. As well as being personalized, mobile phones are the repositories of users’ memories and social connections in the phone numbers, photos, and messages they store, becoming a symbol of “me, my mobile and my identity,” something that embodies users’ social and emotional life rather than just merely enabling it (Glotz et al., 2005). This human-like attribute of the mobile phone or bodily extension, which is intimately embedded in everyday practices, plays a crucial role in building and maintaining social relationships and, most importantly, in finding work. A main purpose of mobile phone use is task-oriented and practical— to find work, to call phone numbers in job advertisements, and to maintain friendships and connections with those in work-related contexts. In the resource-poor condition with relatively less choice and power, job referrals and income are usually derived through social connections with friends and acquaintances. Nannies do not actively seek job information outside of their most familiar in-groups—a surprisingly small number of friends and acquaintances who can respond to practical concerns— due to the serious difficulties of finding alternative jobs or options for constructing an occupational identity outside the work they do. Workers without mobile phones are likely to lose job opportunities and diminish income because they cannot remain connected to significant others. The social use of the mobile phone is fundamental to economic survival because it allows for connectivity with in-group ties upon which they can depend, in a social setting that lacks formal and wider networks for migrant workers. It is a survivalist tool that can extend communicative networks and social support in times of need and can help nannies survive and improve economic and social well-being. In this sense, mobile phone use can translate into social capital and has overarching consequences for migrants’ general sense of well-being and development. The term “social capital” (Putnam, 2000) here refers to social networks, social contacts, and connections that have value and enhance individual productivity. This kind of social capital involves norms of reciprocity, mutual obligations, and trustworthiness, not as mere contacts (“I will do this for you now, in the expectation that you will return the favor”). Commonly seen as having been injured, nannies help each other to find work, exchange job information, fill in for one another in times of emergency, and share food or space to sleep, thereby reflecting upon their shared experiences. To be injured means that one has the chance to reflect upon injury, to find out who else suffers from dispossession, mourning, anxiety, and fear, and all these emotional dispositions leading to reflection on how others have suffered (Butler, 2004). For relatively isolated and vulnerable individuals, such as nannies working inside private households, who are not rich in social capital or well integrated into the host society, and whose physical interactions

52  Mobile Phone for Empowerment? are constrained by social positions and social institutions, informal social networks through the mobile phone and even hazardous encounters, whether inside a metro or on the street, are often important for finding a job or a helping hand. Undocumented women are active in social networks, which in part compensate for their exclusion from civil and social rights (Brouckaert, 2012). The mobile phone is used to enhance social capital, emotional support, and productivity, which can be linked to micro-coordination of income-generating activities on the move. It plays an important role in helping nannies contact potential employers, coordinate appointments, arrange work schedules, make adjustments to the daily activities of employers whenever the need arises, and navigate and keep things in order, while struggling to deal with a precarious, disposable life.

Disposable Life They call me nanny, but I do everything. I look after two children, sometimes clean the apartment, cook for the children when Madam comes home late, iron Monsieur’s shirts as Madam hates ironing. I walk their dog in the park. Once the dog was lost and Madam cried… It is too much work for my salary (800 euros a month, plus a service room). I still live in their service room, but try to move out. I work like a slave from 7:00 morning until 9:00 evening. My salary is 600 euros (a month). I was promised 1200 euros in the beginning, but Madam reduced it after taking money for my room and food. … If I get sick, Madam gets annoyed, “Why are you sick? Take strong medicine.” After several hours she keeps asking me, “Can you work now?” She is demanding. … I am asked to do grocery shopping. A butcher tells me, “Go and sleep more, you look very tired.” Madam can fire me anytime. Having one employer is risky. It is better to have many (part-time) employers because you never know what will happen tomorrow. Because my work in Saudi Arabia was so hard, I thought I could work anywhere, I was not afraid to come to Paris. … Babysitting is unpredictable, so I cannot just leave after work. I rather prefer cleaning than babysitting. After cleaning, you can just lock the door and leave. But with babysitting, you have to wait until their parents come home, and they do not pay for extra work. … Working for 8 years in Paris, now I am preparing for papers as my current boss helps me. No matter what, I try to be nice to the boss so that she can help me to get my card. These stories are typical of many nannies in this study; whether they are from the Philippines, Indonesia, or Sri Lanka, whether they have worked in Paris for several or more than 10 years, and whether they are

Mobile Phone for Empowerment?  53 currently regulated or unregulated workers, their concerns and struggles reveal similar experiences in their shared role as low-wage workers in the underground economy. Experiences of exploitation, isolation, and enduring marginality of these minorities shape a common, shared identity. Interestingly, it has been observed that the conditions and treatment of migrant domestic workers are virtually identical across time and space; no matter where the job is taking place, by what nationality it is held, the experiences are very much alike (Moukarbel, 2009). Although studies about migrant domestic workers often find exploitation and make a plea for the regulation of women’s legal status, legal migration does not automatically mean that women gain more rights or become more empowered as regulation may bring more controls (De Regt, 2010). Live-in nannies tend to have duties going beyond childcare, extending to some cleaning, light cooking, ironing, food shopping, or dog-walking, whenever such flexibility is required by their employers. What often happens in practice is the blurring of the boundaries between childcare and housework as these two roles are merged informally into one without formal written contracts. Nannies are trapped in this cultivated ambiguity. A few nannies appear to have good employers, but countless others are less fortunate, as manifested in three common issues concerning working conditions. First, many work for long hours (e.g., 14 hours a day, 6 days a week), for low wages that are far from acceptable (e.g., between 600 and 1200 euros a month, depending on the provision of a service room), and that does not allow them to have a decent standard of living in Paris. Estimates based on available data suggest that migrant domestic workers typically earn less than a half (40%) of the average wages in France (ILO, 2012). Second, not all nannies are exploited and dissatisfied with labor conditions; however, it is clear that non-payment of overtime is a common practice contributing to the deepening of social inequality. The informal nature of labor relations—often without formal contracts defining working hours and wage payments but discursively centering around the well-being of children—obscures how much workers are actually entitled to be paid. Third, even well-paid nannies are employed under conditions that are unpredictable and largely beyond their control; for instance, they are expected to be available on duty most of time, without sick leave and without a general sense of job security. If they call in sick or become ill for several days, they risk being fired without notice as employers are free to do the hiring and the firing. Overall, these working conditions and the particular vulnerabilities of invisible workers in private homes create a tendency for them to face disposable life as disposable labor, a new form of slavery. Slavery today has two key characteristics that make it very different from that of the past; slaves today are “cheap,” and they are “disposable” (Bales, 1999). Slavery is not about legal ownership of a person, but it is the complete control of a person for economic exploitation. Slaves are cheaper than they

54  Mobile Phone for Empowerment? have ever been, and slaves are chosen by vulnerability, with devastating consequences for women. One of the problems with slavery today is that most people think it disappeared in the nineteenth century, but slavery today is more insidious because it is no longer justified by law or ideo­ logy. ­Modern-day slaves suffer all the more for being “invisible” ­(Parisot, 1998). Invisible nannies can face disposable life as a household slave in Paris, perhaps constituting a part of the estimated 27 million slaves worldwide (Bales, 1999). Hidden behind closed doors in private homes, many nannies are exploited as slave wageworkers at their employers’ convenience, as they are left to labor in conditions of isolation where all rules, regulations, and transgressions are created by employers. Workers’ status, whether documented or undocumented, does not appear to influence working conditions and exposure to exploitation. Home-based childcare is inherently isolated and invisible, which makes the nature of childcare work emotionally vexing and disempowering to a large extent. Apart from occasional bursts of publicity, invisible migrant domestic workers are perennially vulnerable and more likely to be excluded from social and legal safety nets (ILO, 2011). When migrant workers labor at the pleasure of the host country, with little or no legal protection, their work can slip easily into a version of indentured servitude (Rowe, 2003). Just as slavery produced runaway slaves, these conditions often result in runaway nannies, or they remain stuck in a feudal-like situation ­(Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2007), finding it hard to move from a traditional master-slave relationship to a modern one of employer-employee (Parisot, 1998). These jobs are largely unregulated as they take place inside the private sphere of homes; in this uniquely vulnerable condition, a high level of dependency on employers is created, and subaltern women are more pressured to be submissive to make their employers willing to help them with papers for regularization. Most vulnerable of all are live-in nannies who are expected to be constantly available to their employers as live-in arrangements constitute the blurred boundary between work and private life. While the domination-submission dynamic is at the core of labor relations here, possibilities of resistance do emerge among subjugated minorities to escape a state of constant availability and to negotiate constraints. Strategies of resistance include moving out and working as a live-out nanny, or finding multiple employers so that they are not dependent on one employer. These practices of resistance are not always completely successful but nevertheless enhance some degree of auto­ nomy and empowerment of workers.

Mobile Connection, Disempowerment and Inequality My employer often calls me. Why should I be available all the time, even though I don’t live in their service room now? She expects me to be available. … One Sunday afternoon, I was sitting inside a metro,

Mobile Phone for Empowerment?  55 going to meet my friend. I wore pretty clothes and nail polish. But suddenly I received a call from my employer, “Where are you?” She needed to go out and wanted me to come by 5:00 to look after child­ ren. So I got off the train at the next stop. … It is difficult to say “No” or turn off the phone. On Sunday I go to church. If Madam calls me, I bring her child to church. … When Madam and her husband went to Venice, she sent me text messages, “How is my child doing? How is my dog doing?” She often calls me, but I cannot call even when I am sick. … Sometimes Madam would pick up the child, without calling me and letting me know. I went out to school to pick up the child, but the child already left with her mom. She calls me whenever she needs me, but does not consider me. It is always one-way order. While I was talking with my friend outside for one hour, I received a call from my boss several times, “Where are you? On the way home can you drop by a store and buy juice, this and that?” Even during the summer vacation (August), it is better to be far away, out of sight. If I stayed in my room, she would constantly ask me to do this and that. There is no privacy. … This extra work is not paid. Even if it is paid, I need to rest, I am not a slave. On the one hand, the mobile phone may empower workers by adding social connections and increase their sense of autonomy by enabling them to be simultaneously mobile and connected. On the other hand, the every­day use of the mobile phone gives rise to the experiences of perpetual contact by employers and the nuanced ways in which expectations of authority come into conflict with autonomy among the less powerful. The mobile phone has prompted the new expectations that one should be available, anytime, anywhere, and should respond immediately, rendering workers more pressured and constrained in the scope of independent mobility. Employers make calls whenever they need to, and these calls compound the double burden of work and anxiety. In this sense, nannies are further ruled through perpetual connections; paradoxically, the mobile phone binds users as much as it promises to free them. One of the most frequently asked questions in mobile phone communications is, “Where are you?” Locating the person often initiates the conversation, substituting for the traditional greeting of “How are you?” (Goliama, 2011). The question “where are you?” is a form of establishing mutual contexts for communication and enables shared circumstances between people communicating at a distance and a relation of mutual accountability and trust (Hamill and Lasen, 2005). Yet, the relation here is not one of equality but is rather shaped by power dimensions that are embedded in the everyday use of the mobile phone. The concerns revealed in this study are fundamentally about contextual issues of power. Who initiates connection and benefits from it? Why should the less powerful

56  Mobile Phone for Empowerment? be available? New, nuanced constraints are caused by the problems of working in an unequal power context in which the less powerful (nannies) become conditioned to be continually present at a distance, spontaneous and available to the more powerful (employers). The benefits of mobile technology are not distributed equally in relation to asymmetrical power. New inequalities are introduced, not necessarily by a conventional digital divide between the haves and the have-nots, but fundamentally by power relations of people and their use of technology based on differential power. Structures of inequality at the macro-level related to race, class, or socio-economic status influence how the mobile phone’s new mediations define the micro-processes of working lives, labor relations, and experiences of work. It can be said that new technologies and ways of thinking about them are generally given shape and meaning by being grafted onto existing rules and expectations about the structure of social relations, as well as a familiar social order that can be further enhanced by new technologies (Marvin, 1988). Although new digital techno­logies appear to open new spaces for transcending traditional concepts of structures, social divisions, and differences, and although they are seen to have potential to achieve greater social equity and empowerment for marginalized members in a different context (e.g., Mehra et al., 2004), they can also possibly preserve and even reinforce these same structures and divisions. The mobile phone may contribute to intensifying, rather than reducing, differences between social groups operating in asymmetrical power relations. These differences become more significant and stronger to the perceptions of nannies, perhaps more than to the perceptions of madams assuming to be in positions of power. Domestic service is always marked by asymmetrical encounters; it cannot function without devices through which multiple axes of social difference, including class and race, can be established (Delap, 2011). The more communication technology is immersed in society and pervades everyday life the more it attaches to and strengthens the existing social divisions (Van Dijk, 2005). What is represented as so-called new digital reality is actually the technological and cultural manifestation of underlying class and race relations (Wilkie, 2011). Reproducing social inequality and difference, mobile phone technology can serve to perpetuate, rather than modify, existing power relations and existing social practices, which may further oppress the weak and marginal. The “always connected” nature in an “always on” environment has paradoxical consequences, both expansive and constraining. What is commonly considered a liberating new technology for certain ­subjects can also be exploitive and enslaving for others at the same time. ­Nannies commonly find themselves in an ambivalent position relating to the tensions of constant connectivity, the struggles in the management of presence and absence, of availability and non-availability, both their

Mobile Phone for Empowerment?  57 acquiescence and awareness of growing inequalities prompted by the mobile phone’s connectivity and increased flexibility in arrangements. Mobile communication offers a chance to fine-tune social arrangements, rather than making an immutable agreement, thereby reconstituting a sense of timekeeping (Ling, 2012). It creates an unspoken reality that time organization can no longer be agreed upon or fixed in any precise terms, resulting in more work for nannies and benefits to employers. The increased flexibility and mutable agreement enabled by the mobile phone’s connectivity presents an unfavorable condition in which workers are expected to work beyond normal working hours, often without due payment. Paradoxically, mobile communication technology that promises to free and connect people also burdens them with more work due to the increased expectation of availability through perpetual connections. It changes the nature and meaning of work life, blurring the boundaries between work and leisure or the distinctions between workers’ sold time and free time. It can bring unwelcome intrusions into private spaces, seemingly infiltrating every sphere including the bedroom where workers attempt to escape and carve out a constricted yet essential sphere of privacy, however fleeting. Concerns about more work, privacy, and possible surveillance are intimately linked to the everyday use of the mobile phone that contradicts the technology’s presumed potential to enhance the autonomy and empowerment of individuals. The way in which the mobile phone is used by the powerful can alter the very conditions of work life; it can hire workers, but also dispose them if they are not available through this same technological device, leading to quiet private struggles among workers who have limited power. The everyday use of technology in profoundly unequal power contexts orders and shapes human relations, while calling into question what it means to be human. Wittingly or unwittingly, it has become a new form of social control and another hidden aspect of disempowerment of workers. As this chapter shows, the mobile phone has become an integral part of everyday work life, an important dimension of human existence or bodily extension that possibly contributes toward social capital. ­A ffordable and accessible mobile technology is not independent but is embedded in existing social practices and power relations among different social groups. Mobile phone use is situated in asymmetrical power relations contingent on variables such as social class, race, and work conditions that unevenly affect technological benefits in light of connectivity. This situated nature of mobile technology implies that its use and meaning can be understood in the specific social context in which individual practices take place and contest. New practices and unrecognized struggles emerge as a new site of tension, a kind of battlefield in which micro-politics of unequal power are confronted, contested, and unresolved. Unresolved ambivalence is a key feature of mobile culture in everyday work life. The potential consequences of mobile phone use are that deep-rooted social inequalities are

58  Mobile Phone for Empowerment? reproduced and intensified based on perpetual connectivity, and power structures and social differences are reinforced rather than diminished. New social inequalities recognized in this study move beyond a traditional conception of the digital divide between those who do and do not have access to technology to the question of digital inequality as a consequence. The issue in this study is more primarily social than techno­ logical; there are nuances to the digital divide and digital inequality that can be understood in terms of situational use and relative inequality conditioned by asymmetrical power relations. This chapter has made the case for understanding how power relations work in the sphere of mobile connectivity between the more powerful and the less powerful and the consequences of disempowerment for the latter to a large degree.

4 Digital Media for Intimacy? Family Life and Transnational Mothering

Feminization of migration has emerged as a common livelihood ­strategy, and remittances have become one of the largest sources of development, poverty reduction, and human and capital investment for upward ­socio-economic mobility for families in the global South (for details, see Chapter 2). Remittances are particularly necessary for the well-being of children and their education, basic health care, and daily subsistence. The irony of such migration is that migrant women often leave their own children in the care of female relatives and look after others’ children in the global North. Many nannies from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka cross the globe to care for children in wealthy countries where salaries exceed those of their home countries. Today, wealthy countries in the global North seek to extract something harder to measure and quantify, something that can look very much like love (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). This displacement of intimacy, or the globalization of love, is often upward in wealth and power, while raising a question of the equitable distribution of care and becoming a hidden injury of global capitalism for the children of nannies in the global South. The work of intimacy constitutes intimate labors by racial outsiders and lower classes who are seen as greater value for money. Commodified intimacy, or the intersections of money and intimacy in everyday life, is shaped by, even as it shapes, relations of race, class, and gender (Boris and Parrenas, 2010). An estimated 30% of children in the Philippines, for instance, live in households where a parent works abroad (Campbell, 2006). Many migrant mothers, as low-wage workers, see their children only once ­every two years, and such visits are not possible at all for undocumented migrants. This situation has necessitated and amplified the centrality of communications through digital media for transnational mothering. ­I ncreasing numbers of migrant mothers are absent for a signi­ficant period of the growing up of their children, while struggling for morally appropriate mothering practices through mobile phones and the Internet. Since undocumented migrant mothers cannot visit their family back home, they depend on more intensive transnational communications, as well as remittances and gift-giving practices. The explosion of communicative opportunities afforded by digital media,

60  Digital Media for Intimacy? particularly the emergence of a plethora of Internet- and mobile phonebased platforms, has engendered a new type of connected transnational family ­(Madianou and Miller, 2012). The transnational migration of mothers has raised distinctive challenges to traditional notions of family and mothering, important questions about how family connection and mother-child intimacy is sustained or disrupted through the use of the digital media, and with what consequences. Does the use of the digital media create new spaces for intimacy in family life? How much is this new connectivity actually strengthening mother-child relationships and empowering migrant mothers? This chapter presents the complexities of digital media use in the management of personal space and relational life by exploring how migrant mothers struggle to deal with transnational mothering. Providing empirical data on the lives and experiences of migrant mothers, this chapter critically analyzes the potentials and limitations of digital media, mobile phones and the Internet in particular, in creating intimacy in material and symbolic ways across transnational spaces. This critical analysis entails an understanding of the broader contexts, and the traditional concepts, of gender roles, gendered power, existing family relations, and the normative morality of mothering that still powerfully influence the new sphere of the technologically mediated world. The use of new techno­ logical devices is not radically apart from, but embedded within and largely operating by the pre-existing patterns of family relationships and the realities of everyday life. How migrant mothers connect, communicate, and create intimacy across distance using the digital media is crucially dependent on the social, cultural, and moral contexts of family life. Thus, the approach in this chapter challenges any celebratory tenor of technological determinism that may simply assume that the desirable technological attributes of digital media, such as global connectivity, ubiquity, and interactivity, would imprint their own transformative logic on interpersonal relationships and bind people together. The role of information and communication technologies in the management of personal space and relational life reappears as central in the study of the so-called web generation and their use of digital media including the Internet and the mobile phone. The Internet is significantly privatized. It is used to provide a private communication space for families and friends otherwise out of reach; the Internet is barely used as a tool for local civic engagement (Silverstone, 2005). When trying to understand why people purchase and consume goods, including digital communication technologies, it is necessary to consider how goods work within people’s core relationships to those with whom they live and care most about—as a technology for the expression and establishment of love (Miller, 2012). The intimate relationships people have with their technological objects serve to characterize not only their identities, but also the overall nature of their everyday lives as defined by the embodied

Digital Media for Intimacy?  61 activities in which they engage (Farman, 2012). Communicating with families and friends, gathering information, or exploring social and cultural interests online may be among the most important ways these technologies assist in leading lives of value (Kleine, 2013). The mobile phone has become a key instrument of the intimate sphere, a link to those with whom users are closest, thanks to the micro-coordination enabled by almost perpetual contact (Ling, 2012). The mobile phone appears to support better contact within the personal sphere, particularly within the circle of families and friends, allowing for tying of tighter bonds via various forms of ritual interaction (Ling, 2008). In a similar vein, the Internet is seen to engender and enhance emerging forms of “global togetherness” constituted by transnational migration and the progressive shrinking of distances through digital media technologies (Greschke, 2008). Yet at the same time, crucial issues and questions have been raised to debunk some of the myths of digital media. Is digital media use radically changing the way people interact, or are people modeling digital platforms to fit pre-existing relationships? (Baym, 2010). Will the Internet, and its associated technological infrastructures, be used in ways that enrich personal and social relationships? (Graham and ­Dutton, 2014). How connected do users actually feel? The irony is that the more people have access and connection to digital communication technologies, the less they really communicate (Hanson, 2007). Global connections are everywhere in a digital mobile world today, but having connections does not simply mean hooking up a wire from one place to another. Having connections means having a thread that links people to others’ thoughts, duties, responsibilities, and obligations (Jones, 1997). The issues of how families experience digital media in their everyday lives, and how parents struggle over the when and why of practices involving digital media, fit into their wish or obligation to be good-enough parents (Clark, 2013). The struggle over the concept of being a proper mother mediates how mothers choose and use digital media ­(Madianou and Miller, 2012). Importantly, technologies can be understood and interpreted as regards their standing in a range of moral contexts ­(Winner, 1986). There is a relationship between the growing use of digital communication technologies and the pressures people feel to do more, to spend more time online, and to consider using even more techno­logies (Hanson, 2007). Despite having many more consumer goods and a better standard of living today, people are not any happier since technologies create their own needs and desires and people’s horizon of desires is constantly moving along with the technological horizon (Brey et al., 2012). Paradoxically, mobile phones and the Internet can make people’s lives more complicated, by demanding more labor and effort to satisfy heightened desires and expectations, thus adding more work and more stress.

62  Digital Media for Intimacy? This chapter will argue that, while the perpetual connectivity of the digital media in family life may appear to serve as an instrument of intimacy and empowerment for migrant mothers, it can also become a new source of digital fatigue and morality, double burdens, and anxieties about the uncertain consequences of transnational communications. Women’s transnational migration does not necessarily change the gender division of care labor in the family; thus, it forces migrant mothers to continue the traditional roles of mothering, now intensively performed by the practices of transnational communications. This often means more work—more intensive mothering, moral and emotional labor at a ­distance—which does not necessarily lead to the empowerment of women and gender equality in family life. Women’s migratory processes do not always generate positive changes in the status of women, as women’s domesticity is not dispelled by transnational migration. It is important to recognize the possible hurdles in the emancipation of women, as well as the systems of gender inequality that are often maintained in the migration of women (Parrenas, 2008). New digital technologies do not transcend or overcome existing social and cultural divisions, including the gender division of care labor in the family, but continue to sustain and reinforce the existing divisions in the technologically mediated sphere. This chapter will further argue that, despite heightened expectations for intimacy through the ubiquitous connections afforded by the mundane use of digital media, they come to life in profound ambivalence, moral struggle, and tension that remain largely unresolved in mother-child relationships. Digital connections are ubiquitous now, more frequent and easier than ever before, yet there emerges a pronounced gap between the heightened expectations and the actual experiences, with significant consequences on emotional well-being. When technology engineers intimacy, relationships can be reduced to mere shallow connections, lacking in richer, more fulfilling interpersonal relationships (Turkle, 2011). Instead of enabling emotional closeness and intimacy, technological mediation can only present a possibility of communications, sometimes superficial and shallow interactions, or a radical degree of uncertainty regarding the emotional effectiveness of the communications. Dealing with this feeling of superficiality and uncertainty, migrant mothers struggle over the morality of mothering and constantly use communication technologies to create a sense of intimacy. This chapter will argue that the new, digitally mediated world is not free from prior forms of sociality, existing practices, expectations, and moral values of mothering drawn from social and cultural contexts. Any appraisal of digital media technologies valorizing access and connection as solely positive is naïve and incomplete. Such an optimistic and celebratory view often fails to recognize the under-determined praxis of digital media culture, the unintended consequences and limitations of illusory connection that have nevertheless raised expectations of digital connectivity in an intimate sphere.

Digital Media for Intimacy?  63

Intensive Mothering: Gender Inequality Unchanged My daughter was 6 years old and my son was 4 when I left (the Philippines). My husband was jobless for many years. My parents were very poor. It was the only way. If there were any other choice, no mothers would choose this way of life. … I send text messages every day. I use phone cards, but recently bought a computer for my children and an iPad for me. Mobile phone calling is expensive and I don’t want my children to use an internet café… I also work on Sunday to earn more money for all these. My husband is not helpful. My mother takes care of my children, but she is old and sick. If I send more money to find a helper, she says she is not sick. She understands my work as a nanny must be hard. … I am a mother, not a nanny. I do this work for my children. I left (Indonesia) when my youngest child was one year old. … I often call my children. Now use Skype almost every day. When I am tired, I sit down to feel them (over Skype), listen to their voice. My body is here, but my mind is always with them. Skype is always on, when I cook in my room, clean the room, even when I am not in the room. It is part of my life. … I miss my children most when cooking food. I cook and show food (over Skype), then they tell me which food they like, what they eat every day. I tell them to eat breakfast before going to school and listen to grandmother. … We also play with a hat (over Skype), put on a hat and take off, as my little son likes it. We do it again and again until they show me something else to play. A main purpose of digital media use is to maintain connections with family and continue to practice remote mothering. All migrant ­mothers in this study use mobile phones, and more than half connect to the ­I nternet on their mobile phones. For mobile and connected users, the mobile phone is often a means of sustaining transnational family ties and micro-coordinating family activities to some extent. There is a tendency for ethnic minorities to be heavier users of mobile telephony than the general population, and heavy mobile phone use is largely explained by their need to stay in touch with family in their home countries (Castells et al., 2007). One of the most significant modes of transnational practice affecting migrants’ lives is the ability to telephone family members, and low costs of prepaid phone cards and the affordability of mobile phones account for their significant growth in ethnic markets (Vertovec, 2004). For low-income migrants with financial prudence, prepaid phone cards are a useful means of budgeting calls and avoiding large phone bills. Migrant mothers ensure that their families, children in particular, possess digital mobile devices and that their remittances include a budget for communication expenses. This means that new communication

64  Digital Media for Intimacy? technologies can transform the experience and meaning of work, since migrant mothers are compelled to work harder, earn more money, and send more remittances to better deal with the centrality of care through the mediated communications. Text messaging, while being less expensive, is also used to connect with family back home. Although the ­I nternet is a less affordable means of communications, it is increasingly used to connect to family and creates mundane interactions between mothers and children. Some mothers arrange to borrow friends’ Internet connection to construct connected presence. Use of free Internet communications, like Skype with webcam, enables almost real-time perpetual contact with family on a daily basis, becoming not just a means of transnational communications but also a spatial extension of home, or what feels like home. With the continued role of mothering, migrant women’s care work for their children is not readily switched off (“Skype is always on”), which indicates intensive care and longing. Such engagement also indicates ­migrant women’s continuing struggle for identity as mothers, and strug­ emale lagle for recognition in the mediated practices of everyday life. F bor migrants are said to exhibit transnational hyper-­maternalism, which allows them to overcome accusations of maternal neglect ­(Tungohan, 2013). It is apparent that migrant mothers tend to provide intensive mothering to their children from a distance. Their self-identity primarily as a mother is consciously emphasized (“I am a mother, not a nanny”), which may seem natural for these mothers; however, this emphasis is also a strategic way to negotiate and cope with the declining social ­status—temporary or irregular—that the nanny job constructs for most migrant mothers. Transnational mothering practiced through digital communication technologies is at times felt to be enabling and fulfilling, yet it also creates double duty: more work and emotional labor for children’s well-being. The capacity and promises of technological innovation may contribute to compounding the double burden of work associated with gender roles in family life. Women’s narratives in this study indicate that their husbands generally maintain a traditional gender contract, not ready to accept childcare responsibilities and subordinate positions, not suited to do care work or not trusted by children and mothers alike. Commonly, migrant mothers indeed provide care from thousands of miles away, whereas fathers continue to reject the responsibilities of nurturing children (Parrenas, 2005). Female relatives tend to take over childcare and housework, often leading to the collective labor of female intergenerational obligations. Undocumented, irregular migrants in France cannot travel to see their families, thus their connections through digital media become more frequent and more intensive to enact intimate ties with their children. Through intensive nurturing enabled by mobile phones and the Internet, these migrant mothers remain the embodiment of home in the interlocking sphere of productive work and care work.

Digital Media for Intimacy?  65 Overall, such practices of transnational communication raise a question of whether women’s migration has a potential to change relations of gender and power and reconstitute the existing gender contract in family life. The care labor of global markets by female migrants, which has resulted in new, gendered labor markets, is seen as a potentially important agent for the transformation of gender relations (Dannecker, 2005). By performing a traditionally male role as breadwinner, women through their remittances or economic contributions are expected to renegotiate gender power, redistribute gender roles, and reduce gender inequality in transnational families. However, re-enactment of conventional gender norms in the transnational families of migrant mothers is very common, despite the potential subversions offered by the physical absence of mothers from the home. While migrant mothers sell their domestic care labor in global markets, they remain burdened with gendered responsibilities in their own families (Lan, 2003). The institution of the transnational family reifies more than it transgresses conventional gender boundaries, and patriarchal traditions are more often sustained than contested by the actions that maintain the transnational family (Parrenas, 2005, 2008). Although migrant mothers are able to negotiate gender relations, the persistence of the ideology of female domesticity constrains the reconstitution of gender in the transnational family. Significantly, migrant mothers’ simultaneous occupancy of paid and unpaid domestic care labor is merged into distinct spatial settings that are created by digital communication technologies. Their transnational communications via routine connections can dutifully perform and uphold normative gender behavior, thus limiting the potential for gender transformation. The use of new communication technologies that promise to free users is likely to re-introduce traditional gender roles and complicate the already unequal gender relations. Gender inequality remains unchanged, reproduced, and even reinforced by the routine practice of digital media use in transnational spaces. Migrant mothers’ attempt to renegotiate and redefine identities and relationships can also create fissures in their sense of self (Chib et al., 2014). Women’s transnational migration does not necessarily lead to the empowerment of women and transformation of the existing gender contract and normative expectations of mothering that still operate in the phenomenon of the trans­national digital family.

Intimacy and Digital Fatigue When I left for the airport (to work in Paris) I could not explain the situation to my children. I just said I was going to a toilet. I did not know what to say, how to leave them. They were very sad. … Whenever I call my children, my youngest one would ask me, “When are you coming home?” I don’t know what to say because I have to work until my children finish education. … I send gifts. I always call my

66  Digital Media for Intimacy? children, but it also hurts me because I know very well how they feel. My mother left me (for Taiwan as a domestic worker) when I was 8, and I still remember how I felt about the absence of mother. … My daughter is still angry at me. She even thinks I am a slut who just ran away home. My child does not come to me, does not sleep next to me. He goes to sleep next to his grandmother. I left him when he was one year old (now 6). He does not think I am his mother. … When I visited home this summer, I took him out and bought lots of gifts, toys, picture books, and he promised to stay close to me. But after I paid money at that shop, he quickly went to his grandmother with the gift bag. … My mother tries to explain to him why I had to leave. After my husband left me, there was no way to earn money for family. I try not to make them angry. I cannot discipline them, “Do this, don’t do that,” because I do not fully know about their life. I do not really know about their emotions, how they really feel. If I ever talk about bad happenings as I heard from my mother, my eldest son stops talking to me over phone. Because I do not know the full story of bad happenings, I cannot say anything negative or discipline them, but usually say positive things. I frequently call but we do not talk much… I missed their birthdays. When I went home for 2 weeks, I cooked for them. But I did not know what they like, boiled egg or fried egg, chicken leg or chicken breast. Intensive mothering through digital communication technologies does not necessarily lead to intimacy, which seems evident in reunions of migrant mothers and their children back home. Brief reunions, after years of separation, can create heartbreaking anguish and emotional disconnect (“my child does not come to me”). Perpetual communications via mobile phones and the Internet do not substitute for physical travel, and physical travel itself does not always enhance emotional connection or displace strangeness. Some mothers feel like almost strangers on their return to their families and deal with unexpected realities; their children do not recognize them or do not attempt to establish an intimate bond, and mothers themselves do not really know what their children like and dislike. Having missed important life events for children (e.g., birthdays, school graduations, fragile moments of sickness), migrant mothers worry that their children are never quite as happy as children who live with the care of non-migrant mothers. Documented migrants tend to visit home once every two years usually during the French summer vacation ­(August), whereas undocumented migrants who cannot visit home resort more frequently to gift-giving practices. There is great ambivalence about material gifts, although female labor migration generally leads to the financial well-being of family members. Transnational families do not necessarily like female labor migration, but deprived women accept it with the combination of fatalism, resourcefulness, and pluck (Rowe, 2003).

Digital Media for Intimacy?  67 For both documented and undocumented migrant mothers, everyday mediated communications for the enactment of intimacy, as well as regular remittances and gifts, do not necessarily create deep connection or meaningful, intimate ties. Digital media have certainly created new forms of “media-centered” relations among users; it is possible that users of the Internet may invest heavily in relationships and practices that only exist online. Nevertheless, these new spaces created by the Internet are important to users as part of everyday life, not apart from it (Miller and Slater, 2000). Seemingly increased possibilities of conversations via mobile phones and the Internet every day do not necessarily result in the desired consequences. Some migrant mothers feel that the actual conversations become brief and superficial, which frequently differs from what these mothers initially expected. There is simply less to say. In other cases, online communications are seen to enable migrant mothers to discipline their children and build up a mutual knowledge of each other’s everyday lives (Pratt, 2012), while these technologies can also re-cement human relations into structures of control and new forms of surveillance (McDowell, 2009). However, this study commonly finds that it is not always easy for migrant mothers to intervene in routines, set rules, or monitor and discipline their children (“try not to make them angry”) partly due to the emotional ambiguity (“not really know about their emotions”) via digital communication technologies. Often, migrant mothers’ unspoken concern is managing their children’s unresolved tension and questions as to why the mother left. The inability to have face-to-face contact and bodily touch (e.g., a motherly hug) over the computer screen, yet the regular and visible intrusion into everyday consciousness can be even more painful since such a daily reminder can raise expectations for more meaningful intimacy. Such emotional pain, dissatisfaction, and frustration are part of the hidden injury and ambivalent experiences that migrant mothers unwillingly express. “When are you coming home?” Indeed, migrant mothers seem most ambivalent and challenged when their children inquire about coming home. This ineluctable inquiring during regular conversations, with unsatisfying answers or silence (“don’t know what to say”), can intensify a sense of emotional distance and tension between mothers and children. Use of digital communication technologies is ambivalent and contradictory and simultaneously constitutes resources and obligations, new sources of pleasure and tension in an intimate sphere. Although everyday use of the technological tool is expected by intended users to be an effective instrument of intimacy, it is often found to be an unexpected site of tension creating digital fatigue. Using the Internet every day, sometimes I am tired! My daughter keeps asking, “Can I come to you?” I refuse, “Why do you come here? What kind of job can you get here?” Many daughters join their mothers and do the same job, but I don’t want that. … My daughter thinks Paris is beautiful. We use Facebook to keep in touch. She tells me to put more Paris photos on Facebook.

