Hien's shed: (re)framing images of female immigrant home-based clothing workers

Abstract

Campaigns in support of home-based clothing workers (or ‘outworkers’ as they are more commonly known in Australia) deploy powerful images of the exploitative underside of fashion. The migrant woman huddled over her machine has become the quintessential image of campaigns directed against this exploitation. This article engages critically with the politics of such image-making. By examining how frames simultaneously shrink and magnify the image produced it raises questions about what these images exclude or expel and whether and how this matters. It also offers an alternative frame of the female immigrant outworker – an up-close portrait of Hien, a Vietnamese woman who works at home sewing clothes in her suburban shed. The article introduces Hien through a condensed collection of her self-narratives, before moving on to consider how a trade union and community-based movement against outworker exploitation mobilised images of suffering and injured Vietnamese women to promote its cause. It asks how these images speak for and represent women like Hien and suggests that their political ‘success’ relies to some extent on the women being ‘unseen’ and made to ‘unspeak’. Finally, through the metaphor of space, it proffers an expanded dimension to the already framed images invoking Hien's shed as a space that both produces and disciplines her: ultimately, a ‘transitional space’ between the external and internal worlds that shape and constrain her.

El galpón de Hien – (Re) enmarcando imágenes de trabajadoras textiles domiciliarias inmigrantes mujeres

Las campañas en apoyo de las trabajadoras textiles domiciliarias (o “trabajadoras a domicilio” o outworkers como se conocen en Australia) despliegan poderosas imágenes de la explotadora cara oculta de la moda. La imagen de la mujer inmigrante inclinada sobre su máquina se ha vuelto la quintaesencia de las campañas dirigidas contra esta explotación. Este artículo aborda críticamente la política de este tipo de construcción de imágenes. Examinando cómo los encuadres simultáneamente disminuyen o magnifican la imagen producida, plantea cuestiones sobre qué excluyen o expelen estas imágenes y si esto importa y cómo. También ofrece un marco alternativo de la mujer inmigrante que trabaja en su domicilio – un retrato de cerca de Hien, una mujer vietnamita que trabaja en su hogar cosiendo ropas en su galpón suburbano. El artículo presenta a Hien a través de una colección breve de sus propias narrativas, antes de avanzar y considerar cómo un movimiento sindical y comunitario contra la explotación de las outworkers movilizó imágenes de mujeres vietnamitas sufrientes y heridas para promover su causa. El artículo pregunta cómo estas imágenes hablan por las mujeres como Hien y las representan, y sugiere que su “éxito” político se basa hasta cierto punto en que las mujeres permanezcan “sin ser vistas” y se mantengan “sin habla”. Finalmente, a través de la metáfora del espacio, profiere una dimensión expandida para las imágenes ya enmarcadas que invocan al galpón de Hien como un espacio que la produce al tiempo que la disciplina: en última instancia, un “espacio transicional” entre los mundos （externo e interno que le dan forma y la limitan.

贤的小屋—（再）框架移民女性家庭成衣代工的形象

声援家庭成衣代工（在澳大利亚一般较常称为外包工作人员”）的运动，运用了时尚底层剥削的强烈意象。偎缩在机器一旁的女性移工，成为反剥削运动的经典形象。本文则批判性地涉入此一意象的形构政治，透过检视此框架如何同时收敛与放大该意象，提出有关这些影像排除或拒斥了什么、以及此一议题是否且如何要紧之问题。本文同时提出对于女性移民外包工作者的另类框架方式—对于一位名为贤的越南女性在简陋的郊区家中缝制衣服的近身描绘。本文首先介绍现贤的浓缩自我叙事，随后转向考量贸易工会与社区运动如何调动遭受磨难与伤害的越南女性形象，藉此达到反抗剥削外包工作者的目标。本文质问这些影像如何再现如贤一般的女性并为其发声，并主张这些运动的政治“成功”某种程度是透过将 这些女性“隐形”并使之“禁声”达成。本文最后透过空间的隐喻，提出扩张既存意象的面向，唤起贤的小屋做为同时生产与规范她的空间：一个形塑并限囿她、介乎外在与内在世界的“过渡空间”。

Keywords::

• outworker
• framing
• Vietnamese women
• transitional space
• migrant

Palabras claves::

• trabajadora domiciliaria
• encuadre
• mujeres vietnamitas
• espacio transicional
• inmigrante

关键词::

• 外包工作者
• 框架
• 越南女性
• 过渡空间
• 移民

Acknowledgements

I thank Haydie Gooder for being a generous, intelligent and critical interlocutor throughout. I thank her particularly for pressing me to constantly reflect on the difference between critique and criticism. I also thank Charles Livingstone for valuable comments. I am particularly grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their critical and thoughtful comments on a previous version of this article.

Notes

^1. Unless otherwise cited, all references from FairwearAustralia (or The FairWear Campaign) are derived from the campaign website http://www.fairwear.org.au. This is a community coalition that began in 1996 to campaign around home-based outworkers in the textile and clothing industry, churches, non-government organisations, schools and other community members from the membership of Fairwear. In 2005, FairWear launched an international campaign to encourage companies to have transparent and ethical international supply chains, which insure a living wage and fair conditions for textile workers globally.

^2. I have used upper case to try to convey something of the emphasis Hien put on this word.

^3. FairWear Radio Plays. Produced by FairWear as an educational resource, these plays are scripted and read by women. Audio plays and full transcripts are available on the FairWear website (see above).

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Maree Pardy

Maree Pardy is an anthropologist and teaches in the Gender Studies Program at the University of Melbourne. She researches in the areas of gender, multiculturalism and cultural difference and has undertaken long-term fieldwork among Vietnamese-Australian women. Her current research examines new intersections of gender, multiculturalism, religion and urban public space.