THE POLITICAL FASHION SHOW: PERFORMING THE INVISIBLE INJUSTICES OF TRANSNATIONAL MIGRATION AND ITS POLICY EFFECTS
By Shauna Butterwick, University of British Columbia, Canada
Paper Presented June 20, 2013 at the 8th Research on Work and Learning (RWL) Conference, University of Stirling, Scotland.
Introduction:
This paper outlines the findings of a collaborative study between the author and the Philippine Women Centre in Vancouver British Columbia, Canada (PWCBC). The PWCBC has focused much of its research and advocacy work on Canada’s Live-in-Caregiver program (LCP) that brings in domestic migrant workers to Canada who provide child and elder care in the homes of their employers (PWCBC 1996, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 2000). Well over 90% of LCP workers are Filipino women. The PWCBC has researchedthe lived experiences of LCP workers uncovering the racist, classist and sexist underpinnings of the LCP and how it contributes to the creation of a subclass of hidden exploited migrant workers. Through the research of the PWCBC and other academic allies (Pratt 1999, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2010a, 2010b; Pratt & Johnson 2009; Zaman, Diocson, & West 2007; Zaman 2006; McKay 2005).it is clear that the LCP is primarily a labour policy, one that has become Canada’s default child and elder care program, and one that underminesthese workers human rights, shattering the illusion of Canada as a leader in this area.
The research, organizing and advocacy work of the PWCBC has been substantial and highly creative, including visual and performative art--powerful methods that can tell a story and engage with the hearts and minds of audiences and community members, leading to change. This paper reports on research that is focused on the PWCBC’s three Political Fashion Shows, exploring the learning processes and outcomes of these artful engagements. Data is being collected through interviews, archival study, and arts-based methods. Using fashion and theatre, the PWCBC three fashion shows tell stories of Philippine history and transmigration, subverting the way fashion or dress has been implicated in Filipina women’s subjugation. Using a framework informed by Marxist-Feminist and transnational feminist theory, this research outlines how the dresses, costumes and theatre of these shows capture aspects of these workers lived experiences enabling a form of ‘publicity’, that is, moving what was once a private and depoliticized personal struggle into a public, shared, and political project.Participants and audience members of these fashions shows encounter these injustices in a visceral and evocative way, illustrating women’s subjugation, as well as their liberation.
The paper begins by exploring some key conceptual resources framing this study. With this framework in place, then the LCP policy is reviewed. The methodology is then briefly outlined and the paper concludes with some findings of the study.
Conceptual Terrain:
Feminist interrogations of the interlocking dimensions of gender inequity, political engagement, social and economic justice, and labour rights help to analyse the positioning of Filipino women in globalized labour practices of 21st century capitalism (Cohen 1991; Khan, 2009). Through a Marxist-Feminist materialist framework the relations between individual, the social and material reality are understood to be co-determined (Carpenter 2012), that is, the ‘material’ is socially organized through relations of gender and class. Filipino activists have long understood that their project is about “the radical and revolutionary reorganization of the social relations of production” (Carpenter 2012, p. 25) Notions of how gender, culture, race, ethnicity and class are complicated by multiple and, at times, competing loyalties that impede the recognition and exercise of social, cultural, and political rights bring important insights into the complexity of Filipino domestic workers’ commitments to family and their own liberation (Lister, 2003; Young, 2000; Yuval-Davis, 1997). A key issue in the struggles of Filipino women employed as migrant domestic workers is how their situation and policies such as the LCP are complicit in the creation of a “singular feminized identity” of an ideal domestic worker as “obedient, nurturing, complacent” (Khan, 2009, p. 29). Rosca (2010, p. 6) argues that this image involves a “re-feudalization” of migrant Filipino caregivers through processes of “self-abnegation, self-sacrifice”. Feminist explorations also illuminate how the identity of these workers is a complex process shaped by the polarities of private vs. public (Yuval-Davis, 2002) and local vs. transnational (Ong, 1999). Sassen (2002) notes how many families and nations are becoming dependent on the exploited labour of women, a phenomenon she calls the “feminization of survival”.
Benhabib (2004) has examined the global economy, transnational cultural networks,and transnational migration showing the limits of liberal notions of democracy which sheds light on the significance of the resistance activities of organizations like the PWCBC. Similarly, Fraser (1997) has pointed to the limits of the dominant discourse regarding civil society organizations and public policy making, discourses that regard women and racialized and working class groups as existing outside of the public sphere. The work of the PWCBC illustrates how significant popular education and participatory grass roots activities is being undertaken by racialized and marginalized groups and creating spaces for dialogue and the construction of oppositional discourse; such spaces she has termed “subaltern counterpublics”. This study considers how the PWCBC’s Political Fashions Shows have created spaces for counter narratives. The transnational character of capitalism and production is at the heart of the PWCBC’s work and their critique of the LCP. Similarly Fraser (2005) is concerned with these globalized modes of production and asks “who counts?” in deliberations of human rights and social justice. Racialized groups, like the Filipino women who make up the majority of LCP workers in Canada are overrepresented in the circulation and exploitation of migrant labour and are misrecognized and not considered citizens. The work of the PWCBC challengessuch politics of misrecognition by engaging in what Butler and Spivak (2007) describe as “performative contradictions”, that is, acts of resistance undertaken in public spaces by those who have no status as citizens.
