The cosmopolis and the migrant domestic worker

Introduction

Recent scholarship has begun to proclaim the cosmopolitan city as the ‘hallmark’ of global cities and a necessary response to the empirical reality of multicultural cities of today. ¹ In exploring the links between the cosmopolitan and the global, Shah ² observes that ‘As global implies something that occurs on a planetary scale and cosmopolitanism’s framework of political community is the universal worldwide community of humanity, global and cosmopolitan appear to be natural synonyms, one seemingly implying the other’ (a position she then goes on to critique). Turner ³ concurs with this stance but broadens the scope beyond the structure of political community, arguing that ‘modern cosmopolitanism is a consequence of specific social changes that are associated with globalization’, including:

the partial erosion of national sovereignty and the growth of dual and multiple citizenship; the growth of global markets, especially a global labour market and an expansion of migrant labour seeking forms of quasi-citizenship; the growth of multiculturalism and cultural hybridity as an aspect of mainstream contemporary political life; and the globalization of the politics of migrant communities, giving rise to diasporic cultures.

Indeed, cast as the humanist counterpart of globalization, cosmopolitanism has been inserted back into discussions on multicultural societies as these become reconfigured by increasing transnational flows, troubling notions of the national self. While cosmopolitanism has been a pervasive discourse in political projects that promote human rights, global justice, and the idea of a ‘world society’, ⁴ the concept has had much more currency in popular discourse as a neoliberal tool to promote brands, icons, narratives, lifestyles, neighborhoods and cities. ⁵ These discourses continue to associate the concept with attributes that are western and class-based, such as sophistication and a worldly outlook, because therein lies the capacity of cosmopolitanism to ‘attract investors, top talent, visitors, tourists’. ⁶ In such capitalist discourses, use of the concept enables the agents of discourse not only to shape the landscape but to ascribe knowledge and authority to individuals labelled ‘cosmopolitan’. ⁷ There is thus a need to continue to engage the concept in more critical ways given the real material consequences that take place with its use. In this vein, we follow Shah ⁸ in arguing that the ‘assumed equivalence between cosmopolitanism and global’ needs more careful attention, and disrupting the assumption may reveal certain blind spots in current writings where cosmopolitanism is unquestioningly stitched into the notion of the ‘western’ global city. We suggest three ways in which the assumption may be unpicked.

First, discourses on the cosmopolis – especially where twinned with the ‘global city’ – tend to focus on a masculinized version of cosmopolitanism, usually equated with creativity and public civility, as an accompanying if not necessary condition for developing productive relations in the field of business and enterprise. More needs to be said about whether cosmopolitan ideals and realities feature in more feminized spheres oriented towards the private sphere away from public display, including that of ‘carework’ and ‘domestic work’, which are crucial to shoring up the cosmopolis and at the same time a likely antithesis to the masculinized cosmopolis. This parallels Nava’s ⁹ call for a ‘domestic and vernacular cosmopolitanism’ which ‘takes place at home, in the family, in the neighborhood, in the interior territories of the mind and body’. Indeed, attention to the domestic face of the cosmopolis is of increasing significance among Asian urban societies that are confronted by rapidly developing crises in social reproduction. With rapidly plummeting fertility rates, some Asian cities, including the city-state of Singapore, are no longer able to reproduce themselves demographically, and depend on migrant labor to meet the demand for labor in both productive and reproductive (domestic work, carework) spheres. This is joined by the growing phenomenon of international marriage migration in the region as ‘foreign brides’ are becoming necessary to shore up birth rates, reproduce the family, provide for the work of care, and ultimately sustain the social reproduction of the nation-state. ¹⁰ In fact, Douglass ¹¹ advocates the use of the concept of ‘global householding’ to describe the formation and sustenance of households in ways which are increasingly reliant on the international movement of people and transactions among household members residing in more than one national territory. The phenomenal rise in transnational migration in Asia, and in particular the feminization of migration in the region, is not only linked to the globalization of the productive sphere, but increasingly tied in structural terms to securing the social reproduction of the cosmopolis and the nation-state.

Second, more needs to be done in terms of understanding cosmopolitanism at work in the global city in shaping grounded experiences of political membership. In Shah’s ¹² work on what constitutes the normative foundation of political community and how it is metaphorically articulated, ¹³ she points to Bauman’s ‘Tourist and Vagabond’ metaphor ¹⁴ to focus attention on seeing globalization as a process enacted by the ‘movement of people themselves’ rather than the ‘settlement’ of individuals. This in turn highlights the limits of cosmopolitan governance in relation to people on the move, especially those in the ‘vagabond’ category (travellers of precarious status – refugees, migrant workers and asylum seekers – who are mobile but not free, given immigration controls of various kinds) as opposed to the ‘tourist’ category (travellers such as corporate elites and globetrotting academics who have almost complete freedom of travel). Understanding the nature of cosmopolitan membership of the political community hence requires attention to be given to the patterns of mobility and immobility as part of globalization processes, and in particular the mobile-but-not-free populations as opposed to just settled individuals. More specifically, we draw attention to the varying degrees in which mobile groups passing through the global city are differentially included/excluded in the political community by focusing on transnational migrant workers who provide carework and domestic work, a category in between ‘tourist’ and ‘vagabond’.

