The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology

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Telling Tales of Migrant Workers in Hong Kong:

Transformations of Faith, Life Scripts, and Activism

Nicole Constable

To cite this article: Nicole Constable (2010) Telling Tales of Migrant Workers in Hong Kong:
Transformations of Faith, Life Scripts, and Activism, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology,
11:3-4, 311-329, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2010.513399

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The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
Vol. 11, Nos. 3
4, September
December 2010, pp. 311
329

Telling Tales of Migrant Workers in

Hong Kong: Transformations of Faith,
Life Scripts, and Activism
Nicole Constable

Migrant domestic workers confront a multiplicity of difficulties and challenges. Within

the ‘host’ context, some join religious groups that offer comfort by replicating the religion
of home; others experiment with new religions or denominations that appeal to them
within the modern global context; others ignore or reject religion altogether. This article
offers an ethnographic analysis of the religious stories and activist experiences of four
women migrant workers in Hong Kong. These women are not typical of the spectrum of
religious possibilities facing Hong Kong’s migrant workers, but each woman’s tales point
to the ways in which migratory experiences shape lives and religious perspectives in
complex and unexpected ways. The migratory context provides new imaginative
resources with which to reconsider religious perspectives, familial and gender expecta-
tions, reformulate pasts, and re-envision futures.

Keywords: Migrant Workers; Hong Kong; Islam; Christianity; Women’s Narratives;

Conversion; Activism; Gender

Hong Kong is a self-proclaimed Asian World City best known as a monument to neo-
liberal capitalism and as a shrine to wealth and economic disparity.1 It is not typically
imagined as a place that attracts people for religious or spiritual reasons, nor is it
considered a hub of religious opportunity. Yet Hong Kong hosts a wealth of churches,
temples, and mosques, and its religious terrain is rich, diverse, and highly visible. It is
especially important for the 400,000 migrant workers in Hong Kong, which include over
250,000 migrant domestic workers. A majority of domestic workers are Roman Catholic
women from the Philippines and Muslim women from Indonesia, with smaller

Nicole Constable professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh. Correspondence to: Nicole
Constable, Anthropology Department, 3302 W. W. Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260,
USA. Email: ncgrad@pitt.edu

ISSN 1444-2213 (print)/ISSN 1740-9314 (online)/10/3-40311-19

# 2010 The Australian National University
DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2010.513399
312 N. Constable

numbers from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, all of whom come
to Hong Kong on one or more 2-year work contracts on temporary visas.
While consideration has been given to the role of religion in the ethnographic
literature on migrant domestic workers in the Middle East (Liebelt 2008; Frantz 2008;
de Regt 2008), the ethnographic scholarship on migrant workers in Asia*Hong
Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore*is relatively silent on the topic. Research has
been done on the religion of migrant workers’ in Hong Kong (Cruz-Chia 2007;
Hawwa 2000), but far more attention has been paid to workers’ resistance, political
activism, and labour issues (Constable 2007, 2009; Hsia 2009; Sim & Wee 2009). The
two bodies of literature are largely disconnected.2 Yet many Hong Kong religious
institutions are involved in providing essential social services and support to migrant
workers, and the church has played a central role in the lives of many of Hong Kong’s
Filipino migrant worker activists. This article addresses the largely understudied issue
of religious institutions and migrant workers’ religious subjectivities in relation to
worker activism. It builds on my earlier work among migrant domestic workers, but
draws mostly from interviews and field research in Hong Kong in April and May
2009. In 2009 I reconnected with domestic workers and activists I had known for
years, asking them about the connection between religion and worker activism and if
they could introduce me to others who might speak to me about this topic. I met
dozens of women from different corners of the migrant worker religious terrain.
In the wider literature, scholars have debated how, whether, and under what
conditions, religion can be said to ‘liberate’ or promote improvement in the status of
women or to reinforce their subordinate status (Ebaugh & Chafetz 2000; Mahmood
2005). Religion can serve as both a source of oppression and a means of liberation
(Cruz-Chia 2007). In the case of Taiwanese migrants to the United States, religion can
help women ‘to carve spaces of independence and authority for themselves’, and to
construct a ‘sense of self as distinct from family’ (Chen 2005, pp. 355
56). For Javanese
migrant domestic workers who embrace the intensified public piety associated with
global Islamic resurgence and choose to wear the veil, religion can also serve as ‘a means
to distance themselves from their own pasts’ and a way to conceptualise a process
through which ‘to bring about personal change’ (Brenner 1996, p. 673).
It is well known that religious organisations offer support to migrants and
refugees, helping them to adapt to new settings, especially with the adoption of the
dominant group’s religion (Winland 1994). Hong Kong’s migrant workers’ religions
are mostly minority religions in that social context and so they serve to reinforce their
minority migrant identities and do not generally serve to ally them with the
dominant Chinese population. Yet religious institutions offer comfort and a family of
sorts to those far from home; spiritual strength to those who face daily hardships and
loneliness; and a refuge from the isolation of live-in household work (Cheng 1996;
Cruz-Chia 2007). Workers readily articulate these functions and attractions of
religion and religious organisations. Eni Lestari Andayani,3 an Indonesian domestic
worker and activist, reflecting on intensification of piety among Indonesians,
explained:
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 313

