In service and servitude: Foreign female domestic workers and the Malaysian modernity project

The contemporary institution of live-in domestic service that is increasingly characterized by foreign female domestic workers' (FFDWs) labour has become as important as transnational capital and markets to the Malaysian state's modernity project of building a developed society by the year 2020. The conceptual framework of this dissertation integrates analyses of the in-migration of FFDWs and the consequent political, economic, social, and normative dimensions of paid reproductive labour, with the state's relation to the employing social class. The multimethod approach of ethnographic research--i.e., archival analysis, observation, and interviews--is used to recover and generate knowledge of the manner in which domestic service has become indispensable for the construction of a developed Malaysian society. Domestic service is coopted as a key "educative" institution in the Malaysian state's "war of maneuver" to inculcate different social relations and organization that strengthen the dual objective of expanding export-oriented development and maintaining social stability in the multiethnic society. State rules governing the in-migration and employment of FFDWs objectify the material boundaries of the expanding Malaysian middle class and encourage middle class employers--regardless of ethnicity--to adopt the nuclear family form that is expected to be more dependent on the capitalist market economy rather than the community or extended family for the provision of goods and services. State control over the placement of FFDWs with middle class families, however, occurs in a context in which labour legislation fails to extend workers' rights and benefits to FFDWs. Analysis of employer-FFDW relations reveals that employer-related abuse of FFDWs results from the interplay between the Malaysian-Philippine-Indonesian maid trade that commodifies FFDWs; middle class identity construction in the domestic domain; and state manipulated negative public discourse and perception of FFDWs. In the schemata of state-encouraged Malay and non-Malay middle class pursuit of modernity via enhanced consumption of goods and services, the social construction of FFDWs as a symbol of distinction between the middle and working classes, and as commodities, then, obfuscate the truth that FFDWs are migrant women who deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and who have a right to legal recognition and protection as workers.