Lived, Perceived, and Occupied : Migrant Domestic Workers and Public Space in Hong Kong

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Hong Kong use public space to negotiate the constraints of mandatory live-in employment. Drawing on interviews with leaders of a MDW advocacy organisation and anonymous survey responses from workers within their predominantly Filipino networks, the study analyses how institutional frameworks, including the live-in requirement, the two-week rule, and exclusion from permanent residency, produce conditions of spatial deprivation that workers consistently navigate through collective occupation of public space. Henri Lefebvre's conceptual triad of conceived, perceived, and lived space and Evelyn Kwok's theorisation of occupation provide the analytical framework, alongside Silvia Federici's understanding of the structural devaluation of reproductive labour. The analysis finds that MDWs actively produce public space as a site of belonging, community, and mutual support, meanings that their legal residence within the employer's household cannot provide. Access to public space emerges not as supplementary to MDW wellbeing, but as structurally necessary to it.