Elsewhere, ¹⁵ we have argued that nation-building requires not just inclusionist but also exclusionist projects that construct the borders of the nation’s geobody by domesticating certain transnational subjects (i.e. ‘foreign talents’) while distinguishing other foreign bodies (i.e. ‘foreign contract workers’) as transgressors of the nation. In the case of the migrant domestic worker who often doubles up as de facto careworker to tend to both children and the elderly, the politics of inclusion/exclusion go beyond simple binaries; instead, state-led discursively constructed measures place the migrant domestic worker within the sanctity of the host family (e.g. in Singapore, she has no status but as a worker within the employer’s family) while at the same time systematically exclude her from incorporation into civil society (e.g. not only is she treated as a transient with no (hope of) residency rights, she is prevented from putting down any roots in Singapore society as she is barred from marrying a Singaporean or Permanent Resident, or becoming pregnant). In a different paper, ¹⁶ through a close examination of the complexities of spatialized politics played out between employer and the migrant domestic worker in homespace – through little tactics such as negotiations over ground rules, timespace mappings, no-go sites and the shifts between front and back regions as well as larger, more dramatic strategies from struggles over the telephone and other social networking tools to escaping spatial confinement, sometimes with tragic ends – we come to grips with the grounded realities of the relational politics of mobility and immobility within homespace in the globalizing city of constant motion, and hence how membership, or the lack of it, actually translates into everyday experiences in the cosmopolis. Ironically, migrant domestic workers who themselves are the active subjects, even pioneers, of transnational mobilities may experience, at a different scale, far more disciplined forms of fixity when they are relocated in the ‘home’ within the cosmopolis.

Third, Leonie Sandercock ¹⁷ writes that the great possibility of cities in the 21st century is ‘the dream of cosmopolis’ in which ‘there is acceptance of, connection with, and respect and space for “the stranger”’ as citizens and migrants work together ‘on matters of common destiny and forging new hybrid cultures’. This suggests that to reveal the inner workings of cosmopolitanism in the global city requires us to move beyond questions of political membership to the more everyday and personal expressions and negotiations of cosmopolitan ideals among different groups of people. Different routes have been suggested for such an exploration. In allowing for the reconciliation of ‘citizen-of-the-world’ and ‘patriot’ within the notion of the ‘cosmopolitan’, Turner ¹⁸ advocates the learning of a ‘cosmopolitan virtue’ that ‘requires self-reflexivity with respect to both our own cultural context and other cultural values’, a disposition comprising ‘cool loyalties and thin patterns of solidarity’ and where there is ‘no convenient place for real or hot emotions [of otherness]’. In contrast to the tendency to ‘focus on the reflexive, the aesthetic and … on seeing the world from afar’ ¹⁹ Mica argues for a focus on ‘intimate and visceral cosmopolitanism’, which she defines as ‘feelings of attraction for and identification with otherness’. ²⁰ Also in this vein Hannerz proposes ‘looking more closely for … small signs of banal, or quotidian, or vernacular, or low-intensity cosmopolitanism’. ²¹ While they may not necessarily depart from the dominant scripts of elite cosmopolitanism (i.e. of ‘modernity’ and consumption), these alternative renderings are often better able to build bridges across different worlds (e.g. between the ‘modern’ and the ‘fringe’) and, arguably, in ways that paradigmatic cosmopolitans frequently have not or will not. ²² In fleshing out such a perspective, scholars have endeavored to give emphasis to banal appearances of conviviality and fraternity among different groups. Often couched within the working-class context, this body of work has found such ‘vernacular cosmopolitanisms’ to be spontaneous, resourceful and accessible. While they may at times be motivated by a need for survival amid difficult situations, ²³ they may also be carried out with ‘an attitude towards opening up and engaging with “others”’, ²⁴ and thereby propagating an outlook that truly engages with difference.

