Scripts of servitude: language, labor, migration, and transnational domestic work

Beatriz Lorente’s book is an ethnographic study focusing on the relationship between language and the construction of transnational domestic worker identity with a special emphasis on Filipina domestic workers. It deals primarily with the ways in which language is embedded in the labor migration infrastructure that produces transnational Filipina domestic workers and the conditions that regulate their mobility. It is argued and illustrated through numerous examples that the transnational mobility of these domestic workers is dependent on the selection, assembly and efficient performance of particular bricolages of linguistic resources that construct migrants as labor and not as people. The various institutions and social actors that are involved in the migration infrastructure include the Philippine State, transnational maid agencies, Singapore and the domestic workers themselves. The book is split into seven chapters that deconstruct the aforementioned relationship at multiple analytical and methodological levels.

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Published in: International Journal of the Sociology of Language
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
See article on publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2019-2073