68  Digital Media for Intimacy? I always tell my children, “Study hard and get a good job. You should not live like me.” I work here for my children’s education, and send most of money I earn. My daughter calls me whenever she needs money for school projects. … My daughter wants to come. Am I a wrong influence? She should not repeat my life. I warn her, “If you are here as a tourist, Paris is beautiful. But if you are here to work like me, it is totally different.” She asks if I have been to the Eiffel tower, boat cruise on the Seine River, here and there. “Can I come to you?” Routine communications sustained by mobile phone and Internet use can create digital fatigue, due to familial expectations that include not only frequent demands for remittances but also invitations. This unintended consequence of perpetual connectivity in everyday digital life can potentially disrupt, if not exacerbate, ­mother-daughter relationships and produce sites of subtle tension that become common and central features in these core transnational networks. The lived experience of transnational motherhood embedded in digital culture often reveals the intricacies of interpersonal dynamics and unexpected sites of tension. Surely, many migrant mothers do not want their daughters, especially educated ones, to come to Paris and repeat the same life trajectories as nannies. They experience a paradox of Internet use; whether to activate or not to activate, whether to continue or avoid communications to better deal with the new tensions, emotional burdens, and obligations as part of digital life. On one hand, technological benefits afforded by “always on” connection are reflected in the centrality of care in everyday life, while on the other hand, these technological benefits often themselves create new problems, new conditions and anxieties about their consequences. In an increasingly connected mobile world, being “always on” is not always a wonderful blessing, but is rather a complex and contradictory affair. The concern is not how to get onto the connection, but how to get off (Shaviro, 2003). There emerges a desire for greater control over connection, and technological potentials can be temporarily suspended or even rejected at the moments of intense tension as a strategy of maintaining a sense of intimacy. It has also become common for those with mobile phones equipped with cameras to take photos of Paris, document their personal lives with beautiful city images, send them instantly to their families, or upload them to the social media (e.g., Facebook). Digital media users today are mostly empowered to create personal, everyday life-oriented content, and an increase in emphasis of the values of self-expression certainly seems to point to the development of new social habits (Curran et al., 2012). Such empowering practices, new habits, and meanings of self-­ exploration may gain a contextual significance by valorizing the enchantment of the surrounding environment (“Paris is beautiful”). Paris is seen to be a particularly desirable and sought-after place among the younger

Digital Media for Intimacy?  69 generation of women. Transnational mobility itself, as part of indivi­ dualized digital mobile culture, can be triggered by the valorization of the global city. Beautiful images of Paris, reflected in parks, landscapes, buildings, and posh restaurants, can create an imaginative world and function to induce migration among daughters seeking for employment opportunities. For young people of ethnic groups, idealization or internalization of the delusive picture of the world can be imbued with an idea of “paradise Europe” (Goliama, 2011). Without knowing real life situations afar, young people with habitual connection to mobile communications come to perceive that living and working in a foreign country is not completely foreign or inaccessible but increasingly possible and even desirable. Back in their home countries, the self of daughters is already mobilized through the routinely mediated communications, which can lead to extended family movements. Some migrant mothers can experience a partial family reunion when their daughters also migrate to work in the domestic care sector. This partial family reunion is based on intergenerational chain labor migration (Kontos, 2009). Although migrant mothers do educate their children, there are no good jobs for them and often they end up becoming domestic care workers who themselves leave their children to work abroad. This intergenerational chain has become a system (New York Times, 2011). There is a tendency among migrant mothers to blame themselves for their daughters’ eventual migration. Some feel guilty about the negative consequences of their migration on their children back home—­inadequate guardianship, feelings of powerlessness and abandonment (Parrenas, 2005). Such consequences also indicate the limitations of mediated communications and intimacy, as well as the morality of transnational mothering deeply embedded in digital media culture.

Morality of Mothering If Western people ask, “Do you have a child?,” I just say I don’t have a child because some rich people criticize, “How come you leave your child?” They think I am not a good mother. … I work every day, very busy, but try to use the Internet every time when I go over my friend’s room. I use Skype on my friend’s computer. My priority is to buy an iPad and use the Internet at any place. We can talk about children only when they grow up, educated and successful. Now I can talk about my children. Now my children are in university. … This was most difficult for me. When my son was in trouble, he blamed me, “Because you did not look after me, because you did not give enough love.” My daughter was resentful. Because  I called her often, she expected I would know about her enough, I should know about her enough, as a good mother. I felt guilty. Am I a good-enough mother?

70  Digital Media for Intimacy? I try to talk to them more and more (over phone). I try to give more and more, “What do you want for your birthday gift?” I send gifts, or money when they don’t tell me exactly what they want. It is my way of expressing love for my children, to let them know I always think of them, although I don’t think it changes our relationship. … In fact, today is my birthday. I never celebrate my birthday (while working abroad) because I can’t celebrate my children’s birthday with them. The phenomenon of female migration often demonstrates the prominence of a discourse of blame that reinforces established gender roles— what constitutes the desirable Asian family and women’s work—while simultaneously suggesting moral failings and anxieties. Women’s transnational mobility and their loss of bodily connection to their homes mean that they also come to be seen as having lost their moral bearings. In fact, all discussions of mobility necessarily have moral overtones of one sort or another; it is impossible to discuss the issue of mobility without making implicit value judgments (Morley, 2000). If the moral eco­ nomy of a household is grounded in the creation of a home by women, the absence of the physical structure and of women’s role within it seems to betoken the absence of a moral framework. The feminization of migration today coupled with gender-role expectations constitutes a new moral economy that combines traditional motherhood and neoliberal rationales to maintain both emotional and economic support for families back home. Being perceived as deviance from a state of normalcy, most migrant mothers feel guilty about leaving their children while caring for children of others. It is common to see the guilt nannies feel about bestowing on strangers the tenderness they are unable to extend to their own, faraway loved ones (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). The problem in this phenomenon is not the separation of mothers and children; rather, it is a dominant gender ideology that makes these women feel guilty for leaving home and a media culture that links this separation to social problems (Parrenas, 2005). Typically in a Western city, nannies who are visibly different from the children in their care learn to expect to be censored by the public, although this usually takes the form of hostile stares and whispered comments rather than dramatic confrontations (Macdonald, 2010). This morality of mothering plays a key role in blaming migrant mothers for kind of “stigma” (Goffman, 1963), an undesired differentness from what the public normatively anticipates, and furthermore, migrant mothers’ defensive response to their situation can be perceived as a direct expression of their defect. Consequently, these significant moral pressures compel migrant mothers to avoid any questioning concerning children, respond in secrecy (“say I don’t have a child”), or display hyper-maternalism through more intensive engagement with digital communication technologies. For some,

Digital Media for Intimacy?  71 Internet access and live interactions online are nearly everyday routines as an established background infrastructure, since telephone calls and texting are simply not sufficient to show care for children. Many migrant mothers do not have their own time for leisure, or what they call leisure always prioritizes care for their children back home, thereby the work/ leisure divisions are increasingly blurring in this routine process of technological mediation. Their time is almost entirely dedicated to the care of others both back home and at work, which is reflected in the morally grounded use of communication technologies. Such routine and intensive contact with children back home can relieve a sense of guilt to some extent, yet it can constantly remind loved ones of physical distance and produce deeper anxieties about the felt distance. Although connected presence through digital communication technologies gives the appearance of the annihilation of distance, it does not completely eliminate the effects of distance (Wilding, 2006), and it can result in increased guilt and anxieties when the distance becomes even more evident. While the routine connection may appear to offer a possibility for emotional connection and a better understanding of loved ones, contradictions arise from the limits of illusory connection. The realization of illusory connection has significant consequences for how migrant mothers relate to their loved ones and struggle to transform their relationship. Routinely connecting through mobile phones and the Internet, as well as remittances and gifts, cannot erase the deep-seated feelings of abandonment among children. The children of migrant mothers are more apt to describe their relationship with their mothers as consisting of abandonment, regardless of the care they do receive (Parrenas, 2005). Like the discourse of guilt among migrant mothers, feelings of abandonment among children are known to be prominent, while generating consumer cultures of materialism and consumerist expectations toward migrant mothers. Some migrant mothers wish to compensate for the feelings of abandonment and guilt through the commodification of love, including gift-giving and consumption (e.g., latest mobile phones, computers and Internet connections, fashionable clothes, cosmetics). Consumption is also a moral and cultural means of communication, through which physically absent mothers enact their moral roles and express love for family. Migrant mothers’ consumption desires and practices are reflective not only of commoditized exchange but also of affect and sentiment (Silvey, 2006). Remittances and gifts have non-economic, emotional meanings conveying assurances that families back home have not been forgotten (McKenzie and Menjivar, 2011). Overall, at the heart of this phenomenon is a struggle over morality and over the capacity of migrant mothers to create a moral space for themselves to perform mothering. The use of communication techno­ logies can be understood in a range of moral contexts where issues are not just about effective technological use for intimacy but also about

72  Digital Media for Intimacy? constructing a morally appropriate role to be performed. Identity poli­ tics, or gendered identity construction, is morally shaped and enacted through the use of such technologies in everyday life. Everyday life is a moral order where diverse norms are juggled into livable practices ­(Silverstone, 2005). As morally appropriate mothering practices, the use of communication technologies reveals a facet of struggle to be a goodenough mother and creates heightened expectations of use that may in turn generate new pressures on more impoverished migrant mothers to adopt such technologies, to go online routinely, and to conform to the morality of mothering, despite their obvious financial barriers. At a deeper level, the frequency of connection and the extent of communications via the online screen function to display family, a new kind of moral regulation. For migrant families, the new concept of “displaying family” shows how family life must not only be done but also be “seen to be done” (Seymour and Walsh, 2013). Care at a long distance must be demonstrated, rather than assumed, and seen by others as a normative mothering practice. This practice of family display by migrant mothers becomes a ritualistic performance through the mundane use of communication technologies. Although migration necessitates a reworking and a re-imagination of the notion of family, such a new process is nevertheless forced to display the traditional morality of proper family that becomes a major rule of conduct with potential tensions in the experiences of transnational mothering. As this chapter has demonstrated, the use of mobile phones and the ­I nternet does not necessarily empower migrant mothers, as female migration does not fundamentally destabilize the deep-rooted gender division of labor and women’s traditional roles of mothering. Morally defined, traditional forms of gender inequality remain largely unchanged and reproduced in the transnational field where intensive mothering at a distance is performed and paradoxically reinforced through the routine use of new communication technologies. This apparent paradox reveals the limitations of technological determinism; the existing social and cultural divisions are continued and morally re-inscribed in the new realm of technological innovation that is purported to provide opportunities for empowerment. In reality, the use of mobile phones and the Internet is continuous with and embedded in the existing social structures, and the already tremendous disconnection of the existing familial relations that the migrant mothers cannot powerfully transcend but struggle over. The use of such technologies operates within the embodied social relations that cannot be escaped into an abstracted and self-enclosed space apart from everyday life (Miller and Slater, 2000). The users’ everyday world shapes, as much as being shaped by, their engagement with new communication technologies. Remaining mostly powerless, rather than changing or challenging the situation, women on the move continue to undertake economic,

Digital Media for Intimacy?  73 emotional, and moral tasks for their families. This crucial sense of morality is performed and enacted through the routine use of the digital media, as well as remittances and gift-giving practices. While digital innovation celebrating its technologically enabling features of perpetual connectivity and live interactivity may be seen to offer an empowering potential in users’ everyday lives, it is important to recognize that double burdens, new anxieties, and struggle over morality are also significantly manifested among the relatively disempowered users, such as migrant mothers in a particular context. Like all previous technologies, digital media use and future potential are context dependent; if one is to realize the dreams of the digital technology, then one needs to challenge that context in order to empower oneself (Curran et al., 2012). Although the Internet in a different context is said to have tremendous potential to achieve empowerment for marginalized people (Mehra et  al., 2004), and although the mobile phone is seen to be a miracle for migrants (Hicks, 2009), it should be recognized that people incorporate the technology into their lives in different ways that are meaningful to them in particular moral contexts, with context-­ dependent consequences. Migrant mothers tend to feel significantly ambivalent about the consequences of mediated communications. This chapter has featured the unresolved ambivalence and complexity of digital media use, intimacy, and digital fatigue and the struggle over morality of mothering as mediated by routine connections. The complexity of relationships that essentially arise from routine connections calls into question positive assumptions about transnational mothering with a sense of togetherness and emotional closeness over distance. Such connections enabled by mobile phones and the Internet in everyday life are often caught up in tensions and make the distance even more palpable, while also serving to intensify, rather than diminish, the feeling of distance. These findings suggest that the lure and appeal of perpetual connectivity of communication technologies may fail to capture various moments and contexts where subtle and unexpected effects are taking place. Most migrant mothers in this study try hard to create an alternative space of care via mobile phones and the Internet, yet such engagement does not necessarily lead to familial intimacy and close emotional relations between mothers and children. Rather, this considerable effort and hidden struggle may indicate widening emotional disconnection and increasing moral anxiety over the making and remaking of family in long-distance relationships. Digital media use cannot itself be an effective determinant for its final outcomes, but it operates within the existing conditions of family life that constitute and mediate, not determine, the meanings and outcomes of the technological use. New communication technologies are not explicitly perceived as, and do not actually create, solutions to the problems of existing family relations, of separation and ambivalence, despite the

74  Digital Media for Intimacy? active and seemingly desperate ways in which the technologies are being used for solving these existing problems or altering the conditions. It is likely that mother-child relationships that were already strained and then fell apart by the migration continue to be strained, rather than enhanced and transformed, even after the routine inter­actions through the mindful use of mobile phones and the Internet. Digi­tally mediated communications can possibly provide a useful addition to existing family practices as a normal aspect of transnational lives, but generally have limited abilities to bridge the physical separation and create the re-arrangement of affect and emotional closeness.

5 Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration

As discussed in the previous chapters, women’ migration has been prompted by the needs of their family, particularly the needs of children, to cover children’s tuition fees, basic health care costs and the everyday living expenses of those remaining in their home countries. They are desperate to support their children economically but must at the same time leave these children behind. Some migrant mothers can experience a partial family reunion when their daughters also migrate to work in the domestic care sector. This partial family reunion is based on intergenerational chain labor migration (Kontos, 2009). Although migrant mothers do educate their children and indeed education is a key motivating factor for labor migration, there are no good jobs for them, and often they end up becoming domestic care workers, repeating the life trajectories of their mothers. This intergenerational migration of mothers and daughters has become a visible global phenomenon. Such migration is driven by multiple factors (for details, see Chapter 2). Poverty and limi­ ted economic opportunities for women are one of the starting points for care chains (Hochschild, 2002; Moukarbel, 2009). The growing income inequality between the global North and the global South has motivated women to escape poverty through migration (Murrugarra et al., 2011). More young women are choosing careers as nannies in the affluent North rather than as teachers or nurses in their home countries. Increasing gradients of difference between countries in the pattern of growth, in the workforce, and in income levels have been important drivers of the South-North labor migration (Hugo, 2006). Potential migrants, as entrepreneurs of themselves, rationally calculate wage differentials in different places and consequently decide to migrate to improve their lives. Single female migrants are likely to be enterprising, very mobile, and individualistic enough to resist social and structural pressures back home, while seeking to take control of their lives and remake themselves as free and autonomous individuals. Importantly, this increasing mobilization of the self is facilitated by use of the digital media, especially mobile phones and the Internet. Transnational mobility itself has become part of individualized digital mobile culture. Networked social relations are everywhere, enabled by the perpetual connectivity of mobile

76  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration communication technologies in everyday life. Among children of Filipina migrant workers, 60% of the children want to leave their country and think life is better outside (Campbell, 2006). Back in home countries, the self of daughters is already mobilized through the routinely mediated communications via the digital media, which can lead to migration and the possible remaking of their biography in transnational spaces. How do digital media mediate migration, and what are the consequences for identity formation? Can digital media use foster a sense of freedom and progress in the transnational lives of minorities? To what extent can it help or hinder them improve their life conditions? This chapter explores what their experiences suggest about the possibilities and limitations of digital media use for minorities, given that more and more young women from the global South engage with the digital media and experience mobility in the courses of their lives. Digital media, especially mobile phones and the Internet, have become central to the mobile lives and livelihoods of young women; they are integrated into the modes of being in the world and the mundane enactments of identity, migration aspirations, and dislocation. As cultural resources and almost ritual practices, digital media use is becoming an integral part of every­ day life, for even the remote and economically marginalized women located on the globalized periphery. Drawing on the digital experiences of young women, this chapter intends to recognize qualitative changes in the rela­tively hidden, mundane yet profound, vernacular cultures of digi­ tal media in their materiality and multiple manifestations of complexity. Digital media, including Internet-enabled mobile phones, have histo­ rically given rise to utopian as well as dystopian perspectives informed by hopes and fears associated with them (Jensen, 2010). Today, the word “mobile” tends to be attributed to “digital” devices such as mobile phones and tablet computers. Throughout history, when a medium that was once understood as geographically fixed becomes mobile, a cultural shift accompanies this transformation (Farman, 2012). It is generally expected that mobile technological innovation will entail radical cultural change. Positive and enabling concepts like freedom, autonomy, and transformation are often invoked by a hegemonic force of commercialization to reinforce a progressive image of digital media techno­logies. Both a premise and a promise of digital media development has been a concept of freedom. Discourse encountered on and about the Internet has been notoriously libertarian; like the Wild West, it has provided a screen onto which could be projected images of freedom, danger, transformation, and transcendence (Miller and Slater, 2000). The Internet, as de-territorializing technology, is seen to produce new freedoms with no borders and boundaries, or come to stand as a symbol of potential freedoms representing a utopian future conjunction of personal freedoms, global mobility, and new cultural identity. Internet use in the everyday social practice of have-nots is said to have tremendous potential

Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration  77 to achieve greater social equity and improve everyday life for those on the margins of society (Mehra et al., 2004). Individualized digital media including the Internet are also seen to provide a space in which users could freely explore their selves and create liberated subjectivities (Turkle, 1995), encouraging potentially progressive, dis-embedding and indivi­dual-centered identity formation that breaks free from the constraints of the collective markers of identity such as age, gender, class, and ethnicity. The development of personalization, wireless portability, and ubiquitous connectivity of the Internet all facilitate networked individualism, shifting community ties from linking people-in-places to linking people at any place and “I-alone that is reachable wherever I am” (Wellman et al., 2003). The Internet is viewed to promote a more active and critical individual, while allowing the individual the affordances of increased choice (Poster, 1995). The mythic dimension of the openness of the digital media, which has brought about a hegemonic discourse based on the rhetoric of freedom, autonomy, access, and participation, happens to coincide with extreme corporatization and privatization across the globe (Curran et al., 2012). But how real is this freedom and progress for minorities, the weak, and marginal? Cautious questions have been raised about how meaningful its open and borderless nature actually is to digital media users themselves (Liu et al., 2002). Are users able to take full advantage of whatever freedom is available to them in their engagement with the digi­tal media? To what extent do the weak and marginal take advantage of the opportunity to venture beyond the constraints of their real-life conditions? These questions and the significance and character of the transformations, whether progressive or regressive, related to the digital media should be understood by considering the specific social world and material conditions in which digital media are embedded and experienced. How people experience digital media and the consequences it entails are not immaterially determined by the premise and the promise of techno-centric power of the digital media, nor shaped freely or completely by the users themselves, but such processes and consequences are also structured and oriented by the existing social relations and material conditions of e­ veryday life in which they are caught up and operate. It is necessary to recognize a people-­ centered more than media-centered approach, asking how people’s lives afford, or not, the opportunities for certain kinds of activities, including Internet-related activities, depending on the social arrangements of time, space, cultural norms, and personal lifestyles and to what degree people construct their own local contexts, rendering media use meaningful in specific ways ­(Livingstone, 2009). Understanding digital media technologies as complex, socio-­material phenomena, a nuanced approach acknowledges a non-­technology-centric analytic framework and recognizes the significance of the contextual and material dimensions of digital cultures. Technology is a way of analyzing and understanding the material

78  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration components of human phenomena, and not a real entity, which exists independently, has distinct effects, and acts on its own (Levy, 2001). Every­day material practices, such as the habitual use of digital media as communicative cultural resources, are shaped by everyday contexts and are not without the constraints that distinctively mark their specificity and influence subsequent consequences. It is important to recognize the constraints, as well as possibilities, in the emergent patterns of change that minorities, migrant women in this case, experience as agents within specific social and cultural contexts of migratory processes and consequences as mediated by the mundane use of digital media. This chapter will argue that transnational relations and practices, both online and offline, are not necessarily and inevitably a progressive process, but pose new yet often risky opportunities more than freedoms, or foster a normalization of risk, with some unintended undesirable consequences for migrant women at profound emotional costs. While serving as an intensified process of individual-centered identity formation, migration can also place young women in potentially more vulnerable positions than allowing them to exert some degree of control over their lives. Rather than being able to develop transnational networking for improving their life conditions and integrate into the country of destination, they tend to drift or get stuck within the mobility and struggle to deal with the deep cultural and material conditioning that reproduces and intensifies marginalization in a new, transnational social field. ­A lthough the vernacular nature and pervasiveness of the digital media is giving way to a potentially enabling, seemingly dis-embedding, self-­ organized networked individualism, it is not freed from but continuous with the constraining aspects of the real-life material conditions of existence, the social structures of home, family, and community. New digital technologies are not the key agent of change, and do not set or create the conditions for freedom and progress. This means that freedom and progress do not so much flow directly from the new digital technologies as immaterial and independent catalysts of change in users’ lives, but can fundamentally be achieved by a transformation of the real-life material conditions of existence that intersect with and sometimes oppress the everyday practices of the users. The new digital technologies are not necessarily creating something new or progressive in everyday life or go beyond the mythic optimism in their alleged newness, but are also reproducing old practices in new settings and even reinforcing the enduring social structures and relations already in existence. Mobile phones and the Internet are limited yet crucially important resources in their capa­ city to manage the situated nature of mobility, identity, and well-being for migrant women who, often as the lonesome and isolated other, seek to project their unfulfilled needs, desires and enduring uncertainty about futures onto the vernacular cultures of digital media. Self-expression as a constitutive part of identity is prevalent in and articulated by digital

Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration  79 media culture in a private transnational sphere that is unsettled, often disempowered, and highly constrained by social and material conditions. The frequency and intensity of digital media use in everyday life is transforming the character and experience of migration into something more complex and contradictory, with a perpetual feeling of insecurity as well as an imaginative playfulness and a temporary effect of self-­ expression in its banality and immediacy attempting to transcend fears and anxieties about unimaginable futures. As revealed in the previous chapters, many of the nannies (over 80%) in this study were undocumented, irregular migrants (sans-papiers) at the time of research and Paris is home to low-income Asian nannies whose salary level in general does not allow them to have a decent standard of living in this global city, with a tendency for them to face disposable life as disposable labor. Young women in their 20s had relatively higher edu­ cational backgrounds or qualifications from college or ­teachers/nurses training school in their home countries. Some of the nannies come from various social and educational backgrounds including engineering and pharmacy. Many Asian nannies enter Paris through tourist visas, but then overstay the permitted period, to remain in this invisible employment inside private households. Undocumented labor migrants here do not have to be viewed as entirely separate from tourists or other kinds of lifestyle travelers, although they cross borders in order to find work. The proportion of illegal migrants (sans-papiers) in the domestic care sector appears remarkably high (over 80%), who are usually concentrated in Paris (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; Kontos, 2009). Paris is one of the most valorized global cities that induce the physical and imaginative mobility of young women, potential nannies from a digitally connected mobile world of developing Asia.

Mediated Migration: “Paris is Beautiful” My mother (in Paris) sent money and gifts. Once every two years she came home for several weeks and brought lots of gifts for us. We even gave her a list of gifts. … I had a mobile phone and Internet connection at home, instead of using an Internet café. My mother worried that I spent too much time on Internet every day. I cannot imagine my life without Internet. It is so normal like rice we eat every day. … I wanted to be free from my life. Escape and have a better life somewhere. Internet gives me some freedom, at least in my imagination. I can imagine a different world outside that is better than my life. It is easy to be connected even if I move around. … My mother sent money for the whole family, but that was not enough. People in my village are poor, nothing changes. I thought life in Paris with my mother would be better, if I could find any kind of job, like babysitting.

80  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration I finished university but could not find a job. It was really difficult to find a job and have my own life. I always wanted to have my own life, my own room, my own career… Whenever talking to my mom in Paris (over phone), I asked if I could come to her. She did not answer. … Paris did not feel foreign because I was familiar with beautiful images about Paris (on the media) and photos from my mom. Everybody thinks Paris is beautiful. Young women’s narratives indicate that remittances and gift-­g iving practices by their migrant mothers facilitate new consumer cultures, transformations of domestic consumption in low-income families, new consumerist desires, and practices including the pervasive use of digital media technologies in their homelands. Despite being socio-­economically disadvantaged, these young women desire and occasionally consume fashionable commodities such as stylish clothes, cosmetics, and accessories from the West, and it seems essential for them to have the latest mobile phones and Internet connection, or Internet-enabled mobile phones, for better mobility, individual freedom, and imaginative experiences of traveling through time and space. This new consumer culture is part of an individualized discourse of consumer choice and self-expression in the realm of leisure, which is in part influenced by Western material cultures. In the Philippines, for instance, the gifts carried in big, plastic zipper bags from migrant mothers or friends are called Manila ­Vuittons (Rowe, 2003); many of these children do not really know their migrant ­mothers but only know them as money angels (New York Times, 2011); and many teenagers have a mobile phone, or an iPod, engaging with a Western culture of materialism as if the local is not good enough ­(Campbell, 2006). In Indonesia, mobile phone use is generally associated with new freedoms, facilitating a newly emergent youth culture and a mobile lifestyle, and coming to terms with the otherwise abstract notion of modernity ­(Barendregt, 2008). The salience and the mundane use of the digital media and communicative forms mark the emerging patterns of youth culture in the lives of the marginalized and underprivileged, stepping outside the stereotype of the global digital divide between the haves and the have-nots. Not only in the global North, but also in the global South young women, particularly those from transnational migrant families, seem immersed in vernacular cultures of digital media. Migrant mothers may compensate for their absence and feelings of guilt with continual flows of gifts, money, and mediated communications routinely connected by mobile phones and the Internet, as part of morally appropriate mothering practices across distances. Undocumented migrant mothers in Paris cannot visit their families and resort to gift-giving practices and intensive transnational communications, while struggling to create emotional ties with their children, albeit with unintended consequences.

Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration  81 “Paris is beautiful.” The imaginative aspects of consumption in digital consumer culture and the mediated communications between mothers and daughters can further facilitate intergenerational migration toward desired places of the global North. Circulating images and particularities of place, Paris, for instance, can engender mediated experiences of an imaginative world of abundance, beauty, love, and happiness, in contrast to the relative poverty and lack of care and individual progress experienced in the lives back home. People gaze upon the world through a particular filter of ideas, desires, and expectations, framed by social class, gender, nationality, and age, and the gaze is constructed in relationship to its opposite, non-tourist forms of social experience and consciousness (Urry and Larsen, 2011). Migration here may correspond with the broader lifestyle desires and the pre-formed expectations of poor daughters, whose engagement with digital media culture and its global imaginary possibly prompts reflection on, and imagination about, different places of global others and thereby migratory activity from within. Culture in the form of mediated experiences and consumption desires has brought the rich and the poor closer in the paradoxical sense that the poor cannot achieve the standards of the well off, but they can and do have a better understanding of how the other half lives (Lemert and Elliott, 2006). People in the global South can recognize or realize themselves through a particular domain of material culture, such as the Internet, through the encounter with the expansive connections and possibilities of the Internet in a highly idealized form, and this realization is indeed expansive (Miller and Slater, 2000). The Internet is an individual yet networked resource through which one can freely imagine and enact a new, progressive version of oneself that can potentially be mobilized. This kind of networked individualism can generate narrative imagination that allows people to create alternative visions for their lives and visualize other possible worlds by always connecting them to others who are not there (Andrews, 2014). The imagination here is grounded in the struggle of people’s everyday life, while simultaneously allowing them to extend beyond what is already real, with some degree of tension and freedom. As digital media permeate many aspects of young women’s lives, they can make the difference in terms of creating a nomadic culture of imagination and movement as a constitutive feature of individualizing and empowering subjectivity. Movement no longer means traveling from point to point on the surface of the globe, but crossing universes of problems, lived worlds, and landscapes of meaning within the labyrinth of digital space in the process of becoming (Levy, 1997). Internet use by many women and people of color with low social power can facilitate identity tourism, creating a new form of digital play and ideological work that redefines self against distant others (Nakamura, 2008). Mobilization of individual yet networked self is a critical and creative experience

82  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration blurring, albeit temporarily, the boundaries between places, statuses, and people. Boundless mobility occurs and reinforces itself through the routinely mediated communications between migrant mothers and their children back home. Young people perceive that with the possibility of mobile communications, living in distant foreign lands does not cut links with home people after all, yet they may be ignorant of difficulties confronted by migrants since many migrants do not reveal their real-life situations to families at home (Goliama, 2011). Overall, today’s intergenerational migration of mothers and daughters from the global South is significantly mediated, as the place of digital media in the lives of transnational families is becoming increasingly present and salient even in some of the most marginalized and remote parts of the world. Routine contact via mobile phones and the Internet, as well as regular remittances and gift-giving practices by migrant mothers in the global North, can transform the everyday lives of their left-­behind daughters back home toward more consumption-oriented, freeing up, mobile cultures, while encouraging them to imagine possibilities for spatial mobility and freedom from mundane constraints. Routinely mediated communications with migrant mothers and mediated imagination can result in migration aspirations and a changing sense of the wider world, reducing perceived fear of distance, difference, and risk of the u ­ nfamiliar. Mediated imagination can also trigger reflection on their real-life conditions, relative poverty, struggles for employment and self-development, and thereby create developmental desires for the reconstruction of self, albeit in the transnational flows of risk and uncertainty. In a sense, like their migrant mothers, left-behind daughters become entrepreneurs of their own lives embracing constant risk-taking for the development of a self-project. Such transnational mobility in a digitally mobile world today is not always reserved for, and enacted by, only those from the privilege of upper classes and middle classes. Transnational mobility of poor young women from the global South is not just from economic motivation but also importantly a desire for self-realization and a struggle for new subjectivity. Intergenerational migration emerges in the ­socio-cultural contexts of the material and the symbolic, when life chances and resources for lifestyle choice and freedom are unbearably limited. For many young women, migration is not merely a more productive livelihood option to earn higher income in the global economy, but also an identity-based mobility to uproot and transform self. Everyday use of mobile phones and the Internet is not a direct driving force of migration, but it facilitates migration as a key resource constituting and mediating, not determining, migratory processes and practices. Therefore, it should be importantly acknowledged that the very act of transnational migration among young women with desires for new selves arises from the deeper recognition of their constrained socio-­ material conditions that are routinely reflected through, and contrasted

Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration  83 with, mediated imagination. Encouraged by migrant mothers’ financial support through remittances and self-sacrifice primarily for the education of children, young women from these migrant families can have a rare chance to accomplish college or professional degrees and desire to obtain a more socially respected job compared to their mothers’ work as a domestic caregiver. Yet, they generally find it difficult to have good employment opportunities at home, and some remain unemployed provisionally. Unemployment or under-employment among young women is a driving force of transnational migration as a liberal yet risky strategy of life transformation. Surely, many migrant mothers oppose the idea of having their daughters come to Paris and repeat the same life trajectory as a nanny. The migratory activities and experiences by which daughters are reproducing socio-material relations further shape the complicated dynamics of mother-daughter relationships in a transnational social field.

