Chasing Mirages

Amidst an inundation of news relating to Rizana Nafeek’s tragic execution, I was reminded of this encounter from a a few years ago, which I wrote about in the past incarnation of this blog.

I find myself wondering about these girls. All I can hope for is that they are okay and that they have found their freedoms.

—

11th March 2009

Katunayaka International Airport, several minutes had ticked by half-past six when I stumbled towards the liminal olive green immigration desks to fill out the embarkation forms. Laden with a weighty laptop and a folder of documents which traced my life in a paper trail, legitimizing me in the eyes of British Border Control, in the event they decided to question my presence at a place which has been my reluctant domicile for nearly 3 years now. I still need proof that I have no plans of leeching off an overburdened welfare system or disappearing into the woodwork to wo-man the counter of a rural 7-11. Because that’s what an MA will bring you these days: a minimum wage job in a country that can never replace home.  I hope the sarcasm has not been lost.

My country may have its share of problems but that kind of desperation doesn’t affect me. The kind of desperation which leads to catamaran journeys to Cyprus and Sicily. I’m happy where I am, thanks very much. But the papers I carry, just in case they do not appreciate this implausibility.

I scribble in my tired details etched on tens of forms identical to this, filed away in some musty corner, picturesquely gathering mould. The government plans on recycling are rather sketchy. “Nangi.” (Younger sister) A veiled woman approaches me. I’m complacently contained in my own personal semiosphere of memories, goodbyes just said and the dread of a day long journey ahead. I’m made uncomfortable by such acknowledgements of kinship, looking up uncertainly. An unnecessary cultural idiosyncrasy of uncles and aunties.

Expectantly she hands her embarkation form over. “I cannot understand what is said. I don’t know how to fill it in.” I would be lying if I said I wasn’t irritated. She could not read. So much for a 90% literacy, the pride of South Asia. My travel karma did not need unnecessary jinxing. Unnecessary like Nangi. I glance at her crisp novelty of a passport branded for the next decade as “House Maid”; a bold proclamation from the profession box.  House Maid. No euphemisms, no embellishments. Were we post-political correctness already?

Forgive my post-modern cynicism.

Born in 1982, somewhere in the slums of an undiscussed part of the capital. The other peripheral worlds marked by petti-kades, lelli geval and communal taps, rife with crime and unspoken professions. Bound to Jordan, several worlds and a universe away. That House Maid stamp seems awfully permanent for three years. She had that snappy sensibility only an urban existence could mould. I do not say anything as I hand over a completed form. She thanks me curtly.

Another hovers over my shoulder, insistent not expectant, as if it were my cheerful obligation fill out her form. She cannot read either. Sleeplessness and general morning grumpiness blankets me protectively as I complain to myself. I’m ready to settle down with a book at departures, catching snatches of sleep between the mechanical announcements of planes which pendulum between the Occident and Orient.

Born 1991 in a village off “Polonnaruwa?” I couldn’t contain my shock. A child. I am horrified. 18, perched somewhere between the wisdoms of my 21 year old self, and that of my 11 year old sister. Still horrified, I realise the width and depth of the chasm which divides Polonnaruwa and Beirut.  Across the Universe, five oceans and seven seas. I am afraid for her. She did not offer her thanks, strolling to the queue. I’m still taken aback. I do not know what to say. Do I wish such naivety well, as they chase their dreams into deserts faraway?

I watch them huddled together at the Gate making their last phone calls to extended family and friends, running out money as they swap sim cards. She gingerly sips the last of her Polonnaruwa water from a refilled Mixed Fruit Nectar bottle.

I plug in my iPod and return to a soundsphere suspended between the angst of Nirvana and Jason Mraz’s cheer. Conflicted.

I am still afraid for the mirages they chase, towards the oases of dowries and new homes, husbands and children.

The journey ahead would be no smooth sailing.

—

Rest In Peace, Rizana.

