Scripts of servitude: Language, labor migration and transnational domestic work (Finalist, American Association for Applied Linguistics 2020 Book Award) (original) (raw)
Related papers
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 262: 131-134., 2020
Beatriz, P. Lorente. Scripts of servitude: language, labor, migration, and transnational domestic work. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. 2018. Pp. xvii + 176, GBP 99.95 (hbk), GBP 29.95 (pbk), ISBN 978-1-78309-898-9.
Maid or Madame: Filipina Migrant Workers and the Continuity of Domestic Labor
2003
This article examines the complexity of feminized domestic labor in the context of global migration. I view unpaid household labor and paid domestic work not as dichotomous categories but as structural continuities across the public and private spheres. Based on a qualitative study of Filipina migrant domestic workers in Taiwan, I demonstrate how women travel through the maid/madam boundary— housewives in home countries become breadwinners by doing domestic work overseas, and foreign maids turn into foreign brides. While migrant women sell their domestic labor in the market, they remain burdened with gendered responsibilities in their own families. Their simultaneous occupancy of paid and unpaid domestic labor is segmented into distinct spatial settings. I underscore women’s agency by presenting how they articulate their paid and unpaid domestic labor and bargain with the monetary and emotional value of their labor.
2003
This article explores how Taiwanese employers and Filipina migrant domestic workers negotiate their class locations and identities, with an emphasis on the symbolic struggles surrounding linguistic exchanges in transnational contexts. Taiwanese newly rich employers validate their middle-classhood with the consumption of migrant labor service and the investment of English tutoring for their children. Filipinas flee underpaid middle- class occupations in their stagnant national economy to work as foreign maids; they maneuver their linguistic capital, inherited from the American colonizer, to enhance their status vis-à-vis Taiwanese employers. This South-to-South employment relation- ship illustrates the ambiguous micropolitics of producing class boundaries. The English language serves as a means of symbolic domination and resistance in their daily communication and job negotiation.
I-LanD Journal – Identity, Language and Diversity International Peer-Reviewed Journal Call for papers for the special issue: “Translating and Interpreting Linguistic and Cultural Differences in a Migrant Era” The next monographic issue of the I-LanD Journal will be centred on exploring the role which translation and interpreting play as activities which potentially foster the recognition or misrecognition of, amongst others, sexual, ethnic, racial and class differences in an era of great waves of migrations, and will be edited by Eleonora Federici (University L'Orientale, Naples), and Rosario Martín Ruano and África Vidal Claramonte (University of Salamanca). Given the thematic scope of this issue, contributions should adhere to any of the following broad research strands: - Translating gender and sexualities; - Translation and interpreting as cultural mediation; - Translation and ideology; - Translating and interpreting cultural differences in professional fields; - Translation, adaptation and negotiation of gender and ethnic differences in TV series, cinema and the Web; - Translation and representation of political and cultural differences in the press; - Recognition and marginalisation of sexual, cultural and ethnic differences in translated texts; - Ethics and pedagogy of translation. Contributions are expected to be discursively inspired in their methodology, so that they may draw on any of the following approaches: Translation Studies, Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Semiotics, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Narratology, Social Sciences and Media Studies, to name but a few. Original contributions in English will be considered for publication in this issue. Word-count of the abstract - The length of each abstract is approximately 500 words, excluding references. Word-count of the paper - The length of individual papers is approximately 7,000-8,000 words, excluding references. The attachment should not contain the author’s name and affiliation but should be accompanied by an email including such personal information. Contact and submission email - efederici@unior.it, africa@usal.es, mrmr@usal.es, ilandjournal@unior.it Deadlines - Submission of abstracts to guest editors: October 15, 2018. - Notification of acceptance/rejection to prospective contributors: by October 30, 2018. - Submission of individual chapters to guest editors: February 10, 2019. Description The role of translation and interpreting is crucial in the mediation of discourses and in the evolution of literary/linguistic/cultural representations of differences in various sociocultural contexts. A critical analysis of dominant models of translation and interpreting in the various professional fields and a reflection on the ethical implications of translation and interpreting are paramount for a rethinking of theories and practices of mediation, translation and interpreting in Western societies. Aims The aim of this monographic number is to offer a Translation and Interpreting Studies insight into the ethical challenges of translation and interpreting in an era of great waves of migrations through investigations on these activities as fields of recognition or mis-recognition of, amongst others, sexual, ethnic, racial and class differences. Through an interdisciplinary approach which draws on theories and practices from the fields of Translation Studies, Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Semiotics, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Narratology, Social Sciences and Media Studies, this monographic issue aims at gathering substantial contributions capable of depicting and displaying major in-context examples of linguistic usage, cultural representations, stylistic, narrative and communicative frames, patterns and schemata in political, social, literary and cultural discourses, in the shaping or negotiation of which translation and interpreting play a major role.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2020
The idea for the special issue emerged a few years ago when the guest editors, Kamilla Kraft and Mi-Cha Flubacher, started discussing the different possible directions of language, work and migration studies that have dominated the fields of sociology of language, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and applied linguistics. These studies have become increasingly accentuated in the context of tightened language policies (Extra et al. 2009) and securitization (e.g. Khan 2016) for migration as well as migrant populations – i.e. the legally stipulated learning of the locally dominant language and related sanctions in the case of refusal to comply. Though perhaps keeping with a rather crudely binary distinction, we started musing on how, on the one hand, some scholars appear to have treated language – e.g. in the form of language learning or/and the use of multilingual repertoires – as empowering for migrants and migrant workers. For instance, and especially in applied linguistics or second language teaching, a plethora of studies have been conducted with the intention to improve learning conditions and/or learning material with the aim to empowering individuals with migrant backgrounds to achieve greater social and professional opportunities (e.g. Darvin and Norton 2015; Goldstein 1997; Holmes et al. 2009; Yates 2014). On the other hand, critical studies on language seem to have treated the domain of “language learning” as representative and constitutive of systems that (re)produce in- equalities within societies. In this critical reading, migrants who are “forced” to learn the locally dominant language are treated as language-less and deficient subalterns compared to their local counterparts, resulting in the introduction of exploitative measures of self-discipline for said learning. The thrust of this latter line of thinking is to provide a social critique and push for broader social change that is not conditioned on the basis of the assimilation and activation of disenfranchised individuals. In this we inscribe the contributions of this special issue in a line of research that critically questions and nuances promises of and investments in language at the intersection of empowerment and inequality (e.g. recently Bae and Park 2019; Duchêne and Daveluy 2015; Flubacher et al. 2016; Kraft 2020; Muth and Suryanarayan 2019; Norton 2013; Strömmer 2016; Tabiola and Lorente 2017; Zimmermann 2019).