Building on research by Lindio-McGovern’s (1999) study of Filipino women’s political consciousness, identity, and the creation of sustained social movements as well as Stasiulis & Bakan’s (1997) exploration of the strategies and resistance of migrant domestic workers, a key concern of this study is how these arts-based practices build political consciousness. Carrillo’s (2009) study of the transnational feminist orientation of Filipino activists brings attention to women’s resistance and agency. Sandoval’s (2000) “methodology of the oppressed” is particularly salient to this study, given her exploration of the dialectic between identity construction and social action. For Sandoval, differential consciousness, a consciousness that is flexible and diasporic and uses “oppositional technologies of power” involving both inner sensibilities and outer forms of social praxis, is key to achieving social justice.How shifts in identity may occur through the arts-based practices of the PWCBC and how these creative processes and forms may inform political action is a central concern of this study.
Policy Background:
In Canada, Filipinos are the 4th largest immigrant group in Canada (.5 M) and 65% are women; most live in major urban centres of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. They are the most educated of all visible minority immigrant groups yet they are the poorest... Despite their significant numbers, many remaininvisible, most particularly, those women working as nannies under the LCP. The vast majority (98%) of LCP workers are Filipinas. This program was institutedin 1992. Prior to that, in the 1970s and 80s, many professionally educated Filipinos came to Canada and worked in their professional fields such as in the medical sector, nursing and teaching. At the same time, more Canadian women started working outside their homes and needed childcare. Canada’s foreign domestic foreign worker program was a response to those needs in the 1970sand 80s. In those decades this labour was filled mainly by women of colour from the Caribbean countries. The foreign domestic worker program was changed to the LCP in 1992at a time when Canada began to tap into the vast pool of highly desirable migrant workers: they are well educatedwith post-secondary education and they speak English. Given the limited opportunities in the Philippines they are a cheap pool of labour that Canada willingly exploits.In Canada, the LCP is our default childcare (and elder care) policy.
The Canadian and Filipino governments regardthe LCP as a win-win program; it meets the caregiving needs of Canadian families and it provides employment for Filipinos. A contrasting picture is painted by Rosca (2010) who points to how such “opportunities” for migrant workers are in reality a “seduction of hope” in which citizenship is illusory. Pratt (2012) challenges Canada’s liberal humanitarianism or what she calls “happy discourse” and asks“does poverty in the Philippines justify poor working conditions in Canada?”There over 90 million people in the Philippines, a nation that still struggles with its colonial past. For 300 years it was colonized by the Spanish and by the U.S. since in the late 1800s. It achieved ‘independence in 1949 although the U.S. presence is still dominant. Eight million Filipinos are temporary foreign workers (TWF), sending home remittances of $12 billion annually thus they contribute to a major portion of the economy. The exporting of migrant Filipino workers began in earnest in the early to mid 1970s, a time of economic decline due to rising foreign debts and structural adjustments imposed by the World Bank and IMF. There was also serious government corruption and in response,civil unrest. Exporting workers who sent their wages back home was initially considered a temporary measure to bolster the country's economy and to undermine a growing resistance movement, but through the LEP, the Labour Export Policy,this form of export has become permanent. Thus programs, like the LCP, are popular in the Philippines given there are few other economic opportunities and the country continues to suffer from major class divisions. The ruling elite, 10% of the population, own the vast majority of resources,while the remaining 80% live in poverty and in feudal conditions (Carrillo 2009).
These workers are celebrated as “national modern day heroes” and becoming a TFW is the destiny of many. Charlene, one of the main PWCBC collaborators on this project describes an encounter with a six year old girl during a visit to the Philippines:
[she was] a bright little girl. And when i asked her, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”she said, "Oh, I want to be a maid ….I want to go abroad". "What do you know about going abroad? Where are you going?" And she said, "I wanna go to China. I want to go to Saudi Arabia, oh, maybe I'll go to Canada." And I said, "What do you know about geography? You don't even go to school. You're six years old. " And i said, "Don't you want to be an astronaut?" And she said, "no. I want to be a maid."
TWF are working in over 190 countries including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Italy, France, England, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Israel, Egypt, Borneo, Guam, Switzerland and Germany. The majority, approximately 85%, are on temporary labour contracts. These jobs are known by the three “Ds”, that is they aredirty, dangerous, and difficult. And they are devalued; as Kahn (2009) notes ddomestic migrant work is “everywhere perceived as low-status physical labour and proven to be intimately linked with social exclusion, abysmal working conditions, sub-standard living accommodations, sexual and racial discrimination, and exploitation on the part of employers, labour brokers, and employment agencies” (p. 23).
