Born Out of Place: Migrant Mothers and the Politics of International Labor by Nicole Constable

Author:Nicole Constable
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520282018
Publisher: University of California Press

MEANINGFUL TERMINOLOGY

Many women spoke of men as “the father” or “his/her father.” When asked about their relationships, most Indonesian mothers spoke of their partners as “husbands,” which implied a long-term commitment and exclusivity (whether or not this was actually the case), or as “boyfriends,” to imply something more ongoing than a one-night stand, with some hope of commitment, even if they later understood that the man viewed the relationship very differently. When I asked an Indonesian woman about the sort of relationship she had with the man she slept with, she answered simply, “In my country, if married, sleep together; if sleep together, married.” In other words, her sexual relationship was by definition marriage. Like many others, she normally referred to a woman’s partner as her “husband.” Describing a sexual partner as a husband can retroactively be a claim to respectability. The majority of mothers spoke of sex as if it were inseparable from hopes or expectations of a committed and ongoing relationship with the father, ideally a “marriage.”

More of the Indonesian women who had white or Chinese partners—as opposed to African or South Asian ones—spoke of them as “boyfriends.” In some cases, they knew the man was married and unlikely to divorce his wife, but they still hoped for a long-term relationship. As my research progressed, it became clear that, for Indonesian women, “boyfriend” blurred into a sort of customer, client, or benefactor relationship. In response to my question about terminology, Riana—a former FDW now married to a Chinese man—once said, “husband is really boyfriend and boyfriend is really customer.”

Soliciting for prostitution is illegal in Hong Kong but prostitution itself is not, which helps fuel ambiguities. Men (“boyfriends”) like Wilhelm (chapter 4) took Wahyu out, bought her drinks and a meal, brought her home or to his hotel room, and usually gave her “gifts” or money. Although he and other men might have seen this as a variation of the money-for-sex “girlfriend experience,” without the hassle of finding a new woman each time he came to town, women like Wahyu depict this as something qualitatively different from more blatant forms of “prostitution” (Bernstein 2007). As a “boyfriend” he was not a client but someone who cared about her and gave her gifts or money because he wanted to and liked her. Women explained that prostitutes exchange specific sexual acts for defined sums of money (a price). Meeting men at bars, going out with them, sleeping with them for gifts or money, and leaving open the possibility of a long-term relationship was understood or justified as different from prostitution. As one woman explained, “At certain bars men know there are bad girls. If I need money, I say to him ‘I like you and I am a bad girl. But I’m not a prostitute. You just give me what you want to give me.’” A few women, like Wahyu, entered Hong Kong with FDH contracts but freelanced at bars. Some couples later married, which reinforced the blur between customers or clients and “boyfriends” and the fantasy of marriage.

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