In this paper, we give attention to the negotiations of personal relationships in domestic and carework in multicultural settings across a range of interactions. We remain optimistic about the relevance of cosmopolitan ideals to living amidst conditions of ‘super-diversity’ ²⁵ characteristic of global cities, where inter-group difference runs the gamut of cross-cutting axes including not only race/ethnicity but also place of origin, age, gender, human capital, language, religion, legal status, etc. Without doubt, immigration has become a compelling force not only in increasing diversity in cities and other places of reception, but also introducing more complex diversifications – new patterns of inequality and segregation/concentration, new encounters of intimacy and prejudice, new modes of hybridity and fusion, and new patterns of conflict vis-à-vis new practices of coexistence – and we aspire to be able to think through cosmopolitan lenses to envisage possibilities (despite limits) where ‘men and women from different origins [can] create a society where diversity is accepted [and hence] rendered ordinary’. ²⁶ At the same time, we are critical of the exclusionary politics inherent in current versions of cosmopolitanism ²⁷ and would like to work towards ‘expanding the circle of cosmopolitanism’. ²⁸ Towards this goal, and in the context of Singapore as ‘cosmopolis’ (a term used by Goh Chok Tong in 1999 when he was prime minister), we deliberately and counter-intuitively train the analytical lenses on the domestic sphere – integral to the global city and yet almost totally invisible in constructions of the cosmopolis – and focus on the lived experiences of migrant domestic workers, a group of women whose place in the cosmopolis lie somewhere between the ‘vagabond’ and the ‘tourist’. More specifically, we examine the concept of ‘working class cosmopolitanism’ through a grounded approach based on everyday experiences, giving attention to how migrant domestic workers themselves, despite severe limits to social inclusion and citizen incorporation, (un)learn how to become ‘more cosmopolitan’ in coping with difference in Singapore’s multiracial setting and in using the ‘cosmopolis’ as a stepping stone to increase their cultural competencies for navigating the global stage.

‘Working-class cosmopolitanism?’

The general idea of cosmopolitanism as openness to difference and diversity has largely been identified with the global upper class who subscribe to western ideals and who have the resources and cultural capital to engage in a ‘multiplicity of cultures’ and forge networks and ties across borders. ²⁹ It has thus been counter-intuitive to think of the working class as cosmopolitan because they have generally been perceived to be non-mobile and confined to the local. ³⁰ Globalization, however, afforded more people access not only to cultural commodities but also to travel options allowing even the non-mobile and the non-elite to participate in these spatial flows, as exemplified by increasing streams of labor migration across international borders.

In response, recent literature on cosmopolitanism ³¹ has begun to examine its emergence among the working classes, taking into account their increased transnational mobility in a globalized world. Working-class cosmopolitanism differs primarily from elite cosmopolitanism in that it is not so much based on the prior cultural or economic capital of the privileged, but rooted in a process of learning that takes place quite intensively in the course of migration as contact zones and cultural exchanges multiply. Cosmopolitanism among the elite draws on privilege and education ³² and is manifested mainly in the consumption of objects and spaces with an ascribed cultural value. ³³ The working classes, on the other hand, do not have such economic and cultural capital to build on. However, in the course of migration, they acquire new experiences, desires, consumption patterns, self-definitions, and ways of coping with cultural and national differences ³⁴ and also become competent in other cultural traditions. ³⁵ These are embodied and practised in their everyday lives as they navigate cultural spaces and negotiate difference. To see cosmopolitanism as rooted in a process of learning and embodied in everyday life, instead of a quality based on prior cultural capital, makes room for its application beyond the privileged classes. Thus, cosmopolitanism among the working class has to be approached through a grounding in ‘practical politics’ and ‘context’ in that ‘without this grounding … [the cosmopolitan] project runs the great risk of reproducing a neoliberal and ultimately imperialist agenda’. ³⁶

Looking at the concept as embodied in the lives of migrant workers locates the concept within geographical realities, thus expanding its utility and making it more relevant. As Harvey ³⁷ notes, geographical dynamics ‘pervade everything we do’ and ‘cosmopolitanism bereft of geographical specificity remains abstracted and alienable reason, liable, when it comes to earth, to produce all manner of unintended … consequences’. Pieterse ³⁸ argues that cosmopolitanism can function as an ‘emancipatory’ concept if seen as a cosmopolitanism of ‘experiencing, practising, making world citizenship’. However, can such a celebratory stance be reconciled with the power asymmetries (of race, class and gender) that shape female labor migration in Asia? In grounding the concept on working class experiences, it could become a positive conceptualization that is more useful than Shah’s ‘tourist versus vagabond’ dichotomy, or the bifurcated ‘heroes/victims of modernity’ discourse that surround female labor migrants ³⁹ as it takes into account both the learning acquired in migration, despite being in supposedly unskilled occupations, and through the experience of mobility and place.

Acknowledging the possibility of cosmopolitanism among these female migrant workers can also lead to knowledge attribution and would enable institutions to extend discourses on ‘brain gain’ to include them. Williams ⁴⁰ has discussed how knowledge creation is inherent in the migration process and can take place not just in the public sphere but also in the private sphere of the home. Institutions, however, have privileged ‘skilled’ or ‘highly skilled’ labor migrants as learners and knowledge carriers. ⁴¹ If there is recognition of the learning taking place in mobility, then it becomes less counter-intuitive to see migrant workers as cosmopolitan, even though their encounters with difference might have been the result of their being ‘victims of modernity’ and not out of ‘positive, conscious effort’ ⁴² and even though their spatial practices are constricted by race, class and gender.