A look at the specifics of the LCP helps to reveal its injustices. Even before arriving in Canada, LCP workers are paying high fees (sometimes up to $5000) to private companies who offer training and brokering services to connect these women to Canadian employers. Some of these agencies set up loans so LCP workers can pay the fees. The quality of the training and services provided by these companies is not regulated and there are questionable practices. Then these workers must pay for airfare, an expensive proposition that sometimes equates to a year’s salary for some. Thusthese workers even before beginning their employment through the LCP are in major debt. Some arrive at the airport and face border officials who have the power, if they perceive the paperwork as inadequate, to deny entry. Others arrive and find that their employer has not shown up (or that the brokering agency has scammed their fees and has not found an employer). Some of these women end up working illegally for their agency owner, their passports and visas taken from them, and sent to jobs in order to pay off their debt.
Once these workers arrive and gain entry and are connected to their employers, they encounter significant rules and regulations in relation to their temporary work visas:they must live with their employer; they cannot bring their children; they cannot undertake any other employment outside their employer’s home; and they cannot participate in training or education, except for limited ESL programs. Theirliving and working conditions are not monitored. As these workers must live with their employers, many of their stories and struggles are not heard nor understood. Many work longer hours and do more tasks than are laid out in their contracts. Many learn they must care for both the children and the elderly in a family. Some end up doing extra favours for their employers and some end up working for more than one family when requested by their employers. Many never get a day off. Their wages are low and their board and lodging (around $375 per month) is deducted, and most of theirremaining wages are sent home as remittances.
The adjustment to Canadian culture is difficult and many miss their children terribly. They cannot speak out as they run the risk of being fired or even being deported back to the Philippines. Their families in the Philippines also remain unaware of their struggles; they are dependent on the LCP worker and she takes on the burden of caring for one’s family which is highly valued and almost sacrosanct in the Philippines. The tragic irony is that many leave their families in order to care for their families. In many respects, the LCP worker is a modern day slave: they cook and clean, provide child and elder care, drive children and elderly to their schools and appointments, run errands for their employers, clean cars and the list goes on. LCP workers have been subject to sexual harassment, abuse and violence. They are also becoming deskilled as they abandon their professions to care of Canada's children and elderly.
Many LCP workers who come to Canada, given the lack of opportunities in the Philippines, wish to immigrate and settle permanently. To qualify for permanent residency (PR), they must complete 3900 hours of work within a period of 48 months (4 years). Meeting this requirement is a challenge as some employers end their contracts with their LCP worker before the hours are accumulated. Some women leave their employment because of problems and harassment, thus these women struggle to find new LCP jobs. There are costs involved in the PR process: a $450 head tax, processing fees, medical fees for the family to come to Canada, and so on. And these workers continue to send home remittances. For many Filipinas this process can take several years; the average time of separation is five (Pratt 2009, 2010a, 2010b). Once they complete the required 3900 hours, and while they apply and wait for PR status, many of these workers continue with their employers while others become “floating migrants”, working low-waged service sector jobs as they wait for their applications to be successful (Zaman 2006).Those who have professional credentials when they left the Philippines and want to return to this work also face many hurdles (Moors 2003). There are few retraining or bridging programs to re-enter their professions and they have high fees. Many Filipino women make compromises, subjecting themselves to relationships of dependency just to have a roof over their heads. The strain and separation also has impacts on the families in the Philippines; husbands leave, and children’s relations with their mothers are strained.
The LCP, as was noted above, is fundamentally a labour policy and an exploitative program that undermines the human rights of these workers. ‘Mainstream’ Canadians remain, for the most part, unaware of this program and its limitations and exploitative structure. But Canadians need to be concerned about the LCP. Through the advocacy, research and organizing efforts of the PWCBC, more information and stories are emerging.
Methodology:
In this study, a feminist action-oriented approach has been employed, one in which knowledge and theory are understood to be co-constructed. The goal it to engage in methods such that the process and knowledge generated contribute to positive change. Interviews with 20 participants and two focus groups, one with the PWCBC’s Board of Directors (BoD), have explored participants’ experiences of these arts-based practices and how they shape identity and social action as well as the development of community and organizing practices. Arts-based methods were integrated into the BoD focus group; using lengths of fabric, the participants were invited create dresses or tableaus that told their stories. Dissemination of findings will include a variety of formats co-determined with the PWCBC. For example, an animated video focusing on story of the LCP is underway and a final video telling the story of this research is being considered. A key contribution will be the gathering together of materials (that have been dispersed) into one place, perhaps a website; such an archive is difficult for a grassroots organization with little or no funding to create and maintain. It will include all the photographs, scripts, plans, stories, and other materials from the three fashion shows and will include transcripts and some videotapes of interviews. By outlining the lessons learned from these activities that can inform future engagements, this project seeks to contribute to praxis, that is, action and reflection, which has been part of the PWCBC’s approach throughout its 20 year history.