Hong Kong as an Interlude: Chronotopes of Dislocation in Life (Hi)stories of Filipino Domestic Workers
Abstract
In this paper, I explore how Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong realize chronotopes of dislocation during talk, which are emergent and deeply embedded in their situated telling of their living and working experience as temporary transnational migrant workers.
Following Agha (2007), I note that chronotopes are non-isolatable configurations of ‘place- time-and-personhood’ that hinge on particular participation frameworks (what Agha calls ‘mass mediated spacetime’). Employing a linguistic ethnographic approach, I documented life stories from 20 Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong who were also part of a university-based organization dedicated to migrant worker empowerment through skills-development. I demonstrate how participants speak of their experiences in Hong Kong through a spatio- temporal disorientation (in-between here and there), and count years through their employment contract. These situated chronotopic (re)configurations reflect the liminalities of temporary work migration, and combine selves and personhood.
Keywords: Migrant domestic labor, chronotope, dislocation, employment contract, linguistic
anthropology