In grounding the concept of working-class cosmopolitanism in the lived experiences of Filipino domestic workers in Singapore, this paper acknowledges that migrant women working abroad as live-in domestics are located within an interlocking web of gender, race and class relations that entail the performance of gendered (and racialized) labor in both the home and host countries. ⁴³ Their mobility, as well as possible learning, is limited by their class position at home and their depressed status as domestic workers abroad. Despite these structural constraints, migrant workers experience and do things that they otherwise would not have experienced and done had they remained in their home countries. This paper then identifies provisional changes in the identities and subjectivities of Filipino domestic workers upon migration, looking into new sensibilities acquired, changes in consumption patterns, cultural learning and negotiations of cultural differences. The broader questions this paper would like to raise include: Can working-class cosmopolitanism ‘escape’ the logics of the neoliberal project? Can working-class cosmopolitans free themselves from their depressed status as maids? Does transnational migration lead to emancipatory hope in recovering an openness to and respect for humanity?

Research design and interviewee profile

Data was gathered through in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions with a total of 25 domestic workers based in Singapore. Respondents were obtained through snowball sampling from contacts at the Bayanihan Centre, which is a Filipino-run facility that offers classes ranging from computer to cooking and guitar, and serves as a venue for domestic workers to congregate and improve their skills, and also form personal contacts. Respondents were interrogated on their consumption practices before coming to, and in, Singapore, as well as on the ways they deal with cultural differences. The focus group discussions and some of the interviews were conducted at the Bayanihan Centre while other interviews were conducted at Lucky Plaza, which is a shopping mall along Orchard Road known to be a popular hang-out for Filipino domestic workers and other Filipino workers in Singapore. Interviews at the Bayanihan Centre and Lucky Plaza were conducted on Sundays, during the domestic workers’ day-off. Five interviews were conducted during the work week at the residences of the domestic workers’ employers. ⁴⁴

Most of the interviewees were single, in their 20s and 30s, although a minority was older (in their 40s) and some were married. Many had a number of years of college education, and all had been working in Singapore for more than five years. Almost all had Singaporean employers, although three were employed by British, Canadian and French employers respectively.

Lifestyle changes

Prior to migration, Filipino women who become transnational domestic workers have not been immune to the effects of globalization. Whatever forms of cosmopolitanism practised abroad did not suddenly arise because of migration but has its roots in the country of origin. The Philippines being a participant in the global economy, domestic workers have already been exposed to other cultures through the flow of cultural commodities, through education, and through chain migration. All of the interviewees in fact can speak English and most of them have had some form of college education. Those who have relatives and friends abroad have also been influenced by the experiences of these relatives either in their return or through the transnational transfer of information, ideas and material things. In fact, most of the interviewees were lured to Singapore upon seeing the improvement in the lives of friends and relatives who have been working as domestics in Singapore. At the same time, consuming global products in the Philippines does not really change their status as members of the working class in a class-based society with a very wide cultural gap between the upper and lower classes. Thus, migration becomes a rite of passage in search of cultural capital as it provides the working classes with a means for gaining cultural capital that would make a difference to their status.

Not everyone’s lifestyle changed drastically with migration, but coming to Singapore confers greater purchasing power and freedom. Many of the interviewees mentioned that back in the Philippines, they would not usually go out because they do not have money to spend. In Singapore, having a job gives them the purchasing power to buy material goods for themselves as well as for their families. All of the interviewees also mentioned that coming to Singapore gave them more freedom to do what they want and go as they will, with many also indicating that ‘they have no other choice but to spend money’ during their day-off. There are, however, significant differences in the consumption patterns of younger (those in their 20s and 30s) and older (those in their 40s and 50s) interviewees, as well as between single and married interviewees. Older, married respondents tend to spend less on themselves in order to save up for their children’s education and material needs although there is the desire too for things they see in Singapore. For instance, Eve, 43, brings an Ikea catalogue with her when she goes home so that she can select and copy the furniture styles for her house in the Philippines. In contrast, younger respondents’ consumption was more outwardly manifest in their clothes and choice of leisure activities. Gina, 31, for example, says that her employer would buy clothes for her and when visitors or friends comment on the way she dresses, her employer would say ‘she’s sexy so I buy her sexy clothes.’ She criticises other domestic workers who go out with employers during the weekday dressed in house clothes and carrying big bags because they look kawawa (pitiful). She adds that domestic workers should not look so poorly even during the weekday.

All of the interviewees regardless of age try to dress well and put on lipstick, make-up, accessories on Sundays. As Lucy, 40, mentioned, pag weekday katulong talaga (‘during the weekday, we’re really maids’). Thus, Sunday is the only time when they can dress up so they feel that they should take advantage of this. Lucy has to wear a uniform during the weekday because her Canadian employer does not want the maids to wear ‘tight-fitting outfits’ inside the house. She hastened to mention, however, that she is amenable to the uniform because it is branded (Giordano), consists of a shirt and pedal pushers, and so ‘does not look like a uniform at all’. More typically, most Singaporean employers expect foreign domestic workers to observe strictly the standard ‘foreign maid’ garb of oversized t-shirts, long shorts or bermudas and a short and simple (almost tomboyish) hairstyle, distinguishing the ‘maid’ as the asexual inferior ‘other’. The day-off hence provides the ‘maid’ with the opportunity to shed her ‘workaday uniforms’ and don her best clothes, which may range from blouse and jeans to flamboyant outfits inclusive of hats, large dangling earrings and other costume jewellery, leather shoes as well as make-up, which again range from a trace to heavy application. For the foreign domestic worker, day-off dressing is not only indicative of self-respect ⁴⁵ but symbolic that days-off are beyond the jurisdiction of their employers as is suggested in the following extract from a publication targeted at the Filipina maid:

