Many of the connections between the book UnFree by Rhacel Parrenas and the book “feminist Theory Reader” by Carole McCann, Seung-Kyung Kin, and Emek Ergun are connected to Orientalism. A framework that shows us how we perceive, connect with, and treat countries outside of our own that we may deem as “exotic” or even just “different”. There are a lot of things even within our own culture that vary and leave us to fill in the blanks with our own explanations; however, explaining things without context can diminish the problem at hand. This gap in understanding and knowledge grows even more when we do not have a cultural understanding of the group one is discussing.
The book UnFree not only discusses Filipino workers who find work in the United Arab Emirates and how the kafala system used to find work is one that creates a vulnerable work environment but it also discusses how many of the scholarly conversations around this system involve a orientalist perspective. A perspective that does not account for all the cultural context needed to truly give an analysis without placing judgment or colonialistic ideals on the individuals of another country. Many Western scholars placed the kafala system in the same category as contract slavery which is defined as “the contractual binding of workers so as to subject them to slave-like conditions in which they are denied freedom of movement and not adequately compensated for their labor”. However, this definition does not fit a wide portion of Filipino workers’ experiences; the workers who did experience extreme and unsafe workplace environments were not the majority. This system however does aid a lot of Filipino citizens and the Philippines as a country because this is a big portion of how they provide for themselves, and their families, and helps aid their economy.
Scholars focus a lot of their dialog on the negative experiences of Filipino workers and these conversations can be framed too easily as a foreign issue rather than a domestic one. This issue is one that we see all too often in the United States but is never really discussed. Recently in the United States, we have seen violations against child labor laws on the rise with the Labor Department announcing that it has concluded 955 investigations in 2023 with 800 investigations underway. That is just one example of how this is a domestic problem and how framing conversations in a Eurocentric light can be damaging to citizens who are undermined by the shadow of how we want the United States to look. Our labor standards in America are heavily built off of our idea of heteronormative Capitalism that contributes directly to the patriarchy which is the ideal “free market”. Our market and economy are seen as pure and other countries need our help but this market at best equates our productivity to profit and at worst equates us to property or even erases us.
Our system is somehow “better” in the eyes of some, and we are more forward than other countries because we are “modern”. Picking apart which systems are better than others and which ones need to be completely eroded and rebuilt is one that is easily subjected to what the majority sees as correct rather than understanding the little intricacies that work for a country and what does not work for a country. Parrenas does a great job at discussing a pressing topic but also being careful to make sure the viewpoint of her study is not to diminish the kafala system but to understand the experiences of the workers and frame the conversation to be about labor standards. As we work to learn how to have conversations about other countries whether it be in a scholarly article, news article, or a random class paper, we should always put an effort forward to write and understand from a culturally educated perspective.
Child labor violations soared in fiscal 2023
UnFree by Rhacel Parrenas
Feminist Theory Reader by Carole McCann, Seung-Kyung Kim, and Emek Ergun