A Home Away From Home: Filipina Nannies Create Spaces of Belonging in Canada

by Katie Palmer
–Canada–

In 2009, the Toronto Star published a series of investigative reports on the widespread abuse and exploitation of Filipina live-in caregivers. The newspaper repeatedly pegged migrant women as victims: victims of ungodly employers; victims of provincial labor law inequalities; and, perhaps most importantly, victims of oppressive Canadian immigration policy, specifically the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP).

The Live-In Caregiver Program is a visa-entry program that recruits women to enter Canada as live-in caregivers, maids, and nannies for affluent Canadian families. Canadian families hire foreign-born women to care for their children, do their laundry, and prepare their meals. At the same time, foreign-born women from economically impoverished countries, such as the Philippines, have a chance—after living in the employers’ houses for a minimum of 24 months within a 36-month period— to acquire highly coveted Canadian citizenship.

The Live-In Caregiver Program is a far cry from a win-win situation. Activists, journalists and scholars have shown time and time again how the Live-In Caregiver Program reproduces inequalities along the intersecting axes of gender, race, and class.

First, the LCP collapses the boundaries where migrant women work and where they live. The problem of blurred boundaries, according to Sedef Arat-Koc, professor at Ryerson University and author of the book Caregivers Break the Silence, is that they enable “employers who are dominant in the work relationship to also control and dictate conditions of workers’ lives.” The second argument against the LCP builds on the first point – the collapsed boundaries between public and private space create the spatial conditions for an exploitative environment. According to research conducted by countless academics, including Daiva Stasiulis and Abigail Bakan, authors of Negotiating Citizenship: Migrant Women in Canada and the Global System, live-in nannies are vulnerable to gender-specific types of exploitation, particularly sexual harassment and sexual assault.

But what we don’t often read about in the papers is how migrant women are more than helpless victims. We don’t hear stories that speak to how migrant women take charge of their situations and act as agents of change. There is an alternate story – one of empowerment and hope, one of Filipina nannies creating spaces of belonging.

I grew up with various migrant women helping around my family home during my childhood and adolescent years. I took these women for granted. I was the spoiled child who would draw up report cards on their abilities to clean my bedroom. Embarrassing, I know. In 2006, during my third year of undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, I enrolled in a course on women and migration. The course changed my life. The professor presented engaging lectures about how migrant domestic workers experience multiple layers of exploitation – at the household and community levels and by the governments of their host countries. I wanted to learn more about their experiences and decided to pursue graduate studies also at the University of Toronto.

In 2009, I met with 40 migrant women who work as live-in caregivers for some of Toronto’s wealthiest families. I conducted the interviews to help meet the thesis requirements of my graduate degree. My thesis project began as an intellectual journey to learn about these women’s struggles in the City of Toronto. However, once I sat down with the women over a cup of coffee at one of the many Second Cups scattered along Bloor Street, I decided to change focus. I no longer wanted to repeat the story of how live-in caregivers are victims; rather, I wanted to shout to the world that these women are survivors who are not entirely oppressed and trapped within the walls of their employers’ houses.

In playground and schoolyard spaces across Toronto, where lots of nannies congregate, they network with one another. According to Stephanie*, playgrounds are good spaces to make friends with other Filipina women who work as nannies. “I make so many friends at the park. We all want to have play dates. Otherwise [domestic work] is a bit lonely at times.”

On play dates, Charlotte explains, “The children have free time. We watch the children. We are the referees. We are chatting about life. … We tease each other. We speak Tagalog during our play date. Play dates last all afternoon. We usually meet up for lunch and then depart just before dinner.”

More than 96 percent of the women who I interviewed co-rent “weekender apartments” in order to create alternative housing arrangements for their days off. Weekender apartments are living spaces live-in caregivers occupy during their free time. Several LCP migrants described to me how weekender apartments function. Carmina explains that since her arrival to Canada in 2001, she has worked diligently to save her income so that she could rent an apartment on a full-time basis. Although she continues to live at her employer’s house for the entire week, she rents out her apartment to Filipina nannies. “I have an apartment that I rent to caregivers,” she tells me. “If they don’t yet have permanent resident status, they typically will rent an apartment from you. I rent a two-bedroom apartment that they can use on the weekend. My caregivers [tenants] just stay on the weekend.”

Carmina rents her two-bedroom apartment to eight Filipina LCP migrants. There is a wide range of variations to the specifics of how weekender apartments operate; however, the general pattern is that once an LCP migrant acquires permanent resident status, she will rent an apartment on a full-time basis. She will then allow Filipina migrants to co-rent her apartment during their time off on weekends. One renter, Marjorie, describes the benefits of her weekender apartment: “After 6:00 p.m., when you are live-in, you will stay only in your room, talking to the four corners of your room, stay there, and do nothing. And when you are live-out [on weekends], after work, you can go out, you can talk to anyone, you are relaxed, you have peace of mind.”

Like Marjorie, most Filipina LCP migrants choose to co-rent weekender apartments in order to establish concrete personal space away from their employers’, to regain independence, and to escape the on-call nature of live-in domestic work. Jane shares how living in her employer’s house often translates into working overtime: “Sometimes when you live-in, you work longer hours than you are supposed to [as outlined in the contract].” Jane decided to co-rent a weekender apartment in an effort to avoid unpaid overtime hours on the weekends. Sally also makes a case for why she chooses to rent an apartment with her friends: “The kids go into my room. They broke through the locked door. They bother me. I am resting. It is noisy. When they play, they bang. On my day off, if they are not playing well, my conscience will say to intervene.”

Among the women I interviewed, there was general consensus that weekender apartments widen their spatial mobility and enhance their perception of freedom. For instance, Suzie argues, “Here [at the weekender apartment], you can leave your bedroom and do whatever you want in the apartment. No one will bother you. […] You are not censored at the apartment. You have free will. It is a democracy here.”

The practice among Filipina LCP migrants to co-rent weekender apartments speaks to their abilities to informally improve their living experience in Canada. These migrant women are not helpless victims; quite the opposite is true. These women are creative, autonomous subjects who actively construct alternative spaces away from their employers’ houses that they can call home – a home away from home.

*The names in this article have been changed for confidentiality. -Ed.

Katie Palmer was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. She recently completed a graduate degree in Geography from the University of Toronto. She has published articles for the feminist blog Gender Across Borders and the health magazine Neuroconnect. Katie is the recipient of the Dean’s Student Initiative Award and the Royal Bank Graduate Fellowship in Public and Economic Policy. Her areas of interest include immigration, gender violence, and sex trafficking.