… fellow workers, this is Perlita. During her working hours she tries her best to dress simply … [On her day-off], Perlita stepped out of the house, no longer looking like plain Jane but a Julia Roberts in the making… during her twice-a-month day-off she blossoms like a flower … (Tulay Ng Tagumpay, vol. 2, No. 7, p. 10). ⁴⁶

When it comes to leisure activities, older respondents would usually just hang-out with friends either in Lucky Plaza (forming a weekend enclave known as ‘Little Manila’) in Orchard Road (Singapore’s main shopping thoroughfare) or the Botanic Gardens while younger ones would engage in sports activities or watch movies. Lucy, for example, goes to Lucky Plaza with her friends while the second, and younger, Filipino maid working in the same household usually goes swimming with friends on Sundays, because ‘the other maid is young (26) so she likes to have fun’.

A number of interviewees have been able to travel to other countries either with friends or with employers so much so that for them, travelling to nearby countries such as Malaysia has become commonplace. Travel further afield has also become a reality for those working in households with a globetrotting lifestyle. For example, Eve, who has a British employer and has been to London twice, said: ‘If I did not come to Singapore, I would never be able to set foot in London.’ However, that Singapore is located in Asia and is not the ‘west’ continues to matter in the women’s perception of the degree of change, particularly in terms of class mobility, wrought by migratory journeys to Singapore as opposed to Europe or America. When asked to compare themselves to domestic workers in Europe, Sal, 43, and Ana, 29, said that:

of course the lifestyle [of Filipino domestic workers] there would be more different. Sosyal na ang Pinoy dun (Filipinos there are classy) because that’s Europe, this is still Asia. Probably if the Filipinos who came here were from the provinces it would be a big change for them, but if they’re from Manila, not so much.

Volunteer work and self-improvement

Older respondents also affirmed that the main change in their lifestyle after coming to Singapore came from the opportunities to do volunteer work and engage in self-improvement activities, through, for instance, classes at the Bayanihan Centre. Some of them even mentioned the ability to realize their personal aspirations in Singapore. Rebbie, 54, who is also a volunteer music teacher at the Bayanihan Centre, said that if she had not been in Singapore, she would never have been able to study music. Rebbie ⁴⁷ is currently taking voice, theory and opera classes, while also working as a part-time domestic worker, an endeavor that she says is fully supported by her employer. She will be obtaining a diploma soon, which will move her closer to her lifelong aspiration to set up a music school when she goes back to the Philippines.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of service-oriented groups catering to transnational domestic workers, ⁴⁸ usually focused on creating a ‘social space’ for the women to come together to meet their compatriots in similar employment, as well as acquire new skills. Beyond socializing with fellow domestic workers, some groups such as FILODEP also provide opportunities for the women to participate in community voluntary programs such as entertaining and taking care of the elderly. This turns the tables on ingrained ideologies that valorize transnational domestic workers only in terms of the household labor that they perform, and demonstrate instead their potential and capacity to contribute to the wider community and in particular disadvantaged sections of society.

Service-oriented groups invest considerable effort into building up self-esteem and identity among the transnational domestic workers who participate in their activities and in equipping the workers with new skills sets to meet present demands as well as in preparing for the future. One group, for example, offers Taekwondo classes in order to improve mental well-being and to serve as an avenue for the workers to vent their frustrations accumulated during the work-week. The convener elaborates,

… Taekwondo is important, not to bully people but to teach them how to meditate, how to control their anger … So they hit, hit, hit, ah so they come here, they are angry with the boss, hit, hit, all the anger comes out, all the need for revenge comes out with Taekwondo.

Others, through collaboration with UNIFEM, try to move away from the more traditional feminized variety by teaching new skills-set through accounting, book-keeping, finance and entrepreneurship classes as well as computer courses. These are perceived as useful ‘reintegration’ skills; useful, for example, in running businesses and managing budgets. Less tangible but equally important, interviewees agreed that despite being domestic workers, they are still able to hone their skills-set in the form of teaching, organizing and participating in Filipino functions with the Filipino Overseas Workers in Singapore (FOWS), an organization based at the Bayanihan Centre. Clearly, the activity space created by service-oriented groups such as the Bayanihan Centre helps to empower their students and participants by allowing them to move up the hierarchy in the centers to become volunteers and, eventually, teachers after they have gained sufficient experience. A few even move up to become principals of skills centers, which feature as a major turning point in the lives of the transnational domestic workers as they take on leadership roles in the domestic worker community, widening their social circle to include Filipino officials and expatriates who they meet when they get invited to different functions.