They don’t know why their life is so hard, so they pray to God all the time . . . they
are trying to discover their own peaceful spirit because of the hardships they
encounter every day of their life. They are made to believe that if there is hardship,
it is God is giving you trials . . . But the problem is when things get worse . . . . They
have hardships every single day: from husband or partner, to parents, to family,
employer, and friends and others . . . So this [religion] is how they answer their own
problems.

What is even more interesting to me than the comfort religion can offer, however, is
how within the context of migration, religion provides migrant workers with a
language with which to rethink or recast their prior views. Whether adopting a new
religion, re-interpreting their existing religion, or rejecting religion altogether, religion
is useful for rearticulating past and present lives and migratory experiences, a fertile
means of bringing together the ‘past and strange’ with the ‘near and present’ (Biehl
2005, p. 15). In other words, away from home and within the new context of
migration, earlier religious assumptions may be questioned, previous beliefs no longer
so easily accepted, and alternative subjectivities explored.
Inspired by Biehl’s account of one woman’s life story, and adapting his use of
Nietzsche’s notion of ‘plastic power’, in which subjectivity is not essential and
continuous but is shaped by historical processes and changing contexts, I am
interested in how talking about religion in the lives of migrant women*including
its rejection or reinterpretation*facilitates ‘plasticity’ in migrants’ narratives of
their lives and in relation to activism. I envision this plasticity as a process of
stretching the possibilities of ‘specifically growing out of one’s self, of making the
past and the strange one body with the near and the present, . . . of healing wounds,
replacing what is lost, repairing broken molds’ (Nietzsche 1955, pp. 10
2 in Biehl
2005, p. 15).
In general, temporary labour migration is a response to patterns of severe global
economic inequality, but besides employment, migration offers new religious choices
and experiences that often differ from those available at home. Such opportunities
are interwoven with the everyday*for example, when a newly arrived migrant
worker is invited to church by another worker from her building and she agrees,
because she is lonely and homesick, and is deeply drawn to the charismatic experience
unlike anything she has experienced; or when a worker reads the Islamic booklet that
was sent to her 3 years earlier by a friend working in Oman, which prompts her to
find a mosque; or when an exhausted worker stops at St. Johns Cathedral rather than
walk the extra 15 minutes uphill in the scorching summer heat to the Catholic
church, and she is moved by the political content of the sermon of the Filipino Father
who belongs to the Philippine Independent Church. Such occurrences provide
women with new materials with which to explain and understand their migratory
experiences, rethink their pasts, and narrate and orchestrate desired changes in their
lives. For migrant activists in particular, religious subjectivity can come into question,
especially when it is seen as providing barriers to activism or offering creative and
intellectual tools to further activist goals.
314 N. Constable

