Spaces of Belonging: Filipina LCP Migrants and their Practices of Claiming Spaces of Belonging in Toronto

Much current literature on women and migration tends to approach the study of migrant domestic workers as victims of global capitalism—or according to Parrenas’s evocative phrase as “servants of globalization”—from one of two vantage points. The first vantage point focuses attention on how the conditions of exit in various sending countries make overseas domestic servitude one of the few employment opportunities available for many women (Parrenas 2001). The second draws attention to the ways in which these migrant women experience stratification—along the lines of gender, race, and class—as part of their settlement experiences in their host countries (Pratt 1998). Both of these vantage points reinforce aspects of the “servants of globalization” discourse in that they pay relatively little attention to the coping practices of migrant domestic workers. In order to extend the thesis beyond the “servants of globalization” discourse, this thesis examines the coping practices that migrant Filipina domestic workers develop in their efforts to create communities of affirmation, care, and belonging.MAS