Identity construction: ‘becoming more modern’

According to Bourdieu, cultural capital is ‘enacted in fields of consumption’ through tastes and consumption practices. ⁴⁹ While the value placed on certain objects, spaces and activities, and thus the desire for these things, is structured by one’s ‘habitus’, or by one’s upbringing, these can also be acquired. Holt’s ⁵⁰ study of American consumers found that consumption reflected class-based socialization in that the consumption habits of high-cultural capital consumers, who are said to possess a cosmopolitan habitus, did differ from those of low-cultural capital consumers. For instance, high-cultural capital consumers ‘consume a wider variety of genres and styles than do low-cultural capital consumers’, see leisure as self-actualizing, and profess a desire for the exotic. Low-cultural capital consumers, on the other hand, tended to avoid the exotic, construct consumption in opposition to work and see leisure as a socializing activity. ⁵¹ Thus, from this perspective, consumption and the acquisition of cultural capital can be seen as shaped or constrained by class positions. However, Magat’s ⁵² study of Filipino domestic workers in Italy showed how ‘Filipino domestics in Italy bring their consumption habits to a new level’. ⁵³ As previously mentioned, changes in the domestic workers’ consumption patterns was mainly the result of greater financial capital. Such financial capital can be translated into cultural capital as domestic workers have been able to consume material goods and leisure and educational activities they would otherwise not have been able to consume in the Philippines because of the lack of financial resources. The acquisition of cultural capital has also been extended to the interviewees’ children and family, who are also able to consume in the same manner while in the Philippines.

A number of the interviewees in this study pointed out that migration has made them ‘more modern’. This has been especially so for those domestic workers in their 20s and 30s. ‘Being modern’ for them means that they are now able to take part in the consumption practices of middle- and upper-class women in the Philippines. The use of technology, particularly of the internet for email and instant messaging, among the interviewees is often perceived as an indicator of class-based consumption. In the Philippines, while there is an abundance of cheap internet cafes, these are often frequented by middle-class youth and students. Even though all of the interviewees graduated from high school, knowledge of how the internet works as well as the need to actually use these programs remains limited to certain groups of people in the context of the Philippines. Significantly, most of the interviewees professed using the internet regularly for email and online messaging since they started working in Singapore. Most of them said that their employers would usually let them use the personal computers in the home. Eve’s employer actually taught her how to use the internet when she mentioned that her children now have a personal computer at home and would like to chat with her. Nel, 29, who has since found employment as a domestic worker in Norway, said that she would go to the National Library on her day-off to surf the internet and to ‘chat’ with a Filipino friend who is working in Saudi Arabia and who happens to be courting her online.

Other consumption practices that render them ‘more modern’ include going to cinemas with friends, going to discos, shopping, travelling, and doing outdoor leisure activities such as hiking and skating. They may have engaged in some of these activities while still in the Philippines, but what perhaps prompted them to say that these have made them more modern is the fact that they are engaging in such activities in a developed country. It is thus the embeddedness of these activities in place that gives them significance. It is not simply what they are doing, but where they are doing these things, in this case, Singapore, that makes them more modern. This puts them on par with middle- and upper-class women who are still in the Philippines.

Singapore has thus provided an enabling environment for the acquisition of lifestyle and consumption practices that the domestic workers would not have had if they did not migrate, even though some of them held professional jobs in the Philippines. Thus, while they are stigmatized as gendered and racialized labor in the host country, they are also able to engage in middle-class activities and develop their human capital in a way that suggests that migration has (temporarily?) freed them from the traditional expectations and the limits of their class position in the home country. While they perform retrogressive labor, they do not construct themselves as entirely in a subordinate position relative to their ‘place’ back in the Philippines. Instead, because of their ability to participate in the leisure activities of the capitalist middle classes, and given the opportunities to enhance their skills and give priority to self-actualization, they are able to construct themselves as ‘more modern’.

Such an understanding of their own ‘class’ position lies behind interviewees’ considerable unhappiness at the fact that they face discrimination among Filipinos employed professionally in Singapore. They said that these ‘high-rank’ (their term) Filipinos avoid them and are not friendly to them. This is indicative of the transnational shame ⁵⁴ felt by higher status Filipinos who are anxious to distance themselves from the stigma of being a maid (or worse still, being mistaken for a maid). Most of the interviewees said that they felt most discriminated by their fellow nationals who did not value and respect them. One even said that Filipinos should not discriminate one another because ‘we are all servants (she actually used the Tagalog term for “maid”) here. Some are servants in corporations, some in the household’. Interviewees reserved their strongest statements of disapproval for Filipino nurses who snub them when they were trying to be friendly, or Filipino female employers married to foreigners who avoided speaking to their Filipino maids in their native tongue, or impose hierarchical boundaries when relating to their compatriots. As one respondent said, ‘it’s really a question to me why they feel they are above us’. These responses indicate that while they feel they might not have been on equal footing with the ‘high-ranks’ back in the Philippines, everybody becomes equal outside of the Philippines. Their non-acceptance of the persistence of class divisions reveals a notion of equality based on sharing a common nationality rather than social class or employment status, which might have been the case if they remained in the Philippines.