Feminised Migration: The Empowerment Paradox

In 2011, The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimated that the number of international migrants in 2008 rested at 214 million, having increased from 150 million people in the year 2000, amounting to 3.1% of the world’s population. The immense economic consequence of these labour flows are made evident in the fact that in 2009, approximately $414 billion were sent as remittances, $307 billion of which were sent to developing countries, double the official aid and nearly two-thirds of foreign direct investment. As made evident from the sheer volume of not only migrants but significant remittances, particularly to the developing world, through the employment relationship of migrant labourers, the incentives for migration are visibly economic.

Despite the growth of permissive economies where human capital flows have become a significant feature, issues of citizenship and national sovereignty directly affront the optimism of international treatises, particularly within the informal sector. International organisations have become the stern-faced puppets of geopolitical powerhouses, owing to rising differences in wealth, power and security hand in hand with economic liberalisation.

Within an inclined geopolitical playing field, both wealthy and lowly nations were able to benefit from the need for labour, however, what must be interrogated is, at what cost to the labourers themselves and whose responsibility is their safety?

Global Care Economies: An Empowerment Paradox?

Care as a socially-reproductive form of labour, has been identified to sustains human beings as distinct from commodities and products, involving biological reproduction and/or socialisation processes such as childcare or housework. Care, much like other service sectors, has become assimilated into the globalisation project, as a low-cost service sector as what has been dubbed as the ‘hidden labour market’. Women’s labour, particularly in those sectors that are regarded as inherent to their biology, are rendered invisible and thus valueless. These also manifest as unregulated, economic spaces particularly in the realm of the domestic, where national laws or international promises for equality cannot be honoured.

Within a globalised world, where wealthier women needed the support of carers to look after matters of house and children while they engaged in their own employment, or simply out of unwillingness and the ability to afford domestic labour, a new trend of feminised migration was instigated. This need for care-giving as both a formal and informal service within the developed world, saw a rapid incline in the number of unskilled female migrants, who were incorporated as domestic labour into the most intimate microcosm of the global production chain; the household. The category of unskilled was thus inherently tied to womanhood, which engenders domestic labour, by which women continue to be compelled to commoditise their patriarchally-reinforced social role as mothers or wives.

The inequalities of wealth play a crucial role in this flow of labour, for unskilled women who are unable to gain employment within national labour markets, through the thinning boundaries of globalisation and an attractive wage differential, are able to leave their home countries for employment opportunities overseas. Although economic independence is an attractive incentive for women, they are compelled into an employment relationship that preys on their gender as a skills-qualification. Through globalisation and the care economy of domestic labour, women are confined into roles that underline their subordination and highlight patriarchal social biases bolstering a gendered separation of the labour market which disallows mobility or the gaining of other productive skills. Moreover, the informal nature of the domestic sphere marked by grave racialised prejudices also creates a uniquely liminal space where national or international labour  conventions and laws cannot be monitored or enforced, making female migrant labourers exceptionally vulnerable to abuse and discrimination that victimise their most intimate forms of self-identification such as gender, ethnicity and nationality.

Cheap Labour in the Middle-East

Working conditions of labourers in the Middle-East have been consistently marked by a lack of protection, clearly defined rights, ineffective local legal systems, a complete dependence on the good will of their employers and the ever-present possibility of deportation. Furthermore, an ethnic and national stratification was in place informally, whereby European expatriates were paid the most, other Arabs and Asians occupying a middle-rung and Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans getting paid the least. What began as a tide of male migration, soon led to a demand for domestic labour in the prosperous Arab households, owing to the very low participation of Arab women in the labour market as a consequence of social and ad religious customs that restricted females working outside the home.

Thereby, cheap domestic labour from South Asia and beyond was funneled into the Arab states, where the even more vulnerable category the female servant was laid over the plethora of existing biases and constraints that marginalised the male workers. These women often remained isolated in private households where they had no access to any form of external protection or any legal recourse in the event of employer abuse. Moreover, existing national labour laws specifically excluded domestic work from its sphere of influence that made reporting harassment or maltreatment virtually impossible.

