Paper Short Abstract:

Based on 30 self-crafted mental-emotional cartographies of Hong by Southeast-Asian migrant domestic workers, this presentation explores the potentiality of participatory arts-based methods in: (1) creating unique spaces for emotionality, self-reflection and self-expression (and their meaning in the context of both, the lives of subaltern actors and the academic production); (2) unveiling the intangible layers of the emic experience that remain unreachable to conventional methodological and text-centric representational models.

Paper Abstract:

Since the 1970s Hong Kong has been a primary destination for Southeast-Asian female migrants. The foreign domestic workers constitute the 4.5% of the HK population, even though they are largely exposed to very hard living and work conditions, often characterized by abuse and exploitation. These women are forced by law to live in their employer’s houses where they work between 12-18 hours a day and, in most cases, they don’t have their own room or private space. On their day off (Sunday) they all go out driving to an intensive occupation of the public space across the city: squares, sidewalks, parks, walkaways, etc. become covered by camping tents, open umbrellas and cardboard boxes which serve as a rug for picnicking, napping or singing karaoke, among many other activities; modifying the physical, social and cultural landscape of (Monday to Saturday) HK.

The relationship of these women and the city becomes mediated by the power (dis)continuities between the public and private spheres in a context in which both, the physical and symbolic dimensions of the space(s) matter. Based on a twelve-months multimodal ethnography which includes the crafting of 30 mental-emotional cartographies of Hong Kong through participatory inquiry, this presentation explores the potentiality of participatory arts-based methods in: (1) creating unique spaces for emotionality, self-reflection and self-expression and their meaning in the context of both, the lives of subaltern actors and the academic production; (2) unveiling the intangible layers of the emic experience that remain unreachable to conventional methodological and text-centric representational models.