1 Practising Hope in an Urban Landscape: The
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Practising hope in an urban landscape: the poetics and politics of Filipino migrant workers in Hong Kong Hsiang Ying Wu UCL For the Degree of PhD I, Hsiang Ying Wu, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 1 2 Acknowledgement I would like to express my special appreciation to my primary supervisor, Professor Christopher Tilley, at the UCL Department of Anthropology. Your encouragement and advice have made my PhD journey enjoyable and the completion of this thesis possible. I would also like to thank Professor Alan Penn at the Bartlett School of Architecture, for your interest in my research and your priceless advice and support throughout my PhD studies. I want to thank Professor Victor Buchli and Professor Caroline Knowles, my examiners, for your brilliant suggestions and comments and for making my viva an enjoyable discussion. I especially want to thank my informants whom I met during my fieldwork – without you this thesis would not have been possible. I am grateful for your kindness in letting me be a part of your community and the insight you shared in your struggle for better lives for all those concerned. My deepest gratitude goes to: Dolores, Cynthia, Norman, Eman, Lenlen, Aaron, Rey, Janette, Lany, Yeng, Daisy, Vicky, Jun, Joselito, Rowena, Caring and Rochelle. I also want to thank Au Ka Chun, Roxanne Chow, Agnes Yap Huiing and Lim Ji Hsien for being the readers of my first draft and for your invaluable feedback. You might have been far away but you know you are always in my thoughts. Lastly, I want to thank my family. This goes to my mum, Linfen Chen, my brother, Yinghao Wu, and my sister Hsiangjung Wu, for your support and encouragement; my cousin Catherine Jen for your presence in London during my writing up year – it was invaluable to my wellbeing. Finally and most importantly, I want to thank my husband Au Ka Chun. Without your support and love, there would not have been a PhD journey to begin with. 3 4 Abstract The thesis is about the Filipino migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong and how they carve an alternative space in Central on their days off. This alternative space speaks of not merely a social space but a material built environment around which the migrants build their new subjectivities and constitute a transnational movement construed through the assertion of their rights as workers, women and human beings under the rubric of universal human rights. I first discuss the spatial practices of the community to adapt to changes in the physical landscape and reveal the nuanced social relationships and contestation of spaces amongst the members of the community. The linear and cyclical repetitions of their Sunday life act to punctuate the everyday repetitive life they have as domestic workers and create and inscribe patterns of usage of space that disrupt the dominant corporate space of Central that has come to represent faceless capital and consumers of spectacles. Through encounters with the representatives of the authorities in protest marches and everyday interactions, I examine the tensions between the dominant abstract space and the marginalised lived space and argue that the negotiations and creative alternative ways of appropriating spaces by the Filipinos illustrate that the domination of abstract space is not absolute. Alternative social relations emerge in the cracks of the abstract space and these alternatives are the beginning of something hopeful –the transnational migrant domestic workers’ movement. Lastly, I argue that the transnational migrant movement in Hong Kong is underpinned by ‘practising hope’ – of one’s encounter with injustice; of the political awakening that the personal is political; of the identification of oneself as part of a collective and a community. The basis of it all is underpinned by the Sunday gatherings they have in Central that substantiate their claim to the ‘right to the city’. 5 Table of Contents Acknowledgement ........................................................................................... 3 Abstract ............................................................................................................... 5 Table of Contents ............................................................................................. 6 Table of Figures ................................................................................................ 9 Chapter 1 Why are they here every Sunday? ..................................... 12 1.1 Introduction: ................................................................................................ 12 1.2 Migration ....................................................................................................... 15 1.3 The Production of Space .......................................................................... 38 1.4 Structure of the Thesis .............................................................................. 47 1.5 Methodology ................................................................................................. 50 Chapter 2 Filipinas for Export ................................................................ 54 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 54 2.2 Globalisation and the convergence at the global cities ................. 56 2.3 Philippine’s economy ................................................................................ 57 2.4 Power and Resistance in Hong Kong .................................................... 69 2.5 Conclusion: ................................................................................................... 84 Chapter 3 Making spaces of the publics: the cultivation of material and discursive publics in Hong Kong by the transnational domestic worker activists ............................................... 86 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 86 3.2 The Rights Paradigm ................................................................................. 89 3.3 Translating between the global and the local ................................ 101 3.4 Rights to the Space for Representation ............................................ 115 3.5 Merging of Discursive and Material Publics ................................... 116 3.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 120 Chapter 4 The Global Third Space ..................................................... 123 4.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 123 4.2 Christmas Theme Park – the consumerist wonderland of Hong Kong 130 4.3 Walking as resistance ............................................................................ 138 6 4.4 Central and its many protests ............................................................. 142 4.5 Hong Kong as spaces of exceptions ................................................... 157 4.6 Conclusion: ................................................................................................ 172 Chapter 5 Central on Sundays – Rhythmanalysis ......................... 174 5.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 174 5.2 Central On Sundays ................................................................................. 175 5.3 Connecting the Past with the Future: First Meeting with ATIS 186 5.4 Contested Terrain: Electoral Campaign 10 March 2013 ............ 193 5.5 Negotiation of using public spaces .................................................... 204 5.6 Everyday Moments – eating and chatting ........................................ 215 5.7 Alternative social relations .................................................................. 225 5.8 Conclusion: ................................................................................................ 234 Chapter 6 Practising hope – the network of transnational migrant domestic workers’ movements in Hong Kong .................. 236 6.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 236 6.2 Transnational Activism Discussion ................................................... 241 6.3 Network of Transnational Migrant Workers Movement in Hong Kong 245 6.4 Organisational Actors: Service providers and advocates ......... 248 6.5 Linking the Personal to the Political ................................................. 255 6.6 TIGIL NA! (Stop Now!) Movement of Victims against Illegal Recruitment & Trafficking .............................................................................. 259 6.7 Rhizomisation ........................................................................................... 267 6.8 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 278 Chapter 7 Conclusion: Rights to the city as the beginning of alternatives ................................................................................................... 281 7.1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 281 7.2 Claiming Public Spaces .......................................................................... 283 7.3 As Strategies of Resistance ..................................................................