Digital Media in an Emotional Sphere I came to Paris with a tourist visa. My mother paid a lot of money (12,000 euros) to a travel agency to get the visa. … For 6 months I could not find a job, then had part-time work (as a nanny) for 5  months, jobless again for a while, now I am looking for a job. People around me have similar experiences and say this is normal. I need to earn money to pay off the agency fee. … My mother and I live in a small room (service room, 10 square meters). When she came to Paris 8 years ago, she lived with 3 other women in this kind of small room. I want to find a job and live in my own room. When she goes out to work, I am alone. I do everything alone. My mother works all the time, comes back after 10pm. I am all alone most of time, using Internet. My mother also tries to find work for me. … When my mother left home (to work abroad) 15 years ago, I missed her and suffered in my life. … Now I am 24 years old. We do not really know about each other, although she often called home. Do you like this fruit? Do you like that food? While eating together, we get to know. … My mother gets upset if I check my phone all the time. We have problems because she made self-sacrifice and has high expectations of me. I don’t talk to my mother that much. We don’t eat together. She is busy with her work, and I do everything on my own. … I use ­I nternet every day. Waking up in the morning, I open it first and use it before going to sleep at night. It is my own space in this room, everything else is stuff for my mother. … My mother introduced this job to me through her employer. Because I could not find a job here for 5  months, I was so happy to take any kind of job, just happy about the fact that I work! I earn only 600 euros (a month as a nanny). But now, my employer forces me to do everything like a

84  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration slave, including cleaning and cooking. She knows I am young, foreign, vulnerable. … Do I have to stay here? Or, go somewhere else? I wonder every day. Migrant daughters tend to experience emotional distress, care deficits (“do everything on my own”), and a more self-help social climate that underpins the everyday experiences of dislocation and disruption in a new home. In the continuing lack of emotional care and personal availability by their hard-working and exhausted mothers, they generally characterize their current situation and emotional status in terms of aloneness, isolation, and lack of emotional support (“all alone most of time”) that compel them to figure everything out on their own and make such self-help extremely difficult. The precariousness of everyday life, intensified by the repeated experience of unemployment and poverty, significantly de-motivates and marginalizes them in multiple ways. Work is seen to be the most crucial resource for the life project of constructing and managing self-identity, well-being, and empowerment of migrant women. ­Unemployment is not merely a deficiency of income, but it is also a source of far-reaching debilitating effects on individual freedom, initiative and skills, leading to social exclusion and losses of self-­reliance, self-confidence and psychological and physical health (Sen, 1999). Living under poverty negatively affects individuals’ possibility to acquire and maintain social networks and their sense of self, affecting mental health in the process of coping with severe economic strain (Topor et al., 2013). Migrant daughters desire to be free and independent, yet continue to rely on the limited economic resources and nanny job networks developed by their migrant mothers. For many undocumented migrants, finding work is seriously difficult and rather uncommon; thus being irregularly employed, under-employed, or unemployed for a substantial period of time (e.g., 3 months to 1 year) is perceived to be precarious yet quite normal. The result of this is a normalization of risk. Transnational migration in these material conditions increases the experience of and exposure to a normalization of risk with a greater degree of uncertainty, rather than generating a heightened sense of freedom and progress. If lucky, some manage to get a nanny job but are usually exploited as a domestic servant; the wage is far too low (e.g., 600 euros a month) to create a life of their own, and the nature of work is unpredictable and boundless, demanding not only the emotional labor of childcare but also housekeeping including light cleaning when children take a nap, and cooking for children when the employer comes home late (see also Chapter 3). In the lack of negotiation power, migrant women often deal with this exploitation simply by leaving and hoping to find a better luck—a better employer enforcing reasonable demands for domestic work and remuneration. Estimates based on available data suggest that domestic work is among the lowest paid occupations in any labor market; domestic

Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration  85 workers typically earn less than half of average wages and are often engaged informally, without terms and conditions regarding hours of work and remuneration being clearly established and agreed upon (ILO, 2012). The living and working spaces of live-in nannies can reinforce their isolation and marginalization, potentially encountering a risk of experiencing verbal/physical violence and vulnerability in Paris. This kind of hidden life of the “serving class” is “the other side of the global city” (Sassen, 2009a), a sort of new frontier where enormous mixes of people converge—those who lack power, those who are disadvantaged, out­ siders, discriminated minorities have presence vis-á-vis power and signal a need for a new form of life politics. Seeking better and viable economic alternatives somewhere else, migrant women here do not, indeed cannot, settle down but tend to be adrift, imprisoned or trapped in uncertain mobility, with no long-term project and no future toward which they may move. A series of short-term projects in individual lives in an age of uncertainty are in principle infinite, and do not combine into the kinds of sequences to which concepts like “development,” “career” or “progress” could be meaningfully applied (Bauman, 2007). Migrant domestic workers in global cities, despite different contexts of reception, encounter similar dislocations and lack of progress because of their shared role as low-wage laborers (Parrenas, 2001). The conditions and treatment of migrant domestic workers are virtually identical across time and space; no matter where the job is taking place, by what nationality it is held, the experiences are very much alike (Moukarbel, 2009). Unemployment, poor wages and relative poverty—not just material deprivation but also socio-cultural dimensions of participation in a wider community—faced by migrant women contribute to the reproduction of disempowerment, marginalization, social exclusion as well as self-exclusion. Family “togetherness” through migration necessarily spurs the reconfiguration of the sphere of personal relations, mother-daughter relationships in this case, not always for the better or progressive. This is in part attributed to the migrant mothers’ lack of intimate knowledge about their left-behind children but also about the currently co-­habiting daughters. For both mothers and daughters, it seems common to experience emotional ambivalence or emotional distance (“not really know about each other”), despite their constant transnational communications that were previously enacted by their use of the mobile phone and the Internet across national distance. Reunions after many years of separation (e.g., for 5–15 years) can feel like living with almost strangers and face a new challenge to build up a mutual knowledge of each other’s everyday life— an endeavor that is not always effective but sometimes troublesome. The new discovery and increasing recognition of insufficient knowledge about each other becomes an unexpected site of both pleasure and intergenerational tension in the creation of emotional intimacy. A deeper look into this intimate sphere indicates that mother-daughter relationships are

86  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration not frictionless, but full of complex tensions around more or less unrecognized differences in their own expectations and perceptions of the unspoken suffering of mothers and daughters. Long-term separation from one another as a result of mothers’ migration clearly caused a tragic hidden injury of the care drain that tends to get confronted and expressed more openly during their unmediated, interpersonal communications. Different emotional responses to their separation from one another reveal a tendency that daughters may blame their mothers for having left them, while mothers may resent their daughters for not being able to develop a better life of their own despite higher education supported by the mothers’ self-sacrifice. This kind of tendency, which appears to be common in transnational migrant families, can structure a “culture of blame and guilt” (Goliama, 2011) and further deteriorate, rather than enhance, the subsequent lives and relationships of the families. Unresolved feelings of blame and guilt can render mother-daughter relationships even more strained and difficult to rebuild. Living together in proximity, not in distance now, does not necessarily create a more meaningful sense of closeness, better connectedness or emotional intimacy, but can also increase rupture and tension between mothers and daughters. Such tension can be felt more real and intensified in the everyday experience of highly constrained space (e.g., a small service room of 10 square meters for 2 women), constrained living patterns and activities. The very specific problem of spatial constraint in everyday life is struggled over and managed by migrant daughters through the use of the digital media as space-making practice and forced contentment. The purposeful use of technology, and its degrees and significance are context-dependent; in this case, dependent on how spatial constraint and mother-daughter relationships operate in the material conditions of everyday family life. Technological use here can be seen as a “tactic” (De Certeau, 1984) by which the weak (migrant daughters) seek to carve out a space in a place structured by the more powerful (migrant mothers or employers), by incorporating a vernacular cultural space of the digital media. Migrant daughters’ everyday life manifests these technologies’ centrality in the ongoing struggle of extending the physical space or carving out a sphere of privacy, and negotiating the boundaries of their intimate world that are otherwise constricted by living arrangements of their mothers or employers. For live-in nannies who are to some extent confined in employers’ homes by long days of labor, the negotiation of boundaries between work and leisure and the creation of their own private space become particularly important when the employers are demanding and intrusive. One of the fascinating spatial contradictions lived by migrant domestic workers is the juxtaposition of long-range migration(s) and daily experiences of spatial constraint (Pratt, 2004). Mobile digital devices are an extension of their body, implicating beyond their constrained agency and changing the character of the everyday world. Checking mobile

Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration  87 phone messages and the Internet first thing in the morning is a normalized, routine practice for many, and the technologies seem to be “always on” in their daily lives. For this generation of migrant women, the mobile digital media are increasingly an integral extension of the everyday real world, rather than simply a virtual alternative to it. It is said that disadvantaged people in multicultural societies, such as minorities and migrants, are more likely to use Internet-mediated communications to compensate for their lack of social capital (Gustavo, 2012). Minorities, the young, and people with low-income are more likely to access the Internet from their mobile phones, and the demographics of mobile Internet users run partly counter to stereotype, with people of color more likely than Whites both to own mobile phones and to use a wide range of their data features (Library Technology Reports, 2012). Among digi­ tal migrants today, those under 30 may understand some things and experiences about digital life that their over-30 migrant parents will never quite get (Reed, 2014). To younger generations, digital technologies are just an obvious part of life, whereas for older generations these affordances reveal changes that are deeply disconcerting (Boyd, 2014). Many migrant mothers tend to worry about their children’s immersion in digital media spaces and particularly about different communicative lives that may create a new generation gap, with more differences and more distances. Paradoxically, intensive use of digital media by migrant daughters can create new forms of media-centered relations and have consequences on the intricacies of interpersonal dynamics—how they communicate, less communicate or not communicate at all, with their mothers living together or in proximity. Interpersonal communications may become brief, superficial or conflictual, as intruded by the constant presence of mediated communication technologies. Interpersonal communications interrupted and distracted by the intensive use of the mobile phone and the Internet can potentially create a new source of tension in mother-daughter relationships, sometimes leading to a battlefield at the most precious moments that could facilitate regular intimate contact (e.g., eating meals together). Communication technologies can also sepa­ rate family members living together rather than enhancing the meaning of living together and resolving existential issues in an emotional sphere, whereas these same technologies previously enabled communications among them physically apart across national distance.

Self-Expression Online: “I am Doing Nothing” I am lonely. Sometimes I realize I am not talking the whole day. Am I alive? I have nobody to talk to in this room. This computer is helpful for that moment. At the end of using this computer, I feel more lonely, empty… I am eager to find a job soon. Maybe depressed, I cry… Then I just listen to music (on YouTube).

88  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration I was very lonely before, always wanted to be with somebody. I didn’t get along with my mother. She left (home) when I was 8. We still don’t get along (in Paris)… Now, with my baby, at least I am too busy to feel lonely. Every day is really hard, but I have somebody precious… I am not married. He left me when he got to know my pregnancy. Transnational migration entails socio-spatial constraints, adaptive challenges and high levels of loneliness and depression. The irony of this situation is that migrant women here work as a low-waged nanny offering constant, intimate care to others, but often they themselves do not receive in-person support or meet their basic, emotional and material needs of livelihood. It is striking that many young women suffer from isolation and loneliness, and some appear to be clinically depressed without existing social resources and any connections that moderate and combat the silent state of suffering. This silence of suffering is naturalized by a fear of deportation, of visibility and discovery among more fragile, undocumented migrants. Developing social networks of friends and meaningful friendships online is perceived to be all the more important for migrant women, particularly under the conditions of fewer offline peer ties and limited chances for private interpersonal interactions. It indeed appears that, while they are still poor, undocumented, lonely and unmarried, some young women get pregnant and their baby becomes the chief source of identity and meaning in their precarious lives. Poor women put motherhood before marriage because of the extreme loneliness, the struggles with parents, the depression and despair, and the general sense that life has spun completely out of control; into this void comes a pregnancy and then a baby, bringing the purpose, the validation, the companionship, and the order that young women feel have been so sorely lacking (Edin and Kefalas, 2005). New intimacy with geographically dispersed online networks can be also seductive as a rare, core conversation network to feel peer companionship and diminish loneliness. As a positive coping strategy, Internet use may temporarily foster sociability, emotional well-being, and happiness in their lives. Stressful life events are significantly associated with Internet use for mood management, and particular Internet use (e.g., entertainment and relationship maintenance) can temporarily reduce stress and anxiety (Leung, 2007). Simultaneously, however, ritualized use of the Internet in everyday life can render migrant women more emotionally ambi­ valent and simply reinforce more socially isolated status, greater exclusion rather than sociability, even if the Internet is, at least potentially, a means of augmenting new sources of entertainment, informational help, and temporary gratification. Many of those most disadvantaged are among the most enthusiastic and dedicated users of online networks for the formation and maintenance of personal relationships with those

Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration  89 who have similar interests, understandings, and empathy that are lacking elsewhere in real-life material conditions. At the moment of feeling lonesome, bored, or lost, the social media (e.g., Facebook) become a playground for them, wherein their emotional self is played out and expressed in vernacular terms. Facebook is just for fun, sometimes I share fun talk with friends (back home), sometimes a little more serious talk about life, “I got a poor job (as a nanny) but now I am jobless again, what can I do in my life? I don’t know what to do in my life.” Just usual things, I do nothing particularly (on Facebook). … I don’t have friends here in Paris, other than people around my mom, a few Asian friends from a language school. I often ask myself, who am I? What do I really want in my life? (On Facebook) I am doing nothing. I tell friends (back home) about my daily life, what I do, how I feel, what I think. Sometimes I write nothing special, “I am bored. I am going to sleep. After waking up, I  am going out.”… I keep in touch with friends (back home). Life there is not good either, so we understand each other. “I am doing nothing.” A primary purpose of social media use for these migrant women is to keep in contact with their already-made, existing social ties within kinship and close friends back home, and to represent their everyday selves and emotions, which is seen to be doing nothing, as expressive practice in the language of home. Using social networking sites such as Facebook has become rituals of communication, enabling them to connect at any time in their autonomy, and intimately share about themselves, feelings, concerns, and ideas or simply share playfulness and laughter (“just for fun”)—all dimensions of mundane experience with the familiar others. In a sense, social networking sites can be a me-centered, “space of autonomy” reclaimed by networked individuals and ensured by the capacity to organize in the free space of communication networks (Castells, 2013). Paradoxically, the life on social networking sites can be more social than the physical life, individualized and isolated by the conditions of work and urban living. To some extent, this perceived value of both autonomy and emotional experience of connectedness as a self-expressive, networked individual can help migrant women cope with their inner feelings of isolation, boredom, loneliness, or depression in the otherwise serious lack of social resources and emotional support. They consciously create access to their everyday emotions, status updates, unremarkable activities or nothingness, mundane existence (“I am bored,” “going to sleep,” “going out,” “I am jobless again,” “don’t know what to do in my life”) in the banality of everyday life. When nothing special seems to be going on in seemingly trivial non-events and rather boring moments of routine lives and

90  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration mundane or repetitive tasks, nevertheless a lot is actually going on with hidden signi­ficances (Ehn and Lofgren, 2010). The hidden significances easily escape recognition. It is in these characteristically mundane, perhaps “oversharing” (Agger, 2012) of nothingness, yet emotional and profoundly human ways that the social media have become significantly important as a rare form of confessional culture in the relatively muted lives of minorities, such as migrant women in this case. The form and nature of communication on display may appear to be no more than an incessant version of a “daily me” culture that personalizes and re-­ emphasizes normative structures of disempowerment; however, the affective, psychological, and personal dimension of communication is also critical to an understanding of contemporary mediated experiences, especially practices of the social media (Curran et al., 2012). The rise of new virtual “me” cultures and these often typically banal, personalized messages or status updates does not signal the death of meaningful communication; rather, it has potential to increase people’s awareness of others and to augment their spheres of knowledge (Murthy, 2013). For materially constrained and relatively dependent users of the social media, communicational desires and narratives of self are increasingly presented, emotionally open, and recognized in such communication technologies. The high disclosure of subjective self is a unique feature of social media use among migrant women, for whom the values of self, structured around race/class/job/legal status, are often questioned and troubled (“who am I?,” “what can I do in my life?”), and self-­expression through any available resources becomes all the more important in their ongoing struggle to construct a meaningful and coherent sense of self out of a lack of stability. For individuals living under uncertain conditions of Western/­European contemporary life, the task posed to them even while consuming consumer culture including technologies is to produce for themselves the “continuity” no longer provided by society (Bauman, 2001). The social media are perceived to be a significant living space and a new, pleasurable resource for self-expression and continual connection to an emotional sphere of self. In this case, social media use does not produce fundamentally different types of practice and narratives of self, but may function to reproduce existing habits and routines through the technologically mediated maintenance of existing relationships. Rather than liberating migrant women from existing norms and constraints, it may reinforce their existing socio-economic conditions, differences, and boundaries of race and class and further foster a normalization of marginalization. The deve­ lopment of a sense of we-ness with shared participants (e.g., left-­behind, close friends back home) rather than making new connections with the unfamiliar and the strange may not necessarily help migrant women better understand the challenges and risks in the new world surrounding them. While strengthening communications and ties with the existing

Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration  91 circle of friends in the personal sphere, they possibly withdraw and exclude themselves from immediate local communities. The single most important attribute of the social media such as Facebook is not what is new about it, but the degree to which it seems to help people return to the kind of involvement in social networks that they have lost, due to the attrition of other aspects of present life such as increasing mobility, distance, absence, and the damage inflected on people by this loss of close relationships (Miller, 2011). In effect, portable virtual communities self-constructed by these migrant women can be very small in terms of the number of people they actually communicate with, and this distinctive form of chosen sociality can be constrictive and retrospective more than forward-looking. Nevertheless, this different type of social ties or the bounded-ness of communities is felt to be onto­logically secure, meaningful, or happy, albeit temporarily, to their fragile sense of self in transnational contexts. Yet at the same time, they may find themselves stuck deeply into the ethnic enclave without knowing what to look for, and they may mostly engage with practices and relationships that only exist on online spaces without developing a capacity and willingness for integration into, and a better understanding of, the country of destination. This kind of social disengagement is the other side of the familiar benefits of social media use. This potentially negative consequence of social media use in everyday life seems unrecognized by some migrant women who tend to live by short-term, rather than long-term, life planning, immediate conviviality, and gratifications. ­Enthusiastic members of virtual communities agree that expanding their circle of friends is one of the most important advantages of Internet-­mediated communication and that such online space is considered to be an alternative community where they gather for conviviality even though the nature of conversation may be trivial, idle talk (Rheingold, 1993). However, the so-called community in online space is one of convenient togetherness without real commitment and without real responsibility (Fernback, 2007). Although the discourse surrounding digital networks such as Facebook encourages greater connectivity, communication, and community, far from producing new kinds of community and relationality, these technologies also effect non-relations, non-communities, community without community (Gere, 2012). Nevertheless, it is evident that digital self-­expression has become an integral part of everyday routines as a key dimension of human experience, regardless of its unintended social consequences. As this chapter has demonstrated, mobile phones and the Internet are integrated into transnational lives as a space of one’s own and a form of self-organizing practices. Migrant women experience particular dislocations, often being left alone to figure everything out on their own in a crucial lack of available resources. The place and meaning of the digital media are not always enabling self-help or self-care devices but also constraining mechanisms for identity and progress. For migrant

92  Digital Media and Intergenerational Migration women in this study, there is a tendency to maintain strong connectedness and communication with kinship and friends back home and relying on tight connections to a relatively small numbers of core networks. The significance of such mundane enactments as networked individuals raises important questions about what it means for engagement or escape, interpersonal social interaction, and degrees of integration into the country of destination in real terms. Migrant women may not develop any wider relational connections but relatively weaker ties with people in their immediate local contexts and embedded relations, while unwittingly reproducing and reinforcing their marginalization and social exclusion as well as self-exclusion in this self-organized networked complexity. Tellingly, Internet-enabled mobile phones as individualized cultural resources routinely mediate transnational lives and experiences, which often entail profound emotional consequences. The social media such as Facebook are used as part of coping strategies for isolation, loneliness, and clinical depression, alongside unemployment, temporary and unendurable working conditions, and economic exploitation—all these hidden emotions and constraints of the everyday. Everyday life can be transformed into a manageable, bearable and, above all, livable space, and such a transformation is being brought about through a “cultural turn,” either discursively or through day-to-day social behavior ­(Bennett, 2005). The construction and communication of self is managed through nomadic digital culture, through intensive use of the digital media by migrant women. The social media open up spaces for new forms of self-­expression, expressive empowerment, however fleeting and intangible, and the exercise of existential freedom, even if constrained by socio-material conditions. These seemingly banal, personalized yet networked events are not insignificant in their subsequent consequences. Micro-modes of self-representational digital narratives continuously produce, in part reproduce and legitimate, rather than progressively transform, existing social formations and old relations through a ritualistic way of expressing self in the radical dislocation of everyday life.

6 The Care of the Self “As a Woman, Not as a Mother or a Nanny”

How do migrant mothers struggle to gain love and care and develop themselves into more than just nannies? To what extent is digital media use felt to be of value in extending their sense of self and sociality? The notion of “self-sacrifice” is a frequently expressed and defining feature of identity among migrant mothers in this study. These migrant workers are not just nannies; they primarily define themselves as self-­ sacrificing “mothers” but they also desire to be “women,” recipients of love and care outside of the paid and unpaid care-giving work they perform across transnational spaces. Yet commonly, they are relatively silent about, or feel morally obliged to hide any expressions of, love and care for themselves. Much research interest has centered on migrant domestic workers’ performance towards their left-behind families, parti­ cularly their children and transnational mothering, as well as on their work conditions and complex relationships with employers. This chapter importantly recognizes the relatively neglected and silent aspect of the lived experience of migrant mothers in the intimate domain of love and care beyond work and family life. The care work for themselves is often suppressed by dehumanizing conditions of work and enduring roles of mothering across transnational spaces. They are often reduced to paid servant roles at work and self-sacrificing mothers in family, not necessarily as equally human or individual female subjects. It is important to acknowledge the personal desires and aspirations of migrant mothers in their specific social contexts, where loveless-ness or careless-ness for themselves has generally become the taken-for-granted order of everyday life. This chapter reveals the narratives of how they feel about themselves as mothers, as nannies, and also importantly as women, and explores the uncertainty and complexity of multiple identity development among the migrant mothers conforming to the prevailing norms of self-sacrifice and working in the coerced situations of social isolation and extreme loneliness. Considering their own perceptions, desires, and capabilities to be crucial, this chapter further explores their use of mobile phones and the Internet in the broader context of social lives, leisure and forms of sociality in order to capture the various moments of possibilities and women’s struggle to move beyond maternal and occupational identities and extend their self in the course of transnational lives.

94  The Care of the Self Digital media use is significantly involved in the care of the self, social organization, and management of human relationships in everyday life. The digital, as all material culture, is becoming a constitutive part of what makes people human. The digital should and can be a highly effective means for reflecting upon what it means to be human (Horst and Miller, 2012). It is important to understand the new digital techno­logies within a humanist perspective and recognize the subtle, qualitative changes resulting from the extension of new digital networks throughout socio-cultural and material life. Always ambivalent and undetermined, digital technologies project important components of human pheno­ mena, emotions, intensions, and life projects onto the material world (Levy, 2001). To better understand the wholeness of human experience it  is necessary to consider the specifics of people’s lives, including life stage and lifestyle, perceived needs and obligations in a digitally mobile world (Wellman and Haythornthwaite, 2002). As this chapter will demonstrate, digital media, mobile phones and the Internet in particular, form an embedded part of the lives that migrant women value and choose, albeit not arbitrarily. To some extent, digital media use increases their sense of capabilities or their sense of freedoms to lead the lives they have reason to value, adequately nourish, and develop. Development consists of the removal of various types of substantial unfreedoms (e.g., poverty, oppression, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation) that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency (Sen, 1999). Development, including self-development as a process, therefore constitutes expanding people’s capabilities or the real freedoms that people enjoy. Capabilities are the various things people may value doing or being that are feasible for them to achieve. Digital media use takes place with a particular development outcome in mind—capabilities to which people aspire (Kleine, 2013). Weak and marginalized actors, Asian migrant mothers working as low-paid nannies in this case, are able to appropriate digital media in an attempt to transcend their primary, servant-mother identities, and race/class/gender stereotypes and gain some degree of freedom to adequately nourish and develop the self as a creative agent despite the extremely imposing structural and material constraints. There is a deep complementarity between individual human agency and the force of social influences on the extent and reach of individual freedom (Sen, 1999). More than products of social conditioning, individual human agency exerts itself despite the enormous pressure of social conditioning or power structures, rather than simply repeating what individuals are conditioned to do (Noland, 2009). In this dynamic process and interplay of structural forces and conditioned agency, new meanings of identity and the human, expressions and variations in performance of the self, as well as instances of resistance may occur from the dynamics of power and at the intersections of digital

The Care of the Self  95 media technologies. Technologies such as digital mobile devices do not only enable individuals’ connections with others and with information. They also add a new layer of meaning and identity to those connections, and in doing this, they change individuals’ relationships with each other and their relational identities (Clark, 2013). Identity is performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be its results. This performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual, which achieves its effects through its naturalization (Butler, 1990). Minorities may attempt to create a sense of freedom and power through ritualistic use of digital media in their material conditions, and at the same time, anticipate, produce, and perform identity through various forms of expression within existing power relations and material constraints of the everyday. Foreign domestic care workers, who usually perform rituals of deference according to discursive norms at work, may anticipate any possibilities of reworking and freeing themselves from a class-specific, non-person or inhumanly imposed identity in their mundane and situated efforts to perform an alter­native self. The continuous crafting of the self is expressed and performed through ritualistic use of digital media. Identity formation, seen from an anti-­essentialist perspective, depends crucially upon materiality and digital media technologies that are embedded and routinely incorporated into everyday life. Human, identity and social interaction have not been untouched by the digital mobile phenomenon defining the overall nature of everyday life today (Srivastava, 2005). Human interaction in mediated form has been facilitated in a remarkable way, and technologically mediated communication is critical to the performance of everyday life activities (Silverstone, 2005). The micro-coordination of everyday life through the mobile digital media, typified by the networked computer and the mobile phone, and the increasingly personalized nature of the mobile device have directed renewed attention to the performative aspect of communication (Jensen, 2010). This perspective simultaneously requires an understanding of performative identities or mediated practices not as free-floating, but as situated in the users’ specific social world and necessarily limited by structural and material constraints concerning money, time, space, and mobility, as well as moral norms and values. In the current era of digital transformation, it is important to study the situated and contextual process of the emergence of ideas in self-­organized networks and mediated practices by human agency, and at the same time acknowledge that constraints are continuously negotiated in action (Hartley, 2012). This chapter will argue that, in the lack of power by social and structural conditions, some degree of freedom, empowerment, and solidarity as well as a sense of inner strength in coping with isolation and oppression can be derived from individual and collective pleasure through ritualistic use of digital media technologies, notably mobile phones and the

96  The Care of the Self Internet. Such freedoms and power of individuals can be seen as active agents of change, although not immediately visible and radically signi­ ficant. These changes and transformations may usually take place at the micro-scale escaping attention. Most migrant mothers act as creative social agents and realize the potential of ritualistic use of digital media in ways that deepen human relationships and alleviate isolation. One of the greatest adversities endured by migrant mothers is their experience of isolation, poverty, and oppression. Yet, it should be noted that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression. Endurance is not to be confused with transformation (Hooks, 1981). This chapter will argue that, although these mediated practices serve as a source of inner strength and a form of daily resistance to mundane social structures and power relations, they can also reproduce socially acquired tendencies and existing forms of social inequality and in doing so can potentially reinforce social boundaries and exclusion based on race, class, and gender. This is consistently evident in the way they also perform old familiar practices to meet their immediate, practical, and affective needs or strengthen existing human relationships and network ties to sustain economic and emotional well-being through mediated ritualistic practices, rather than extending to the new. This chapter gives insight into the potentially empowering, self-development possibilities and also limitations of digital media technologies, while ­simultaneously recognizing migrant mothers’ experience as dynamically produced through the interplay of social structure and human agency, of materiality and performativity. Based on a people-centered ethnographic approach to digital media use in everyday life, it invites recognition of both enabling and constraining dimensions in the affective, humanizing implications of the digital media in the lives of minorities.

Self-Sacrifice: Money, Time, Leisure I first moved to Saudi Arabia, and then Singapore, Malaysia, and came to Paris 10 years ago with my employer family. They moved to Madrid, but I preferred to stay in Paris because I heard salary in Paris is higher. I need more money. … My life is all for my children. It is self-sacrifice! It is very hard life but I endure, like all other mothers here. Most of my friends (nannies) here are in the same situation. … I have a 23-year-old daughter. She came to Paris several years ago, and now has a 4-month-old baby (as a single mother). Because she can’t work full-time, I work more to support her and the baby. I also have two sons (back home) to support. They are still in school. … I can only go back to my country and rest finally, when my daughter settles down and my sons finish their education. Of course, it is self-sacrifice for my family. I have four children (back home). Two have graduated from college. Two more are left.

The Care of the Self  97 My daughter is known as an excellent student. She makes me happy. People might criticize how come I don’t live with my children, but this is the only way I can earn money and give them education for a better life. … I seem to work, work, work all the time! I have been working in Paris for 7 years, but have not yet enjoyed the Eiffel although I see it through the window of Madam’s apartment. I hear there is a restaurant in the Eiffel and the Seine boats, too. I don’t know when in my life, but someday I want to be there once and enjoy myself as a normal tourist. One of the most prevailing and common descriptors of the self among migrant mothers is “self-sacrifice.” While often neglecting their own basic needs, migrant mothers’ economic and emotional sacrifices function in multiple ways: to give their children a better life through a good quality of education, to gratify the desires of their children and enhance long-distance mother-child relationships, to reaffirm their identity as mothers, or to uphold their morality as responsible parents despite their extremely limited financial resources. Self-sacrifice in this context—as societal expectations, core cultural values of Asian female identity, or everyday ideological practices—is a socially constituted experience that centrally constructs the female migrant subjectivity. Human behavior, including self-sacrificing behavior, can be better understood as a sign of self in practice, not as a sign of self in essence. Research may find the generalization that some people from certain societies or groups emphasize more socio-centric and relational notions of the self, while others, such as those of the West, emphasize more individualistic ones. However, such characterizations also lend themselves to reification (Holland et al., 1998). Self-sacrifice is seen as a powerful and essential part of social life generally, and family life in particular. Any absence of a language of sacrifice and love limits one’s ability to give voice to one’s experience (Bahr and Bahr, 2001). Self-sacrifice in the service of family members is seen as high virtue, and often emphasized in the narratives of migration experience and struggles by migrant mothers, who are deeply attached to family themes. Migrant care workers are not working for themselves only. They are working for everyone, first and foremost their children, then other family members (Campbell, 2006). As a result of these gains, self-sacrifice is reified, and migrant mothers as an iconic figure of self-sacrifice are championed by their national government as “national heroes” or “modern-day heroes”—a discursive strategy to facili­tate transnational migration as a way of generating remittances for the home economy and the nation-building project (Parrenas, 2001; Solomon, 2009). Although migrant mothers view themselves as making sacrifices for the family and eventually for the nation as living enactments of core cultural values, ironically they have to endure a widespread social stigma against mothers who work abroad and leave their

98  The Care of the Self children behind. In this ambivalent sense, the notion of self-sacrifice is felt to be both pride and loss. As a mother, I am proud of myself. I give all to my children, so there is nothing much left for myself. I try to send most of the money I earn here. I earn 800 euros (a month, including a service room). I send 600 euros to my family and keep 200 euros for my living. … Nowadays my children often call me (over Skype) to ask for extra money for their school and other activities. I used to call them every week and send text messages, but nowadays they often call me (over Skype) whenever they need something urgent, usually money. Every month I still have to pay my debt (recruitment agency fee 12,000 euros), so cannot send home much money. From my small salary, I have to pay 300 euros for my debt, and send 400 euros to my family but that is not enough. I work in central Paris but live afar. Everything is very expensive in Paris. … I have to earn more money to send more to my family. Time is money. I cannot afford to sit and just rest. I sometimes work on Sundays, summer holidays, Christmas. It is better to earn money. Maybe, we are seen as a money-maker. Some people in my village (back home) think I make lots of money… When Indonesian women visit family, some women wear brands, famous bags. We care about our own image. If people ask, “What do you do in Paris? What kind of work do you do?,” some women say they work in office. They don’t reveal their real job (as a nanny). I tell my family the truth, “I work like a slave.” It is good that relatives come to see me, but they ask for some money. If somebody comes home from abroad, they expect some money or gift. I work like a slave all the time, but can’t make enough money. “Time is money.” Migrant mothers are primarily involved in economic activities—making money and sending remittances—and endure the often exploitative nature of work conditions under which remittances are produced. Remittances here signify exceptional sacrifice, above all for their children. Despite the meagerness of their wages (e.g., usually bet­ ween 600 euros and 1200 euros a month), each month migrant mothers typically send home a significant proportion, from half to two-thirds of their earnings to ensure their family’s economic well-being. The strong economic demand from their families back home compels migrant mothers to work harder and make both economic and emotional sacrifices in order to send more money and more gifts. The themes of hard work, frugality, and sacrifices are constantly shown in migrant women’s lives (Pratt, 2012). It is important to recognize that, even though migrant mothers are structurally more disadvantaged than migrant fathers, ­mother-away families are often thriving economically because of mothers’

The Care of the Self  99 extreme sacrifices (Abrego, 2009). This simultaneously implies that the gender of migrant parents centrally affects how well their families are faring, as gendered social expectations inform migrants’ approaches to parental responsibilities and remitting behavior. Although transnational migration is generally assumed to transform migrants’ lives and identities significantly, one shared claim is that women’s migration cannot be viewed as a complete eraser of traditionalism—in this case, the explicit ideology of women’s domesticity and caring role. Rather, traditionalism is firmly maintained but at the same time contested and negotiated by migrant women (Parrenas, 2008). Migrant women’s agency in this context constantly requires bargains with the monetary and emotional value of their care labor (Lan, 2003). Nevertheless, the consequence of the negotiation here does not signal that transnational migration has substantially freed or emancipated migrant mothers from the traditional gender ideology and expectations. Rather ironically, their motherhood can become more consciously emphasized as their migration ties them to an endless negotiation and endless justification of their physical absence from home (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009). Gendered social expectations of care also make migrant mothers feel more guilt and ambivalence that arise from the deep recognition that left-behind children may blame their mothers for having left home, and that the children may not be grateful for the self-sacrifices their mothers have made, but simply consider their mothers as money-makers. Use of digital media, mobile phones and the Internet in particular, creates symbolic home and migrant mothers perform to be the embodiment of home. To perform this role, migrant mothers’ remittances cover digital communication expenditures for their family back home, including the purchase costs of latest mobile devices and phone/Internet bills. In general, those who migrate to a rich country are not only considered to be responsible for the support of families who stay home, but they are also expected to cover communication costs (Bonini, 2011). Those who are left behind expect to be called, but nowadays left-behind child­ren with their own mobile devices call their mothers whenever their monetary and emotional needs arise. As the digital media have become an integral part of transnational mothering in daily life, they can also raise familial expectations for more monetary support, more work of intimacy on a frequent basis. While being certainly convenient and indispensable in transnational lives, the enhanced and perpetual connectivity of mobile digital devices can bring more economic and emotional burdens on migrant mothers, who are obliged to perform transnational care-giving duties or ideal mothering regardless of spatial and material circumstances. Self-sacrifice in this context is perhaps more complicated and harsh for undocumented migrant mothers, who earn less money than documented migrants, cannot visit their family back home without papers, and thus rely more intensely on the mediated communications and gift-giving

100  The Care of the Self practices. Consequently, migrant women’s self-sacrifice affects the overall quality of their own lives, their living conditions, extremely thrifty consumption, and leisure in general. According to available estimates, a quarter of the domestic care workers in a global city live below the poverty level (ILO, 2011). The narratives here indicate what it means to feel poor, and how they deal with poverty and perceive leisure. I stay in my room to save money. I don’t usually go out with friends and have a good time outside. In Paris, once you are outside, you are supposed to spend money. Staying inside saves money, it is a habit for me now.… I am doing nothing in free time. I clean my room, cook food, organize photos on my phone, just lie down or sleep because I feel so tired after work. … I always call my children (back home) to see how they are doing. I call friends (nannies in Paris) and share funny programs that I watched on YouTube. Leisure is luxury to me. I just sleep. Work is very tiring, so I need to sleep more for work next days. … Because my children are not with me, I don’t feel like having fun outside. If I hang around and have fun outside, people might think, “What kind of mother is she?” I don’t feel comfortable. … Sometimes I watch TV (on computer). Usually I see my children (via Skype). Just sit down there for many hours. I am doing nothing. … Although working in Paris for 5 years, I did not know that entrance to museums in Paris is free on the first Sunday of each month. My Japanese friend (housewife married to a French) once asked if I would like to see a museum. I sometimes work on Sunday. I was sad to suddenly realize that I don’t even have time to enjoy the free stuff in Paris. “I stay in my room to save money.” The everyday frugal practice, for instance, signifies a particular way of managing poverty and shaping the nature of leisure. Migrant mothers are forced to restrain their own personal needs and desires for leisure and live within a much smaller material world, which possibly leads to a process of social exclusion, and even self-exclusion as a pragmatic strategy to cope with poverty. This mundane and repeated experience can demotivate and orient them towards more isolated and more individual rather than collective subjects. Poverty here has wider implications, not just in terms of material deprivation but also in the capacity and degree of socio-cultural participation, marginalization, or exclusion. The so-called leisure activities they are involved in are primarily home-based, purposely inactive (“doing nothing”), highly individual in nature, low cost, or no cost at all. Mobile phones and use of other digital media (e.g., YouTube, Skype) centrally constitute home-based leisure, “doing nothing” moments of recreation that nevertheless generate pleasure of sociality, connection and communication, networking and self-expression.