Although Sri Lanka has been marked as a developing nation that has fared well in matters of human development, economically it has consistently faltered. In the 1984, with a per capita income of $360, it was among the 30 poorest countries in the world having succumbed to very high inflation and unemployment rates in the 1970s. The demand for labour in the Middle-East proved to be a beneficial solution to the Sri Lankan government, which was able to solve some of its worst economic problems and also enable an income and alleviate unemployment. Sri Lanka, having advertised itself internationally has having the cheapest labour in Asia, proved to be an attractive source for Arab employers owing to higher wage differentials, regional proximity, liberalised economic policies that encouraged labour flow out of the country and its comparative regional advantage for not having imposed restrictions on female labour over issues of culture or religion. Many of the women were unskilled outside the domestic sphere which made them pertinent candidates for housekeeping and child-rearing. Given that there was no possibility of them being paid this amount with similar jobs at home, the wage differential was the single most influential ‘pull factor’ in the feminisation of Sri Lankan migration to the Middle-East.

Since the 1980s, Sri Lanka maintained itself as a rich labour resource for the Middle-East, which has sustained its economy throughout as second largest earner of foreign exchange in the Sri Lankan economy. According to the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (2009), there are approximately 1.7 million Sri Lankans working overseas (amounting to nearly 10% of the country’s population) remitting Rs. 382,801 Million (47.03% of total foreign exchange earnings of the country) back to Sri Lanka. During the past decade 70% of labour had been exported in the category of unskilled sector of which nearly 66 % had been female domestic workers who formed 89% of the total female migrant workers. Given the low levels of female employment in Sri Lanka alongside its economic and political instability in the civil war years, migration as domestic labour was motivated almost solely by dire financial necessity among respondent women. Poverty is also tied to the pursuit of social and economic status including ambitions such as building a house, purchasing land, paying off family debts or educating children.

Abuses and Violations

The economic promise of domestic labour in the Middle-East is virtually unequivocally bound to the high probability of abuse.

HRW (2007) reports that not only are women victim to wage exploitation, unpaid or underpaid salaries, heavy workloads, excessive hours of work, food deprivation, inadequate living conditions, confiscation of passports, forced confinement, restricted communication, forced labour, prohibitions on returning home and a series of exploitative practices by recruitment agencies in both Sri Lanka and the Arab States, but also violent physical, psychological and sexual abuses. In Lebanon, the abuses are often centred on racial and ethnic prejudices and ensuing stereotyping that creates a hierarchy of nationality and interlinked wages appropriate for domestic labour, but also categories for recruitment basing nationality as an indication of trust or degradation. Racial slurs and offensive stereotyping are a manifestation of symbolic violence that negate and debase the identities and personhoods of these women. Not only are the human and civil rights of unskilled migrant labourers constantly challenged, and their existence marginalised through these practices, their citizenship becomes a burdening category of identification.

Whose Responsibility?

Universal standards of living are prescribed and marginalised social groups are given legal protection through documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that recognises ‘the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’. However the existence of such idealised and optimistic provisions does not account for the lack of support by human rights or humanitarian organisations in the realms of ‘hidden labour markets’ not simply in the Middle-East, but beyond.

Inter-governmental understandings and solidarity in policy formulation could possess a positive impact on these relations in the long-run although relevant legislation has been slow in implementation.

HRW (2007) states, ‘International human rights law places positive obligations on states to protect the rights of individuals against acts, including ill-treatment and discrimination, committed by private persons or entities. States must take appropriate measures (in some places referred to as “due diligence”) to prevent punish, investigate, or redress the harm caused to individuals’ rights by private persons or entities. States must also provide effective remedies to those so harmed.’ Given that much of the abuses taking place in the domestic sphere, face very legitimate problems of reporting and monitoring, efforts have been made to account for the process of migration itself.The Sri Lankan government has been increasingly wary of abuses in the system through recruitment agencies and has introduced a stringent system of licensing for regulation (Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, 2009; HRW, 2007). Similarly, the establishment of embassies and consuls in the recipient countries has played a considerable role in providing registration services for labourers and sanctuary for women who manage to escape oppressive domestic relations.

