"Mom Is a Stranger": The Negative Impact of Immigration Policies on the Family Life of Filipina Domestic Workers

ABSTRACT/RESUME Drawing on data from twenty-one in-depth interviews, government documents, and secondary sources, this study examines the consequences of current immigration policies on the life of Filipina domestic workers and their families. In a broader context, it explores the role of state immigration and labour policies in constructing disfunctionality among families of Filipino-Canadian domestic workers. The paper argues that the inability of 'live-in domestic workers to immigrate to Canada with their spouses and children results in the destruction of traditional family roles, creating serfdom-like work situations in which family relations are maintained transnationally, from afar, for many years. When, and if, family members of domestic workers are finally unified, they are often plagued by tension and conflict. The article analyses migrant domestic labour in the context of the global economy and proposes policy changes. Sur la base des donnees obtenues au cours de vingt et une entrevues approfondies ou extraites de documents gouvernementaux et autres sources secondaires, cette etude examine les consequences de la politique actuelle en matiere d'immigration sur la vie des travailleurs domestiques philippins et sur leur famille. Dans un cadre plus large, elle analyse le role joue par l'immigration etatisee et les politiques du travail dans l'etablissement d'un [much less than]dysfonctionnement[much greater than] au sein des families des domestiques philippino-canadiens. La recherche soutient que l'impossibilite, pour les domestiques vivant au domicile de leur employeur, d'immigrer au Canada avec leur conjoint et leurs enfants, a pour resultat la disparition des roles familiaux traditionnels par la creation de situations de travail comparables au servage dans lesquelles les relations familiales ne sont maintenues qu a distance, d' une nation l'autre et pendant de longues annees. Quand et si les membres de la famille des travail leurs domestiques sont enfin reunis, ils sont souvent dechires par des tensions et des conflits. L'article analyse le travail domestique migrant dans le contexte de l'economie globale et propose des changements de politique. Patricia, a Filipina widow and a mother of two children, Christie (16) and Eduardo (17), has been in Canada for nine years. [1] Her husband was killed while serving in the army in the Philippines when her children were two and three years old. In 1986 she left her son and her daughter with her widowed mother to assume a position as a domestic servant in Saudi Arabia. Over the past fourteen years she has seen her children and family only twice. After four years of doing housework and caring for twin babies of an Egyptian family -- seven days a week, fifteen hours a day -- Patricia managed to be sponsored by a Canadian family and to be admitted to the Foreign Domestic Movement (FDM) program. Under the FDM program, the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission (CEIC) issued her a special employment authorization restricting her to live-in domestic work with a particular employer. In 1990 she arrived in Canada and started working for a family of five in North York. In January 1994,following disclosure of the f act that she is a widowed mother of two and not a single person as declared on her passport, she was granted Landed Immigrant Status under the Live-in Caregivers Program (LCP) which replaced the FDM program. A few months later she began the process of sponsoring her mother and children. Her children's applications were approved; her mother's was denied. In 1994, while Patricia's applications were already being processed, immigration policies for family reunification changed to exclude parents and siblings from the definition of immediate family. In a second attempt, using a lawyer and filing through a Canadian embassy in the United States (consequently going through a long, expensive, and bureaucratic process), her prospects seemed more positive. …

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