Below, I offer an ethnographic analysis of the stories and experiences of four

women migrant workers. These four women provide a glimpse of the religious
diversity, flexibility, and mobility experienced by migrant workers in Hong Kong.
Although two of these women are Filipinas who were raised as Roman Catholics and
two are Indonesians who were raised as Muslims (the two religions that are most
common among Filipino and Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong), these
women are not typical of the spectrum of religious views of migrant workers in Hong
Kong, which includes members of a vast array of rapidly growing new charismatic
Christian churches mentioned but not discussed in detail below. These four women
were selected in part because, despite their differences, they all self-identify as
activists; moreover their activism and political consciousness developed while they
were migrant workers in Hong Kong. The stories and experiences of these four
women illustrate the significance of religion in migrant workers’ (re)telling and
(re)scripting of their lives within the context of migration. Their narratives,
performed in the telling, hint at some of the ways that ‘narrative dimensions of
selfhood’ are linked to historically specific social contexts that ‘shape both life stories
and lives’ (Maynes, Pierce, & Laslett 2008, p. 2). The following tales of four women
illustrate how migrants’ religious choices can lead to further choices, potential
conflicts, new directions and new subjectivities in their life scripts as migrant workers
and as activists.

Telling Tales
Amor
Jesus will go deaf from your prayers! *Amor

Amor is elegant and articulate, around forty, never married, and has worked in Hong
Kong for over two decades. Long involved with UNIFIL-HK (United Filipinos in
Hong Kong), an activist umbrella organisation of Filipino groups, she is a devoted
activist. I encountered Amor many times over the years at the Mission for Migrant
Workers, Bethune House (a domestic shelter for migrant workers), and at rallies and
protests, but I had never talked to her about religion. Like most Filipinas, she was
raised Roman Catholic; she learned to pray and go to mass as a child, following her
mother’s example. Throughout her time abroad she became increasingly reflexive
about*and critical of*the religion of her childhood.
Her visits back to the Philippines, for 2 weeks every other year, gradually revealed
to her the problem with her mother’s passive attitude towards religion and towards
life. Her mother’s solution to every problem (like that of many Filipinas), she
explained, was to ‘pray, pray more, and pray harder’. If that didn’t work, which it
never did, as she remarked wryly, she would walk on her knees, prostrating herself in
religious processions, petitioning the Virgin to appeal to Christ, to appeal to God, for
mercy.
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 315

A key example of her mother’s passivity involved her approach to Amor’s older
brother’s drinking and his belligerence towards the family. Her mother was unwilling
to criticise him or confront him about the family’s collective concerns about his
drunken, wasteful behaviour. Amor recounted the turning point: once, when she
went back to the Philippines for a visit, her brother was in a drunken rage, and she
stood up to him. He lashed out at her while his daughters (Amor’s nieces) watched in
awe. ‘I threw the small chair in front of him, in front of everybody and I did not get
scared. I thought, ‘‘It must stop!’’ My mother was there. He did not say anything [in
criticism of her]. He didn’t say ‘‘this is wrong,’’ or that he’s older and I’m younger.
And that’s the first time they heard him apologise.’ To everyone’s amazement, her
brother apologised, and from then on he made an effort to drink less and to behave
more responsibly. Standing up to her brother strengthened her position as a respected
member of the extended family, and reinforced her role as trusted advisor to her
young nieces.
Replaying our recorded conversation later that day, I was struck that I had asked
Amor about the role of religion in her own life, but she focused largely on her
mother’s religious and ‘superstitious’ practices. She traced a path from her early
Catholic practice as a child, to her growing scepticism: she did what her mother told
her, but prayer turned out to be the problem, not the solution. Her mother ‘prayed
hard’ before she went to sleep and she taught Amor to do the same; to review all the
bad things and to pray about them. Her mother would wake up in the middle of the
night petrified with fear, and Amor did too. Finally, she told her mother ‘don’t pray
about the bad things before you go to sleep. It only makes things worse’.

