However, as a feminist and queer studies scholar, my intent is to unsettle the seemingly logical arrangement and natural symmetry of this rather static formula that reads as follows: domestic = family = heterosexual woman = care and love. My alternative queer reading revolves around several questions: What are the consequences of this framework for understanding gender as a relational process and for illuminating women’s experiences in global migration? What happens to this linear arrangement of affect and travel when reproduction is not the pivot for the mobilization of gender labor migration? What happens if we de-center biological motherhood and its naturalized linkage to “caring”? What if we include such queer creatures as gay men, single and married women with no “maternal instinct,” and transgendered persons into the mix? How can we queer this particular migratory diaspora without dismissing the struggles of some of its constituents?
At the outset, I want to emphasize that I am not denying the existence of sexism, patriarchy, and violence that Third World women face in their home countries. I aim to explore alternative narratives that would dispel the rather hasty, and I would suggest, quite dangerous, gendering of global labor migration in recent social science migration research.
The neat symmetry of the “chain of care” paradigm lends itself to a precarious linearity that unwittingly constitutes narratives of modernist development founded on imperial designs and desires. Hochschild, in her attempt to find an ethical solution to the drama and dilemma of the absent mother and wife, proposes an ideological makeover, or a father re-education program, for Third World men. Her ideal models for such a re-education are Norwegian men who take parental leave and participate in domestic affairs more than their Third World counterparts.1 This tutelary solution is no less imperial than the “emotional imperialism” that Hochschild and Ehrenreich talk about when affective energies are “drained” from the Third World and transported to the First World. Two things are clear from these formulations: first, there is a total and universal subjugation of Third World women in the domestic sphere and an absolute disinvestment of Third World men from care work; second, affect is a cumulative essence that can be neatly packaged and transferred.
In order to move forward from these problematic formulations, I argue that the narratives and experiences of women and men (gay, lesbian, bisexual or heterosexual) as well as transgendered people (both male-to-female and female-to-male) among migrant domestic workers disrupt the neat synchronicity of the “chain of care.” To this end, I find inspiration in recent works from such anthropologists as Jennifer Hirsch, Mark Padilla, Denise Brennan, and Nicole Constable2, among others, as well as recent cultural productions such as the documentary film, Paper Dolls.
The film Paper Dolls provides an alternative framework to situate migrant care work and gender. Paper Dolls is a documentary produced in Israel that chronicles the travails of gay Filipino men and M-F transgender domestic care workers who work as unskilled “health aides” and whose charges are elderly Orthodox Jewish men. They are also part of a female impersonation or drag performance group called Paper Dolls. The director, Tomer Heymann, follows these queers as they contend with the vicissitudes of domesticity, gender, and migration. He tracks their everyday struggles with language, drag performances, the police and immigration authorities, racism, and caring for a largely infirm group of Orthodox Jewish elderly men.
- Arlie Russell Hochschild, “Love and Gold,” In Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. Eds. B. Ehrenreich and A. Hochschild. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003, 29. [↩]
- Jennifer Hirsch, A Courtship after Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Denise Brennan, What’s Love Got to Do with It?: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Nicole Constable, Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Brides. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Mark Padilla, Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality and AIDS in the Dominican Republic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. [↩]