The Care of the Self  101 In general, many migrant mothers do lack time or the temporal capital for leisure, time dedicated to themselves and their personal development, primarily because they are busy working/caring and surviving with less economic stability. Care work, both paid at work and unpaid in family, is the center of everyday life. The line between work and leisure is blurred, as migrant mothers tend to work extremely long hours, feel tired and lonely, yet dedicate leisure time to a caregiving role for their left-behind children. A limited idea of leisure, conceptualized as time or activity alone, poses problems for gender. The underlying idea of leisure as a freely chosen, self-actualizing experience in relation to power and autonomy, or lack of them, is a better way to understand the limitations and the freedoms inherent in the leisure experience of women (Wearing and Wearing, 1988). Temporal capital is gendered in practice. It is not just a matter of quantity, but also quality (Silverstone, 1999). Time has to be allocated for leisure, and one’s capacity to use what one has is dependent on one’s command of both material and symbolic resources. Poor migrant mothers have very little leisure time or material and symbolic resources. At a deeper level, it is important to recognize leisure as a complex space of morality. Deep down, migrant mothers do not seem to have strong inclination to coordinate and engage with leisure time and pleasure because the concept of leisure or free time is morally charged in their perceptions. Time is about coordination and rhythm, but it also involves material, emotional, and moral dimensions (Shove et al., 2009). With the guilty feeling towards their left-behind children and the emotional ambivalence of temporal constraint and freedom, migrant mothers tend to equate leisure time with comfortable life or luxury, self-indulgence, idle pleasure, and laziness, in contrast to productivity, hard work, and self-sacrifice. The time or activity for productivity, hard work, and self-sacrifice is felt to be morally proper or morally superior. Their common expression, “I  am doing nothing in free time,” can be moral negation to leisure time and pleasure within an extremely constraining terrain of everyday life. Leisure is part of freedoms that people enjoy and have reason to treasure. The exercise of freedom is mediated and influenced by social values and prevailing mores (Sen, 1999). Such shared norms and morality can influence social features such as gender, class, and racial inequity, the nature of childcare at work and home, and many other arrangements and consequences of self-sacrifice and inequity on the lives of poor women and minorities in particular.

Not Part of the Family I like looking after these children as they remind me of my children (back home), but this job makes me isolated. Sometimes I feel very lonely. … I don’t usually go out. I go out to pick up the children from school, but don’t talk to others. My employer doesn’t like that.

102  The Care of the Self One time my friend was so glad to see me on the street, but I told her, “Hush! Don’t talk to me on the street. Go away, and pretend you don’t know me.” I also told my children not to call me when I work. … I have worked as a nanny for three different families in Paris. I am not lucky enough to have a good relationship with any family. I don’t feel part of any family. I work for a French couple with two children and a dog. Sometimes Madam would ask me to walk the dog in the park. I can see other people with their dogs in the park, but Madam doesn’t like me to chat with other people. I walk along the other side of the park or hide behind trees so that Madam can’t see me from the balcony. Sometimes I want to use my phone while walking the dog in the park, but Madam doesn’t like that. … When do I go out? It depends on the children. If they want to play at home, then stay at home. If they want to go out, then go out. They would tell their mother whether or not they had a good day with me. The situation of work here, as well as leisure, is largely characterized by home-based isolation and lack of spatial mobility and freedom. Many employers tend to control mobility, the movements of care workers, while reducing the scope for free and independent action in day-to-day lives. Some care workers are forced to restrain mobility and socialization, including meeting and chatting with friends, sisters, or individuals like themselves in the neighborhood, and using mobile phones as well. In many cases, mobile phones are considered to be a distraction, an unwanted intrusion into the work sphere. Migrant mothers’ narratives reveal that it is common practice for employers to discourage employees from using the mobile phone during work hours, including making and receiving calls from their family back home. When employers do encourage mobile phone use, their main purpose is to effectively micro-­coordinate their everyday family activities or routinely monitor and control care workers on the move in order to ensure that the care workers should be available and accountable to the employers at any time and place. Digital technologies, such as mobile phones, which are assumed to free and empower users, in this context routinely reinforce employer-employee power relations into structures of control and become new sources of disempowerment for the less powerful (for details, see ­Chapter  3). It is as though employers have bought domestic care workers’ labor power and time, not simply hired them to carry out specific tasks of care giving for the family (Constable, 2002). My employer controls everything. Sometimes I wonder, “Does she think I am a nanny, or a servant?” She has her own rules. … When I don’t go to work, I can wear pretty clothes, sandals, make-up, nail polish, all that stuff. I want to look like a normal woman. But when

The Care of the Self  103 I go to work, all these should be removed. I become a completely different person. … My employer doesn’t look young or pretty, but she is very fashionable. I don’t know how old she is. Like a movie actress, she wears thick make-up, nail polish, perfume, even when she is around with her kids. In Madam’s apartment I am forced to wear a uniform to signal “I am serving you.” The uniform looks like pajama. My friend once saw me in the uniform and she cried… I do babysitting, cleaning, cooking, ironing. I do everything for this family, not just babysitting, as the child grows up. I hate ironing for hours! I feel sleepy and tired… Madam is on diet. She once asked me, “How do you stay so thin?” I didn’t answer but thought in my head, “Madam, if you work like me from morning until evening, then you can look like me.” She is free and controlling, behaving like a business boss. Although migrant mothers are said to be hired as “nannies,” presumably as part of the family, to take care of children in everyday family life, many are exploited and treated as domestic “servants” in the vulner­able work conditions of isolation, invisibility, and individuation. Migrant and minoritized women are a favored source for this type of invisible yet crucially important work in the advanced global economy and become the systemic equivalent of the offshore proletariat with its lack of power and political visibility (Sassen, 2009b). Working alone in private homes, they are out of sight and out of public mind, thus perpetually vulnerable to employers’ rules and regulations (ILO, 2011). Employers’ rules not only control workers’ labor, mobility, and freedom, but also regulate workers’ bodily appearance, the symbolic, personal or subjective dimensions of the workers’ identity. For instance, workers’ dress codes set by some employers (e.g., wearing a simple and covered top with trousers instead of skirts, or wearing uniform or an apron, and no make-up, perfume, and nail polish) symbolize servile, deferent, or convent-like modes of workers’ bodily identity, while conspicuously making the status difference between workers and employers. These visual, bodily presentations are seen to create and reinforce the race and class dimensions of privilege, social distinction, and lifestyle through the role of master, which may similarly resemble a traditional master-servant relationship in domestic work. Male employers, or the partners of female employers, seem mostly uninvolved and uninterested in the role of master. From the perspective of female employers, any possible threat of domestic care workers serving as potential seductresses or trouble­makers rationalizes the imposition of moral control, including dress codes (Lan, 2006). Clothing serves as one of the key sites in which sexuality is expressed, discipline is enacted and resisted, and various forms of power are exercised (Constable, 1997). Sexuality is a locus of control not only between men and women, but across racial and class divides, evident in unequal power relations

104  The Care of the Self between domestic workers and their employers or the broader community (Chang and Groves, 2000). Formal or informal rules of this private nature, concerning how to dress, are meant to suppress, to some extent, the sexuality of domestic care workers, when these foreign workers performing intimate, emotional labor are viewed as sexually threatening or exotically appealing and thus in need of strict discipline. As a whole, these private rules aim to suppress the femininity of care workers and reinforce their subordinate status in everyday family life (Lan, 2006), or routinely convey the female employers’ sense of the workers’ inferior position (Constable, 2002). These regulating practices imply that the employers have power to buy the laboring bodies of the care workers, wittingly or unwittingly degrade the humans, subject them to subhuman conditions, or completely control them in the privacy of homes. The laboring bodies of the care workers, especially live-in care workers, are subjected to forms of control and surveillance that used to be more common in factories than within the boundaries of the home (McDowell, 2009). Domestic care workers are far more vulner­ able. Whereas large groups of factory workers work together for the same employer, usually under similar conditions, domestic care workers are solely and completely isolated in private homes (Constable, 2002). These processes of bodily regulation by the rules of dress and conduct lead to a continuation of women’s loss of power and freedom to create their respectful self and positioning in everyday work life. Madam once invited her friends and I helped her with shopping. After long hours of shopping, I felt tired and hungry. She gave me a small pack of macaron, so I ate all. Then loudly she told her friends, “She ate all!” It was humiliating as if I were a hungry pig. … When I  first worked here, Madam said, “Feel free to eat food in the fridge.” Because she said that, I ate food. But another time she asked me, “Where is food?” It made me feel so bad, as if I stole her food. I never ate her food again. I always bring my own lunch or take away Chinese food. … During children’s play time, I cut one pineapple to feed children and their friends. When they left pieces, Madam counted “one, two, three, four. …” before putting them in the fridge. Sometimes I am asked to cook food for this family, but Madam is not sharing food with me. Like family? We are not eating food together. Madam is like a queen in the house and her boy is like a little prince. I am not invited to sit together. Madam is distant. … Discipline is difficult. If the child is well-disciplined by a previous nanny or parents, you are lucky. If not, it is difficult to handle “little prince,” “little princess.” This little prince is a devil. I can like him only when he is in sleep like an angel in the evening. It is difficult to look after him. He does not respect. He learns from his parents, because his parents

The Care of the Self  105 do not respect me. Madam even yelled at me and slapped me in the kitchen, while the boy and his friends were eating snacks in the dining room. … I work hard for this family, but Madam does not appreciate. I never express how I feel. Anyway, my feelings are not important to her, and she thinks she can just hire another nanny. I am a human, too. I am not a working machine for this family. My employer doesn’t care when I get sick, … I looked after her child­ ren as if they were my own children. She expected me to be always available whenever she needed me. If her children got sick, she would call me and I would always go there to look after them. One time in the winter, I was sick for 3 weeks, so asked her to give me some days off. If I took a rest for one day or two days, I could recover quickly. But she was demanding, asking me to come and work. I was so sick that I said I would quit a job. She was cold, “OK, that’s fine.” I was really hurt. … Now I am working for another family. I am just doing the work like a robot without emotions, because for many years I have learned from my work experience how to protect myself. Most importantly, it becomes difficult and common for care workers to have good relationships with their employers/madams or feel part of the family. It is rather believed to be uncommon or lucky to be placed in work conditions that make one feel part of the family, which is most often reflected and articulated by way of food by the majority of care workers. Cooking and sharing food, for instance, is of central importance in defining the meaning of home and family. For these migrant mothers, food is a major feature to maintain connections to home and family far away and a marker of culturally defined identity, and at the same time food is a highly personalized and ritualistic mechanism to draw the boundary bet­ween insiders and outsiders in the privacy of households. Thus, the conventional lack or absence of food hospitality (“not eating food together,” “not sharing food”) experienced in employing households is seen to be an implicit way to draw such boundary and know whether or not the nanny is treated as part of the family. It is also common to experience spatial isolation in the family, in respect to the important spaces in which care workers actually perform their everyday work life. Many care workers feel that they are not encouraged to share the spaces of family living rooms or dining rooms when the family is present there. The nanny job allows them to be physically present in the family households as the sole caregivers of children, while denying them the important, constitutive components or basic rights to which any member of the family is entitled. For many nannies, one of the hardest parts of the job is to handle the unnatural role of “being inside the family but always outside” and remain aware that they do not truly belong (Blaine, 2009). In fact, the interpersonal relations between the two women—the nanny and her female employer—can be described as profoundly ambiguous,

106  The Care of the Self opaque, distant companionships that do not transform l­abor relationships into family like relationships, despite the fact that the nature of the labor here is to give intensely private and intimate care for the well-being of the family and that many nannies often become emotionally attached to the children in charge. Yet, this opaque and nameless relationship bet­ ween distant companions is a profound keystone of the psychic stability of servant-keeping classes (Delap, 2011), a ritualistic way to maintain domination and distinguish positioning in an everyday family setting. The conflicts between nannies and employers reflect deep-seated differences in class-based beliefs and different views on mothering, including the assumption that domestic care workers are part of the family ­(Macdonald, 2010). To blur the hierarchical work relationships and attitudes, many migrant mothers wanted to believe that being treated like one of the family could ideally shape and sustain the best possible work relationship. Evidently, however, the reality is far more hierarchical. It is evident that many care workers have to cope with the low social valuation accorded to domestic care work performed by migrant women, which is also reflected in their employing family’s general disdain and lack of humanist ethics of respect towards them. Encountering a chance to work for humanist employers, who treat care workers with respect, is considered to be extremely lucky. Many nannies suffer from their isolated, often inhumanly treated, under-appreciated or thankless work, yet tend to remain silent about how they feel because expressing such emotions to their employers can possibly lead to termination of work—disposable labor. Relatively less is known about how nannies feel about the families they care for. The relatively hidden emotional landscape in the apparently asymmetrical power relations remains opaque. Their voice and emotions, as well as their body and identity, are intimately suppressed or even threatened at work. The emotional aspect of what it means to be a domestic care worker, not only her economic, material constraints and lack of power, should be equally recognized in an understanding of the nature and daily shaping of the care worker’s identity. The work of domestic care workers is emotional as much as material. Domestic service has historically stimulated powerful emotions, in particular, thus an adequate understanding of domestic service culture should be supplemented by attention to a separate but related emotional and psychic realm where meanings are interpreted and often internalized (Delap, 2011). Emotionally, all the nannies long for their employers’ recognition of the important contribution they make to the childrearing endeavor and family life, but few receive this recognition. Most of the employer-nanny relationships are distorted and damaged by a recognition deficit (Macdonald, 2010). When this recognition is rarely or never received, care workers’ emotional labor can result in emotional detachment or emotional dissonance (“just doing the work like a robot without emotions”) as a reactionary work identity. As a temporarily defensive

The Care of the Self  107 and somehow resistive mechanism, they come to learn to detach their emotions ironically from the paid emotional labor, while keeping silent for fear of losing their jobs and dealing with the internal inconsistency and silence in tension. At the most basic level, what these care workers are looking for, in acute self-consciousness, is to be recognized as a human with emotions and treated respectfully at work—a rare sign of truly belonging to the family while being inside the family.

Gossip Community, Sexuality, and Erotic Capital I see many Filipinos in my area. We help each other. Once we tried to form a group and more than 100 Filipinos showed interest. … Now I only meet them on special events, birthday parties because there is always talking about each other if people gather. I don’t like people to get to know too much about each other. There is no privacy. I am concerned about gossip as I have an (American) boyfriend. I don’t like people to talk about me and my boyfriend. … We are seen as just nannies hanging out together. Sometimes I prefer to meet people from other countries. It’s more comfortable to meet women from other countries and talk about other things, not the same (nanny) job and the same life. French people seem cool, very different from us. They seem uninterested in us. Most of my friends are women from my country and some Asian women in our (Filipino) church. To me, French people are distant, and they have their own way of life. They are just so different. It was less difficult for me to work for American employers (expatriates in Paris) compared to French ­employers. … I met some Asian women in a language school and parks; a Japanese woman married to an American visiting professor, a Thai woman married to a French trade man, a Chinese chef working in a Japanese sushi restaurant in Paris. I like to hear about other things in life, not always about nanny jobs. I like to have friends from other Asian countries, not only from my country (Sri Lanka). … I know some Sri Lankan women. They are helpful for finding a job, but we get to know too much about each other, private lives, who is having a relationship with whom. … There are too many Filipinas (in Paris). I know some of them because I go to Filipino church. Our church is like family; we cook food and eat together, we bring friends. I found my first job (as a nanny) in Paris through a Filipina woman in our church. To create a communal sense of belonging and respect, nannies actively develop a tightly knit, small community or a network of domestic workers, close friends and like-minded acquaintances upon which they can depend in everyday work life. Given their undocumented status and lack of resources and power, this kind of informal network is a

108  The Care of the Self locus of social capital that is integral to their survival (for details, see ­Chapter  3). In reciprocity, they can expect from each other economic support (e.g., exchange job information and help each other to find work and housing), emotional and moral support (e.g., cook food for sick or maltreated nannies and share experiences of how to deal with employers), and legal support (e.g., how to file documentation papers). This is a community of social capital and necessity, crucially important for undocumented migrant workers who must confront hazards and precariousness in every­day activities. For instance, Filipina domestic workers who are maltreated by their employers in France do not usually turn to the ­Philippine embassy to seek help, but rather find support elsewhere through informal social networks or ethnic churches because of their undocumented status and fear of being arrested by the police and deported ­(Fresnoza-Flot, 2010). While maintaining strong ties with their families and friends back home, migrant care workers create and reaffirm relatively homogeneous and tightly knit communities that are organized around migrant women of the same ethnic or national background, simi­lar class and socio-­economic status, or around ethnic church affiliations and assumed similarities at the margin of the urban experience. This communal sense is routinely reinforced through interpersonal contact and the use of mobile phones and the Internet. Cultural diversity in this relatively homogeneous and small social world is not always evident, although cultural diversity is a desirable component of identity in global city spaces, and although the transformation of an ethnic or national identity and the formation of new transnational subjectivity is generally assumed of, and expected upon, transnational migrants today. Commonly, there is growing perception among the majority of nannies that it is very difficult, if not possible, to socialize and connect with French people (e.g., “they have their own way of life,” “very different,” “distant,” “uninterested”) and form meaningful friendships, or transcend the perceived socio-cultural differences and boundaries that are felt to be more or less significant. As a potentially subversive and regressive response to the socio-cultural differences in relations of power, strong bonds within their ethnic group or ethnic enclave can emerge as a source of empowerment but also of constraint, rendering its members less connected and integrated into mainstream society and more marginalized by intergroup isolation. Although the role of ethnic networks and communities is paramount in coping with life in migration, there is also ambivalence towards such communities as they can serve as barriers to facilitating connections with the majority population and creating opportunities for upward social mobility (Kontos, 2009). At the same time, the ethnic community of social capital and necessity is seen as a gossip community that powerfully affects migrant identity and offers little privacy since members of the community often share intimate knowledge, details or “too much” about private lives, and center

The Care of the Self  109 around the repeated experience of “nanny jobs.” In a situation of high dependence on community networks, it would be rare for migrants not to be affected by the perceptions and opinions of others. Gossip is an overlooked and trivialized yet pervasive aspect of community networks. Gossip is a highly gendered activity with significant consequences for women, perhaps more than for men, in a transnational context wherein parents and children live apart (Dreby, 2009). To avoid gossip and marginal structural position, migrant women’s mechanism of identity management and identity reconstitution may lead to forms of differentiation from other migrant women, often other domestic care workers in their community networks, as well as ways to move beyond the usual experience of conventional stereotypes, over-simplified and discredited status (e.g., “just nannies”). Although being a nanny, or a domestic service worker in general, has become so commonplace among the migrant women belonging to their community networks, and although the social status of this occupation itself tends to group all of them under an inferior and marginal category, nannies have no desire to accept this presumed, given identification. In many cases, nannies attempt to elevate their socio-economic standing and status by acquiring symbols of difference across territorial boundaries; for instance, by having a variety of friends, albeit mainly females, of diverse ethnic or national origins, albeit mostly of Asia, and of different occupation or class backgrounds, and by re-positioning themselves as more open, flexible, cosmopolitan subjects in interpersonal relationships. Some documented workers can afford to visit home once every two years, enjoy holiday vacation in tourist attractions, and signal their upwardly mobile, higher socio-economic status compared to that of undocumented, or poorer, counterparts in the lower segments, while drawing another boundary within the community to which they belong as an insider but temporarily reject, as an outsider. Churches, ethnic churches in particular, are important sites for migrant domestic workers to access much-needed space for a felt sense of family through collective worship, conviviality, meal sharing, and social networking, and thus the experience of different forms of power or inner strength in this process, which can lead to a realization of their shifting sense of self. In the context of migration, marginalized and poor migrant women including domestic care workers constantly move through trajectories of power using religion as a spiritual resource, everyday practice and subjectivity (Williams, 2008). Ritual activities and participation in church communities play important roles, both moral and material, for migrant domestic workers in the diaspora, whose religious practice in everyday life may employ a pragmatic, personalized, and pluralist approach to the divine in times of need (Frantz, 2010). Ethnic churches, as primarily place-based social ties and social connections, are important particularly for many undocumented migrant workers who have legal and economic insecurity and desperately need informal channels for

110  The Care of the Self finding viable jobs and housing in the domestic service sector. Undocumented, irregular nannies in France actively engage with church communities not only to perform their religious devotion, but also to deal with spaces of nonexistence characterized by their social isolation and lack of legal rights, by increasing their chances of finding jobs and weaving a network of friends and acquaintances crucial for their s­ ocio-economic incorporation in the new society (Fresnoza-Flot, 2010). However, the empowering implications of religious communities and their role as a moral guide remain ambiguous, sometimes functioning as another community of gossip that in turn compels some migrant women to stay away from the tightly knit religious communities to avoid gossip, especially on female sexuality. I don’t go to church any longer. As I am with somebody (boyfriend) now, people seem to talk about me, “She always needs a man.” (As a single mother) I have a 2-year-old child (born in Paris) and sometimes it is helpful to have a man. Working and raising a child is really difficult. I am tired and lonely. … Maybe because of my job (as a nanny), men think I am feminine, emotional and lively. They think I would take good care of children and men, too. I so want to be in love. Sometimes I want to be cared. Am I not a woman? Sometimes I want to be treated as a woman, not as a mother or a nanny all the time. I am a human, like everybody else. … Some Western men find us (Filipinas) attractive. We are seen as hotblooded, and we are not selfish but caring about others. I once met a man (Belgian tourist in Paris) while waiting for a bus. He actually liked the fact that I am an Asian woman. … I don’t like too much Westernized culture. One time I saw Asian-looking teenagers kissing and hugging at a metro. It was shocking to me, although it might look like personal freedom to Western people. I am still traditional and care about what other people think. The gossip community functions as social control and regulation especially over female sexuality, with implicit moral discourses of self-­ sacrifice and respectability in women’s transnational lives. Thus, some of the very intimate spheres of life, which could be a source of gossip, are often not disclosed in migrant communities—such as ethnic, hometown, familial, and religious communities—and female migrants probably feel safe to share their life stories with somebody perceived as a trustworthy outsider, rather than with an insider in these communities (Shinozaki, 2012). Partly from a patriarchal perspective, some migrant women show moral objections to the explicit expression of sexuality, do not talk about sex and sexuality, and place moral prohibitions on women’s sexual activities in their community networks including church-based communities. There is a tendency to construct a respectful ethic of service and

The Care of the Self  111 self-sacrifice within these communities and highlight the importance of sexual abstinence in the lives of migrant mothers, although single or separated. Gossip, and the circulation of rumors about sexual relationships and conjugal separation, can encourage an inward-looking sociality with relatively reserved, traditional, yet unresolved and ambiguous views on sexuality and romantic relations among transnational migrant women. “I so want to be in love.” At the individual level, indeed women’s desire to be in love is strong, but is often unexpressed, morally repressed, and even trivialized over the life course. For many migrant mothers, single or separated, there is a tension between the culturally inherited, self-sacrificing image of motherhood and the desire for the extension of the self and yearning for love and care for themselves in the everyday practice of motherhood from afar. Women often feel they are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it. Women, more often than not, speak from a position of lack, of not having received the love they long for (Hooks, 2000). For the most part, intimate relationships are principally sought as a form of self-actualization, an assertion as a female subject (“as a woman”) or a human, more than simply an indicator of sexual pleasure and freedom, or a situational outcome of the women’s isolation and loneliness. Entering into intimate relationships can serve as a form of implicit resistance to the oppressive forces that deny female subjectivity and reduce one’s identification to a servant role or “just a nanny.” This intimate practice is not always explicitly resistant, but it is one of the rare ways to claim space for a new female subjectivity, redefine the very nature of human identity, and enact human agency and resistance against the social conditions and control that powerfully inhibit them. For live-in nannies, living conditions with limi­ ted freedom and mobility play a key role in structuring the practical and symbolic meanings of, and desires for, intimate relationships. Not by their choice, nannies tend to form short-term, precarious, and nomadic intimacy, contingent on their physical, social, and temporal constraints and the availability of jobs for themselves and their partners. Due to the constraints of race and class, the sorts of people with whom nannies form intimate relationships are very like them—low-income migrant workers, male domestic workers, church community members, most of whom are from Asia—thereby indicating and affirming their identity as profoundly raced and classed status. However, this does not necessarily mean that there is no possibility of romance and intimate interaction transcending the race and class boundaries, although social and cultural differences can also be an intricate source of uncertainty and conflict in initiating and sustaining relationships. As a distinctly feminine asset, there is a certain erotic appeal (e.g., “seen as hot-blooded,” “caring,” “emotional and lively”), a combination of physical, emotional, and social attractiveness that makes some migrant women agreeable or even preferable, since some of these seemingly

112  The Care of the Self feminine features are associated with the racialized and gendered emotional labor of domestic care work and with the classed, subservient position and self-sacrificing quality of migrant women in servitude. Some women appropriate the often controversial yet significant “erotic capital” (Hakim, 2011), a complex but crucial combination of female beauty, sexual attractiveness, liveliness, and social skills in order to gain a greater choice of friends and relational partners and achieve social and economic advances in both personal and work life. Appropriation of erotic capital can be seen as one of the variations in performance of the self, exploring possibilities for reworking or establishing aspects of the self as a woman. Some women are fully aware of the potential value of erotic capital and sexuality and are thus willing to appropriate it, while others have strict moral objections to it. The effect of erotic capital, such as sexual views and stereotypes about female migrant laborers, is not always positive and predictable. In some unfortunate cases, temporary and poor migrant women may be equated with prostitutes or sexual servants, a widespread stereotype that facilitates sexual harassment and abuse in the unequal power relations of the transnational social field (Kontos, 2009). Erotic capital is essential for making sense of sexuality and sexual relationships among systematically marginalized and disempowered groups of women, such as migrant domestic care workers, whose sexual politics may recognize the social and economic value of erotic capital and sexuality and develop or even attempt to capitalize on the subtle power of erotic capital, given the profoundly asymmetrical relations of race, class, and gender they must encounter. Erotic capital is just as important as economic, cultural and social capital, and social networking for understanding socio-economic processes, everyday social interaction, and upward social mobility through multiply constitutive channels, including romantic relationships and marriage. It is hard to find a man, Pilipino. I know some Filipina women live with Sri Lankan men or Indian men without being married, because there are not many Pilipino men in Paris. Some women are involved with Western men. I hear from Western men that Asian women look ­ -year-old young and kind. They can’t guess our real age. … I have a 4 daughter (born in Paris). Now I am separated from my (French) husband. My husband’s parents sometimes look after my daughter. ­Because she is the only grandchild, they liked her together with their dog, but they didn’t like me. I experienced cultural differences. Some women marry French men for papers, but it seems common that they get separated later. … Those women married to Western men do not usually meet and talk with us anymore. They live their own new life. There are benefits in the marriage life with Western men, not only French men. It is good to settle down permanently and not to worry about legal problems every day. Maybe they think

The Care of the Self  113 they can be treated as equal. Maybe they can get a better job, instead of this nanny job, and make more money. If they left their children (back home), they would work harder to make more money and bring their children here. Erotic capital can be a major asset in initiating romantic relationships and pursuing marriage and lifestyle aspirations that can allow women to take better control of their lives and make a difference in their social status. It is evident that, in general, many single women prefer men in cultural proximity, within their ethnic or national communities. However, despite being single women of marriageable age or older, domestic care workers’ opportunities to meet eligible life partners are noticeably limi­ted since there are very few men in such migrant communities shaped by a predominantly feminized culture of service labor migration. In light of the history of servitude among Filipino migrants, the entrance of a small number of Filipino men today to domestic work and other forms of feminized jobs is recognized (Parrenas, 2008). Yet, their presence in France is far less visible, given that it is now mostly women who leave home to do service work abroad at an unprecedented level. For instance, ­Philippine communities in France can recognize a familiar socio-­economic ­hierarchy—a very small number of rich families from the Philippines with secondary residences in France, or Filipinas married to rich French or other non-Filipinos usually in business, a small number of middle-class entrepreneurs or Filipinas married to middle-class non-­ Filipinos, and a large majority of domestic service workers, still multiplying with new arrivals and second-generation migrants (Meyewski, 2007). Western middle-class men in general, not only French men, are perceived as desirable marriage partners for gaining higher social class, more respectable marital status, and rights. Women’s desire for transnational marriage is driven by pragmatic desires for economic livelihood and stability linked primarily to their ambiguous social and class identities in the context of their undocumented, irregular status. Some migrant women may pursue transnational marriage as a self-interested strategy of status transformation and sometimes of family migration; for instance, some are said to marry Western men for visas, marital citizenship, and stability by turning temporary stays into permanent settlements. Finding a foreign husband, particularly of European extraction, may be about more than changing personal and familial circumstances, more even than a desire for the romanticized other (Bulloch and Fabinyi, 2009). The desire for transnational marriage can be seen as part of a process of self-actualization through enlarged experiences of the social world and reflexive imaginings of the self and other in everyday life. Many Western men turn to Asia for traditional wives whom they imagine to be more conservative and less demanding; and in this context, migrant women demonstrate the intersections and multiplicity of their roles

114  The Care of the Self as workers, mothers, wives, and mistresses in a transnational migratory space, while simultaneously blurring the assumed division between labor migrants, mainly for domestic service work, and marriage migrants (Lauser, 2008). Transnational marriage, as a life project, is expected by migrant women to be an important mechanism of self-transformation and helps transcend rigid structural differences and redefine the self. As a new representative of the self, this further marks a distance to, if not a complete rejection of, subordinated groups of women, often other migrant women in their own ethnic or national communities, thereby paradoxically shaping unequal, hierarchical social relations between migrant women in the transnational social field, reconfiguring underlying class relations, and potentially reproducing another site of class conflict and hidden injury for the weaker and more marginalized.

