name: atherine / age: 44 / profession: teacher / location: Swansea / weekday: friday / reference: In 2005, Isabella stayed in a training agency in Jakarta – with over 700 other girls, all waiting to be sent to Singapore, Malaysia or Hong Kong as a domestic helper. Such training centres are compulsory, as Indonesian agencies claim all their applicants are given cooking and hygiene classes. Most importantly, the girls are also required to learn English. However, Isabella experienced very harsh living conditions in the centre. The days were very long, the girls had to wake up at 5 am, and they could only rest at 11 pm. There were not enough beds, the food was scarce and very basic, with little nutritional value. The centre was locked, and the girls were not allowed outside. They were not allowed to use their phone either. This training centre has been closed recently because it was also found out that under-aged girls were being contracted as a domestic helper. Isabella stayed in the centre 40 days before being sent to Singapore. As she started working, she was then charged 2280 Singapore dollars by the Indonesian agency, which means that for the first 6 months of her employment, her full salary was sent back to the agent and she did not receive any money.
migration
though strictly defined as the movement (of people) from one place to another with the intention of settling there permanently, a word like “migration” implies more than that. first of all, the most commonplace permutation of the word – immigration – implies the point of view of the occupant of the land travelled to, and more often than not the immigrant is conceived of as the “other”, an unnatural element, an intruder, possibly threatening to the stability of a place. furthermore, to speak of migration implies a sense of mobility that is less than voluntary and more or less forced. hence, domestic workers in amsterdam are called “migrants”, while north americans or europeans working there are “expats”. as this example shows, the intention of staying permanently or not is irrelevant: in colloquial use, “migrant” often designates “bad”, more or less undesired foreigners, and nothing else. there exists, therefore, an urgent need to reconsider both the history and the present of migration in a way that considers migration positively, as a form of wealth (of knowledges, of cultures, of intersecting traditions). such a positive conception of migration counters current racist ideas concerning migration and is attuned to decolonization practices.