Publication by Liberty Chee

Liberty Chee’s paper on ‘Supermaids’ has just appeared in the IMI-N working paper series. Based on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, the paper critically examines the training and recruitment of domestic workers. Domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to human rights abuses. The paper describes how the “resilience training in various stages of the migration trajectory – during recruitment, training prior to deployment and while on their overseas residency” functions to produce an “ideal worker”, that shows resilience to abuse. The trainings thus place the responsibility for protection with the migrants, rather than with legal or regulatory mechanisms.

You can download the paper, free of charge, here