Digital Media as Affective Practice: “Doing Things Together” I have been working in Paris for 8 years, but it is surprising to realize that I don’t have many friends. I only keep in touch with some women from my country (Sri Lanka). They helped me when I first came to Paris. We are not of same age, but good friends now. … A younger friend would send me smiles, funny pictures, jokes over phone to make me laugh, to give me just more fun, as she knows my hard life. She sends text messages in case I still work at night. She also taught me how to use my new (smart) phone. So I send her smiles and music before going to sleep. I am not alone at that moment. I like the feeling of doing things together. … Although I may look young and smiling in front of people, inside me, I am very sad not to see my three children (for 8 years). Because I don’t have papers, I can’t travel home. My friends (nannies) here are in the same situation, so we can express our real feelings to each other, “I want to be happy,” “I want to have normal life,” “I want to be in love.” We are not just a nanny. We want more in life. I don’t like being alone and lonely, especially when I am sick. I was hospitalized two times. I was alone in the hospital, and after that, I was alone in my room. I am always alone. My eldest daughter works (as a nanny) in Paris, but she is also busy working for a demanding employer. … My friend (Filipina nanny) called me in the hospital whenever she had a moment after her work. She always asked me what I would like to do, what I would like to eat. I could only say to her, “I want to do this… I want to do that. …” As a mother, I don’t say that to my children, I don’t want to burden them. … I have two more children (back home). While being alone in the hospital, I thought of my children most, although my mother looks after them. My youngest one cries and always asks me (over

The Care of the Self  115 phone) when I come home. … I hate being alone. But I also feel guilty, when I am not alone, when I have a playful time with friends joking and laughing together. It is a relief to have a good friend who can help me when I get sick, or when I can’t find a job. In this life (as a nanny), two things are crises – getting sick and jobless. I introduce jobs to other Indonesian women, because I also found my first job in Paris through them. Good friendship is most important. Even though we have full-time work now, we don’t know when we can be suddenly fired by our employers. … I always use my mobile phone or Internet when I don’t work, to keep in touch with my friends. I try to keep good friendship and cheer up. I call my friends at night, or text with a heart symbol, “How was your day? How do you feel?” I cook food and share with them, when they don’t feel well. Digital media can be recognized as being effective in the formation of emotional solidarity and sociality (“doing things together”) in everyday life. Emotional warmth stands out as an important dimension of everyday use of the digital media and communicative practice, which is related to a practical concern among migrant women and a need for much-needed emotional comfort. Given the social isolation and exploitation of the labor process and the difficult and unpredictable times of emergency, including illness and joblessness, the implications of their use of the digital media, mobile phones in particular, for social and emotional well-being are apparently significant and compelling in this particular social context. The use of communication technology and its effects are largely dependent on the situational context in which users attempt to achieve particular goals or gratify unmet desires within the constraints of time, space, and resources. It is this situational feature perhaps above all others—the isolation experienced by migrant domestic workers whose workplace is someone else’s private home—that makes this form of closed and embodied work so difficult to control (McDowell, 2009), and that renders the workers more vulnerable, more lonely and reliant on the place and value of social networks of friends sustained by digital media use. The distinctively isolating, socio-economic conditions of the workers lead to the growing reliance on socially interactive technologies, and to some extent, these technologies enable them to deal with social isolation, temporarily escape or free their physical existence from a servant role to become a cared human, albeit a short-lived and fleeting moment. At this temporary moment, they are not just caregivers but recipients of care. A discredited common identity (“just a nanny”) and commonly shared experiences of social isolation and exploitation lead to empathy that may be lacking elsewhere, while providing emotional support for each other to express the suppressed self and hidden personal desires (“I want to be…,” “I want to do…”). This affective, human dimension of

116  The Care of the Self technological use and emotional support exchanged within a mediated community is integral to an understanding of the nature of mediated experiences among the weak and marginalized. The Internet and mobile phones are not just tools for meeting communicational desires, but also important channels through which self-expressive, emotional warmth or ontological security is created and sustained by ritualistic regularity and familiarity in daily routines of technological use. The mobile phone is widely used for the performance of ritual activities that structure habits, routines, feelings, and emotional life embedded in the personal sphere. Emotional connectedness and strong bonds can be created and performed via various forms of ritual interaction both mediated and co-present. The emotional implications of ritualized practice become all the more important when performers face the banal problem that time is limited, after they finish their work late at night, and leisure time is often dedicated to transnational care for children back home, in the case of migrant mothers. For many nannies, the two major acti­ vities on which time is spent in their daily lives are work and digital media use (“always use my mobile phone or Internet when I don’t work”), ­although the latter is considerably constrained by the extremely long hours of work, sometimes 14 hours a day. Within the time constraints, the mobile phone, as possessed by all nannies on the move, turns out to be the most crucial instrument for social connection and support among themselves, sporadically interrupting the separation between work time and leisure time, despite the restriction imposed by employers. Mobile phones contain all the phone numbers of close friends, not merely numbers but a mobile social space, a community of social capital and emotional support that users bring to the interaction. Not being able to live without the mobile phone is a common feeling expressed by users, as the device has become a major attribute to the human existence in everyday life. This emotional attachment to the mobile phone, usually a positive emotional association, is a consequence of the ritualistic investment users have made in their devices, although there are also feelings of tension and anxiety (Glotz et al., 2005). Digital media are used in ritual ways through which emotional warmth is created and new practices and complex meanings are also introduced. Of particular interest here is playful practice, which is evoked and expressed through funny pictures, smileys, jokes, and laughter over voice calls or text messaging, and which appears to underpin the important yet relatively under-recognized dimensions of affective practice. Text messaging is one of the most popular functions to express playfulness in a more private and relatively unobtrusive way compared with voice calling, or just to have fun with old textual practices and friendly symbols. The asynchronous nature of text messaging—which means that it does not require the immediate attention and care of the receiver—is one of the reasons for its increasingly global popularity (Ling, 2004). Texting is

The Care of the Self  117 the primary mobile-phone application in Asia, and most notably in the Philippines that is reportedly the world’s highest texting nation, whereas texting is not popular in Western Europe; for example, in France adoption is low (Castells et al., 2007). The benefit of not requiring the immediate attention and care in text messaging is particularly useful for time-constrained Asian nannies, who are often not able to, or not allowed to, answer the phone during work time, or occupied with other chores even after work. In this sense, text messaging is a non-demanding space where receivers can choose to check messages at any convenient time. Also, the benefit of silence in text messaging is critically significant for nannies living in constrained space under the tight control of employers and hence with limited privacy. Some live-in care workers have to lower their voices over the phone to avoid disturbing the sleep of their care recipients who stay in the same room, or they have to whisper under quilts when talking to friends at night. With their own phones, they secretly build a “cellular backstage” to enjoy and protect their private lives from employers’ control (Lan, 2006). On the one hand, such playful practice naturally responds to the lonely, highly repetitive, and monotonous nature of nanny jobs in the isolated private sphere in order to bring a slightly different, entertaining nature (“just more fun”) to the daily routines after a long working day. Digital media use provides a creative and pleasurable means of social connection, and encourages the expression of playfulness for emotional support among themselves. Playful practice evoking laughter is meant to reinforce inclusion and greater bonding with a sense of empowerment, as a way to better deal with quotidian interactions in the asymmetrical power relations of domestic care work. Laughter, humor, or satire is enacted as one of the most important means of managing and negotiating domestic service in the capacity of servants (Delap, 2011). On the other hand, a deeper look into playfulness here could reveal certain distinctive and complex features embedded in the lived experience of migrant care workers, especially migrant mothers, many of whom are self-claimed to be unhappy (“deep inside me, I am very sad”) for their inability to have papers and visit home regularly to see their children. These migrant mothers tend to reveal the double sense in which expressing their natural pleasure of playful social interaction is both understandably ineluctable and at the same time inappropriate, perhaps guilty, or ambiguous. Like the moral nature of leisure and pleasure discussed above, playfulness, joking, and laughing can be understood as a terrain of morality, a hidden moral agenda that is shaped by the conventionally gendered, normative values of care and mothering performed dutifully by migrant mothers in transnational spaces. What it means to be a proper mother is largely experienced as a moral formation of the self, and migrant mothers feel urged to perform morally grounded activities. While their morally grounded activities for leisure and pleasure tend to be purposely

118  The Care of the Self inactive (“doing nothing”) and highly individual in nature, home-based patterns of mobile media consumption create an imagined space for affective practice, and at times lead to moments of collective pleasure and empowerment by “doing things together.” I watch Pilipino dramas and talk shows (on the Internet) and talk to my friends over phone, “Did you watch this program?” It is nice to have somebody to talk to and share warm and emotional programs. This is how I open interesting conversation and feel our friendship. This is our common joy. … It is more fun to watch TV together with friends, talk together, laugh together, cook and eat food together. We like doing things together. … It makes us feel that we are not alone and weak, we are not too much worried and scared in this foreign country. We can feel stronger together. I feel my heart is uplifting and moving forward. I don’t have TV in the room. I don’t watch French TV. While ironing, I listen to my favorite music (on the mobile phone). Ironing is not part of my job, but Madam would ask me to do it sometimes, even when I rest in my room after work. Ironing is the most boring job, so I need good music to cheer me up. … I select and share recent, good (Sri Lankan) music with my friends (Sri Lankan nannies). We like listening to music together (sharing ear plugs), sitting on a bench in a park or a shopping plaza in my area. Like girls’ bonding together, we find it enjoyable to do that with close friends. … When I feel frustrated, I sit on that bench in the park. There is not much privacy in this service room. Even though it is not my work time, Madam often calls me and knocks on the door, and once the door is open her children freely come in. When I really need privacy in the room, I cover myself under a blanket, especially for my prayer time, or if I need to talk privately to a friend over phone. I share a room with another nanny (from Indonesia). It’s hard to have privacy in this small room. When I really need private time, I wish her to come back late from work, or I just stay in the toilet. … I go out to the park. I have nowhere else to go. I listen to music and look at all photos on my phone. Recently I’ve got a better quality phone, so my friends can watch together interesting shows from our (Indonesian) television. We sometimes have a picnic in the park (on Sunday), bring lots of home-made food, listen to our old music, talk about our employers and how to handle difficult situations. We gather in our favorite space in the park. … It’s just a short day of enjoyment because some of us have to work on Sunday. But it gives a solid feeling we want to cherish and continue. Watching television together, dramas in particular, listening to music and sharing entertainment media information are ritual and affective

The Care of the Self  119 moments to strengthen social bonds and well-being, and to facilitate dealing with difficulties and grieves as well as certain kinds of sociality and humanity deemed somehow lost by transnational migration and the harsh reality of everyday work life. Bonded solidarity can be created and maintained through mediated rituals within the constraints of temporal, spatial, and social dimensions. Everyday media construct the ritual space in which actions are organized around key media-related categories and boundaries, whose performance reinforces the underlying value expressed in the idea that the media are one’s access point to a social center (Couldry, 2003). Through media rituals—such as certain ritualized forms of popular television viewing or music listening and talking together about content and pleasure from the media—one can shape private actions, habitual or formalized actions for expressing values entangled in the social order, and forge a sense of community, albeit private and small in its nature, and a feeling of empowerment. Empowerment is derived from the field of media cultural practices, with shared and momentary pleasure and an expanded sense of space sustained ritually in ethnic diasporic media space. Poor migrant women have few resources and have no choice but to engage with their ethnic cultural practices for a sustainable identity project. For ethnic minorities and diasporas, mobile digital media, as time-space compressing technologies and personal coping resources and strategies to assist in reinvention of the self, are often identified as important sites of key cultural dynamics and identities that construct a sense of solidarity and possible emotional empowerment amplified by collective pleasure and meaning-making, although this sense does not always lead to political dimensions or collective emancipation. These moments of mediated experiences and possibilities may be fleeting but decisive sensations of delight contained in daily existence. Moments of possibilities are ephemeral and would pass instantaneously into oblivion, but during their passage all manners of possibilities—often decisive and sometimes transformative—can be uncovered and sometimes achieved (Lefebvre, 1991). The weak and marginalized migrant women, such as nannies, capture and live by these fleeting but decisive moments of possibilities, by appropriating available resources within the constraints of the everyday social world. Mobile digital culture gives its users some power of control over their experience of time and space in a critical period of social and material disadvantages. The ungovernable nature of domestic care work means an unexpected amount of extra work, often unpaid and unappreciated, even while nannies take breaks in their room, and nannies ease the monotonous time of coercive work, such as ironing during leisure time, by listening to pleasurable music through their mobile phones. Their mobile phones are equipped with a variety of audio-video applications capable of micro-managing personalized, global media culture, and the decisive use of this mobile device creates ways to improve their perceived quality

120  The Care of the Self of life situations and adopt a new layer of control in extended forms of media-centered space. One of the themes in the rise of the mobile phone today, such as the iPhone, has been how it underscores the active role that users play in the orchestration and appropriation of digital media culture (Goggin, 2009). In many cases, television appears to be absent in the very small space of nannies’ private rooms or ­so-called maid’s rooms (usually about 10 square meters); the Internet (e.g., ­YouTube accessed through computers or mobile phones) is a particularly useful tool, as ­YouTube is free at the point of use and circulates many available content of transnational television every day. Like television, YouTube is marked by a diversity of content and a similar quotidian frequency, or everydayness (Burgess and Green, 2009). Nomadic media ­technologies—such as personal wireless mobile phones with portable media content—can transform, to some extent, nannies’ daily experiences of spatial constraint. Nomadic media technologies facilitate the creation of new, affective, hybrid spaces as either a possibility or a practice. The logic of the concept of hybrid space is significant and relevant in this particular context, given that many domestic care workers do not have their own personal space but share a very small room with a friend or have living arrangements with co-workers, and thus assert their pressing need for spatial privacy and personal freedom. Hybrid spaces are mobile, imagined, yet potentially feasible and dynamic forms of habitat that are created and played out, in a symbolic and pragmatic sense, against the background of nannies’ physical situation of small living spaces and the situated constraints of everyday communicative and mediated practices. These situated constraints can be continually negotiated in some creative action, for instance, creating self-organized and networked mobile spaces by the capacity of human agency. Appropriating various places beyond private ones (e.g., park, shopping plaza) and available mobile digital resources of all kinds, hybrid spaces simultaneously become mobile habitats and residential sociality for the marginalized and subaltern migrants who are not part of the mobile city mainstream. It is important to note that a park, for instance, is appropriated as an affective space for a temporary and strategic escape, contact for purposes of socializing, co-worker solidarity, and a fleeting but decisive feeling of spatial empowerment amongst nannies who have little privacy and less free time and power. Nannies, although traditionally viewed as one-­ dimensional in their work, have multi-dimensional experiences influenced by cultural practices, and through these practices, communities are formed and a communal life invigorates an otherwise mundane workday (Brown, 2011). They somehow manage to develop a sense of community out of, or in spite of, these routines and find ways to preserve their autonomy in the public places where they gather and share conviviality. In Paris, the socalled city of love and beauty, many nannies say they have nowhere else to go. The park is a public place. While one may conventionally associate

The Care of the Self  121 privacy with the domestic, home and familial world, nannies tend to associate privacy with some of the public places in the neighborhoods, notably a park, more than with the private home where they work and dwell every day, and blur the private/public dichotomy by carving out a sphere of privacy in supposedly public spaces. For migrant domestic workers, the distinction between sold time (work) and free time (leisure) is often blurred, and most of their supposedly private activities are temporally squeezed into holidays and spatially forced into public places, resulting in a peculiar situation of private/public inversion (Wuo, 2010). This formation in public places, whether a park, a shopping plaza or elsewhere, can be seen as ethnic enclaves or counter spaces constructed by migrant domestic workers. Ironically, being situated in public provides them with more personal freedom and privacy and challenges the dominant conceptions of public space (Lan, 2006). Generous amounts of food of homeland styles are shared with each other in a ritually constructed space in the park, creating quasi-home or a feeling of home accompanied by popu­lar media narratives, nostalgic music, voices of intimacy and emotional directness from homelands over mobile phones. Mobile digital devices, especially Internet-enabled mobile phones, are part of spatial-temporal strategies that allow nannies to carve out a sphere of privacy often in a form of ethnic enclave and respond to the real need for space and time. The social space of the city is not just the sum of its parts, but it is continually made and remade, always changing, and never necessarily the fixed end product of the intentions or power of its initial producers, while such action generates new forms of representation of the possible and redefines the very nature of human identity (Lefebvre, 1991). These moments of the possible are intensely evident in a social situation and process that threatens to become fixed. Space— including imagined hybrid space for affective practice in this case—is socially produced in relation to both material and ethnical conditions of life, and thus space and identity are mutually constituted. In an era of digital transformation, hybrid spaces merge the physical and the virtual in a social environment created by the agency of users connected by mobile technology devices (Kavoori and Arceneaux, 2006). In the light of major shifts in the unique interaction between mobile digital technologies and spaces, hybrid spaces are becoming increasingly common and expected to transform positively the way subjectivity and relational identity is formed and negotiated. However, hybrid spaces are not necessarily a locus of progressive or emancipatory identity politics, as these spaces are also constituted and sustained by reciprocal exchanges of like-minded individuals, a familiar circle of friends, or imagined yet possibly ethnic enclaves and consequent group solidarity, thus potentially becoming markers of social boundaries and social exclusion. By marking their status in this way, these spaces can simultaneously reinforce migrant careworkers’ marginalization. Hybrid spaces in a digital

122  The Care of the Self age may well offer moments of individual control and creative agency to intended users, but not without the constraints that still mark their status as situated agents located on the globalized margin. It is evident that the nature of community formed by the majority of nannies in this study tends to be a very small social world, both virtual and grounded in the context of their everyday lives. Although the personalized use of mobile digital technologies opens up new, seemingly fluid, hybrid spaces and may appear to destabilize and surpass social and cultural boundaries as assumed by a technologically deterministic rheto­ric, in effect nannies selectively share and communicate with surprisingly few friends, who nevertheless have bonded solidarity and trust and are more immediately sympathetic toward common experiences, and shared emotions, of displacement, identity trouble, and constraints of everyday work life. As this chapter has demonstrated, nannies’ self-­ exploration practices, including the use of mobile digital technologies in spatial constraints, are likely to maintain existing bonds and embedded social networks through affective practice, rather than creating new ties and broadening communicational horizons and relational identities with the outside world. Socially interactive mobile technologies, such as the mobile phone or the Internet-enabled mobile, do not necessarily enable migrant women to extend their mediated networks beyond a small social world. Instead, they tend to maintain, deepen, and consolidate already existing social ties and networks with a narrow yet orchestrated circle of self-selected friends or like-minded acquaintances living close to each other with frequent face-to-face interaction, largely within the boundaries of their particularly preferred, ethnic or national, class- or occupation-based, migrant communities. Preferences, ideologically simi­ lar interests, and values become the key determinants of community “boundaries” in a digitally connected mobile world (Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson, 2005). Here, preferences themselves should be understood as not freely selected, but limited choices within the constraints of material and symbolic conditions under which migrant women live a life as a project. These mobile practices through particularistic preferences do not always freely break out from the constraints of these relatively closed or exclusionary communities, but are fundamentally meant to sustain, within these preferred connections, the most important community of social capital, so essential for economic survival and emotional well-­ being (see also Chapter 3). Social capital, gained through membership in the networked community, constitutes the realm of sociality and provides important social benefits, such as access to employment and meaningful mobility by serving as an informal employment referral system. It is therefore considered to be most effective in finding jobs in the situation of socio-­ economically disadvantaged migrant women, nannies in this case, many of whom are undocumented, irregular workers. Nannies’ motivations

The Care of the Self  123 for using mobile communication technologies, mobile phones in parti­ cular, are influenced most strongly by such economic needs, and their media-­related affective practice discussed above (e.g., watching TV and sharing music together) should also be understood in this work-oriented context as an emotional way to enhance the value of social capital and validate stronger bonds within existing relationships. This implies that economic and emotional aspects, or economic needs and emotional connectedness, are intimately intertwined and mediated by such techno­ logical resources. Technology does not cause but encourages a sensibility in which the validation of a feeling becomes part of establishing it, even part of the feeling itself (Turkle, 2011). As an outcome of using new mobile technologies and maintaining the strength of tight networks and solidarity, social capital becomes a compensatory and supplementary system of support in a marginalized situation that lacks formal institutional networks, welfare resources, and representational power for migrant workers. Such mobile and connected technologies are some of the major mechanisms that make possible their existence and survival and sustain their self-development. Mobile phones are apparently seen to mediate the development and livelihoods of low-income populations, and poverty may now be intensified by the distance between those who have access to such technological resources and connectivity and those who do not (Horst and Miller, 2006). However, the role of social capital, as a source of network-mediated benefits, is not only positive. Social capital in a networked digital age should be understood in its complexity and contradiction, its double ­articulation, by recognizing not only intended potentials but also unintended limitations in specific conditions under which social capital is formed and operated. Not-so-desirable and negative consequences of social capital and sociality are commonly obscured by a largely uncritical and unmitigated celebration of the concept of social capital and community, but in fact, undesirable consequences manifest marginalization and balkanization (Portes, 1998). There are situations in which group solidarity is grounded in, and cemented by, a common experience of adversity and subordination by the more powerful forces, employers and mainstream society—which is the case with nannies in this study. Strong social ties and solidarity bind and provide the sources for socio-­economic ascent, individual freedoms, and greater control over self-­development among some subordinated groups. However, sometimes these strong bonds and the same processes can simultaneously constrain, rather than facilitate, particular outcomes and have the ironic effect of helping perpetuate the very subordinating situation that they decry and resist. These un­intended consequences and undesirable forces continue to make access to, and participation in, mainstream society even more difficult, resulting in continued and perhaps more intensified marginalization. It should be importantly recognized that social capital

124  The Care of the Self operates in complex and contradictory ways, and that mobile digital technologies are particularly at the center of these contradictions. While mobile digital technologies may well contribute to the social capital and link geographically separated people in an increasingly dispersed world, these same technologies also apparently lead to interaction with only like-minded individuals, stronger in-group ties, voluntary balkanization, or ghettoization. Paradoxically, such technologies’ bridging and bonding capabilities also have the potential to screen out unwanted contact, fragment interaction, divide groups, and create boundaries and isolation, rather than integration (Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson, 2005). Concurrently, a dominant pattern of identity manifested within the community of social capital is a drift towards networked individualism that is constructed around the particular preferences, personal fulfilment, and life projects of the individual, combined with the individualizing and fragmenting nature of the domestic care labor process. The personalization, ubiquitous connectivity, and wireless mobility of the digital media all facilitate networked individualism as the basis of community (Wellman and Haythornthwaite, 2002). Undocumented, ir­ regular migrant women in France may take on a very individualist way of being, as their roles and expectations in foreign society differ from roles and expectations in their country of origin (Brouckaert, 2012). An individualist way of being organized around a digitally networked sociality is not necessarily felt to be social isolation at that temporary moment of connection. Network sociality, often in a community form of convenient togetherness without real responsibility and commitment (Fernback, 2007), may be largely fleeting, short-lived, but intense at times of real necessity. Personalized mobile media devices allow for smaller, more personal, more individualized yet networked forms of selective sociality with like-minded individuals or in-group members also based on face-to-face residential sociality. It is commonly observed that the mobile phone appears as a supportive communication technology used most extensively to nurture a small number of relationships that are primarily sustained through face-toface contact (Ling, 2004), and that there is a potentially subversive and regressive implication of mobile telephony as it is re-connecting indivi­ duals with a smaller and tighter social world, which is perhaps limited in its concentration on small individual social networks (Glotz et  al., 2005). This distinct usage pattern of the mobile tends to foster the private sphere primarily but is relatively inattentive to the larger institutional society surrounding it and somehow disconnected from institutions of power. The consequence here indicates that, far from liberating the routine users of socially interactive mobile technologies, the specific mechanisms of their technological use can also work to reinforce race and class differences and further strengthen the already existing social boundaries and power structures. Mobile phones in particular may

The Care of the Self  125 support the tendency towards social closure and the narrower realm of highly familiar, predictable, and self-controlled social relationships and identities, rather than towards opening up to the new and wider surroundings (Glotz et al., 2005). Although the digital media including mobile phones are becoming integrated into everyday practices and offering a seemingly liberating space in which users could explore available forms of connected presence and moments of identity possibilities, the practical conditions under which they operate may not necessarily encourage some users to nurture new forms of short term, often anonymous and ambivalent encounters with strangers and precarious socialization on the move. They may prefer to facilitate communicative possibilities, embodied ties, and symbolic proximity to the people of similar social groups in locally specific and embedded spaces, while continuing to nourish old ties more than develop new ties and consolidate more than fundamentally transform existing social practices, in order to enhance the quality of existing personal relationships for their fragile selves. New forms of interaction and connected exploration through new digital technologies, albeit representative of a new resource and social capital among transnational migrants, do not always easily and necessarily serve to generate new forms of social relations and novel identities. Greater connectivity encouraged by digital networks and digital culture in general is, in effect, far from producing new kinds of community and relationality, even though users are encouraged to imagine that such digital technologies keep them ever more in touch (Gere, 2012). As today’s transnational migrants and diasporas are said to be increasingly engaged in transformative digital landscapes that appear to transcend geographic distances and territorial boundaries, enthusiastic observers of the new digital culture are likely to overlook the persistent continuities with traditional social practices and existing social relations that are still continually mediated by, but not determined by, traditional markers of identity. For the most part, while exploring their real selves and possibilities of liberated subjectivities, there is also a tendency to affirm their identity marked by race, class, and gender, more than to surpass or break free from the constraints of the structures of identity and difference in a socially stratified global city. Thus, the consequences of digital technological potentials can lead to the reproduction of, rather than the transcendence of, the existing structures of social inequality and relational hierarchies.

7 Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home

How do racial identities figure into everyday encounters? How does digi­ tal media use create spaces of home and belonging and with what consequences? This chapter explores how race operates in everyday life or “how race is lived in tensions” (Anderson, 2011), by looking at the everyday lived experience of race and racism among nannies living in Paris, a global city that appears to manifest a public embrace of diversity and multiculturalism. Physically living together does not necessarily mean that people will enter into amiable relationships, as tolerance does not equal integration (Powell, 2014). This chapter pays particular attention to the complex interplay between the experiential texture of everyday racial relationships and the use of new digital technologies; how migrant nannies as racialized and marginalized members of particular social groups attempt to make themselves at home and create a sense of home and belonging through transnational media and communication practices and mundane experiences of the online ethnic media in particular. It considers the persistence and significance of banal racism and what it means to become at home in a world of digital connectivity, while at the same time recognizing the networked creation of migrants’ home not merely as virtual but as embodied spatial experiences and practices in everyday living. As more and more people experience migration and mobility in the course of their lives, their accounts of race and racism travel, and their routine use of digital technologies and the vernacular cultures of the digital media open up new capabilities and possibilities for becoming at home, albeit with complex and unintended social consequences. Racism surfaces and is mobilized through global shifts of people, capi­ tal, technologies, and ideas, while the affective and material reworking of race in intimate spaces of culture and community manifests the enduring significance of race. Under the global forces and processes of dislocation, existing significations of race and racism give way to reattach to migrating, vulnerable, and displaced bodies (Tarc, 2013). Seemingly stable analytic objects like race are now relocated to new contexts, and racism is re-articulated through the enunciation of cultural difference (Visweswaran, 2010). Race, in interplay with class and gender, is a crucial category by which people of color define and reflect on themselves,

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  127 and racial individuals or communities bring these reflections to bear on their use of technologies in their everyday lives (Nelson and Tu, 2001). Digital media technologies, through their banal yet profound presence in cultural life and modes of communication, have become central to the articulation of cherished beliefs, ritual practices, and modes of being in the world. The fact that digital media culturally matter is undeniable but showing how, where, and why they matter is necessary to push against peculiarly narrow presumptions about the universality of digital experience (Coleman, 2010). In a global and de-territorialized world, many people can no longer depend on the securities and stabilities of place, and the role of the digital media is important in compensating for or reinforcing that loss, while offering or denying them certain space or spaces. In this sense, space in a mediated world has become a much more complex and integral entity than perhaps people imagined it once to be (Silverstone, 1999). These spaces are socially produced and important as an integral part of everyday life, as well as of identity construction with reference to material, racial, or ethnical conditions of everyday life. Although digital technologies, such as the Internet and mobile phones, are generally presumed to lead to the detachment of cultures from geographic places, these technologies are also used by migrants to reproduce intimate, personal, and public spaces for their territorial attachment to their national home and ethnic cultural practices (Kang, 2009). When dealing with the discomfort and uncertainty migrants experience in foreign locales, and when negotiating encounters with other people and cultural forms, the national home is defined as a secure base of identity from which to proceed, and most importantly, to return to, in what has been labeled a borderless world (Skey, 2011). There are mutually dependent processes of exclusion and identity construction in relation to the home and the nation as spaces of belonging, and in these processes the crucial issue in defining who belongs is also that of defining who is to be excluded (Morley, 2000). A general characteristic common to ideas about races, ethnicities, homes and nations is their propensity to draw such boundaries and hence to attribute group membership. These boundary-making or space-making practices are profoundly political practices and politicized cultures that variously reproduce or challenge existing power structures by perpetuating or opposing existing inequali­ ties of status (Karner, 2007). These new digital media are not themselves born autonomous and innocent but arise from existing patterns of hierarchy in relation to race, class, gender, and so on. However, they enable practices that do not always fit with earlier complexes of domination but also open the field to new spaces of identity politics (Poster, 2001). Today’s migrants and minorities increasingly engage with the digital media as socio-­cultural resources, self-organized networks, or “little tactics” (De Certeau, 1984) of the marginalized against hegemonic forces that govern their lives, while

128  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home positioning them within new networked spaces that transcend their immediate location and constraint. Positioning is about strategies for surviving or succeeding in these new flows and spaces (Miller and Slater, 2000). Small wars go on in everyday life as individuals and groups struggle for positioning, and power is inevitably relayed in everyday practices (Macdonald, 2010). Power is produced or reproduced and traditional forms of social inequality are reproduced or contested, while migrants as social actors are able to use digital media culture to transcend their fears, anxieties, racialized and classed stereotypes, and identification (Embrick et al., 2012). Culture and identity in a large sense are both embodied and challenged through the variable performance of individual human agency. Learned techniques of the body are the means by which cultural conditioning is simultaneously embodied and put to the test contingently despite the enormous pressure of power structures (Noland, 2009). Beyond the obvious practical and financial barriers that face ordinary users, empirically grounded and contextualized accounts of digital media use can recognize the power relations and the symbolic struggles that are involved in going online, positioning identities, and thus reshaping the very meaning of digital media technologies through contingent processes of use in specific social contexts (Livingstone, 2009). As this chapter will argue, asymmetrical power relations, racial hierarchies, and banal racism are prevalent in the global city of Paris that is celebrated as a privileged site of civilization, diversity, and multiculturalism. Unlike explicit expressions of racism, indirect and less visible forms of banal racism in everyday life may escape immediate attention but are persistent and durable as contradictions inherent in banal multiculturalism. This banality is not trivial, insignificant, and harmless. Banal racism continues to permeate the structures of everyday life and takenfor-granted experiences, which may be internalized to some extent or deliberately ignored when economic survival with ontological security is still an urgent issue for most minorities such as migrant nannies in Paris. It is in this context and place that the routine and strategic use of digi­tal media resources is actively sought out as self-organized networked spaces and home-making practices by racialized minorities who are not part of the global city mainstream. This chapter will argue that the digi­tal media’s capacity, or the nature and significance of the ways in which migrants maintain perpetual connection with their homeland through digital media, is both enabling and constraining their actions in the new society. In particular, ethnic media cultures afforded by the Internet and mobile phones are experienced as mundane enactments of home and belonging, ordinary doings and feelings that constitute home-making practices. It is clear to see the centrality of mobile digital technologies in creating and maintaining a sense of home and belonging, albeit temporary and fragile. Yet, these enabling technologies providing some solutions to genuinely challenging realities can also generate

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  129 new problems and unintended consequences. Being able to sustain their hyper-­connection to ethnic media spaces or ethnic enclaves may enhance their sense of being at home in the displacement, yet simultaneously this sustained ability may continue to constrain and mark their status as racialized and marginalized individuals or groups while engaging with the struggle for recognition. Being marginal is not necessarily about being disconnected in a digital age, although the tendency to equate marginality to disconnection is subtly present (Powell, 2014). Rather than the disconnection presumably associated with transnational migration and marginality, marginalized migrants’ hyper-connection to the home in a digital realm can render them more marginalized and excluded from the immediate, physical, and material world of sojourning.

Banal Racism in Everyday Life My son was born in Paris. When my son was 3 years old, I took him to my work. He was a very good child. If adults tell him to sit still, he would sit still quietly and would not move around or make any sound. My employer liked him that way, so she allowed me to bring my child. My employer family had two other people (migrants) working in their big house as they owned a building in Paris. My employer allowed me only to bring my child to work. As long as my child sat still quietly, my employer allowed him to be here. … I have worked for many French employers. They don’t treat me as their family although I look after their children every day in their home. I don’t feel at home. I just work here quietly without making any trouble. My employers don’t take me as a part of their family. Once my employer was away with her family for summer vacation in Spain, a bugler broke into her apartment in Paris. The door was broken. My employer said to me, “You are one of the suspects.” I was very sad to know she didn’t trust me. Maybe she thought I was a dangerous foreigner like the bugler. I returned her apartment key and said, “Please don’t leave your key with me.”… My current employer is sensitive to sound in the apartment. She doesn’t like when I use a coffee machine or a blender. I should not make any sound or trouble. She doesn’t permit my daughter (aged 22) to visit me or to stay overnight in the service room with me. She doesn’t permit a foreigner, as if my daughter is a trouble maker or a suspect. My employers don’t talk much, except for ordering things to do. I always follow rules. They look distant to me. I don’t know what they really think about me as a nanny living in their house and looking after their children. … I look after a little girl (aged 5) and a baby. She likes following me around and imitating what I do. If I do the laundry and fold clothes, she would fold clothes next to me.