However, the process of creating bi-lateral understandings with the Arab States which have very little to gain besides the cost of implementing mechanisms for monitoring labour within the private homes, has been very slow. The core nations’ dependence on the Arab Gulf for oil and its remarkable financial capital, helps maintain its interests within potential threats from international laws. Although a space for civil society activism has opened up in the form of NGOs within these countries where women are given advice and shelter if needed, the problem of abuse and forced labour within the households remains a persistent problem as news reports of violence against female domestics gather momentum, and the expectation of violence becomes grotesquely normalised.

As stated by HRW (2007) the Arab governments remain notably inactive in this sphere, and the critical importance of remittances to Sri Lanka’s economic strategy for poverty alleviation implies that, it too is reluctant to enforce any major restrictions on labour migration. Thereby, what must be questioned is even though globalisation in its neoliberal economic manifestation has become a successful flow for securing employment overseas and interlinked financial independence and gains in socio-economic status owing to high wage differentials, at what disjunctive cost to human dignity and life must these financial incentives be pursued?

Rights and Sovereignty in the Household

Saskia Sassen posits, highlighting the declining sovereignty of states over their economies, posits that global markets created a space for legal regimes that mediated between national autonomy and the transnational practices of economic players.For example, Human rights are not dependent on nationality, overriding political, social and civil rights which elude those categorised as aliens.  However the existence of such idealised and optimistic provisions does not account for the lack of support by human rights or humanitarian organisations in the realms of domestic labour not simply in the Middle-East. These debates on legality and citizenship in relation to migration must be re-examined in relation to enforcement in the liminal, hidden space of the domestic sphere where the employment of domestic labour, the international and national have begun to intersect with the private.

In these spaces and beyond, human rights violations, exist in reality much like the thought experiment of a falling tree in a forest, crimes that did not take place unless it is reported and acted upon.

Relevant Reads:

Abu-Habib, L. (1998). The Use and Abuse of Female Domestic Workers from Sri Lanka in Lebanon. Gender and Development , 6 (1), 52-56.

Anthias, F. (2000). ‘Metaphors of Home. Gendering New Migrations to Southern Europe’. In F. Anthias, & G. Lazaradis, Gender and Migration in Southern Europe. Women on the Move. (pp. 15-47). Oxford: Berg.

Athias, F., & Yuval-Davis, N. (1992). Racialised Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle. London: Routledge.

Bannerjee, D., & Goldfield, M. (2007). Labour, Globalisation and the State: Workers, Women and Migrants Confront Neoliberalism. Oxford and New York: Routledge.

Brochmann, G. (1990). Middle East Avenue: Female Migration from Sri Lanka, Causes and Consequences. Oslo: Institute for Social Research.

Human Rights Watch (HRW). (2007). Exported and Exposed: Abuses against Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia,Kuwait, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates. Human Rights Watch.

Moukarbel, N. (2009). Sri Lankan Housemaids in Lebanon: A Case of ‘Symbolic Violence’ and ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Sassen, S. (1998). Globalisation and its Discontents. New York: The New Press.

Sassen, S. (1996). Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalisation. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment. (2009). Annual Statistical Report. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.

Yeates, N. (2009). Globalising Care Economies and Migrant Workers: Explorations in Global Care Chains. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

‘It didn’t look like you were the type to see a Tamil film’

Having missed the screening of Ini Avan at the EU Film Festival last month, D and I were quite pleased to see that it was being screened at Savoy. So we set aside our Sunday (23rd) to catch the 1.30 screening at Savoy, Wellawatte. Responsibly, I checked the showtimes and D and I made it to the cinema at a respectable 1.15.

