This dissertation examines how Filipina domestic helpers in Hong Kong occupy interstitial spaces in both Hong Kong society and the Filipino society from which they come. Informed by discourses of migration, domesticity, fashion, cosmopolitanism, and spatial practices, this study brings into dialogue seemingly disparate discussions that, nevertheless, provide important insights into the lived realities of many Filipina domestic helpers in Hong Kong during the 1997 period and beyond. This work is based on research conducted in Hong Kong and the Philippines, including ethnographic research of Filipina domestic helpers' work and leisure time, oral life history interviews, textual analysis, and archival research. It studies the contradictory sentiments expressed about them and by them, and their complex relationship to life in their employer's expatriate household, to city life in Hong Kong, and to life in their 'home' in the Philippines. As well it provides a framework for understanding the in-between spaces they occupy, the polarizing discussions about them, and the oppositional forces (e.g., cultural, religious, personal, and national) that impact their daily lives. It situates them squarely in the middle of discussions at the crossroads of the public/private, memory/nostalgia, nation/migration, the cosmopolitan/transnational, work/leisure, anonymity/scrutiny, domesticity/diaspora, and, finally, the foreign/domestic.
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