Cultural learning

Cultural learning is shaped by the spaces in which one moves. Amin’s ⁵⁵ discussion of microcultures of place show that even spaces for intercultural dialogue may be limited because in ‘even the most carefully designed and inclusive spaces, the marginalised and prejudiced stay away’. ⁵⁶ For many migrant workers, for instance in Singapore, exclusion is reflected in the formation of weekend enclaves where migrants mingle with their own kind. However, for domestic workers, the home as their workplace can also be a space for (limited) intercultural dialogue and thus negotiations of difference that can lead to particular kinds of learning and sensibilities despite asymmetrical power relations in the homespace. For instance, Lan’s ⁵⁷ study of Filipino domestic workers in Taiwan shows how domestic workers define the boundaries of race and social status within the household through the use of cultural resources such as language. English becomes a tool to negotiate difference and contest their employers’ superiority.

When asked about cultural learning, food came up as one element of culture in which much has been learned from employers. All of the respondents showed familiarity with Singaporean food because they have had to cook it for their employers. Some of the respondents had to go to cooking schools to learn how to cook the dishes as they did not have prior cooking skills. By the time of the interviews, however, they were conversant with different terms for Chinese food, western food and international cuisine to describe the different dishes that they prepare. In the Philippines, food is an indicator of class. There are certain dishes that are not common in the countryside and certain dishes that are prepared only on special occasions by the lower classes, but are daily fare for the upper classes. One of the interviewees actually mentioned that her favorite Singaporean dish is chicken curry. When asked how it compares to Filipino chicken curry, she said that she has never tried Filipino curry because they do not have it where she comes from. In Singapore, not only can she taste curry regularly but she can cook it as well. Another interviewee prides herself in being able to prepare as well as consume high-end foodstuffs such as salmon and sashimi, showing disdain for fellow domestic workers who have yet to learn. She commented, ang tagal na sa Singapore di pa alam kung ano yon (they’ve been staying in Singapore for so long but they still don’t know what it is!). Thus, their ability to consume such dishes in Singapore (and their inability to do so in the Philippines) proves a higher class standing compared to their prior social position in the Philippines, even though they are consuming these delicacies as part of the global underclass whose position in the hierarchy is often depressed by the exclusionary policies of the host country and marginalizing practices common in many Singaporean households.

Another cultural element that came up was language. While respondents did mention that the main difference between them and domestic workers of other nationalities is their command of English, they also mention that there has been a noticeable improvement in their English skills upon moving to Singapore. They speak English more fluently and with a better accent compared to when they were still in the Philippines. At the same time, there is also the added knowledge of Singlish. During the interviews, the women were liberal in sprinkling their conversations with certain Singlish terms, for instance, sayang (show affection) or kaypo (busybody), to explain what they wanted to say, indicating that Singlish is already becoming part of their vocabulary. A number of them can also understand a few Mandarin words, which they picked up from their Singaporean Chinese employers or by watching the Chinese TV channel with their employers’ family members. Thompson and Tambyah’s ⁵⁸ study of expatriates in Singapore shows that one of the ways by which expatriates consciously embody a cosmopolitan ideology is by ‘seeking to be sufficiently adaptable and adroit to ingratiate themselves into the local culture’. Domestic workers may not be consciously aiming for a cosmopolitan identity but ‘access to the private sphere’ of the families ⁵⁹ gives them an advantage in terms of immersion in local culture.

Cosmopolitanism: class illusions or emancipatory hope?

While the concept of cosmopolitanism is said to contain the possibilities of an emancipatory openness to humanity, it has also been criticized as an elitist neoliberal project generating an illusion of class. Cheah ⁶⁰ has critiqued the notion of this new cosmopolitanism as a ‘harbinger and bearer’ of freedom, calling it:

‘a ruse’ which ‘equates the power of transcendence with travel, mobility, and migration and tacitly establishes the metropolitan scene of multicultural recognition as the model for cosmopolitan freedom as such. But … the freedom that is promised is not only inaccessible to the majority of the world’s population, who inhabit the other side of the international division of labor and are unable to move to OECD countries and the top-tier cities. It is also severely undermined by the fact that the efficacy of these new cosmopolitanisms is generated by, and structurally dependent on, the active exploitation and impoverishment of the peripheral majorities.