Upon requesting tickets from the counter (in Sinhala, so there was no question of this being a language-related misunderstanding), we are told that the film (Ini Avan- we specified a few times) has a special screening time of 3.00pm and that we would have to come back. I ask them in turn, why they can’t update the website to that effect and they say that the information conflicts with the other screening times- which, if of course untrue since each film/EAP theatre has a dedicated page. Fine we say, and ask to buy tickets now. They refuse to sell, saying that ticket sales only open at 2.00pm. Fine, we’ll be back before 3.00pm.

So after mulling around Colombo for an hour and a half, D and I return with A in tow. The three of us head to the counter inquiring for tickets and the same seller has the audacity to (very rudely) laugh at us and say ‘oh it’s actually at 4.15′.

Of course, I lose my cool. I explain to him that when I very clearly inquired (regarding the film and the website times) he insisted that the screening was at 3.00pm, when he could have easily just sold us tickets for the 1.30 that we originally asked for. There’s not paying attention and then there’s making a sheer mockery out of your customers- especially given that they refused to sell us tickets for the 3.00pm screening saying it was too early.

So I ask, do you really think people have nothing better to do than to keep coming back every couple of hours to the cinema according to the whimsy of the sales staff? Then they laugh at us and say,

‘Well I asked you to come back for the 3.0opm Hobbit screening since it didn’t look like you were the type to see a Tamil film’

Because, your appearance as a visibly ethnic stereotype matters when the cinema staff decide for you what film you should be seeing and what they sell you tickets for. Especially when you dare show up to see a Tamil film without making your best effort to highlight your ethnicity as a qualifier to watch a film in your mother tongue.

A sharply asserts in Tamil, that she is indeed Tamil and asks what he meant by that.

They find it acceptable to laugh at us in response, a sneering sort of laugh that has everything to do with the fact that we are women and they somehow are making a joke of us. They won’t event let us buy tickets for the 4.15- once again apparently, it is too early. The manager is apathetic and completely unhelpful, laughing along with his clever salespeople.

Then they say (and they are finding this hilarious) ‘Well you could always go to Concord (in Dehiwela) it will be 4.15 by the time you get there.’ Snigger.

They clearly don’t want us to 1. make a scene 2. see this film.

We leave to Concord and get there by 4.00. What do you know, they got that wrong too (or lied). The film started at 3.00.

That was 4 hours of our afternoon wasted, out of what I can only interpret as some form of bad joke, deliberate misinformation and absolute disrespect to customers coupled with some sort of negative twist of ethnic and gendered differentiation. I might be reading too much into this, but the unapologetic and snide attitudes of those employed at Savoy, doesn’t have me in a particularly forgiving mood.

—

Utterly appalling customer service by the Savoy staff aside (rest assured, I will never return to Savoy), Sunday’s incident highlights a greater quandary.

I would like to inquire how many of us make a conscious choice to dress Tamil or Sinhala everyday? Should A be embracing an ethnic stereotype of sari, pottu, flowers in her hair finery? Should I be highlighting my mixed-heritage with some form of indication to both to satisfy judgment on what film I am ethnically and linguistically qualified to see? If you don’t speak English/Sinhala, does that mean you will be redirected to seeing a film in your own language because you don’t look the type of person who can watch an English/Sinhala film? Would the situation have been different if we were three men who perhaps would not have taken the mockery lightly?

Nascent Tamil language cinema in this country is still at a fledgling stage and I encourage you all to support local film making, especially when artists are attempting to draw attention to extremely important social issues that require greater attention. The predicament of ex-combatants in Mullaitivu, which is addressed by Ini Avan is one of particular relevance to present day Sri Lanka, being at the stem of manifold social integration issues ranging from attempts at illegal migration to social exclusion and economic marginalisation.

Post 2009,  amidst all the problems and challenges that remain conveniently undiscussed, we can only hope to look forward and do our part in building a lasting foundation for reconciliation and integration.

However, when you go into a cinema and someone is still making a bluntly unfounded judgment call about your ethnicity and its relevance to what films you may want to see, one must really wonder if any progress has been made, and deliberate how much further we have left to go in changing people’s petty attitudes towards differences.

