Fictitious Kinship: Intimacy, Relatedness and Boundaries in the Life of Hanoi's Migrant Domestic Workers

Abstract

Th is article argues that migrant domestic workers in Hanoi practise a form of fi ctitious kinship to carve out personal spaces away from their rural home. Biographical narratives of domestic workers who are unusually devoted to forging emotional ties with their employers indicate that they tend to have problematic private lives. Beyond emotional labour, the performance of fi ctitious kinship entails signifi cant personal investment on the part of women, at times generating mutual feelings and relationships between them and certain members of the employers' household. Th ese relationships are crucial to their personal transformations, helping them construct new identities and opening up possibilities for challenging the power hierarchy in their home. Yet such constructed kinship is treacherous and uncertain, not just because of its foundation is their commodifi ed labour, subject to the rules of the market, but also due to the dangers of intimate encounters in the private sphere.