130  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home If I clean the house, she would pick up tissues on the floor. She finds it fun to imitate me. … One time Madam’s family asked her, “What do you want to be in the future?” This little girl said happily, when she grows up she wants to be like me (nanny) looking after children and cleaning the house. Madam was so upset that she yelled. This little girl cried without knowing why her mother yelled. … My employers think it is such an inferior job done by inferior people. They show no respect. Departing from their family of origin and living at a transnational distance, migrant nannies enter into new families of employment but do not live there as one of family. They routinely provide private and intimate emotional labor and struggle to be recognized as part of home and family wherein oppressive forces generally reduce them to servant subjects (see also Chapter 6). The discursive battles over the meaning of home and family are significant as they concern the redefinition of a domestic caregiver as a worker, removing her from the highly gendered discursive frame of familialism and re-imagining her within the language of class (McDowell, 2009) as well as the language of race, which is part of the way in which employers distinguish themselves from workers in the home. The home is a site not only of domestic service, but also of domestic oppression, of vulnerable foreign others taken into the home, often masked by the discourse of being one of the family (Huang and Yeoh, 2007). For vulnerable foreign others, the home is in no sense a symmetrical site of security and comfort or of emotional attachment, but rather of emotional dissonance against the poor treatment and emotional pain they may experience at work. Intersections of race and class shape an important context for asymmetrical social relationships within this home space and create the meaning of the relationships to the women living together—Western female employer and Asian care worker. Domination, or symbolic violence, is maintained through interpersonal, racial, and class relations in a domestic family setting where work is defined as a service, a position of care and subservience (Moukarbel, 2009). Symbolic violence is a disguised strategy of domination and is displayed through a constant process of otherness, racialization, and inferiorization, which is very efficient in keeping a foreign domestic care worker where she “belongs,” in her place, role, and being. Otherness is not seen to be threatening as long as it is kept in its place (e.g., “sit still quietly,” “not make any sound or trouble,” “always follow rules”) under continual surveillance and control. Strategies of surveillance shape the construction of migrant identities in France and create a new category of migrants whose everyday lives seem permanently in unstable transition (Sargent and Larchanché-Kim, 2006). It is not the presence of otherness per se which is problematic or threatening, but only that of uncontrolled and undomesticated otherness. Domesticated

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  131 otherness, or the feminized under the authority of the powerful in the home, is welcome and indeed necessary to service the needs of the domesticator and to function dominant forms of life, and thus many forms of others such as migrant workers and domestic servants are often positively required in both the domestic home and the nation (Morley, 2000). Rather than necessarily being entirely excluded, otherness is thus kept in its place through a process of domestication, the inculcation of homely rules and values of the powerful by proximity. This is one of the main and often invisible means through which the disempowered, such as migrant nannies in this case, are kept that way in the home and family. The meaning of living together, or maintaining non-conflictual, if not necessarily harmonious, relationships between migrant domestic care workers and their employers, requires domestication, racialized and non-threatening otherness in places. Race is produced by space, and it takes places for racism to take place (Lipsitz, 2011). The discourse of racism allows for the imagination that one does not have to share one’s space with anyone else unless they are of exactly one’s own kind by virtue of consanguinity, and it is a discourse in which there simply is no legitimate space for the other (Morley, 2000). Racism can be seen as a discourse and practice of inferiorizing parti­ cular ethnic groups, and power relations are inevitably involved in the symbolic and material processes of differentiation between the inferior and the superior. Not all migrant nannies in this case occupy the alien presence as intensified by the racialization or inferiorization, the racist symbolic violence and the spatial oppression inside the private home. A few nannies are lucky enough to encounter and work for employers who treat them with respect. Even so, they are also liable to encounter snobbery, often alloyed with racism, in society at large (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002). In both the lived and the mediated world, migrant nannies experience the exclusion of minorities who are not seen as belonging within the private and the public domains. To account for racism, through the unspeakable narratives of racism experienced by silenced minorities, is to offer a different account of the world with the subtle and mundane nature of contemporary racism. This city Paris is beautiful, but I don’t like people. Racism is everywhere. It’s not like a direct punch on your face, but you feel it at a grocery market, at a metro, on the street. … We don’t express how we feel about racism because racists wouldn’t care, anyway. They would say, “If you don’t like it, then go back to your country.” That also means, if you don’t go back, then shut up and endure. … I see their attitude of superiority towards other people and other cultures. Once in a French language class, a French teacher asked if students liked French food. Some students from Asia said honestly they didn’t like French food. Then, the French teacher looked very surprised,

132  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home her facial expression was like, “I can’t believe how come you don’t like French food?” One student from Japan said her Japanese food is lighter and healthier. Another student from Thailand said French food is too rich and sweet. … Maybe the French teacher thinks people around the world love her country, her culture, her food, because many tourists come here to see the Eiffel Tower. I don’t recall any French people humbly apologizing, “Sorry, it was my fault.” At a metro door, young men violently pushed me but didn’t say “sorry.” At a corner shop, I pointed out an error on a receipt but a staff rather got annoyed and stared at me… I try to speak up in French when there is no respect towards us (Asian nannies), although they wouldn’t care. We don’t usually speak up, not just because our French language is not good enough, but because we know they wouldn’t care. They would just stare at us, sniff and ignore. … If we ever talk about racism, French people think we are the problem, we have our own problem, or we must have done something wrong. They say proudly Paris is a very civilized multicultural city that doesn’t have racism. They say all people are equal. They don’t see racism, because they don’t experience racism in their own lives. I don’t watch French TV, I don’t see people like us Asians but there are black people. Are we not important in this country? I watched it to learn the French language, but French TV is not interesting to me. I am not interested in French people and French things anymore. … We (Asian friends) talk about French things. French people have their own superior attitude. For example, they expect us to speak perfect French. If I don’t pronounce French perfectly, if I don’t speak exactly like them, they would correct me in a humiliating way. Even at a grocery market a cashier would humiliate my French pronunciation by repeating her correct French loudly in an arrogant way. … I don’t speak perfect English, but native English speakers from America or Australia don’t correct my English pronunciation in their superior way. French people seem too proud of their language and their country. Mainstream media create a key site performing a role in the public representation of unequal social relations and the play of cultural power. It is in and through representations that people in multicultural society are variously invited to construct a sense of who they are in relation to who they are not, insider and outsider, colonizer and colonized, citizen and foreigner, normal and deviant, the West and the rest (Cottle, 2000). By such means of media cultural representations, the social identities mobilized across the society are marked out from each other, differentiated, and often rendered vulnerable to racism and discrimination. The media gather and mobilize sentiments and affective investments that increasingly underwrite quotidian practices of racial inequality

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  133 and racism (Gray, 2013). On French television, ethnic minorities and immigrant groups are simply not represented as part of everyday life, reinforcing popular perceptions whereby these groups are seen as fundamentally alien rather than ordinary people (Hargreaves, 1993). Today, blacks are over-represented on French television in comparison to other minorities. There is a rich and vibrant black presence and black expressive culture that has been reformulated as global culture in the multicultural and multinational spaces of France (Thomas, 2007), whereas newer migrant groups such as Asians are largely absent from media cultural representations (Rigoni, 2006). Mainstream media discourses of exceptionalism tend to perpetuate attitudes about racism as unfortunate, exceptional blights that occasionally erupt on a modern, civilized, and multicultural nation’s post-racist, color-blind, and racially tolerant body politic ­(Everett, 2008). Historically, it is important to recognize the practices that have racialized bodies, and racial thinking in the making of French bourgeois identity, the bourgeois self, or what a healthy, vigo­ rous, bourgeois body has been all about (Stoler, 1995). The distinctions of the bourgeois self have been tacitly and emphatically coded by race, as well as by class, while mapping the moral parameters of the French nation. Nationalist discourses have been predicated on a racial order and exclusionary cultural principles that systematically exclude or subsume marginal members of the body politic. In the French society that purports to be color-blind and race-free, people of color have been constituted as a social problem, a denied racialized question in the society that posits itself as operating out of a type of humanist universalism (Keaton, 2006). This tendency reveals fundamental contradictions between the highly abstracted notion of universalism and the lived reality of ethnic distinction and racialized discrimination against people of color and of non-European origins. With large-scale migration from non-European origins, racial tension is increasingly seen to pose a threat to society. Ordinary verbal racism, which is regarded as posing no real threat, is very commonly tolerated and indulged in France (Vourc’h et al., 1999). This kind of tolerance in today’s multicultural nations of the West may emanate from the enigma of “racism without racists,” a new racial ideology that is viewed as ­“color-blind racism” (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). Contemporary racial inequality is reproduced through the practices of banal racism that are subtle, inexplicit, and non-blatant, and that are not always operating by the formal and institutional processes of exclusion. Banal racism in everyday life has become increasingly subtle and invisible to most whites living in a multicultural society today. For racialized and inferiorized nannies on the receiving end of racism, banal forms of racism are regular facets of their everyday lives, whereas banal racism may not be matters of concern to the privileged white who tend to be blind to racism (“don’t see racism”) because they do not necessarily experience racism in their

134  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home privileged lives. Few whites today would claim to be racist, and most whites would assert that they do not see any color but just people and that all people are equal. There is little consensus on the definition of what is considered “racist” and even less consensus about how to appraise the seriousness of racist remarks and the degree of their banality in France (Vourc’h et al., 1999). It can be said that the banal racialization of strangers, or of racial minorities, is not immediately apparent but disguised perhaps by the strict anonymity of the strangers (Ahmed, 2012). Victims of racism, often as strangers, are twice suffered and twice marginalized, since they are victims of racial discrimination and at the same time they are victims of a general disregard or suspicion about the reality of the incidents they encounter and experience in everyday life. The experience of racism and of racial discrimination is not acknow­ ledged seriously but often disregarded as being attributable to individual personality, a uniquely individual problem (“own problem”) or even a personal failure (“must have done something wrong”). There is terrifying racism, but any outbreaks are now treated as individual and private irregularities, to be solved by punishing and re-educating the individuals by teaching them color-blindness, by teaching them not to notice the phenomenon of race (Davis, 2012). Although the ugly face of racism and discrimination is still pervasive, it is no longer seen by the powerful majority as a central factor influencing racialized minorities’ life chances (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). This partly explains why potential victims of racism, migrant nannies in this case, do not and cannot speak out and why they cannot be heard but silenced. The powerful majority living with color-blind racism cannot imagine and understand the hidden pain and suffering of racism experienced by racialized minorities. It is difficult to look after the baby, and the boy (aged 4) does not come to me, which is more difficult for me. Sometimes I wonder, does the boy recognize my skin color is different? Their mother is pregnant with the third child, so I have more and more work in this family. My mom (nanny) first introduced this job to me through her employer. She said I was lucky to have this job because most French people prefer an EMT (English Mother Tongue) nanny. … I stopped French class because I got too tired with full-time work every day. As time goes by, my employer gives me more and more work, not just childcare but also cleaning, grocery shopping, ironing. But my salary is the same (600 euros a month, with a service room), because I am an Asian woman, she thinks I would not complain about the salary but just accept it. … My mom says this abuse would not happen to European and American nannies. These employers cannot hire European and American nannies at this cheap price. Usually, we (Filipinas) earn more salary than Sri Lankans. Because we speak English better than them, not fluently but without

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  135 difficulties in everyday conversation, and because we are known as better and hard-working, employers tend to prefer us and pay more. We usually get about 8 to 10 euros (per hour for part-time work), but I hear from Sri Lankan nannies they even accept 7 euros. … I have worked for four different employers. They pay differently, 8, 9, 10, 12 euros, depending on how they judge me, and depending on their mood. There is no agreed pay. They want me to work in the weekend, sometimes call me on my mobile phone. I should be there whenever they call. Otherwise, they can fire me. … When looking after babies, I don’t think this language is important. But for children, some French mothers prefer a nanny who can speak English so that their children can naturally learn English at home. It’s very tiring to speak English to these children (aged 7 and 9). If I say, “Now it’s time to go to the bathroom and take a shower,” they would ask, “What is bathroom? What is shower?” They don’t listen to me. They are big enough to know how their mother treats me. Central to these narratives are social forms of racism, structured inequalities, and human relations between powerful employers and their racialized nannies that the powerful perceive as being inferior, cheap, and even disposable at any time. The privileged majority living with color-blind racism may continue to ignore the fact that the existence of people of color oppressed and exploited in everyday work life is a manifestation of social forms of racism, for instance, in terms of employment discrimination and life chances, racial stereotypes, and wage inequalities. Race, in interplay with class and gender, is constructed but it has a social reality producing very real effects on the actors racialized as “Asian,” “black,” or “white” (Bonilla-Silva, 2006). In a materialist society, racial difference or only what is visible can generally achieve the status of accepted truth. Race and gender operate through visual markers on the body and thus are penultimate visible identities that are fundamental rather than peripheral to the self, whereas class can be hidden behind a cultivated accent or clothing style (Alcoff, 2006). Racism is intersected with banal inferiorization, gendered emotional labor, and class exploitation associated with a dangerously globalized capitalism (Davis, 2012) and the underground economy that evades any formal protection of workers. In practice, indeed, deeply embedded racial assumptions contained in the domain of work life, employment, and wage levels are of foremost concern to racial and cultural minority groups, in this case Asian nannies who are often stereotyped as inferior and cheap in hierarchical relation to Western white nannies. Racial identity as a visible marker of social subjectivity remains the key variable in shaping opportunities and life chances for individuals and groups in seemingly race-neutral or race-blind urban sites (Lipsitz, 2011). As the nanny occupation in the private home is not only gendered but also heavily

136  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home racialized, wage exploitation and racism are commonly found in Asian nannies’ work experiences. While many Asian nannies may be considered generally marginalized, some groups of nannies by virtue of their racial and national markers (e.g., ­ ilipinas) are Indonesians and Sri Lankans, standing in subtle contrast to F more disadvantaged in that they are less likely to find employment or gain adequate wage levels. This means that marginalities here do not operate in a uniform manner as there are implicitly racialized, global hierarchies of nannies within the margins. Gender-based pay discrimination in domestic care work is compounded with other forms of discrimination, since workers’ racial origin and nationality may also determine the level of remuneration as opposed to legitimate criteria, such as the type and actual hours of work performed (ILO, 2012). In a market situation where workers do not have normal employment protection, and where preferences are not constrained by anti-racism discrimination, then race or ethnicity, age, experience, and qualifications, all take on their relative market values (Lutz, 2008). Based on racialized hierarchies, certain nannies receive an unreasonably lower salary just because they are from certain countries, and this exploitation primarily takes on a racial dimension. Work positionalities of nannies from I­ ndonesia and Sri Lanka tend to be more marginal than those of their Filipina counterparts, and these individuals face worse aspects of stereotypes and constraints, including linguistic barriers (e.g., English and/or French) that may limit their entry into employment. Among these three groups of nannies, Filipinas are at the top; they are more likely to have one day off every week and achieve higher salaries, as well as better accumulation of social capital that can further enhance their job opportunities. Filipinas seem to be distinguished from and placed above other migrant groups due to their relatively high level of education, and they utilize racialization as a means of negotiating their decline in status by claiming and embracing their racial differentiation from other racialized workers and by highlighting their specific distinction as the educated workers (Parrenas, 2001). Moreover, they tend to believe that they are racially distinguished from other domestic workers by employers, because this belief itself helps ease their pain of downward social mobility, underemployment, and servitude. ­Filipina domestic workers generally work under more favorable terms of employment than do Indonesians, most commonly because ­Filipinas have more education or more skills and speak better English and they may be better at negotiating the terms of their contracts (Thompson, 2009). However, it should be noted that domestic workers in France are all the more vulnerable, given that 85% of them are foreigners who do not know the language or the laws of France, and thus they cannot effectively negotiate or formally express what they are suffering (ITUC, 2012). Many Asian nannies try to take French language courses but often encounter time constraint in their everyday work patterns.

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  137 The English language, not only the French language, can serve as a means of social and cultural capital in daily communications and job searches, and some nannies try to acquire and maneuver their linguistic capacity to improve their life conditions. Domestic workers’ proximity, and daily exposure, to middle-class or upper-class family worlds and the social and material comfort their employers indulge in has an immediate effect on their own views of themselves and their low status as belonging to a relatively disrespected profession and a low-income group. Yet at the same time, their daily presence in this new different environment also fuels their dreams of a better life and becomes to some extent familiar with the typical literacy practices in the lives of their employers, even without taking active part in them (Papen, 2007). Some white employers insist that race does not matter when making hiring decisions on domestic workers, but other cultural markers such as language matter greatly (Moras, 2010). Since some French parents seek out bilingual education for their children at home, language, specifically the command of English, is considered as one of the decision-making factors in hiring nannies. Job advertisements also reflect the strong demand for EMT (English Mother Tongue) nannies from the West, such as Britain, the USA, and Canada. In general, white women of European origins are preferred for the affective, emotional work of caring for children, whereas Filipina women are usually restricted to the less valued and often less well-paid sectors of the home-based caring occupations, despite their adequate education and training (McDowell, 2009). In comparison to their Western counterparts, Filipinas’ services are categorically placed under low-quality care, and their high level of education is not properly acknowledged and rewarded (Parrenas, 2001). Some employers of the West may prefer to hire racialized others, relatively less educated and poor workers for domestic care service, because those workers are more desperate and vulnerable and they are expected to be more deferent. It is important to recognize that, when hiring nannies from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka in this case, there is no clear distinction between domestic worker (e.g., traditional housewife’s general housekeeping role including childcare) and nanny (e.g., professional childcare role only) in the perceptions or demands of employers (see also Chapter 3). In the unpredictable and contingent processes of domestic work, the so-called nannies in this case are often expected to do cleaning, ironing, grocery shopping, light cooking for children, as well as childcare. This blurring distinction and informal merging between the two roles of domestic worker and nanny, with consequently more work and exploitation, is largely mediated by race and racial stereotypes. Crucially, racial stereotypes and racism contribute to, and intensify, income inequalities that make lives worse or unchanged for many Asian nannies and underpin their growing anxiety in the racialized processes of work practices.

138  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home Commercialized nanny agents, and clients-parents alike, tend to hold stereotypes of Asian nannies in comparison to Western nannies, and these stereotypes play a key role in structuring the work conditions and the wage levels of each national or racial group of domestic care workers. Employment agencies are often in a better position to see the aggregate effect of consumer choice in the market for domestic care service and how closely the consumer choice is overlaid with national or racialized stereotypes (Lutz, 2008). For instance, according to nanny agents in a Western city, the British nanny is portrayed as both superior in terms of training and temperament, but cold and controlling, whereas the Filipina nanny is represented as both uncivilized and poorly motivated, and well educated (Pratt, 1997). More specifically, a nanny agent expresses this stereotype: “Most of the Filipino children, the adults who are coming over, were not raised how we would raise our children at all… there’s none of this, ‘Would you please sit and eat!?’ No, they can run all over the house eating something. Also, of course, the Filipino nannies are not permitted to discipline at all. … So the little kids pick up this very quickly. … They’re kind and caring and loving and that sort of thing. But there is no discipline or structure” (Pratt, 2004). For Western children whose families employ Asian domestic workers, home becomes an ambivalent space for renegotiating their status as children and reconstituting childhood in their routine interactions with these foreign others. Western children growing up in this home environment do not necessarily become open and tolerant to racialized others, but quite the opposite seems the case. The ways in which elementary school children of the West access different cultural discourses and construct their identities in relation to Filipina and Sri Lankan domestic workers through their routine interactions and popular imaginations are often revealing of new forms of racism (Spyrou, 2009). Overall, it can be suggested that the experiences of nannies considerably depend on racialization and imposed inferiority, and experiences of the instances of racial discrimination, as well as the amount of power they have, or do not have, to act and discipline, in the private home and the society that appears to be the fabric of civilization, diversity, and multiculturalism. The repeated and pervasive experiences of banal racism and discomfort over time can lead them to be slaves of their own racial appearance and sometimes buy into the identification of otherness and inferiority that will constrain them from being viable actors in private life, work life, and the society at large. Many Asian nannies feel trapped in this kind of situation, by the larger structural forces of race and racism that intimately and socially shape the processes and outcomes of their life chances. Experiences of racism, even in an apparently relaxed and comfortable nation, undermine the ability of migrants to feel at home, and hence their capacity to perform social agency (Noble, 2005). A sense of ontological security and comfort is fundamental to

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  139 one’s capacity for social agency and subjectivity (Giddens, 1991), which requires resources to operate meaningfully in everyday life. The role of the ethnic media, as a resource for ontological security and comfort in transnational lives, can be further understood in this broad context of racial relations, boundaries, and marginalization.

Ethnic Media, Ethnic Enclave French TV is not interesting to me. If I ever feel I belong here in this country, I will be more encouraged to learn their language and their culture. I never belong here. I see racist attitude and racist look among French people who think they are superior. I come to learn to just ignore them to have peace of mind. Otherwise, my life will be more miserable. My work is already hard every day. … I have worked in Paris for 10 years. I left my son (in Indonesia) when he was three years old. I talk to my son over phone. When an electrician came to Madam’s apartment to install a box (for phone, cable and the Internet), he asked where I came from. He said this box includes free international calls to my country. I didn’t want to work in Madam’s apartment because Madam was too demanding, but I stayed here because of free international calls to my country. The most important thing in my life is to be in touch with my family. … Now I have a smart phone as friends (Indonesian nannies) gave this as a gift for my birthday. We collect money together to buy a useful gift. I watch Indonesian television on my smart phone and keep in touch with friends in my country. They tell me what is going on, what is popular on television now. I watch music shows, talk shows, dramas with friends here. My French is not improving. I speak English, more than French, to the children of my employers. I watch French TV just to learn the French language. Madam says it is good to watch children’s animation to learn the language. … Of course, I watch TV programs from my country (Sri Lanka). In my feeling, it’s not relevant to watch French TV, and I don’t feel motivated enough to get to know this foreign country (France) better. I don’t belong here. I will never belong here. Our friends (Sri Lankan nannies) feel the same. There are big differences between us and them. Even though we work and live here for more than 10 years or even 15 years, we can’t be accepted by them. We can’t easily change and become like them. We don’t want to become like them. Even though our body is here, our heart is elsewhere. French TV is not appealing to me, so I stopped watching. It’s just another world that doesn’t look related to me in any way. Ways of life are different between us and them, in real life and on TV too. I watch Filipino news, drama, music (on the Internet). I find

140  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home information about which Filipino websites can be accessed quickly in Paris. If there is a well-made encouraging program to watch with friends (Filipina nannies), we recommend to each other, “You have to watch this.” Sometimes we watch together, eat food together and talk about many difficulties in our lives. … I have twelve cousins in the Philippines. We are like one big family, chatting with each other on Facebook. It continues on and on, sometimes I have to quit chatting, “I am busy now.” My mother (aged 62) sends me text message every day, because I bought a new phone for her and my sister taught her how to use. … I don’t feel that kind of family, warmth, sharing in Paris. I try to ignore racism, ignore them when their superior attitude shows, “If you don’t like it, go back to your home.” I still don’t belong here although I have worked here for 12 years. Experiences of racism and feelings of non-belonging to the mainstream society are further articulated by the mundane use of ethnic media resources and personalized communication networks. Race is an important social category, both face-to-face and online in the communities of migrant nannies, and the ongoing significance of race and implications of banal racism are reflected on the digitally mediated world. In defiance of public discourse in a presumed post-racist, neoliberal society that says that race does not exist and does not matter, digital media users continue to produce and consume images, symbols, web sites, and narratives that say that race does exist and does matter (Nakamura, 2008). Matters of race and racism are of central discourse and violence on the digital media such as the Internet. The Internet can maintain and extend racial hatred, foster misunderstanding, and perpetuate rather than assuage ­animosity (Curran et al., 2012). The world, both online and offline, is increasingly divided by bitter and unresolved conflicts of value, belief, and interest, while simultaneously fostering and reassuring a sense of collective identity and community in which both haters and victims, the powerful and the marginalized, do not remain alone but contest. It is clear that migrant nannies’ leisure spaces and media use as a routine practice are structured around the online ethnic media from their homeland that circulate expressive discourses as formative of ethnic home identities. In a sense, the everyday lives of migrant nannies here may resemble the situ­ ations of unconnected tourists and temporary sojourners who are not necessarily participants in the local and national environment of the destination country. The media in the host language, French in this case, are largely disregarded (“not interesting,” “not appealing,” “not relevant,” “just another world”) by their routine preference over the media in their own languages, homeland narratives of popular television, film, music, and digital self-expression. It is commonly emphasized that they tend to watch programs produced by French television channels much less than programs from their homelands through the Internet, not merely for

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  141 linguistic reasons. The private and public spheres of the host society in which they physically reside and work every day are felt to be dominating, remote, and distant from being the main source of connections, domestic warmth, and social identifications. Fundamentally, French media do not occupy significant space or relevance in their lived experiences, due to their deep realization of racism and non-belonging and their consequent lack of motivation and willingness to learn and better communicate in the host language, and to better understand and engage with the host society. It is also demonstrated that when ethnic or minority groups in France perceive themselves to be under social pressures to conform to the dominant culture and language, they will be less motivated to acculturate, or refuse to completely adapt, and rather increase resentment toward the dominant French culture (Croucher, 2009). Racialized others, such as migrant nannies in this case, are not entirely passive recipients of dominant ideology and ideological practices, but they are capable of routinizing their responses to racism in media and cultural practices that tend to be ethnically structured and bounded. The racially marginalized and excluded, under the full force and pernicious power of the white spatial imaginary, keep living and looking beyond the oppressive routines that control and reduce their positions (Lipsitz, 2011). Active use of digital media and new means of communication, as part of coping strategies, generally suggests that relatively silenced nannies attempt to move beyond the lived experiences of banal racism and non-belonging. Women of ethnic and migrant minorities in France are significantly affected by racism and adopt strategies to combat social exclusion and negotiate cultural identities (Freedman and Tarr, 2000). There is an increased dependence on online ethnic media as transnational strategies and cultural resources that allow migrants to deal with the constraints of social relations and asymmetrical power in the mainstream society and to engage in new forms of action to create lives with some sense of security and emotional comfort. Demonstrating their agency and resourcefulness, migrant nannies in this case use the mobile phone or the Internet-enabled mobile as personalized communication networks and as strategic mechanisms that make possible their existence and sustain their development. The role of the mobile phone in social networking practices and cultural identities has become crucial especially in the lives of socially and economically less-advantaged migrant workers (Thompson, 2009). Routine use of online ethnic media and creation of imagined space of networks, while negating the media of the host society, can be seen as indirect and safe, everyday forms of resistance that are not always explicitly resistant but away from direct provocation. In the unrecognized micro-scale forms of resistance, and with some networked sense of empowerment, the weak do try to limit and undermine, if not change and reverse, dominant socio-cultural discourses of the privileged and powerful. Actors typically represented as

142  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home weak, powerless, or victims are implicated in a global field of discursive power in which they struggle, contest, and resist on a discursive level. Particular global trends today shape new forms of domination and discrimination, but also new tools for contestation and resistance (­ Sassen, 2009a). It is importantly recognized that migrant domestic workers rarely take part in—let alone organize—public protests or resistance in the host countries where they work, but they are not simply subject to institutionalized power (Constable, 2009), even as they may appear to facilitate migrant acquiescence linked to raced or gendered subordination and class complicity in the contentious reproduction of the migrant labor force (Barber, 2008). It is also recognized that the rapid growth and proliferation of ethnic minority media in multicultural societies of Western Europe is attributed as an expression of increasing migration patterns and the emergence of all kinds of community, alternative, and oppositional media practices, in part amplified by the Internet (Deuze, 2006a). Practices of resistance are the prevailing phenomenon surrounding the diasporic ethnic media and the construction of subjugated minorities’ alternative spheres and subjectivity (Kama, 2008). Migrant nannies tend to view themselves as mainly class-specific, ­racialized, ethnic subjects and reflect a process of reactive ethnic formation vis-à-vis the identity construction imposed by the dominating culture in the private and public spheres. Reactive ethnicity by the dominated can be understood primarily as a “fear-driven, defensive process” (Morley, 2000) and as a shared identity highlighting assumed similarities and responding to their mundane experiences of high levels of racial discrimination, spatial exclusions, and inequalities at multiple levels in the mainstream society. In a sense, this new reactive ethnicity is a contradictory and ambivalent “space of enunciation” (Bhabha, 2006), serving as an implicit resistance to the profoundly unequal relations of power and domination, everyday ideological practices, othering processes and hierarchal claims to identity that marginalize particular groups represented as alien or foreign subjects. Simultaneously, reactive ethnicity as a new form of oppositional consciousness can be understood as an alternative, ongoing process of understanding themselves and articulating narratives of place, identity, and belonging through multicultural reflexivity, by the migrants who are typically racialized women, placed in socially isolating domestic care labor, and situating a particular sense of belonging vis-à-vis other marginalized migrant workers. Exclusion and identity construction—discriminatory processes and the construction of a sense of who they are and where they belong—are intimately connected, mutually dependent, and reconfigured. Identity formation is both material and symbolic, operating in interplay with the processes of exclusion and inclusion and the creation of spaces of belonging. Inhabiting with difference and working every day in a global city like Paris, substantially for a long period (e.g., more than 10 or even 15 years), does not necessarily

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  143 mean that these migrant workers will themselves embrace cosmopolitan practices and outlooks or extend cultural horizons, although transformations of the old identity and the formation of new subjectivity in the new contexts of the global destabilized world are generally assumed and expected. This, also, signals the possibility of a new form of politics centered in new types of actors on the other side of the global city, where enormous mixes of people struggle to gain presence vis-á-vis power and maintain presence vis-á-vis each other (Sassen, 2009b). When people talk about communities of migrants or undocumented domestic workers in France, the idea persists that the development of ethnic identity and homogenous networks exist (Brouckaert, 2012). Cultural difference and identity is produced and maintained in a field of power relations in a world always already spatially interconnected (Morley, 2000). Reactive ethnicity is firmly grounded in and largely configured by ethnic enclaves—relatively fixed and bounded sites with marginal structural positions but also with feelings of empowerment by raising consciousness about subaltern oppressions and exclusions in asymmetrical representations of power and asymmetrical encounters. Ethnic enclaves are constructed, in response to the mainstream processes of exclusion and unequal power relations, by excluded minorities attempting to carve out spaces of autonomy and control over their marginalized lives. Ethnic enclaves, as an embodied ethnicized habitus, respond to the deep realization of a lack of comfortable fit between place and belonging (“never belong here”) and recognize subaltern positioning, or positionality as a minority, in the cultural conditioning of racialization and other social divisions and multiple axes of difference that simultaneously create segregation. Positionality refers to both structural and social positioning as a process, as a set of practices, actions, and meanings (Shinozaki, 2012). Positionality may involve a process of entering into a dialogical relationship with the other and self-work by the dialogical self, while encountering the challenge of how to deal with incompatible and often conflicting cultural and personal positions in the age of transnational migration and diasporic cultures (Bhatia and Ram, 2001). It is generally assumed that experiences of transnational migration, social inclusion or exclusion, belonging or non-belonging, shift and differ according to local contexts of reception that shape the migrants’ trajectory of integration well beyond their individual agency and control. However, it is worth recognizing that migrant domestic workers in different countries or different contexts of the West tend to reveal common patterns of experiences in terms of racialization, social exclusion, and non-belonging (Parrenas, 2001). Therefore, the role of ethnic enclaves as ethnic social networks is paramount in coping with life in migration, for instance, offering moral and emotional support, a sense of we-ness and belonging, as well as social capital for finding employment and housing and for maintaining economic survival. Ethnic enclaves are constructed

144  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home by migrants expecting to live in a better place, by continuously articulating and reaffirming the spatial boundaries between “us” and “them,” between the familiar and the strange, thereby establishing differences and reassuring a sense of ontological security, self-esteem, and belonging within the boundaries. Migrants in their ongoing relationships to, and engagement with, ethnic media seek to preserve and protect the familiar, and what is seen as their own, within such ethnicized boundaries. It can be suggested that boundaries are still important in everyday life, and there are socially and individually defensible and defended boundaries between the familiar and the strange, between the inside and the outside, between the self and the other (Silverstone, 2005). Boundaries, whether invisible or clearly marked, are defined and defended in the everyday practices and lives of migrants, in the assumption of their particular relevance and in the pursuit of their power, to some extent. Such boundaries are increasingly becoming indistinct and proliferating as a result of mobile digital media themselves, particularly of the highly routinized ethnic media use giving way to a new social and cultural order in the displacement. Within the boundaries, migrants find shareable and shared meanings with a sense of belonging or community that is essentially a claim for difference and power. Boundaries are central to questions of identity and culture in this increasingly mediated, mobile, and multicultural world. From this perspective, the issue is not the propensity of indivi­ duals and groups of migrants to construct boundaries, but the meanings and identities as well as the racialization of differences that are often ascribed into them once they have been constructed (Morley, 2000). The boundaries routinely sustained and mediated by ethnic media use, as a necessity, do not easily open up new spaces for transgressing such structures of difference, but also possibly require a moment of arbitrary closure for identity. In a sense, the ethnicized boundaries between “us” and “them” can somehow contribute to the essentialist construction of displaced identity, rather than transcending the essentialization of the self as well as the other. As strategic choices used by minorities, essentialist modes of being and becoming are often reproduced within the boundaries of ethnic enclaves, with the recognition of ethnic media resources and validation for the self. Individuals’ experiences, relationships, and ensembles of systematic types of relationship not only set particular choices and decisions at particular times, but also structure, really and experientially, how these choices come about and are used and defined in the first place (Willis, 1977). While serving to mark out the constraints of a given field or social space, such boundaries can become deeply embedded in social structures, in individual practices, and in their common sense. Fundamentally, questions of ethnic or racial identity are about the drawing and redrawing of boundaries that define the borders of nations and territories as well as the imaginations of minds and communities (Cottle, 2000). The imaginations of belonging

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  145 are created and sustained routinely by ethnic media resources, largely within ethnic enclaves. On the other hand, ethnic enclaves fueling the imaginations of belonging within the ethnicized boundaries can introduce complex issues of dynamics of social ordering, voluntary disintegration, and enduring exclusion from mainstream society. The consequence indicates the unsettled ambivalence embedded in ethnic media cultures and associated cultural practices that are simultaneously empowering and constraining, both positive and potentially negative in their implications. There is ambivalence toward ethnic networks and communities in Europe, especially if they serve as a significant barrier to facilitating social integration or acculturation and connections with the majority population (Kontos, 2009). Women of ethnic minorities in France engage in selective acculturation in terms of what they decide to embrace in the new country and demonstrate their ability to resist segregating labels that do not fit with their self-perceptions (Killian, 2006). What presents itself as segregated or excluded from the mainstream of a global city is an increasingly complex, informal political presence, materialized and concretized by invisible, non-formal political actors in the space of the global city and national politics of identity and culture (Sassen, 2009b). Ethnic migrants’ capacity to cope with problems of exclusion and to realize belonging is broadly affected by resources and conditions set by the host society. Ethnic enclaves, carved out and sustained by the routine use of ethnic media resources, allow them to attenuate their dependency on the host society and minimize cultural assimilation by creating an oppositional subculture of their own and developing strategies of escape from racial tension and of temporary escape into the concealed space of belonging. By escaping from direct confrontation and creating separate lives within the mainstream society in which they live and work every day, the complex double role of the ethnic media and ethnic enclaves can sustain and reinforce, rather than diminish and resolve, intricate matters of racial concern and of socio-cultural tension in their particular contexts of occurrence. The tendency that arises here involves racial indifference, racial distancing from the mainstream of the dominating, or racial refusal (“learn to just ignore them”), as a non-violent, aloof, and defensive strategy that allows foreign, racialized migrants to temporarily withhold themselves from the global racial order. Indifference is foreigners’ shield—foreigners not belonging to any place, any time, any love (Kristeva, 1991). Ethnic media, as potentially therapeutic resources, are appropriated as relational spaces of indifference, of distance, of refusal, if not overt resistance, in order to avoid deeply painful ethnic conflicts, to recognize the self elsewhere, and to create ontological security, albeit fleeting and vulnerable. Ethnic conflicts may be sustained by trans­ national ethnic actors’ formation and maintenance of ethic networks in the diaspora that are in turn used to mobilize resources, identity, and

146  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home freedom (Wayland, 2004). Unintended and contradictory consequences of oppositional subculture in ethnic media and ethnic enclaves indicate that such symbolic and material social practices can also reproduce racial stratifications and reinforce already existing relations of difference and deep structures of inequality, as well as existing subjectivity by constituting themselves as class-specific ethnicized subjects on a daily basis and by strengthening mediated hyper-connection to homeland.