When I was little in the Philippines my mother taught us, before you go to bed you
have to pray. I would go to bed and pray. I would remember problems,
situations . . . and I would go to bed with a heavy chest and in the middle of the
night I will [would] get nightmares. My mother will have nightmares every night
and I would have to wake her up. The kind of nightmare when you know you are
awake but your body cannot move. And sometimes I experience[d] that in the
Philippines as well. As if people are putting things on my chest. I am scared that I
will die . . . [Later, when she worked as a domestic worker] because of continuous
working I’m tired already and I will start my prayer and before I finish my prayer I
am asleep already. Then I realise I will just wake up and sleep straight and I realised
that when I’m tired I forget to pray, and I realised I don’t have nightmares anymore.
[So when I] go back to the Philippines, I told my mother, ‘don’t pray hard when
you go to bed. Don’t remember all your problems before you go to bed.’ She laughs
at me, but I’m serious! The more you remember the more you will be tense, not
relaxed. Still she will have nightmares. I can’t change her daily routine, especially
when it comes to praying and god. She really believes in it.

Amor laughed as she recalled her mother’s ‘superstitions’ and how, when her
mother died and she returned to the Philippines, she blatantly disregarded them all.
Despite the customary prohibitions, close relatives carried her coffin; in a way that
was believed to invite dangers, her mother’s casket scraped against the walls and door
of the small room in her house where it was temporarily displayed. And according to
316 N. Constable

Amor, despite these offences, ‘nothing bad had happened!’ Brazenly tempting fate,
she said to them, ‘Look, my brother is still healthy and strong. He hasn’t died! No one
has died!’ She laughed. ‘We lost jobs before that! We already were poor before that! So
how much worse can it get?’ Her confidence was bolstered by the fact that she had
supported her mother, paid for the funeral, and contributed to the family with her
remittances.
She summed up her current religious beliefs with the saying Nasa tao ang gawa,
nasa Diyos ang awa, literally, ‘Deeds reside in men, mercy resides in God’, or less
literally, God helps those who help themselves. This concept, she explained, is what
draws her*if she attends church at all*to the Philippine Independent Church (PIC
or Iglesia Filipina Independiente). Historically, the PIC was the first breakaway
church from the Spanish Philippine Roman Catholic church in 1902. Founded by
nationalist progressive activist Isabelo de los Reyes (a.k.a. Don Belong) who
established the first Philippine labour union opposing US capitalist imperialism
the same year, the PIC was also known as the Aglipayan Church, led by Bishop
Gregorio Aglipay, a former Roman Catholic Priest. As is still the case, PIC members
actively support workers’ rights. Known for its progressive politics, the PIC is anti-
imperialist and nationalist; its members openly criticised the extra-judicial killings in
the Philippines. Hong Kong PIC members are often involved in worker activism and
they criticise those who depend blindly on prayer, waiting for blessings in the next
life. The PIC is officially in full communion with the US Episcopal Church and most
closely affiliated with Hong Kong’s Anglican Church, specifically St. John’s Cathedral.
Amor, like other PIC members, is deeply involved in migrant worker activism. She
has taken a visible and public stand in marches and demonstrations condemning
overcharging by recruitment agencies, criticising Hong Kong and Philippine
government policies that dis-empower workers, helping to organise the ‘Stop the
Killings’ forum and vigils in Hong Kong (to pressure the Philippine government to
oppose the political assassinations of hundreds of human rights activists, leaders, and
church workers in the Philippines), and actively participating in drives to register
overseas Filipino voters. She leads migrant worker ‘trainings’ on global inequality, the
global role of migrant workers, and about their rights as workers. Her Chinese
employer is also a political activist who supports Amor’s involvement in migrant
worker issues.
Overall, Amor’s migrant experiences have led her to firmly reject the Catholicism
and ‘superstition’ of her childhood and to free herself from the familial and cultural
expectations that she should one day return to the Philippines and marry. Through
her migrant experiences she has become a respected member of her extended family
in the Philippines despite*and perhaps in fact bolstered by*her single status and
her economic independence. Her migrant experiences and her exposure to the
Philippine Independent Church*which provides an institutional platform for many
activists*have bolstered her commitment to activism and her leadership role among
migrant workers. Activism and the PIC are both linked to Amor’s projection and
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 317

understanding of herself as a far more active, rational, and empowered woman than
her mother.

