Multilingual Matters
Scripts of Servitude
About this book
This book examines how language is a central resource in transforming migrant women into transnational domestic workers. Focusing on the migration of women from the Philippines to Singapore, it unpacks why and how language is embedded in the infrastructure of transnational labor migration that links migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries.
Author / Editor information
Beatriz P. Lorente is a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Bern and a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute of Multilingualism at the University of Fribourg and the University of Teacher Education Fribourg.
Beatriz P. Lorente is a Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Bern and a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute of Multilingualism at the University of Fribourg and the University of Teacher Education Fribourg.
Reviews
Scripts of Servitude offers a compelling and nuanced analysis of the centrality of language in the manufacturing and exporting of transnational Filipino domestic workers. It is an important contribution to our understanding of the macro and micro politics of inequality. It unequivocally shows that servitude is never voluntary.
This is simply one of the most profound and revealing studies in language, globalization and social issues I have ever read. The author and the women with whom she worked become one in this textbook example of contemporary sociolinguistic ethnography, and the issue of what counts as English in the world, and how it counts, has rarely been more delicately illustrated than in this book.
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
v -
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Acknowledgments
ix -
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Series Editors’ Preface
xi -
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References
xvi -
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1. Language and Transnational Domestic Workers
1 -
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2. The Making of ‘Workers of the World’: Language and the Labor Brokerage State
27 -
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3. Assembling the ‘Supermaid’: Language and Communication Skills for ‘Vulnerable Occupations’
53 -
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4. Marketing Domestic Workers: Maid Agencies in Singapore
66 -
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5. The English-Speaking Other Looks Back
96 -
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6. Translating Selves: The Trajectories of Transnational Filipino Domestic Workers
126 -
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7. Conclusion
148 -
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Appendices
154 -
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References
160 -
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Index
170
