The
Migrant Domestic Mothers
project
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTINA FELTRACCO
NANCY SERGIEVA
Can you tell us more about the project itself? Who are the domestic helpers?
that Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation is creating. The intentions of this project is to be able to write, record and film a dance to spread the word about migrant domestic mothers.
They decided to use the art of dance to convey the message because with a dance we are not enforcing a biased opinion on anyone. People can think ‘oh I never knew about this, I should help’ or ‘this is not a big issue, I do not care’.
To sum up the problem, migrant domestic mothers are helpers that have become pregnant in Hong Kong. They are legally not allowed to be fired but unfortunately they are mostly always fired. They then only have two weeks to return back to their home country before their visa expires.
Most of them do not understand the laws to do with their job and because of family values as they mostly come from Philippines and Indonesia (since they had a child with a ‘stranger’), they are not allowed to return home. They therefore then live illegally in Hong Kong, which means they do not have access to medical care for their child and when their child is born, they are not allowed to work and gain money for their child to go to school or live a normal life. With the ‘father’ of the child mainly not being found or being a refugee they are left alone in this situation. Imagine living in Hong Kong as a child (every child born in Hong Kong becomes a resident) with a mother that could be deported back to their home county at any moment and being left alone. Pathfinders ensures that they have access to medical care, shelter, food and legal support.
The project had three phases to it. Meeting the migrant domestic helpers, writing the piece of work and recording it, creating the dance, and then filming. We started off with five of us going to meet migrant woman to understand more about their stories and then six others joined in on learning the dance and filming.
This project is part of a couple other charity projects
How do you feel about this project?
I have been given such an eye opening opportunity to be able to work
with a specific problem that is affecting the city in which I live in, so if
you have not yet seen the video, please go watch it and share it, as it
would mean so much to not only me but also the migrant woman.
Almost every family in Hong Kong that can afford a helper has one, they do not know about their rights and more importantly they are treated as just ‘cleaners’ and not human beings, and therefore not many people in Hong Kong know about this situation. I went into this project not knowing anything about this situation and thinking that they were just people in a terrible situation. However, it is much more. They are people that are denied basic human rights because they are not taught about their own rights in HK.