“They tell me you’ve been listening to women’s problems.”

November 25^th marked the International Day against Violence against Women and the interlinked 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign highlights the need for creating awareness on gender-based violence.  More on the Women and Media Collective’s Sri Lankan campaign can be found here:
http://srilanka16days.wordpress.com/

Here’s my contribution. Mostly because a few years ago when I was researching labour relations on a tea plantation in Bogawantalawa, the women workers thought I was there to ‘listen to women’s problems’. The incident that ensues remained confined within the pages of an undergraduate dissertation, but 2 years later, I feel like I owe it to She who shall remain unnamed, to make sure that others hear her story and act against violence against women.

The following is a loosely adapted section from an unpublished Social Anthropology dissertation entitled ‘An Alternative View of Plantation Patriarchy: A Study of Labour Relations among Indian-Origin Tamil Workers on a Sri Lankan Tea Plantation’

—

“They tell me you’ve been listening to women’s problems.”

“Are you the one listening to the women’s problems?” She is small, and crooked from the weight of the fraying fertilizer sack full of leaves she has grown accustomed to carrying each day. I am startled, unsure as to how I should respond. I have spent a couple of weeks engaged in Malar’s welfare visits, familiarising myself with the winding paths and sunburnt faces. I have not met her before.

“They tell me you’ve been listening to women’s problems.” She repeats anxiously. I nod. “Don’t write down my name. Don’t tell anyone.”

Now, I am intrigued but am unsure as to what she thinks my role is. “When he drinks he changes. He breaks my head, my arms and legs. When he leaves, he is fine but when he comes back… I have taken on all the responsibilities of the man of the house. My four children work as domestic helpers in Colombo. You must do something to stop the sale of alcohol in the lines.”

I am bewildered. She plucks at the hedge we are standing against, crushing the leaves between her green-stained fingers. A nervous memory that rests only in her hands after the hours spent plucking kolanda (tea leaf).

“Will you tell them about how the women here suffer? Please do not write my name. Women suffer in the field and the house. We do not even have the freedom to eat. There are other women selling alcohol in the lines, they do not see our pain. If they do not sell alcohol in the lines, our men will not drink. They will not go into Tientsin to buy alcohol because they are afraid of the police. Can you bring the police?”

Uncertain as to what to say, I tell her that I am only researching gendered labour.

She asks me what the point is if I am not going to do anything about the women’s problems. “When I tell people my troubles, they carry tales to my husband so I get beaten. Why can’t you do something? Today is advance day and the money lender will collect my salary because when my husband takes a loan it is I who end up paying.” As other women begin to filter in, she leaves abruptly not wanting to be seen speaking to me.

Incidents related to alcoholism and interlinked domestic violence, are frequent. While some gruesome episodes involved young women being molested by drunken husbands, others were horrific instances of forced incestuous rape. Known through the euphemism thanni podarda (drinking water), alcohol is a menacing agent in the relationship between sexes.

Women anticipate that the management will enforce an alcohol ban, as alcoholism adds an ominous layer to the gender inequity manifesting as a prop for domestic violence. It also plays a mediatory role in men’s social engagements.

Selladorai, an older labourer tells me “It’s like refusing a meal. If you invite me to have a meal with you, and I refuse, it looks ugly on you and me both. So we will eat together. It is the same when it comes to drinking together.”

—

Male and female alcoholism in Sri Lanka’s plantations, hand in hand with the brewing of illegal liquor has become a grave problem that goes terribly unnoticed. This post isn’t by any measure an outcry against the vices of alcoholism, but to highlight that its ominous role in fuelling domestic violence must not be underplayed, particularly in the case of abuse and violence against women in the private sphere of the home.

I suppose the gravest predicament is not the lack of awareness or the evils of alcohol abuse, but the resonating silence and implicit acceptance that it is in the nature of men or worse, part and parcel of being a woman.

Say something. Do something, today.