Transforming a Private Home

When I was socializing with Filipina and Filipino domestic workers at weekends, it was common to get a glimpse of a heavy bundle of house keys, which they carried with them. This means that they are live-out weekly cleaners of their “part-times”—the name that Filipina and Filipino migrant domestic workers gave to their employers. This working arrangement is the most common one among my research participants in Schonberg: they clean and iron a few hours a week for each one according to a previously agreed schedule, rather than indicating their overall working hours. They are not part-time workers themselves but have several part-times a day for six days—some of them seven days—a week. At the time of the interviews, 17 (12 women and 5 men) out of 20 domestic workers lived out from their employers’ homes while the remaining 3(2 female and 1 male) migrants lived in their own apartment or room within their employer’s home. Below are quotes of two domestic workers: When we first came here [in 1989], it was very common to work for full-time. I did work for full-time for a couple of months, but when I started these part-time jobs, it was less stressful because mostly there’s nobody in there [in the house or apartment]. Or even if they are there, you have this system that they know if you are working in that place and they move to another room, things like that.