Diasporic Dreams, Middle-Class Moralities and Migrant Domestic Workers Among Muslim Filipinos in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This paper is about middle-class Muslim Filipinos in Saudi Arabia and their discourses about and relationships with migrant domestic workers. Saudi Arabia is not simply a temporary stopping point to a better future elsewhere, but is also a place where the middle-class aspirations of Muslim Filipinos may be realised and where their religious affiliations as Muslims may be seen as enhancing rather than detracting from those dreams and imaginings. As part of a large and diverse diasporic community, middle-class Filipinos routinely interact and socialise with working-class Filipinos. They often provide succour and support for their compatriots who labour under difficult and legally unprotected conditions. Some employ migrant domestic workers in their homes, many of whom are irregular or takas (escapees). At the same time, they reproduce and reinforce many of the gendered stereotypes of domestic workers that often suggest moral failings of one sort or another. The simultaneous embracing of and distancing from domestic workers reflects the anxieties of those, particularly women, whose tenuous hold of middle-class status is accomplished through, but also put at risk by, the precariousness of their sojourns abroad in the Kingdom.

Keywords:

• Class
• Gender
• Diaspora
• Muslim Filipinos
• Saudi Arabia

Acknowledgements

This article draws on ethnographic research in Saudi Arabia and the Philippines conducted by Mark Johnson and Alicia Pingol extending intermittently from September 2007 to January 2010. The research was part of an Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded ‘Footsteps’ project (grant ref. AH/E508790/1/APPID: 123592, principal investigator Professor Pnina Werbner; co-investigator Mark Johnson), which formed part of the Diasporas, Migration and Identities programme and was based at the Universities of Keele and Hull (UK). The King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh kindly sponsored the research work that Alicia Pingol and I undertook in Saudi Arabia: I am grateful to Nada Elyas, a PhD student at Hull University, who made that link possible. In the Philippines I was ably assisted by graduate students at the Institute of Islamic Studies at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Special thanks to Buddi and Amira, two of the people I mention in the paper who not only shared something of their life and experiences in the Kingdom, but also facilitated introductions to many fellow Muslim Filipino sojourners: the choice of pseudonym, Buddi, the Tausug cognate of the Tagalog utang na loob, reflects my debt of gratitude to them. This paper has benefited from the constructive comments and suggestions of anonymous reviewers. Finally, I thank my colleagues on the Footsteps project, Claudia Liebelt, Deirdre McKay, Alicia Pingol and especially Pnina Werbner for her contribution to honing the argument and presentation.

Notes

1. Unless specified otherwise, I write about Filipino Muslim experiences in Saudi Arabia because the research on which this paper was based was primarily with Muslim Filipinos. I am therefore unable to comment in a knowledgeable way on the experiences of Christian Filipinos in Saudi Arabia. The choice to study Filipino Muslims reflected both the chosen aims of the research—to investigate the importance of the religious imagination among migrants in a place considered sacred to them—and was a condition of research set by the local sponsor, the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, due to political sensitivities about prohibitions on religious gatherings among non-Muslim groups.

2. The newest entrant The names of all the people referred to in this article have been changed to protect their anonymity. in a work place is asked to do the most menial tasks.

3. The newest entrant in a work place is asked to do the most menial tasks.

4. Being able to bring family is a common measure of success and status among Filipino migrants, at least in European and North American contexts. Parreñas (2001, 2005) discusses the citizenship hierarchies in the US that create distinctions among migrants there. I suspect that Christian Filipinos working in Saudi Arabia may not view separation from their spouse or children in quite the same way as Muslim Filipinos owing to the restrictions placed on Christian religious observance. In terms of family structure and life course, it was generally expected that children would return to the Philippines, and Manila in particular, for higher education. As with college-age students in the Philippines who move away from the family home to attend university, arrangements would be made to ensure that they were looked after by a relative.