Negotiating Spaces in the Labor Market: Foreign and Local Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

Abstract

This article aims to clarify how foreign domestic workers (FDWs) and local domestic workers (LDWs) compete and at the same time co-exist with each other within Hong Kong's domestic work sector. FDWs had dominated the domestic work sector since the 1970s but LDWs began offering competition in the late 1990s when the Hong Kong government instituted programs to rechannel displaced and unemployed local women into this sector. To promote the interest of these potential LDWs as well as to make them more competitive with the FDWs, the government provided them with skills training to enhance their employability. However the FDWs, with the aid of migrant-support NGOs and various FDW-organizations, endeavored to keep their space in the labor market by countering such initiatives. In time, the government had come to recognize that FDWs and LDWs respond to different clients and that both can be accommodated in the labor market.