Home Always There: “I’m Not Going to Stay Here Forever” My computer is always on until I go to sleep at night. I see my family and talk to them. I watch Filipino dramas and talent shows. Sometimes I watch again the old dramas that I watched (back home) and I cry again in my good memory. I like television drama of love and happiness after hardship, which comforts my hard life. My life is full of drama. My life is more dramatic than television drama. It’s just fun and familiar to watch again. It reminds me of home. … My dream is to build a house in my hometown and live with all my family. I send money to build a house. My mother died five years ago while I was working in Paris. I couldn’t go home because I didn’t have papers. My father was sick. I said to him, “Please be alive until I can go home.”… I don’t like being alone and lonely when I am sick in Paris. When I was in hospital (after operation), a doctor and a nurse didn’t pay attention. They forgot to give pain killers to me. So I requested, but then they didn’t give food before pain killers. I couldn’t take them into my empty stomach. … Someday I will go home and rest in my house. I want to see the familiar faces in my neighbor and greet every day. That’s how I remember the warmth of home there. I’m not going to stay here forever. I don’t try to belong here anymore. I just give up. It’s just pleasure to watch our (Indonesian) drama and music on YouTube. It’s my own world in this small service room (10 square meters). I like warm and emotional home drama that makes me feel good and strong. I watch again and again. Life is worth, no matter what circumstances. … Sometimes I watch Korean drama because there is no kiss or nude body. Korean drama is very emotional, pure and pretty. I also watch Japanese drama and Japanese manga on my phone. I get to know these programs from Asian friends (from the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Korea, China) in the French language class. I also like to know how to make food, Thai noodle, Japanese vegetable sushi, Korean barbeque. My Asian friends were curious to taste Indonesian food, so I brought some food for them to eat together. We like to share food, but some Europeans didn’t want to taste when I offered. … I save money to build a beautiful

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  147 house (back home), live with my children and grandchildren and cook food for them. My children say, someday they will support me. My son will buy a big refrigerator and a washing machine for the house. My daughter promises to offer a big dining table and money for home decoration. If they can’t do that, I will come here again to earn money and complete my house project. I work like a slave here, but my home is always there. It is comforting to have (Sri Lankan) music in the maid room at the end of hard work. I feel my home while listening to music. Internet is always on until I sleep. I go to sleep with my phone. … I don’t belong here. It is better to give up here and focus on my home there. Paris is expensive and people are not welcoming. No matter how hard I work, I can’t have good life. … Looking after little children every day, I suffer from back pain and knee pain. Some spoiled children don’t want to walk, but want to be lifted and hugged. Sometimes I wake up five times at night whenever the baby wakes up. In the morning I feel dizzy. … I don’t want to work like this forever. Who would want to stay here for the rest of life? Life here is only temporary. Someday I will go home. My friend (Sri Lankan nanny) worked in Italy for over 20 years and now has her own house with a garden, apple trees and vegetables. I envy her house so much that I keep her house photo on my phone. I dream to have my house and sleep in my house, finally. “I’m not going to stay here forever.” For many migrant nannies, it means that they prefer temporary to permanent settlement because they are conditioned to give up the very idea of belonging “here.” Indeed, very many do not settle but remain highly ambivalent about interrelated issues of economic survival, insecurity, banal racism, integration, and belonging, given the structural and cultural constraints they are subject to. Questions of belonging, both implicit and explicit, remain as important existential themes in the lives of migrant nannies at the intersections of mobility, place, power, and resources that constitute their belonging as raced, classed, gendered, migrant, and national in the conditions of mobility. The uniqueness and complexity of mobile forms of belonging arise from the seeming contradiction that migrant nannies physically inhabit “here” while typically investing in home or house-building projects “there.” What might be characteristic of the migrant narratives is going home, whether imaginary or anticipated, and the centrality of the house, house-building practices or dreams, which indicates their intense longing for home as a place of return and security and their ongoing struggle to feel at home in an endlessly troubled world. Overseas labor migrants regularly send their home remittances and build their own house that they do not even live in. Putting migrant remittances into house construction and rebuilding is generally seen as either conspicuous consumption or productive investment, but this perspective

148  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home is economistic and incomplete. It is necessary to understand the cultural dimension of such economic action—the meanings of houses and ties of relatedness—to better comprehend migrant spending on houses ­(Aguilar, 2009). Remittances enable them to make tentative plans for house construction, acquisition of vehicles, and purchase of socially valorized goods to enhance their socio-economic status in the community. The meaning of return, or going home, does not necessarily imply the closure and completion of labor migration but rather a provisional, circulatory, and possibly continuous one. Even if they return home “there,” some are likely to migrate back “here” to earn additional capital and complete their house-building projects, while developing a kind of mobility strategy to make themselves feel at home and find themselves in a temporary place of sojourning. Online ethnic media from homeland play a crucial role in processes of mobility and identity formation by creating and navigating the space bet­ ween “here” (challenging place of residence) and “there” (distant homeland), between structural constraints and imagined possibilities, while maintaining a sense of home and belonging. The social logic embedded in digital technologies serves to connect the challenges presented by the physical realities of “here” with the warmth of domesticity idealized by the notions of home “there.” The digitally connected ethnic media are the everyday resources to transcend the limits of immediate social place and to imagine home in the margins. In this context, the very idea of home is itself reactionary, necessarily recuperative, and deeply affective. Home is ideationally constituted through affective cultural practices, with shared experience of a we-feeling, shared meaning, and signi­ficance, through the networked reproduction of homeland. Constructing the meaning of home, from the margins and at transnational distance, is highly idealized, mythical, and often enchanted in a way different from the actual reality of homeland. Home is nostalgic for a vision of the self or culture, homeliness, old or ordinary tradition and certainty (Morley, 2000). In a digitally connected mobile world, home is partially mediated yet hyper-connected, despite transnational distance, serving to enhance coping strategies of displacement and cultural politics of belonging. This partially mediated yet hyper-connected home is both embodied and symbolic, experienced simultaneously as a material and immaterial, lived and imagined space of belonging, by mobile and connected migrants who construct a mobile habitat and articulate diverse imaginations of home. Hyper-connection to homeland is afforded by personalized digital media such as the mobile phone or the mobile Internet as “the only fragment of home” (Bonini, 2011), as a necessity rather than a luxury in migrants’ lives today, giving rise to new social practices and directions steering displaced ethnic groups. Whether or not mobile devices are in use, without them people feel disconnected, adrift (Turkle, 2011), and have fear of losing home. This fear or anxiety

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  149 is closely linked to the pervasive use of, and emotional attachment to, mobile devices that embody migrants’ social and emotional life. Mobile digital technologies are new forms of attachment and flexible, elective belonging regardless of the place of migrants’ sojourning, and play a special role in making them feel at home, responding to the displacement, placeless-ness, and social exclusion and specifically to the racial inequality implicit in transnational migration. Migrant nannies in this case are routinely involved in mobile home-making practices (“Internet is always on”) and experiences of the warmth of domesticity that continually grow in importance, in dealing with the precariousness of placeless-ness. The online ethnic media as home-making practices may suggest that the digital media are not just a vital technological device for communications, information, and entertainment but also, more significantly, an individualized home space (“my own world,” “my home”). Online ethnic media are extended, temporary yet enriched, hybrid spaces of traveling cultures and of potentially meaningful connection, meaning-making, and identity construction, in which migrants can recognize and position themselves in the midst of displacement and within broader relations of power. It is acknowledged that migrant home-making is an inevitable ongoing task for the constant negotiation of displacement, racism, incivility, and ontological insecurity thrown upon by the act of transnational migration, as migrants struggle to settle and feel at home, even in a host country that is known to be relaxed, comfortable, and multicultural (Noble, 2005). As general strategies for home-making, popular media culture from the homeland provides a perfectly ordinary, taken-for-granted, familiar and pleasurable means of self-expression, communal connection, and belonging (“just fun,” “just pleasure,” “comforting”) through home-made taste of foods, home-grown talent shows, popular music, comedy, news, continuity of drama, and all the homely, predictable, and familiar feelings that temporarily surpass, but not erase, constrained physical and material conditions. Watching popular culture, such as entertainment television, is not simply to entertain themselves nor simply a form of escapism or diversion. It is myopic to disregard popular culture as a merely trivial, playful culture or as unworthy of serious consideration. Popular culture is said to take the serious and often oppressive regulation of the conduct of everyday life, and turn it on its head. In such spaces of popu­lar culture, oppressed individuals such as women and minorities can suspend the regularities of daily life, take pleasure, and in some transcendent way, play with the categories and concepts of the world over which they otherwise have no influence (Silverstone, 1999). Images and narratives of popular television wash over individuals in everyday life, but most leave little trace, unless they are particularly relevant and resonate, even for a moment, with something in individuals’ personal or cultural experience. Because of their mundane, familiar, and taken-for-granted

150  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home nature, images and narratives of popular television are not usually objects of reflection in individuals’ everyday life. Yet, at the moments of particular relevance and resonance, everyday meaning-making through popular television lives in the community of its users and enters into life (Bird, 2003). Although most of television watching experience is spent unmarked, there are moments which stand out and are imprinted in users’ memories (Gorton, 2009). These moments include memories of home, albeit idealized and enchanted at transnational distance, which may become an emotional anchoring point for otherwise disenchanted lives. Memories of popular television can be intimately linked to one’s own muted biography and to memories of home. The emotional appeal of television drama, often mentined by migrant nannies, enters into life and moments of memories, triggering an emotionally intensive and conscious rather than mindless identification and immediate bodily reaction (“I cry,” “watch again and again”). These moments of the memorable may  purify symbolically or empower temporarily, rather than alter or transform, the everyday social world in which they struggle. This mediated experience can offer emotional support that is critical in the structuring of life stories and memories and in the management of displacement, and that is increasingly opened up and shared through mediated communicative practices. The significance of television can be recognized as a cultural resource for remembering specific social locations. Women use television in everyday instances of remembering, and these mnemonic practices contribute to the articulation and construction of social identities (Keightley, 2011). Each moment of mediated experience, if relevant and resonant, may invisibly contribute to the repositories of life memories, social connections, and work on the self. Engagement with popular television drama—more or less as women’s ways of knowing the self and as women’s culture across differences of generation—can offer emotional reflexivity and resolution, or an A-ha emotion, a moment of immediate recognition and relevant interpretation of the everyday world women are embedded in (Kim, 2005). Raced, classed, and gendered selves in displacement affect, and are affected by, the habit and structure of everyday cultural practices, and popular media are central to this mundane cultural experience. Today, watching popular television from the homeland is a perfectly ordinary habit in migrants’ lives, the rare but important way in which they can relax after hard work, find current topics for conversation with people from their homeland, and ease feelings of loneliness and homesickness. Television is a habitual part of people’s everyday lives, stitched into their daily routines and expectations (Briggs, 2010). Migrants ritually structure and maintain mediated hyper-connection to their homeland, and recreate a home away from home that is deliberately made meaningful, compensatory, and pleasurable. Home-making practices are crystalized by, materialized by, and inhabited by everyday media rituals. Homes

Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home  151 need to be continually invented, reinvented, and preserved, and the media with many enabling technologies are mobilized to play a central role here and ritually contribute to these ontological shifts. Rituals are essential to home (Silverstone, 1999), and home is essentially a claim for distinction, belonging, and power. Ritualized media use and certain ritual attitudes among migrants for maintaining the sense of home indicate enormous technological potentials and informal and multitude forms of power in securing situated identity, stability, and familiar formulations of cultural spaces. A similar quotidian frequency or everydayness of television is now marked and amplified by mobile digital technologies such as YouTube, one of the most popular and most visited entertainment websites globally (Burgess and Green, 2009). The Internet as the meta-medium has remixed almost all the media—press, radio, television, and cinema— and there is a tendency that migrants still keep watching contents from their homeland, even if they use the global platform YouTube instead of VHS tapes, music tapes, or CDs passed on previously by migrant friends and families returning from home (Bonini, 2011). Without high levels of technical knowledge, migrants can easily enjoy, appropriate and embed YouTube into their lives as a home-making tool, and for many, the Internet is always on to create a feeling of home and warmth of domesticity. The widespread and ubiquitous use and form of YouTube not only surpasses other social media platforms but also influences the ways migrants broaden resources for feeling at home and expand home-­making practices. New social habits can be developed around the YouTube sphere, as migrants come to consume widely and seek out cross-cultural popular entertainment and share newly acquired unique experiences with migrants of other ethnic or national origins, both face-to-face and online. Not only ethnic media culture from their homelands but also non-­Western popular culture, particularly Asian media imaginaries (e.g., Korean drama, Japanese drama, Japanese manga), enable feeling at home and form a minor yet affective and shareable trans-Asian community of sentiment (“warm,” “emotional,” “pure”) that is distinctive or differentiated from a Western sensibility. To some extent, home-making practices in a digital age can be understood not only within a relatively bounded, ethnic, or national location, but also as a set of sharable relationships to mediated culture and cultural proximity, even if differences also persist. Ethnic or national home is an undoubtedly primary means of identification, but at the same time there is some fluidity and multiplicity of home in this process, as part of an extended heterogeneous network that can be created by mobile digital media, increasingly by the mobile phone and YouTube as a multifunction and multimedia device providing always-on Internet connection, anywhere and anytime. As a whole, it can be suggested that Internet use via the mobile phone, as personalized and situated media appropriation, is increasingly

152  Racism, Ethnic Media, and Home integrated into everyday cultural practices and plays a key role in reinforcing migrants’ territorial attachment. Migrants tend to use a variety of Internet applications to reproduce their home territories and ethnic cultural practices (Kang, 2009). The Internet is seen by many as primarily a means of embracing and repairing old identities such as home, family, and nation, although identities today are positioned in relation to a far wider context and dynamic than before (Miller and Slater, 2000). Although processes of identification in a mobile digital realm are often assumed to generate new, flexible, de-territorialized, and transcendent identities, migrants long to create a feeling of home by reviving and strengthening nostalgic and idealized forms of home and by reintegrating into the social and emotional life of the homeland. The role of the digital media in facilitating transnational lives that are situated simultaneously “here” and “there,” or rather reinforcing the prevailing tendency to maintain hyper-connection to the homeland, both empowers and constrains the actions of migrants involved in the routine creation of spaces of belonging, of home, family, and nation.

8 Cosmopolitan Hospitality

I have travelled a lot. My parents (in the Philippines) were very poor, so I started to work abroad. I first travelled to Saudi Arabia with other women in a group. I looked after children, and other women did cleaning and cooking in a big house. We did not have freedom to go out, always worked inside the house, but at least our employer provided enough food to eat. … I also worked in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, and moved to Paris with a Lebanese employer. Paris is not open to foreigners like us. I hope to visit Canada as my sister works for a Canadian family. … My employer’s family in Paris goes on holiday vacations. They have a house in South France. Madam is French and Monsieur is Italian. When their family and friends get together, it’s an international party. It’s more work for me because I have to look after more children. They invite many people. … People don’t talk to me, they leave me alone. They are not interested in me. It’s just a different world to me. I am not one of those invited guests. Standing at a corner, I watch over the children playing together. If the children join their parents, I just use my phone and listen to music (on YouTube). … On my phone I always keep favorite music from my country. My home is on my phone. Wherever I go, I am always connected to my home and talk to my family. I worked in Dubai, Malaysia, Singapore, Greece, before coming to Paris. I travel along with madam’s family whenever they spend holidays in foreign countries, Greece, Spain, Portugal or Switzerland. My friends (nannies) in Paris call me “madam international,” but we know this is more tiring work. Sometimes I have to help with shopping, cooking, and cleaning after madam’s guests leave. But madam doesn’t say “thank you,” doesn’t even offer me a cup of water. … When madam’s family spends summer holidays in foreign countries, I really wish I could go home (Indonesia) and see my children! Madam doesn’t allow me to go. She says in a superior way, “that’s a fact of life,” as if I was born to work like this every day and as if she was born to be served. She doesn’t consider me as part of her family, even though I take care of her children every day. I am always a foreigner. … I keep in touch with my children through phone (Skype) and try to know how they are doing every day and what is going on in my country through news, talk shows, dramas. I am physically far away, but my thought is always there with them. … Once I lost my bag including my bank card and my phone. I contacted

154  Cosmopolitan Hospitality the bank immediately, but felt really frustrated about losing my phone. It was like losing my self, my home. Tourists say Paris is beautiful, but Paris is deceptive to me. Sitting on a bench in the park (near the Eiffel Tower) with little children I look after, I once chatted with other (Asian) nannies who also look after white (French) children: “If tourists in this park see us, they might think Paris is so international and open to foreigners because these children are white with blond hair but their mothers have dark skin. Or, would tourists know we are not mothers but nannies?” We had this chat because there are so many nannies like us. … Tourists say Paris is beautiful, but it’s just the same workplace for us. Tourists come, take photos, eat French food and leave. But we cannot just leave or go home, although we wish to go home. … Like other nannies, I worked in many countries before moving to Paris. My boss has houses in Europe and America, so travels often. This summer I will travel to New York with my boss’ children. My friends in my country (Sri Lanka) say I am an international tourist. They don’t know I work like a slave for these rich people. Working in different countries doesn’t make any difference, it’s the same hard work, and I don’t belong anyway. Looking back, I realize it has been a long hard journey. I have been working abroad for almost 20 years. … Next summer I hope to go home and see my children. I hope to tour and see the beauty of my country. Through the Internet I get information about the beauty and share on Facebook with my family and friends. I  love my country more and more while working abroad.

Whose Cosmopolitanism? Experiences of global nannies so far suggest that the spaces of family, home, homeland, and thereby the idea of an implicitly national territory continue to have a powerful influence on the construction and maintenance of migrant identity, with the contextual recognition of difference and the somehow essentialist insistence on ethnic difference (for details, see Chapter 7). The nationhood implied in the transnational social field is ethnic and cultural, and the notion of home is not merely a nostalgic yearning but an intense desire for a sense of belonging. Far from ­de-territorialization, this study on global nannies indicates that transnational migration and digital media use do not necessarily dissolve ethnic or national territorial identity, but more consciously reinforce it as a cultural entity and a space of belonging. This can be seen as part of a “cultural self-empowerment of the marginal” (Hall, 1991) through ­ ertain transnathe rediscovery of hidden and suppressed life histories. C tional phenomena of mobility and connectivity can engage in the nationalization of the transnational operating in existing power structures and uneven relations of difference while seeking to establish a distinct space of one’s own, as evident among Asian female migrants in the West (Kim, 2011). The experience of an increased level of mobility does not inevitably

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  155 reflect the decline or demise of the nation, nor does it necessarily lead to the replacement of the conceptions of national culture with the global to the extent of becoming irrelevant. Like widely traveled tourists, nannies in the global city of Paris have visited and labored in many different places of Asia, the Middle East, and ­Europe, while commonly facing the difficulties of work conditions, isolation, and exploitation hidden behind the closed doors of private homes and living with embedded contradictions (for details, see ­Chapter 3). ­Living with difference in spatial proximity, in this case private homes, or close contact in everyday life does not always reduce prejudice and non-­belonging. Ironically, it can generate more conscious defensiveness and the bounding of existing identities, rather than increase understanding of one another, provide extended forms of social experience, or open one up to new transnational subjectivity and loosen attachments to the nation. ­Nannies’ transnational practices—pivoting around gendered norms of family duties and family centered digital communication networks—tend to be highly personalized experiences with perpetual connections to the private, intimate, and emotional spaces of family, home, and homeland left behind at transnational distance (for details, see Chapter 4). Gendered, raced selves impact on transnational lives, and families themselves become sites of belonging, part of the imaginary unity through which migrants emotionally seek communal identity (Chamberlain and Leydesdorff, 2004). Gender, race, and nationalism are all materially and historically as well as symbolically intertwined and are all evaluative elements in some kinds of re-enactments across a wide range of communities of practice (King, 2011). By annihilating distance in media-­centered digi­tal cultures, use of mobile phones and the Internet have become key resources and mechanisms for connecting and re-enacting family, home, and nation together in a global era of movement and de-­territorialization. At the intersections of mobility, communications, and cultural consumption, micro-processes of the family, the home, and the private realm are linked and integrated with macro-­dimensions of the national, community, and cultural identities (Morley, 2000). The Internet, used primarily in a personal and private sphere, can be seen as a mundane resource to enable the mobile to sustain their cultural identities and their security in strange and sometimes temporary places (Silverstone, 2005). The Internet as a de-territorializing medium may indeed be global, yet Internet users continue to live within the space where they feel a sense of belonging, and do not usually venture beyond their language and cultural group to interact with those whom they normally would have little opportunity to meet otherwise (Liu et al., 2002). Transnational practices of hyper-connection, as shown by global nannies in this study, do not entail a weakened personal and private involvement with ethnic or national culture, and the nation does not become less and less vital as a source of cultural resonance and identity. Although

156  Cosmopolitan Hospitality the non-territorial character of the Internet is often predicted to threaten the cultural integrity of nations and make it difficult or impossible to uphold a collective sense of national identity based on shared images, representations, and myths, experiences of migrants working abroad temporarily or permanently reveal that such predictions are mistaken since the Internet is used to strengthen, rather than weaken, national identities (Eriksen, 2007). Contrary to all the predictions about the new global technology, national identity and culture are central to the use of the Internet. Mundane Internet use, including chat rooms and banal talk about everyday things, is viewed as being part of expressive, warm, and distinctive national culture, infused with strong national consciousness and nationalistic aspirations on a global stage (Miller and Slater, 2000). It is possible to see the continuing power and vitality of nations and nationalisms (Smith, 1995) or the growing significance of long-distance nationalism in a transnational context (Anderson, 1992), continuing as a major ideological force in many little “banal” ways (Billig, 1995) that are now so familiar, so continual, as routinely mediated by the Internet in everyday life. Migrants’ transnational practices tend to suggest a banal and playful form of digital nationalism or vernacular culture of portable nationalism as produced through accessible, personalized, portable digital technologies and the ubiquitous flows of nation-centered and popular culture-oriented entertainment from the homeland, including popular music and drama that become embedded into migrants’ home-making practices (for details, see Chapter 7). These seemingly trivial, everyday practices are part of the uneventful, ephemeral, and elusive phenomena and pursuits in everyday routines that are usually neglected or not noticed, because they are too ordinary or too insignificant. However, it is important to recognize how seemingly marginal activities, non-events, or the performance of mundane and repetitive tasks may be more influential and provoke thoughts about what is taken for granted, normal, and natural (Ehn and Lofgren, 2010). Routine, habitual connectivity to ethnic media spaces and personalized, portable national culture provides the everyday rhythms through which a crucial and sometimes pleasurable means of self-expression and social connection is sustained for a sense of belonging and empowerment against the banality of the dominant social order. Ethnic minorities lack the means to challenge the power of the dominant social order, and their engagement with the ethnic media as everyday practice manages and navigates the forces imposed upon and alien to them in the place of the white majority. The weak escape the dominant social order without leaving it; many everyday practices are tactical in character, knowing how to get away with things, maneuvers, joyful discoveries (De Certeau, 1984). Migrants’ appropriation of digital media in their quotidian habits shows the extent to which the technological device is inseparable from, and deeply embedded in, everyday struggles and pleasures, the material

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  157 constraints and emotional support that it encounters and articulates in multifaceted contexts of the everyday (for details, see Chapters 5 and 6). Digital cultural objects or mediated commodities, in the practices of appropriation connected with them, configure subjects in ways that are difficult to reconcile with existing structures of domination in daily life (Poster, 2004). On the one hand, the appropriation of digital media by migrants transforms the migrant experience into a nationalizing process with family centered networks and home-making practices as well as the nationalist popular imagination triggering some sense of belonging and empowerment. On the other hand, these new technologies as strategies to deal with displacement not only attenuate but also perpetuate the experiences of isolation and social exclusion. The new technologies’ transformative yet under-determined potential can work to reinforce already existing power relations and structures of inequality through the process of continual isolation and exclusion from the mainstream society. The double role of the digital media in transnational migrants’ everyday lives is significant in its own right, as a complex and contradictory culture marking out spaces of belonging “there” and ritualizing constraints “here” within the nationalizing process. The nature and significance of the nationalizing process thus call into question the de-territorialization of existing social relations that is commonly associated with transnational mobility and digital media use. Transnational mobilization of individuals today, in unprecedented and intensive transnational movements, time-space compressing techno­logical innovations, electronic mass mediation by the Internet, and instant and regular connections across national borders, is thought to represent a necessary condition for the rise of transnationalism, multi-stranded social relations in the age of trans-border crossers (Portes et al., 1999), an explicitly transnational and even post-national era (Appadurai, 1996) and the declining importance of nation and national identity (Hannerz, 1996; Beck, 2000). Transnational media flows, accelerated and intensified by the Internet’s de-territorializing capacity, are situated at the center of these assumptions of transnational processes and consequences. It has been assumed that transnational migrants and diasporic subjects may eventually move beyond the national mentality and its fundamental and essentialist categories of identity, culture, and belonging and instead come to address the problems of national social relations and essentialism with new narratives of emancipation and further consider alternative possibilities of transnational subjectivity in the new encounters of the wider transnational spaces. To the contrary, the national home as a mythical space of desire, remains a key, albeit partial, context for a diasporic consciousness and subjectivity, becoming not simply outdated but more important than transnational trends (Kim, 2011). There are the wealthier, privileged cosmopolitans who increasingly de-link from their nation of origin into an international world of cultural mixture

158  Cosmopolitan Hospitality and connections and enjoy multiple belongings and flexible identities, as opposed to marginalized, poorer groups of migrants who respond to the pressures of power inequality by becoming even more national or home-loving for the safeness of place and ritual belonging (Morley, 2000). Global nannies in this study suffer from the consequences of their displacement, far from becoming the often-celebrated de-nationalized cosmopolitans in the space of transnational mobility. Whose cosmopolitanism? Cosmopolitanism has become the privileged, prime term of analysis for characterizing qualities in people on the move and their identities, in the current debate of transnational mobility at cultural, moral, and political levels. It has been generally argued that increased mobility and the transnational flows of labor, capital, ethnicity, and culture, along with global media flows and consequent encounters with difference, lead people around the world to go beyond the boundaries of national thinking and develop a shared cosmopolitan outlook. Cosmopolitanism basically means the recognition of difference, both internally and externally. Cultural differences are neither arranged in a hierarchy of difference nor subsumed into a universalism but are accepted for what they are (Beck, 2006). Cosmopolitanism suggests a more outward-looking disposition, a mode of engaging with the world and such experiential openness and willingness toward divergent cultural experiences (Hannerz, 1990). As individuals and groups now travel across the world at escalating distances and unprecedented scales and create transnational forms of life temporarily or permanently, contemporary conditions and social relations are thought to be shaped by cosmopolitan predispositions and practices. More and more people are now said to be conscious of the phenomenon that they are living in an age of global flows of money, goods, and consumption, that interdependencies with other human beings and places are on the increase, and that the boundaries of nations and cultures are possibly blurring and intermingling. Such consciousness suggests that cosmopolitanism has become more of a possibility and a reality (Szerszynski and Urry, 2002). Cosmopolitans become open to the world by abandoning territory and rootedness (Beck, 2002), perhaps on the condition that they are in a position to freely transcend boundaries and belong to the world. To a large extent, this trend of cosmopolitan openness as opposed to closure has been prompted and intensified by the accelerating processes of digital media technologies and liberal flows of new images, concepts, lifestyles, and commodities that are perceived to create opportunities for contact of different cultures and otherness and hence cosmopolitan encounters. The recent re-vitalization of cosmopolitanism has been in fashion since the 1990s, amid intensifying globalization of late liberalism, capital, mobility, and media. Greater frequency of travel and transnational media cultural flows create a zone in which emergent global forms of cosmopolitanism are brought into a conflictual relationship

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  159 with nationalist forms of culture (Appadurai, 1996). Social relations are increasingly produced through transnational communication systems occurring beyond the limitations of national boundaries and control (Juergensmeyer, 2014) and through mobile networks of cultural and socio-economic interdependencies that routinely enable the accessibility of other cultures and experiential domains in everyday life. The transnational flows and networks of the media, including entertainment, are taken as an emblematic domain of existing, banal cosmopolitanization (Beck, 2006) or ordinary cosmopolitanism as potentially productive and meaningful exchanges that are grounded in everyday experiences associated with talking, eating, listening and watching, shopping and imagining (Skrbis and Woodward, 2013). As a special feature of cosmopolitanism, the globalization of entertainment and popular culture proliferated through mobile digital technologies has encouraged an increased sense of transnational connection and imagination. The world today is increasingly conceived as networked imagined spaces, as there are now countless virtual, imagined, and real lives that crisscross each other and connect points that are separated by vast distances. If there is anything to learn from the aesthetic forays into the ideas of home and the stranger, openness and cosmopolitanism, it revolves around the belief that the imagination can yield an alternative sense of place, create new modes of relating to others, and present another way of seeing the world as a whole (Papastergiadis, 2012). Cosmopolitanism concerns ways of imagining the world, and thus it is more than a condition of mobility or transnational movement (Delanty, 2012). In cultural and political dimensions, cosmopolitanism lives a double life; a pop cultural evocation of openness to a larger world, and a political claim about the moral significance of transcending the local, even achieving the universal (Calhoun, 2008). Invoked as a moral and ethical ideal, cosmopolitanism means learning from each other’s differences through conversation and taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance (Appiah, 2006). Transgressing frontiers and social status, the quest of cosmo­ politanism is associated with love of what is different, unique, unstable, and foreign (Badiou, 2012). It represents a normative philosophy transcending all identities—a universal identification that does not place love/loyalty of country ahead of love of mankind, universal humanity (Nussbaum, 1997), assuming that extensive learning of human diversity will lead to a finding of common human qualities and purposes. Despite the tension between the universal and the particular, cosmo­politanism assumes a shared post-national identity based on the universalistic norms of discourse ethics beyond the boundaries and limitations of nation states (Habermas, 2003; Benhabib, 2006). In its most basic form, cosmopolitanism maintains that there are moral obligations owed to all human beings based solely on humanity alone, without reference to race,

160  Cosmopolitan Hospitality ethnicity, nationality, culture, political affiliation, or other communal particularities. As both a moral and a political project, cosmopolitanism is universal in its scope, maintaining that all humans are equal in their moral standing and that this moral standing equally applies to everyone everywhere (Brown and Held, 2010). Significantly, the transnational flows of media images, information, and knowledge have contributed to the fundamental erosion of, and thus the sense of, spatial distance that previously separated individuals from the need to consider all the other humans and humanity. The image of humanity and the morality of every­day lifeworlds are fundamentally altered by everyday media worlds, while simultaneously a form of cosmopolitanism occurs in the realm of emotions and empathy across great distances (­ Tomlinson, 1999). The boundary-less media with free, unconstrained global discourses are seen to foster cosmopolitanism of emotions through an opening up to other people, cultures and places of the globe. With a moral, emotional, reflexive sense of boundary-less-ness, the human condition has itself been cosmo­politan (Beck, 2006). Because of the growing empirical reality that the world is getting smaller, mediated, and compressed, and because of this increased human interaction and moral questions, it is now common for politicians, academics, and ordinary people to engage in discussions about what this increasing interconnection means to people’s everyday lives, as well as to the lives of others whom they encounter and live with (Brown and Held, 2010). In this conjuncture, there is a tendency to equate widely traveled cross-border migrants with the cosmopolitan, with openness to active embracing of diversity and de-territorialization. Transnational migrants, because of their socially constructed desire to leave their country and imagine a better life, are assumed to develop a voluntary detachment from their homeland and a potential for the cosmopolitan, rather than national, component of identity. Transnational groups are figured as the bearers of de-territorialized cosmopolitanism, as “always already cosmo­politan,” which goes beyond the grip of any individual state. Their cultures are characterized as worldly, productive sites of crossing and as exemplary instances of active resistance to national cultures and localism (Clifford, 1992; Bhabha, 1994). However, it is necessary to question the general tendency to construct a celebratory image of the de-­ territorialized, nomadic, rootless cosmopolitan. It is crucial to ask more concretely where, how, and for whom de-territorialization or cosmopolitanism is actually taking place, and furthermore, who experiences forms of cosmopolitanism as enriching (Morley, 2000). Not everyone sees him- or herself as part of cosmopolitanism or can afford to choose to participate in interactions with people who are different, in equal relations of power and moral standing. Considering those who are socially displaced, stigmatized, and disempowered, it is equally important to recognize the tensions that emerge from within differently situated

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  161 relationships, discourses, representations, and social movements and thereby critically understand a situated cosmopolitanism that speaks to the anxieties, contradictions, and disparities in power (Glick Schiller and Irving, 2015). The relatively privileged idea of cosmopolitanism is normatively valorized and reinvigorated against nationalism (Kristeva, 1993). A cosmo­ politan position of the so-called “citizen of the world” indicates the impending obsolescence of national cultural identity of national self that is understood as an ideological or naturalized constraint to be overcome (Beck, 2006). This emergent form of cosmopolitanism has come to be cast as a potentially liberatory space, a locus of progressive politics and rejection of parochial nationalist positions. Such a condition called cosmopolitanism, mixed with the vision of a global, hybrid, and rootless culture, has been celebrated as an alternative to ethnocentric nationalism. It is said that the banal nationalism of the first modernity is being subverted by a banal cosmopolitanization of the second modernity (Beck, 2006). Advocates for the idea of cosmopolitanism, as the extension of the cultural, moral, and political horizons of people, institutions, and societies, tend to overstate their speculations about the decline of the nation-state and declining allegiance to national identity, at least as far as Europe is concerned. Much of the theory on cosmopolitanism suggests that existing transnational movements and digitally networked spaces give rise to the emergence of new world communities with emancipatory forms of global consciousness and lifestyles. However, the meaning of cosmopolitanism is equally disputed, and celebrations of the cosmopolitan can suggest an unpleasant posture of superiority toward the putative provincial, without developing habits of co-existence and conversation of living together across boundaries (Appiah, 2006). In fact, migrants of marginalized groups create ways of maintaining connection to their homeland and hence a re-invigoration of an undesired nationalism—­ undesired as seen from cosmopolitan anxieties of the majority in Europe (Yegenoglu, 2012). Those displaced often find themselves in circumstances that close down their possibilities for cosmopolitan openness or unsettle their aspirations for belonging and security (Glick Schiller and Irving, 2015). Global nannies in this study constitute one such marginalized group, continuing attachment to their national culture and speaking from their subaltern positionings and experiences of displacement in a hierarchal world of Europe, in a world of difference that is bound to create a hierarchy based on asymmetrical power relations. Cosmopolitan Europe was consciously initiated as the political antithesis to a nationalistic Europe, and cosmopolitanism as a vital theme of European civilization and European consciousness is believed to have the latent potential to break out of the self-centered narcissism of the national outlook (Beck, 2006). Cosmopolitan perspectives are deemed vital in Europe’s ongoing transformation, becoming a way of imagining

