Employers’ resources and experiences of employing live-in foreign domestic workers

Abstract

Employing foreign domestic workers (FDWs) has become a common practice for outsourcing domestic labor. There has been a rapid diffusion process of the practice from the families with more resources to families with fewer resources. This study adopts an employment perspective to examine the employers’ subjective experience and the risk of replacing FDWs, and how these are related to the employing families’ economic and informational resources. Analyzing data from a representative household survey (N = 732 employer-FDW dyads) and follow-up interviews (N = 20), the results show that couples living in larger apartments and recruiting FDWs through social networks were more likely to have better subjective experience with their FDWs, while couples who grew up with FDWs in their childhood were less likely to replace FDWs. Families with fewer economic and informational resources have poorer experiences with their FDWs. This finding is important when the practice has become popularized among families with fewer resources.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study received funding support from the Early Career Scheme, awarded by the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong (HKBU/ECS/28603817).

Notes on contributors

Adam Ka-Lok Cheung

Adam Ka-Lok Cheung is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests include gender ideology, division of household labor, family relations, and domestic violence in Hong Kong and other Asian societies. His research appears in Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Science Research, Current Sociology, Journal of Family Issues, Demographic Research, Population Research, and Policy Review, Violence Against Women, and other peer-reviewed journals. He received an honorable mention in the Early Stage Family Scholar Award from the Research Committee on Family Research (RC06) of the International Sociological Association.