Indeed, the recrudescence of cosmopolitanism in the literature is very much spurred by a neoliberalism that seeks to sift out the various strata of society, and to place them at different levels of (dis)advantage. Thus, for Sparke, ⁶¹ while global-trotting elites are able enjoy a ‘soft’ cosmopolitanism (which ironically avoids the outside through fast-lanes and airline lounges), subalterns have no such access and are subjected to controlling regimes and sometimes even incarceration for attempting mobility. Yet, such dismal cosmopolitical views often do not do justice to, or completely erase, the possibilities for conviviality and socialities based on mutual respect. Beneath the surface of programmatic biopolitical disciplinings of people is veritably a more positive and happier ‘cultural’ face of cosmopolitanism. ⁶²

In Singapore, the cosmopolis, as erected in state visions and pronouncements provides little room – both conceptual and material – for the majority of migrant others called ‘foreign workers’ whose marginalization is made even more stark given the zealous overtures to include that minority of migrant others called ‘foreign talent’. ‘Forgetting’ the large majority of migrant others in the cosmopolis is not a benignly accidental or ignorant act but a ‘structural necessity’ to render them invisible and transient, as somehow less-than-workers and certainly far from being legitimate social and political subjects of the cosmopolitan nation. ⁶³ Thus, Singapore’s heavy reliance on foreign domestic labor, for instance, can be said to undermine ‘even as it enables the articulation of purportedly humane social formations and political projects … [such as] cosmopolitan society in Singapore’. ⁶⁴

Undoubtedly, foreign domestic workers are enmeshed in power asymmetries inherent to the performance of retrogressive labor. Much of the human rights abuses inflicted on these workers are intimately tied to daily situations in the homespace ⁶⁵ that arise from the transnational trade in female domestic workers. ⁶⁶ However, both the invisibility brought about by the Singapore cosmopolitan project and the unequal power relations present in homespaces do not obviate the development of new consumption patterns, new skills acquisitions and the possibility of intercultural learning. A grounded approach to cosmopolitanism shows an interweaving of fragments of both the redemptive and the illusory in the everyday lives of Filipino domestic workers as ‘subaltern cosmopolitans’. ⁶⁷

In the discussion above, we tried to look at the transformations that have taken place in the identities and attitudes of domestic workers. The domestic workers interviewed have all been living in Singapore for a fairly long time and have come to imbibe elements of Singaporean culture as well as aspects of their employers’ lifestyle. Even though their work reflects both patriarchal structures and the position of the Philippines in the global economy, they are able to partially transcend the constraints of class, race and gender in the way they construct their identities. While they are aware that being domestic workers defines how other people, especially other Filipinos, perceive them, their notion of themselves as more modern and of a higher social class as compared to when they were still in the Philippines has been influenced by the spatiality of consumption and cultural learning, despite these taking place within the context of capitalist-labor relations. Their ability to participate in class-based leisure activities, consume cultural commodities, develop human capital, acquire cultural skills, and engage in limited forms of intercultural dialogue with their employers within the homespace in a developed country allows them to see themselves as equal to middle-class women in the Philippines and even expatriate Filipinos in Singapore. Class consciousness is place-based: consuming the modern in a developed country like Singapore is more highly valorized than doing the same thing in the Philippines. Maids working in Europe are ‘more classy’ than those in Asia. This indicates the significance of place to their construction of self, even though in constructing themselves as more modern, they are also buying into cosmopolitan illusions of class and consumption.

Class aspirations appear to structure motivations and fracture sociality rather than race or nationality divides. Being snubbed by fellow nationals cuts deeper than anything else and appears to be uppermost in the consciousness of Filipino domestic workers as the unforgivable insult. But nationality consciousness is not transcended even as Filipino domestic workers experience cultural learning and engage with cultural difference. Discretionary activities are still nationality-based. Counter-claims to assert status are based on nationality lines – outside of the Philippines, it would seem that from their perspective there is an equality of sorts in the notion that ‘all Filipinos are servants of one sort or another’.

While state discourses in Singapore constructing Singapore as a cosmopolis depends on the city’s attractions for transnational elites (and at the same time rendering the majority of foreign workers invisible in the discourse), ⁶⁸ we have shown that the reality is that other cosmopolitanisms are being negotiated in other arenas within the city-state, including the domestic sphere. A focus on working-class cosmopolitanism helps to disrupt dominant state discourses and constructions, as well as dispel the notion that cosmopolitan socialities are the prerogative of (western) footloose transnational elites. ⁶⁹ It should be noted that working-class cosmopolitanism in process does not transcend the strictures of class, race, nationality and gender, although in this instance, it is class, not race, that seems to most visibly shape cosmopolitan imaginings. It is class (middle-class urban lifestyles in the Philippines) that forms the main benchmark for the domestic workers in their aspirations to participate in modernity.

At the end of the day, while ‘cosmopolitan’ consumption freedoms are more or less available only on the day off (which could be anything from once a week to once a month), the opportunity to experience the day off time-space capsule is sufficient to validate the aspirations of foreign domestic workers of ‘being modern’, overcoming the drudgery of the work-week. Recognizing the potential of even transient and fractured forms of working-class cosmopolitanism is in our view progressive, for it may lead to the inclusion of domestic workers in cosmopolitan discourses, which could be potentially important in the longer run, as they navigate journeys of return to the spaces of their home country, or negotiate onward travels to other spaces within all manner of possible worlds.