162  Cosmopolitan Hospitality ethical life and political responsibilities. Nevertheless, the social reality of cosmopolitanism is much more ambiguous, marked by structures of power and inequality, exclusion and inclusion governing one’s relationship to others and the world. Who wouldn’t want to be a citizen of the world? The possibility of cosmopolitan identity requires taking account of the uneven social relations of power, ethnic cultural differentiation, and situated human contexts in which one defines the self and others not necessarily in terms of pleasures but in terms of tensions to cope with (Kim, 2011). There are discrepancies between the global circulations of pleasurable media images, commodities and consumer cultures of cosmopolitanism and the actual realities of the lives of displaced migrants and marginalized minorities. Pleasurable images, fantasies, and consumerist desires formed by the global media and popular culture to some extent facilitate transnational migration of young women from the poor South to the rich North, to the global cities of Europe and Paris in particular with its reified image: “Paris is beautiful” (for details, see C ­ hapter 5). One may remain curious to question where ­everyday people have received the image of cosmopolitanism from, and what is happening to it (Derrida, 2001). In this mobile digital age, increasing media-­connectedness, individualized yet networked consumer spaces and proliferating images of cultural cosmopolitanism do not necessarily create a moral condition to foster a cosmopolitan outlook. Although geographical borders are becoming loosened by virtue of de-­ territorializing digital media communications via the Internet and the emergence of communities such as the European Union, and although temporal boundaries of the past are being blurred through the increases in mediated knowledge and imagination, the promotion of a humanist world in the name of cosmopolitanism and world-citizenship falls short of achieving the proposed goal (Park, 2009). Crucial limits to cosmopolitanism are found in the casual acts of banal racism in work and everyday life—an indication of the unwelcoming of strangers, the different and unrecognizable, with a daily reminder of inferiority and discrimination (for details, see Chapter 7). The idea of a cosmopolitan Europe and diversity continues to be central to contemporary debates, but much of this idea remains disconnected from the need to consider questions concerning the centrality of work and racist nationalism as well as a racialized politics based upon the fear of strangers (Stevenson, 2006). Diversity, as a set of practices, can participate in the creation of an idea of an institution that allows racism and inequalities to be overlooked; if diversity is a way of viewing or even picturing an institution, then it might allow only some things to come into view (Ahmed, 2012). The appealing nature of diversity, for instance Europe’s diversity of cultures, can be paradoxical. In practice, as far as most cultures are concerned, not all strangers are equally strange, and unwelcoming discourse is not targeted at white people but predominantly at non-white

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  163 people (Morley, 2000). With its hierarchical and racist subordination of other cultures and peoples, cosmopolitanism is marked by racism and exclusion, closure and fear in France, as evident in the marginalization of non-white diasporic communities that have emerged as the cultural and racial other to France’s self and struggle for inclusion, belonging, and identity (Freedman and Tarr, 2000; Laachir, 2007). France has had a certain tendency to portray itself as being more open to foreigners in contradistinction to other European countries, but the motives behind such a policy of opening up to the foreigners have, however, never been ethical, in the sense of the moral law or the law of the land ­(Derrida, 2001). The motives have been for obvious economic reasons and national interests that necessitate and permit certain types of migrant workers. For instance, France is in a greater need for migrant nannies, who offer intimate care for her children and home but generally remain racialized, marginalized, low-wage workers. Contrary to the rosy assumptions of cosmopolitan encounters, diversity and belonging, close contact does not alleviate prejudices in societies of Europe that offer little possibility of social advancement and belonging for migrant domestic workers, and such contact spaces are morally framed through b ­ oundary-making based on intersections of class, race, and migrancy in private and public spheres (Nare, 2014). This is particularly evident in the large number of undocumented domestic workers from the poor South. While ­Europe brought many low-wage migrant workers from the poor South to labor in its private and public spheres, it has never welcomed them into its culture; they have come to be increasingly regarded as undesirable, threatening strangers and have become the targets of racism and hostility, fueled by a political rhetoric that extols the virtues of a form of national identity which is predicated on cultural exclusiveness (Morley, 2000). The continuing marginalization and exclusion of these minorities perpetuates the power structures of the host (nation, home, employer) and her guest by the dominant political-economic, cultural, individual order. Politics to develop meaningful contact, between minority ethnic groups and the white majority, needs to address inequalities as well as diversity, and fuse what are often seen as separate debates about racism and respect for difference with questions of social-economic inequalities and power (Valentine, 2008). The tension between identity and difference is at the heart of cosmo­ politan ethics, and the stranger or the guest in a home not of her own suffers the symbolic violence of assimilation (Baker, 2009). Debates about how to best promote cultural assimilation are central to most European public agendas (Maxwell, 2012). Historically, French understandings of nationhood have been state-centered and assimilationist (Brubaker, 1992). While French nationhood is constituted by political unity, it is centrally expressed in the striving for cultural unity; politi­ cal inclusion has entailed cultural assimilation for cultural minorities

164  Cosmopolitan Hospitality and migrants alike. The historical and expressed objective of French social structures and national education remains Franco-conformity— an arrogant assimilationism toward a national identity in keeping with the interest of national unity (Keaton, 2006). The riots in France, for instance in 2005, were testament to an overly inflexible French policy of assimilating communities into the unitary national identity that cannot be subdivided into distinct communitarian parts by a strong and separate sense of identity (Raymond and Modood, 2007). The race riots across France have been widely recognized as an illustration of the failure of the French model of (im)migrant integration, while indicating that ideological and institutional constraints continue to shape a shifting world of unstable identities for migrants (Sargent and Larchanché-Kim, 2006). Contrary to frequent claims that recent migrant minorities cannot be successfully incorporated into Europe and particularly France because they are supposedly unwilling to adapt to its cultural norms, there is overwhelming evidence to show that the principal barriers come from socio-economic disadvantage and racial discrimination by members of the majority (Stevenson, 2006; Hargreaves, 2007; Kontos, 2009; ­Maxwell, 2012; Nare, 2014). If integration has proceeded more slowly than wished in France, this is not because of resistance against it by migrant minorities, but because politicians have been too slow in taking action against the poison of discrimination (Hargreaves, 2007). In parti­ cular, this would entail a politics that seriously considers the centrality of employment while granting people a basic income and a more concerted attempt to break with a racialized politics and racist nationalism (Stevenson, 2006). Understanding why some migrants are better integrated, or not integrated, than others is a crucial question for multicultural nations such as France struggling to maintain stability and unity in the midst of growing migration-related diversity, and these concerns should be addressed by analyzing the conditions that shape integration outcomes for different migrant groups, including ethnic minority migrants in France (Maxwell, 2012). For migrant domestic workers, the capacity to cope with problems, to achieve participation, and to realize belonging is broadly affected by conditions set by social and integration policies (Kontos, 2009). Such conditions, or barriers to integration, are related to socio-economic resources and class position, racial discrimination, cultural stigmatization, and difference. Critically, multiculturalism in Europe rapturously celebrates the social accommodation of diversity, but it lacks a sense of cosmopolitan realism, and it is blind to the contingencies and ambivalences of ways of dealing with difference that go beyond assimilation and integration (Beck, 2006). Cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism are co-­constitutive; multiculturalism without cosmo­ politanism becomes a nasty ghetto; thus, putting them together gives politics a whole new agenda (Papastergiadis, 2012). Multiculturalism is a strategy for dealing with difference in society that situates respect

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  165 for cultural difference in the national space. While multiculturalism is generally reduced to a political strategy for managing minorities within a nation-state, cosmopolitanism is represented as the effort to transcend national categories. Multiculturalism remains trapped in the national outlook, with its either/or categories and its susceptibility to essentialist definitions of identity. Contemporary global politics is in significant measure one in which minorities, recently or less recently displaced, are seeking to defend, not just the right to exist materially but the right to maintain their own culture, their own identity in the context of the persistence of inequalities of access to both material and symbolic resources (Silverstone, 1999). For marginalized or downwardly mobile minorities, their ethnic media from the homeland are meaningfully mobilized and appropriated as integral resources in the ongoing struggles for recognition, identity maintenance, belonging, and power they lack in the foreign place (for details, see Chapter 7). Ethnic media spaces created by the everyday practices of digital migrants signal multiple meanings and new dimensions to ­identity—as an inevitable response to deep-seated social inequalities and particularly unequal racial relations, as a muted and implicit form of anti-racist resistance to compensate for the consequences of social and economic disadvantage, as cultural withdrawal of the marginalized into ethnic enclaves to create separate lives and identities, as conscious and stronger connection to the homeland, as a lack of motivation or willingness to integrate into French culture and society. In the age of mobile digital connection, these mundane and ritualistic developments of ethno-national culture, though hidden and unpresentable in itself, indicate that traditional assimilation paradigms of the host land are increasingly becoming, and will continue to become more, untenable. In France, only in very recent years has the legitimacy of cultural difference been recognized through the adoption of the now fashionable notion of diversity. However, some policy-makers still refuse to speak of ethnic minorities and tend to insist that multiculturalism is fundamentally incompatible with France’s model of integration; this notion of integration is predicated on the assumption that social differentiation is, or should be, in the process of being reduced (Hargreaves, 2007). The politics of identity in France exist within a state of tension between an ideology of national unity and a reality of ethnic diversity, and people of color are not accorded the social recognition and currency that assimilation presumes (Keaton, 2006). The marginalized and the excluded can become disenfranchised from humanity, misrecognized as the other, exploited and oppressed, and vulnerable to systematic violence (Cottle, 2000). The formation of a new Europe cannot be simply searched for in cosmo­politanism. The private and public sphere erases the traces of otherness, and otherness becomes tolerable only insofar as it resembles the sovereign European self (Yegenoglu, 2012). A particular cultural

166  Cosmopolitan Hospitality homogeneity is assumed, and this becomes a standard of universal significance. Cosmo­politanism is Eurocentric to the extent that being cosmopolitan as a practice is associated with being in the West, and cosmo­politanism as an idea is seen as being of the West (Bhambra, 2011). In a sense, cosmopolitanism is therefore uncosmopolitan in being a pro­ duct of the West and in tending to ignore the experience and subjectivity of non-Western parts of the world (Delanty, 2012), which may call for a need to continue work of recovering non-Western discourses of difference and marginalized forms of life for empowerment and intercultural exchange, but this time with more rigor and urgency (Paredes-Canilao, 2006). The cosmo-politically inclined European subject, in desiring to protect the private and public sphere from the threats of others and of ethnic or nationalist attachments, ends up refusing a relation with the different and the unrecognizable, and hence evades responding to others (Yegenoglu, 2012). Cosmopolitanism and ethnic nationalism, which appear to be mutually exclusive, should nevertheless enter into dialogical relations with one another in everyday practice (Beck, 2006), and furthermore respond to one another in hospitality for feeling at home as opposed to feeling unwelcome at the boundaries of the nation, ethnicity, and other communities of conflicting values and discrimination.

Hospitality as an Urgent Response Although I have worked for this French family for 5 years, I don’t know them very well and they don’t know me. They might think I am a stranger but living in their house. Not like family, not really. Madam doesn’t know anything about me or my country ­(Indonesia). She once asked about food, “What do you eat in your country? Do you eat rice every day?” She doesn’t seem interested in anything else. … I once talked about my family, especially about my c­ hildren (back home), but she didn’t respond or show any interest. That was awkward, so I stopped talking. She doesn’t have any conversation with me. To her, I am just a nanny hired to look after her ­children. … But there is one thing good about Madam. When she is away for summer vacations, she asks me to look after her apartment and her dog, and she allows me to cook food and invite my friends. ­Occasionally she allows that, when she is in good mood. That is enjoyable to us (nannies), because we live in very small (service) rooms and cannot invite friends for cooking and eating together. Eating outside is very expensive in Paris. Madam likes to taste foods from different countries, Asian foods as well. She loves Japanese sushi and goes to a Japanese restaurant regularly with her family. She has already tried various Asian restaurants in her area. Sometimes I cook Asian foods, noodles, and share with her. But she doesn’t cook and share food with me. … In fact,

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  167 Madam doesn’t eat food with me. I always bring my own food and feel hungry at the end of long work. Looking after little children is tiring. Madam is very rich, but doesn’t share food with me. … Madam drives a car to go grocery shopping and takes me there. She tells me to bring grocery bags from shops to her car. She buys fresh, expensive fish (tuna, salmon) for her family. One time I said, “I also like fish,” and then she picked up small, cheap fish (mackerel) for me. Even with this kind of small thing, her attitude shows she is superior and I am inferior. She reminds me who I am in relation to her. … Madam gave me her shoes and jackets that she didn’t use anymore. So I have fancy shoes for a party that might not be quite useful for me. During the last Christmas, she gave me a bag of her used clothes. It’s like a charity gift for Christmas, because she thinks I am so poor. I even work for this family during Christmas. When my employer’s family went on holiday vacation, Madam asked her daughter (aged 8) who she would like to invite among her school friends. The daughter chose one Asian girl (from China) in her class. Madam said she would invite her as a guest to play with her daughter. During the holiday vacation, Madam and her partner used one room in a hotel, and I stayed in another room with her daughter and the Asian girl. The Asian girl was sweet and polite. Whenever I helped her, for example, opened the door for her or gave snack to eat together, she would always smile at me and say “thank you.” The hotel had a swimming pool, and there were many kinds of restaurants, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc. Madam let her daughter decide where she would like to eat and what she would like to play. The Asian girl had to follow her decision. The guest was meant to entertain her daughter. … Another time, again Madam invited the Asian girl as a guest to play with her daughter from 1:00pm until the dinner time 7:00pm in her apartment. But the Asian girl’s mother came around 5:00pm to pick her up because they usually have dinner earlier, unlike French people. So the girl was left alone with me between 5:00pm and 7:00pm, and she got bored. Madam was very irritated, “I invited her to entertain my daughter!” I was sad to hear that again. … Through the Asian girl, I saw myself. I saw how I was treated by this family. I am meant to make their life comfortable and enjoyable. They don’t care about my situation. They would just say, “If you don’t like it, go back to your country.” They don’t care about how I feel and what I think, while living together in the home. I am a human being, not a servant. Who feels at home? Global nannies in this study do not feel part of the family, the home, or the territory of the host (for details, see ­Chapters 6 and 7). The voluntary and obligatory mobilities of migration today are generating new patterns of circulation, intersection, and

168  Cosmopolitan Hospitality proximity between strangers, and social life is increasingly comprised of strange encounters, while calling for a need to interrogate the ethical responses to mobile others who are more or less invited, more or less welcome (Molz and Gibson, 2007). New intersections and proxi­ mities as well as everyday encounters bring the difficult and urgent question of hospitality—how to welcome the stranger, the foreigner, the other to one’s home, nation, space, and self. Cosmopolitanism and hospitality begin at home. Home is often idealized as a space of hospitality that offers travelers or guests respite from the labor of mobility. Cosmopolitanism and hospitality, then, would need to operate not just on macro levels but also crucially on the micro and personal levels, as lived and mediated experience in everyday life. Home is not the site of the ­welcoming of possibility, but is the possibility of the ­ ospitality (Derrida, 2001). Home is clearly central to welcome, of h formulations of hospitality; however, what constitutes home depends very much on the way hospitality is imagined, performed, offered, or denied (Molz and Gibson, 2007). Hospitality is a constitutive element of cosmopolitanism, and is urgently brought back to center stage in the contemporary concerns of a mobile world. The key cosmopolitan principle is that of hospitality— the universal and fundamental moral principle of opening one’s home to strangers, and of treating them equally in dignity and worth (Kant, 1795/2010). Criticizing the injustices, exploitation of resources, and enslavement of people committed by the European colonial states, Kant originally conceived hospitality as the right of strangers not to be treated with hostility when they enter someone else’s territory as long as they behave peacefully. Hospitality is oriented toward the stranger and her needs, rather than toward one’s home and territory. Hospitality here should not be merely reduced to philanthropy or charity, but it is fundamentally a question of right, a cosmopolitan right of hospitality, a right of all strangers to claim a right of resort. However, this concept of hospitality can be viewed as conditional, as it requires that the strangers behave peacefully in the foreign territory. This conditionality, or the condition of universal hospitality, is a limitation, and in practice, hospitality of this type is not possible without further conditions (Derrida, 2001). According to Derrida, there are some impasses embedded in hospitality, defined by the conflicts between the unconditional principles of hospitality and the conditions under which these principles must be implemented: In order to offer hospitality, one must be the master of the home or nation, and one must in some sense control it in order to be able to host at all. Also, the host must have some degree of control over her guests as well. The host has the duty of choosing and selecting those to whom she decides to grant the right of visiting, or hospitality. Thus, hospitality offered is always limited, as it is subject to strict and domesticating conditionalities by the host. While the moral injunction to hospitality

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  169 might be unconditional in principle—open one’s home, nation, space and self to the other, act beyond one’s own self-interest, and welcome the other whoever she is unconditionally without consideration of where she comes from, from a rich North or a poor South—in practice, it does involve conditions that have important ethical and politi­cal implications. This complex vision of hospitality necessarily encompasses both the ethical and the political domains which must always be negotiated, between the law of an unconditional hospitality offered to e­ very other and the conditional laws of a right to hospitality. The ethics of hospitality often does not reach the ideal, so must be supplemented with a politics of hospitality. Hospitality of this type recognizes the apparently irreducible ethical-political complexity, almost impossibility, of hospitality, while still insisting on the necessity, the imperative, of practicing it (Derrida, 2001). In this sense, hospitality is both impossible and necessary. While hospitality can be held out as an impossible real to improve politics and ethics, one would not want to come too close to it (La Caze, 2013). The concept of hospitality is thus recognized in the context of the moral and political implications of cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism and hospitality are necessarily the starting point in rethinking the place of foreigners, migrants, strangers to contemporary politics. Thinking cosmopolitanism through hospitality becomes a necessary rather than contingent exercise in politics (Baker, 2009). Cosmopolitanism can be taken as synonymous with an ethics of hospitality, while remaining true to the cosmopolitan impulse to recognition of moral obligations to foreigners and humanity. Humanity has today become an inescapable fact, an essential human right in global contexts (Arendt, 1976). The connection between cosmopolitanism and hospitality remains an ethical and political response to the uneasy questions about how to deal with humanity, how to treat foreigners such as undocumented migrants in Europe, how to organize interpersonal relations and reconcile one another to exist side by side, rather than exclude. Hospitality may be viewed as a demanding version of cosmopolitanism because of its emphasis on practicing engagement with the other. Cosmopolitanism cannot be coerced, but must be the result of universal norm building and a recognized need for hospitality that will gradually spread further and further (Kant, 1795/2010). Whilst cosmopolitanism is a big idea that is often exaggerated and implicitly idealized, it ought to be found in small things, in the manifestations and possibilities of hospitality in everyday people and humble, ordinary encounters (Skrbis and Woodward, 2013). Cosmopolitanism starts gradually in the gestures of hospitality, every small gesture of reciprocity that can potentially be seen as part of the drive to achieve sociality and the ideal emerging from the critical consciousness of everyday people (Papastergiadis, 2012). Its core value is reciprocal recognition of the equal moral respect of everyday people, which involves thinking from the standpoint of everyone else and a

170  Cosmopolitan Hospitality sense of humility and openness (Held, 2010). The micro-scale of everyday encounters, small interactions, mundane friendliness and kindness in private and public spheres, for example, holding doors, sharing seats and so on, represents one form of togetherness, one facet of reciprocal acknowledgment, although the extent to which these everyday practices truly represent the dialogue and exchange necessary for the kind of cosmopolitanism and hospitality needs closer consideration (Valentine, 2008). Hospitality reveals its complex nature in a range of places, moments, objects, and fantasies, from the micro-gesture of a warm smile to the macro-iconic symbol of an open door (Molz and Gibson, 2007). In a broad sense, hospitality is culture itself and not simply one ethics among others, insofar as it has to do with one’s home, the familiar place of dwelling, and with the manner in which one relates to oneself and to the other (Derrida, 2001). Indeed, hospitality is implicit in all discourse on the relationship between the self and the other (Baker, 2011). It is relational, dialogic, and connected to the act of engagement with the other. Toward more inclusive and tolerant formations, hospitality is another kind of extension of wonder, generosity, and love and importantly involves the openness of wonder to the difference of the arriving other (La Caze, 2013). Although it may be common to see a courteous and sometimes kind behavior toward the other in public space, this is not the same as having meaningful contact and respect for difference of the other (Valentine, 2008). Everyday contact with difference does not necessarily reduce prejudice or translate into a better understanding of, and a more positive respect for, difference. Indeed, one does not know enough about the other, the difference of the other, in the home that one allows the other to enter. What does one talk about when one talks about difference? Cosmopolitanism, like hospitality, is based on the recognition that human beings are different and that one can learn from each other’s differences (Appiah, 2006). It is proposed that openness to the other is the only way toward mutual understanding of differences and that there should be a way of relating to the other that is not bound by instrumental calculations of fear and bene­fit (Papastergiadis, 2012). Something as banal and mundane as food, for instance, keeps open the mystery of the other’s identity in everyday experiential spaces. It seems undoubtedly true that the primary way of experiencing cultural difference and cosmopolitan-ness is through being a global consumer, through a taste for the other. Willingly or unwillingly, human beings today are increasingly confronted by, and open to, the world of consumption and symbols of consumerist cosmopolitanism in everyday life. Experiencing ethnic cuisines, exotic music, tourism, lifestyles, and so on, and entering into the experiences of unfamiliar lives is becoming a prominent and ordinary facet of city life in Europe, which may appear to promise further openness to cultural difference and banal cosmopolitanism. In this connection, consumer society is said to be the really

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  171 existing world society, and cosmopolitanism has itself become an everyday commodity selling the glitter of cultural difference across national borders. There is increasing evidence that banal cosmopolitanism is intimately connected with all forms of consumption—exhibited not only by the vast, colorful array of meals, foodstuffs, restaurants, and menus routinely found in almost any city anywhere in the world, but also pervasive in other spheres of everyday culture (Beck, 2006). It is tentatively suggested that everyday ordinary encounters of diversity through things like food, the incorporation of patterns of omnivorous-ness, and consumption for colorful difference can constitute a valid cosmopolitan experience and may be useful building blocks for the prospect of the formation of a fully formed cosmopolitanism (Skrbis and Woodward, 2013). Everyday cultural exchanges such as eating different foods are assumed to promote an appreciation of the benefits of migration in people’s everyday life and increase people’s tolerance and levels of openness toward differences. However, these elements of aestheticization of difference in play, including the cosmopolitan experience of tasting other foods, may be part of occasional adventurous sorties into the exotic or simply forms of commodification of otherness within which multicultural difference is consumed by privileged white cosmopolitan consumers as a form of spice or seasoning that can liven up mainstream white culture ­(Morley, 2000). The cosmopolitan experience of multicultural commodities can produce a multiculturalism without the other, one of “hegemonic versions of culture and oppression” (Visweswaran, 2010), a hegemonic discourse of diversity and cultural mixing in which the other subjects are erased by white cosmopolitan consumers and to an extent “the other cultures exclude their proliferation” (Latour, 1993). Cosmopolitanism with some measure of mutuality, with a more inclusive, respectful and hospitable engagement, is not necessarily generated through such consumerist engagements and neoliberal cultural pluralization through the commoditized forms of otherness and multiculturalism. Cultural flows and impacts deriving from the periphery and affecting the center may be less concrete and visible, and such flows of culture seem to mask inequalities and power relations (Agustin, 2007). Those privileged white consumers who taste exotic ethnic foods and have the capacity or power to enjoy everyday convivial encounters do not necessarily identify with, understand, or learn deeply about, the culture and the intersecting identity from which the foods are taken, symbolized, and consumed. Many everyday moments of contact between different individuals or groups, different cultures, different foods, and so on in the global city are not sufficient to produce respect for difference and do not really count as meaningful encounters at all (Valentine, 2008). While different people co-exist and even observe each other in spatial proximity in everyday life, there is little actual mixing and mutual understanding between different

172  Cosmopolitan Hospitality people, who rather tend to self-segregate within particular spaces by carving out their own ethnic or national territory in the global city. The global city like Paris is often associated with a potential for the forging of new cultures, diasporic cultural mixing, and ways of living together with difference. The global city is a social microcosm of the world, because of its importance as a global node of economic and cultural networks and because its own population is a tapestry of people from different parts of the world (Juergensmeyer, 2014). The increasingly diverse city is positively thought to give rise to the emergence of cosmopolitan canopies, pluralistic spaces, or settings that offer a respite from the lingering tensions of urban life and an opportunity for diverse peoples to come together, sometimes casually, engage one another in a spirit of civility or shared humanity, and appreciate one another’s differences (Anderson, 2011). In this context of diversity and cosmopolitanism, the global city is usually celebrated as a rich site of difference or imagined technologically as a center for “a broader diffusion of inter­ national interurban connectivity” (Townsend, 2001), a dominant hub for connection and communications with people from everywhere. Yet at the same time, such celebration may overshadow “the other side of the global city” (Sassen, 2009b) inhabited by those disadvantaged, discrimi­ nated, marginalized minorities who lack power. City life is becoming more racially, ethnically, and socially diverse than ever, but not easily moving beyod this simple mixing. Cosmopolitan sensibility and hospitality arise from the clash of cultures within one’s own life, which may lead to the internationalization of difference and the co-existence with the other in the recognition of oneself and the other as different and of equal value (Beck, 2006). Living with the other, with the foreigner, is not simply, humanistically, a matter of being able to accept the other, but of being in her place, and this means to imagine and make oneself other for oneself (Kristeva, 1991). Yet, there is always an element of mastery in the practice of hospitality, insofar as it attempts to incorporate the other into oneself. Because being at home with oneself supposes a reception or inclusion of the other which one seeks to appropriate, control, and master according to different modalities, there is always a tendency or a possible perversion to limit and condition the experience of hospitality (Derrida, 2001). There is a contradiction in hospitality and identity that cannot be easily reconciled: On one hand, hospitality means an unconditional moral obligation placed on the host of the home, yet on the other hand, hospitality reaffirms the idea that one is master of one’s home to which one welcomes the guest, and hospitality is always conditional on the position and the identity of the host. For hospitality to be capable of welcoming the other, it needs to be extended without the imposition of any condition to the other, since hospitality as a giving gesture in fact does subject the other to the position and

Cosmopolitan Hospitality  173 the identity of the host (Yegenoglu, 2012). In order for the host to avoid the loss of the home and the self through otherness, hospitality itself will inevitably be limited, and the capacities of the sympathetic human self neither extend nor define cosmopolitan ideal community ­(Hallemeier, 2013). Even under the guise of tolerance and generosity, hospitality frames the home as a domain of power where the host polices the conditions by which the door remains open or closed. While the host may show gestures toward multiculturalist tolerance and hospitality surrounding the reception of guests or migrants, these practices often serve to reiterate a specific power relation between the self and the other (Molz and Gibson, 2007). The gestures of hospitality reinforce the host’s position of power and privilege, maintaining the host’s control over the home and the self. Everyday encounters and spatial proximity, between the host and the guest in the home, do not equate with meaningful contact because of socio-spatial inequalities and consequent insecurities, as well as the complex and intersecting ways in which power operates (Valentine, 2008). The practice of hospitality is always limited by the host’s mastery and fundamental need for self-preservation, and thereby hospitality tends to reassert the identity and belonging-ness of the host against the movement, instability, and un-belonging-ness of the guest. Identity construction is potentially creative yet also confined, as it necessarily entails the exclusion of the other and boundary-making. Identity and difference are mutually constitutive in hospitality. Since no form of inclusion can banish exclusion, since all acts of inclusion constitute their own exclusions or outsiders, it can be said that even a cosmopolitan home or community would have its foreigners (Baker, 2011). Consequently, there will be continued calls for hospitality from unknown, unrecognized, and unfamiliar outsiders who have been already in but continue to be excluded effectively by the operation of the imbalances of power and control over identity construction. Is there any hope for hospitality? Who will be able to offer hospitality? In reality, official and informal policies and practices toward welcoming the other to one’s home for the most part fall far short of the ideal of hospitality (Molz and Gibson, 2007). Seeing the reality of hospitality is difficult, and feelings of hospitality are not necessarily long-lasting or sustainable. Experience of the stranger, the foreigner, the other—including global nannies in this study—calls for an urgent response, “a just response, more just in any case than the existing law” (Derrida, 2001), a process to move ever closer to the possible ideal of cosmopolitan hospitality. Marginalized minorities who constantly struggle in the displacement, or those who “slowly perish in their place as a result of sustained exploitation” (Spivak, 1995), are waiting for a just response. While endeavoring to move toward the possible ideal of cosmopolitan hospitality, it is still important and tenable for everyday

174  Cosmopolitan Hospitality people to “hold a moral position without also knowing exactly how it could be implemented institutionally” (Brown and Held,  2010). ­M inorities at the margins struggle to deal with the weight of the world, the oppressive forces of everyday life and subhuman conditions in their own capacities toward a deliberately encouraging, intended and hopeful movement, gathering their own “resources for a journey of hope” (Williams, 1983). Cosmopolitan hospitality is a far distant, seemingly unachievable at present, yet fundamentally important resource for a journey of hope, for the order of the future in an unstable mobile world.

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Index

affective practice 114–19 aging society 38 alternative media 142 autonomy 47 banality 128 belonging 107, 127–8, 140, 143, 147–8, 157, 163 black economy 39 bodily regulation 103–4 boundaries 122, 144, 166 bounded control 47 boundless mobility 82 care drain 23 citizen of the world 161–2 color-blind racism 133–5 commodification of care 39 community 91, 108, 122, 125 consumer culture 80–1, 170–1 continuity 90 cosmopolitan Europe 161–2 cosmopolitan hospitality 168–73 cosmopolitanism 158–65, 168 cultural cosmopolitanism 162 cultural turn 92 culture of blame 86 de-territorializing technology 76 development 6, 23, 28, 85, 94 difference 144, 155, 166, 170–1 digital dystopia 9–10 digital fatigue 65–9 digital media 8–9, 14 digital utopia 8–10 discrimination 136–8 disempowerment 17, 55–7, 73 displaying family 72 disposable life 52–4, 106 diversity 162–4 doing nothing 87–90, 100, 118 domestication 131

economic heroes 32 embodied experience 7 emotion 17, 23, 106, 150 emotional sphere 84–7 employment 37, 136–8 empowerment 46–9, 119, 143, 150, 154 English Mother Tongue 137 erotic capital 107, 112–13 essentialism 144 ethnic church 109 ethnic conflict 145 ethnic enclave 91, 143–5 ethnic media 126, 139, 142–5, 148, 165 Europe 36–40, 163 European self 165–6 everyday experience 14 everyday life 12–15, 150–1 everyday material practice 78 everydayness 120, 151 exclusion 85, 100, 127, 141–3, 173 exploitation 22–3, 53–4, 173 Facebook 68, 89, 91 family life 59, 72 family togetherness 85–6 feminization of employment 27 feminization of migration 1, 19 food 105, 121, 170 France 164–5 freedom 6, 55–7, 78, 94, 101 French immigration policies 2, 43–4, 164–5 French television 133, 140–1 gendered expectation 26, 99 gift-giving practice 71, 80 global capitalism 23 global care chain 20 global city 21, 69, 162, 172 global connection 12 global mobility 1, 19, 24

202 Index global nomads 2 global servants 1, 23 globalization of love 23 good life 6, 145 gossip community 107–12 habitual connectivity 156 happiness 12 home 127, 130, 147–52, 168 home-making practice 149–51 humanity 12, 169 hybrid space 120–2 hyper-connection 129, 148, 155 identity formation 142, 148–9, 172–3 identity politics 5, 9, 14, 72, 95, 121, 125, 145 imagination 145 indifference 145 individualized portable device 4 Indonesia 31–4 inequality 55–7, 63, 125, 127–8, 135 inferiority 104, 138 intensive mothering 63–5 intergenerational migration 69, 75, 82 Internet 76, 155–7 interpersonal communications 87, 105 intimacy 59–62, 65–9 invisible work 22 isolation 96, 115 journey of hope 174 laughter 117 leisure 101, 121 lifestyle aspiration 113 like-minded individuals 124 livelihood 1 love 93, 111 marginalization 100, 121–4, 141–3, 173 media-centered relations 67, 87 media representation 132–3 media space 17 mediated experience 150–1 mediated imagination 82 mediated migration 79–82 mediation 14 memories 150 micro-coordination 47–8 migrant labor 40

minorities 3–4, 11, 145, 156, 165 misery of everyday life 13 mobile communication 47 mobile connection 55–7, 62, 68 mobile phone 50, 141 modern-day heroes 29, 97 modern-day slavery 1, 45, 53–4 money 98–100 moral life 11, 61, 69–73 morally appropriate mothering 59, 70–3 multicultural commodities 170–1 multiculturalism 164–5, 171 nation 155–7, 163 nationalism 155–6, 161, 166 neoliberal market 39, 43–4 networked individualism 81 new gold 23 nomadic media technologies 120–1 non-events 156 normalization of risk 84 North-South inequality 25 ontological security 128, 138 otherness 130–1 oversharing 90 paradise Europe 69 Paris 41–5, 162 park 120–1 performing agency 14 perpetual connectivity 62 Philippines 29–31 playful practice 117 politics of everyday life 15 popular media culture 149–51, 159 positionality 143 positioning 4, 128 power 3–5, 11, 14, 48, 56–7, 95, 106, 128, 173 power of everyday life 13 private/public inversion 121 racialized other 141 racism 126–38, 163 reactive ethnicity 142–3 recruitment agency 41, 138 relational context 5 relative poverty 22, 25 remittances 19, 24, 29, 147–8 resistance 141–2 ritual activities 116, 119, 150–1

Index  203 sans-papiers 2, 16, 44 self-expression 88–90, 156 self-help 84 self-project 82, 85 self-sacrifice 86, 93, 97–9 servant economy 20 serving class 1, 21, 85 sexuality 103, 107, 112 silences 3, 134 social capital 50–2, 87, 108, 122–4 social change 15 social class 11, 40, 130 social inequalities 1 social media 68, 89 social transformation 15 socio-economic hierarchy 113 socio-material phenomenon 12 socio-spatial constraints 88 solidarity 119 space 121 space of autonomy 89 space of enunciation 142 spatial-temporal strategy 121 Sri Lanka 34–6 stigma 70 storytelling 17

surveillance 57, 67 symbolic violence 130 tactic 86, 127–8, 156 technological determinism 7, 49 technological progressivism 11 technological sublime 10 temporal capital 101 text messaging 116–17 time 98–9 total connectivity 8 transnational marriage 113–14 transnational mothering 59–68 transnational networking 78 transnational process 157 travel biography 17, 26 undocumented migrants 2, 16, 19–21, 42 unemployment 83–5 wage differential 24 welfare services 38 work life 52–4 YouTube 120, 151