There is a kinetic force in episode 5 of the over-produced show Expats, released to much fanfare in 2024. In a pivotal scene, the mostly Filipina domestic workers gather in a hideous spot in Hong Kong for some rest and companionship. This scene and portions of the episode are set to the 'girl boss anthem' Roar (by Katy Perry) and the threat of an impending typhoon.
For a few moments the show makes us believe in the power of solidarity: it feels like Puri, one of the Filipina domestic workers in the show, will be able to Girlboss (a verb which means the ability to act like a conceited, privileged woman). She has singing aspirations.
But the reality of her beholden status soon catches up to her. Her mistress Hilary (played by a fantastically brittle Sarayu Blue) has a needy, manic breakdown—and the hierarchy of needs takes over.
Puri can no longer roar; her snug, sequinned gown, a hand-me-down from her mistress, is abandoned in favour of kitchen duties.
Expats, based on the novel Expatriates by Janice YK Lee, is about the lives of expats in Hong Kong and the building of new social classes in a former colony. A faulty show, which despite its weaknesses, manages to show the exploitative nature of domestic work performed, in intimate settings, predominantly by women, from developing countries in richer countries.
In the more recent Danish show, Secrets We Keep, the exploitation and anxieties related to class and status is explored with a more even hand.
This is an urgent tale of immigration and families—the topics our politicians just cannot stop talking about.
An Ecosystem Heavily Reliant on Women Migrant Workers
In Secrets We Keep, we are shown the dank basement, with a nanny cam, where the very young and recently disappeared Filipina nanny of an almost adult boy resides. So devoid of any warmth and colour are her forced quarters, they could have belonged to a nun in a convent. The show is very good at pulling back the curtain on the malaise of white feminism.
Alter the outside scenery a little, and we can be in Gurugram or Whitefield or Carmichael Road.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) in its compelling study on International Migrant Workers, released in 2019, has some thought-provoking statistics for us to consider. “While globally migrant workers constitute 4.9 percent of the labour force of destination countries, this figure is highest at 41.4 percent in the Arab states.”
Globally, “women constitute 41.5 per cent and men 58.5 per cent of migrant workers,” as per the said report.
A greater number of women migrant workers are employed in services may, in part, be explained by “a growing labour demand in the care economy, including health and domestic work. These sub-sectors have a predominantly female labour force and rely heavily on women migrant workers.”
Specifically, consider the case of the Philippines. Since the 1900s, the US government changed its laws, under the Lyndon Johnson administration, to allow for a more racially diverse immigration policy which resulted in more migration from the Philippines. The Philippines, too, changed its laws because of the “crony capitalism” of the Marcos government that left a balance of payments so severe that the government encouraged its citizens to find overseas employment in search for dollars.
The Story of Indian Workers
The story of Indian workers in the Gulf is similar. One of the largest suppliers of domestic labour force to the Gulf states, India has developed a dependency on the remittances sent by the workers abroad. Per the latest data released by the World Bank, India is a top receiver of remittances.
For workers in the Gulf, the story is challenging due to the legal regime in the Gulf states.
“Most private sector employment of Indian workers in the Gulf operates within the visa sponsorship, or kafala, system. While there have recently been some reforms, the kafala system still ties a foreign worker’s residency permit to a sponsor. Workers require written consent from their sponsors to change employers or exit the country under normal circumstances.”
If labour from developing nations or the Global South is cheap, a woman’s time is even cheaper.
In a cutting line in Secrets We Keep, the lead character admonishes her male colleague who had the temerity to question her on hiring of an au pair from the Philippines.
She says that because the men failed at sharing the load of housework, women like her had to outsource it to an au pair. She was Girlbossing, you see! This line would draw out nods of agreement from women like her, but this hides a more complicated reality.
Women like her, like us, cannot build our social and economic lives without exploiting other women from different social and economic background who are just like us in their hustle and grind.
In Indian law, the women who are the building block of our lives have been identified as the “unorganised sector”. A spineless regulatory measure which does the bare minimum.
Spineless, much like the white feminism depicted in both the shows, and the “palatable feminism” on rise across the globe. We have learnt to be less entitled but in a performative way.
Let me explain. Even though we proclaim that our domestic worker is like our family, we still hesitate to pay them a fair wage. Both Expats and Secrets We Keep excel at portraying this conflict between the two classes and how performative, palatable feminism is limiting and limited in its scope.
In Expats, while conversing in Tagalog, the Filipina domestic workers discuss their self-respect and the need to draw boundaries between themselves and their “families”. Families where the rich claim the domestic workers as their own, but do little to offer them a pathway to break out from the cycle of poverty.
Perhaps, Taylor Swift wrote the song Anti-Hero for people like us after all.
(Sangeeta Chakravorty is a Mumbai–based writer and lawyer. Currently, she is pursuing her Masters in International Relations at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. Views are personal.)