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Out of Focus by Nimanthi Perera-Rajasingham

Often the significance of migrant workers in the Middle East is commented upon through varying stereotypes. Local middle and upper class women will lament the fact that domestic work has become difficult to find, because all these women had become impossible after their trips abroad, refusing to work without washing machines, and vacuum cleaners to do the work.

I have personally noticed, that once a plane touches ground in a Middle Eastern country on its way home, the silver cutlery disappears and is replaced with plastic disposable ones. Perhaps flying staff fear being stabbed with silverware for their rude treatment of these migrant workers.

What is often not acknowledged is the fact that housemaids have become an important part of our society, which depends on them for economic sustenance. If there is to be a second Gulf war, largely due to Bush's politics of 'ridding the world of terrorism' and dismantling the 'axes of evil,' jobs for housemaids and money for our economy will definitely be jeopardized. The present tensions, over whether Iraq will accept UN inspectors under the given circumstances, pose many a question for women and dependent families whose livelihoods are based on these jobs in the Middle East.

For, during the Gulf war in 1980, an estimated figure of one hundred million rupees was lost to the local economy. Often female migrants abroad lost months of salary as a result of the Gulf War. Women had to group together with other Sri Lankans, and were left to find their way home. Despite the setting up of numerous Sri Lankan embassies in the Middle East, to facilitate migrant work abroad, many women did not obtain support to evacuate in their moment of need.

While the UN may have promised these women compensation, it took seven years for them to deliver through on their word. Even then, not all women did obtain proper remunerations.

The importance of housemaids cannot be overstated. Today they alleviate some of the tensions created by high levels of unemployment within the country. In a country where national enterprises and productivity are on the decline, these women earn some of the highest amounts of foreign revenue badly needed to boost the local economy. Many of the problems facing these women, in their rather precarious situation as housemaids, are discussed in Michelle Ruth Gamburd's book Transnationalism and Sri Lanka's Housemaids.

Change

Migration that started in the mid '70s has grown in proportion today where numbers of women, often married and with children, leave Sri Lanka to earn and save money to buy land, build houses and ensure the future of their children.

Hence, ironically these women are compelled to leave their own children to look after a foreigner's offspring.

At times housemaids have not worked outside the domestic sphere prior to their migrant work, and the low earnings paid to their husbands prompt their departure. These women are paid today for work that they have always done for free in their homes. Once abroad, their work ranges from looking after children, washing clothes, cooking, cleaning the house, and maintaining the garden. All duties they have performed at home, but are finally paid for, resulting in their empowerment as important figures of society.

Today, these women have become the breadwinners of their societies. Women work abroad for as long as 15 years, sending home regular amounts of money for the welfare of their families. This has altered traditional notions that a woman's place is in the household, while the husband's place is a public and professional one.

Gamburd also notes that often Muslim or Christian housemaids are more in demand than Buddhist ones. On a visit to border town Sungavilla last year, I found that many of the women there had lived abroad as housemaids earning the needed income to support their families. This, despite living in a conservative environment where traveling alone outside the town itself would be frowned upon.

Agents too are paid higher commissions for recruiting Muslim maids. Often Buddhist women will alter their religion in passports to suit requirements, thus defying their traditional roles as Aryan, Buddhist Sinhala wives, to ones that are more convenient. Here is an example to women refusing static notions of identity.

Intimate outsiders

Despite the amounts of money earned by these women, and their growing importance to our economy, they do not often enjoy the experiences migrant work has brought to their lives. They remain intimate outsiders both in their host countries and in Sri Lanka.

What are their lives like, in their host country? Gamburd's book comments on how often 49% of these women testify to working 16 hour days. They awake at dawn and continue to work till late at night. Their dress, food, leisure are all regulated by the family of each individual woman. There are, unfortunately, no regulations to moderate treatment, but the welfare of each individual depends on the benevolence of her household.

This may lead to her being central to the family, or being abused and treated badly.

A housemaid remains an intimate part of the family where sometimes the host children may come to love her. Yet, at the same time she is the servant, the outsider, the one who has a family elsewhere to which she will one day return. So, she lives always on the margins of her host society.

At the same time, even at home, she may be an outsider. A woman may leave home for long periods of time, and her children may be under the supervision of a relative. Often when she returns, her children may have been victims of trauma themselves and be estranged from her. Even her relationship with her husband may be formal rather than intimate. In these instances, the blame for family breakups is placed on her non-presence rather than perhaps the husband's negligence.

The already difficult situation for these women will only become worse if tensions build up in the Gulf.

If there is to be another war, and if US threats of making Iraq pay for its actions and attitudes become a reality, then what is to happen to these women? Are they to be left in the lurch as in 1980? Will the Government prepare in some way to help these women evacuate their host countries? Will the Government also support their loss of income, be it through UN intervention or otherwise? These are important questions to reflect upon.

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