Spatial Agency and Occupation: Migrant Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

There are around 340,000 Foreign Domestic Workers in Hong Kong, but the ways in which they experience migration is largely hidden in the homes of their employers.This book helps us to understand the complexities of migrant experiences by analysing the socio-spatial consequences that emerge from global migrant labour, and examining the capacity of the disenfranchised to create new spatialities by using public space to resist their disempowerment. This approach gives voice to a phenomenon silenced by the hegemony of mainstream urban economics and, in turn, reveals practices that cut across global labour. By shedding light on the importance of space in moulding these practices and how these practices, in turn, shape space, Kwok demonstrates the power and limits of spatial agency in pushing back against the deleterious consequences of considering labour as another commodity, and reveals what lies behind the curtain of Hong Kong’s ’successful’ spatial capitalism.

Evelyn Kwok is Research Assistant Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts at the School of Creative Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. Her background is in spatial design research, and her work focuses on the intersection of gender, labor and space, in particular on marginal communities in urban spaces and their use of public space. Her teaching integrates service learning and community advocacy into design and socially engaged art in interdisciplinary contexts within and beyond Hong Kong.