[HKAS Seminar] “Keep Catwalking:” Education and Beauty Pageants of Filipino Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

Title: “Keep Catwalking:” Education and Beauty Pageants of Filipino Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong
Speaker: Chen Ju-chen (Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong) 
Date and time: 25 February 2016, 7:00 p.m.
Venue: Lecture Hall, Ground Floor, Hong Kong Museum of History, 100 Chatham Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

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Domestic helpers in Hong Kong are often homogenized, exoticized, and stigmatized as people who live without purpose beyond remitting money home. Ethnographic research shows that, on Sundays, foreign domestic helpers often actively juggle personal chores, association board meetings, birthday parties, church volunteer work, and beauty pageants. This talk addresses a puzzling phenomenon: the motivation behind active participation in costly and time-consuming beauty pageants and, therefore, getting little rest on the designated “rest days.” Focusing on beauty pageant participations, this talk argues that similarly baffling individual aspirations – such as college education and working overseas as a maid – need to be understood within a much broader context of the Philippine’s class structure, colonial cultural legacy, discourse of modernization and global capitalist institutions.

Following the talk, you are invited to a self-paying dinner with the speaker.

For more information, please contact Stan Dyer on 9746 9537 or anthrohk@gmail.com, www.cuhk.edu.hk/ant/hkas, or www.facebook.com/hkanthro.