Sister Fareedah
Catholics can say ‘I do’. Muslims can say ‘I do’ and ‘I don’t’*Sister Fareedah

Aged around fifty, Sister Fareedah is older than Amor, but like Amor, she has spent
much of her life (28 years) in Hong Kong. Both women are single, and they share a
Filipino Roman Catholic background. While Amor’s religious convictions had begun
to wane before she left the Philippines, Fareedah became an increasingly active
Roman Catholic upon her arrival in Hong Kong. When I met her in 2009, however,
she was Muslim. People who recommended that I meet her described her mistakenly
as ‘a born Filipino Muslim’ or accurately as a ‘Muslim convert’.
Our several meetings took place at a Hong Kong mosque and Islamic centre that is
most diverse (in terms of nationalities) and most welcoming to women and migrant
workers. ‘Fareedah’ I later learned was the name that she had chosen for herself, a
Muslim name that she went to great lengths to establish as her legal name after she
‘embraced Islam’. Each time we met, she wore modest dress, with only her face and
hands revealed. At our first encounter, she wore a moss-green jilbab, similar in style
to those that more conservative Muslim Indonesians wear. Following a lecture by a
professor from Pakistan on issues facing Muslim minorities in non-Muslim regions,
we met in a small room where her group, Helpers of Islam, meets each Sunday. She
introduced me to many of her Filipina Muslim sisters, including her biological sister.
Most of them called her ‘mommy’.
Sister Fareedah’s story had been repeated to visitors, scholars, and new members of
her group many times, and she tells it with confidence and pride. For much of her life
she was a staunch Catholic. She was instrumental in revitalising one of the Hong
Kong Filipino Catholic church groups and was the leader of their choir. Yet despite
her faith, commitment, and her early and deep-rooted ‘hate of Muslims’ (dating from
her youth in the Philippines, where she grew up knowing of the tensions and civil
conflicts between Christians and Muslims), she began asking questions. She read a
few pamphlets, then sought online information about Islam, and she frequently
passed by the Kowloon Mosque. Finally, she sent a letter to the Kowloon Mosque
explaining her desire to learn more about Islam. For days she waited but received no
reply. She convinced herself that it was not meant to be, but 3 weeks later she received
a reply. Since there was no woman teacher at the Kowloon Mosque, her letter had
been forwarded to the Masjid Ammar, the Islamic Union in Wanchai where there was
a Malaysian woman who could teach her about Islam.
She described the subsequent difficult 6 months during which she felt as though
she led a secret double life. Church choir finished at 9 a.m., and she quickly changed
from her choir robe, caught a taxi from the church to the mosque, changed her
clothes again, and began her lessons at 9:30, all the while saying nothing to her
church friends about her activities. During those months she posed increasingly
318 N. Constable

critical questions to her Catholic colleagues about Christianity: questions about the
Trinity, which appeared as a ‘confusing’ type of polytheism*father, son, and holy
ghost*compared with Islam’s ‘simple one God’; and observations about practices
enjoined in the Bible, such as veiling and avoiding pork, that Christians rarely follow.
As she recounted, ‘Muslims follow the Bible better than most Christians’ and they
enact their religion through their actions and daily practices. Fareedah’s preference
for Islam over Christianity is linked to its ‘more logical’ absence of the Trinity and of
Jesus’s divinity, and the ‘encompassing ritual praxis and the direct accessibility of
God’ (Van Nieukerk 2006, p. 6) that Van Nieukerk describes for Muslim converts in
the West.
As Fareedah’s commitment to*and confidence about*Islam became stronger, she
decided it was time to tell her friends and family that she had ‘embraced Islam’. Many
of them, echoing her own earlier views, ‘hated Muslims’, but some of them accepted
her and respected her decision. In her words,

I was a very serious Christian before, and then you change something and it is very
strange. And then, so it goes around six months and then I said, you see Nicole, in
one’s life we reach a junction where we have to decide which way to go. I said I’m
going out in my hijab, and I’m looking left, I’m looking right and I forgot to look
up!

In other words, she realised that she had been too concerned with how those
around her might judge her for wearing the veil, and more generally for her religious
conversion. This concern about others’ opinions had blinded her from the obvious
truth. She had failed to ‘look up’ (i.e. to turn to God and trust her faith in Islam), but
when she did, she realised that the answer was obvious. As she continued,

That makes, you know, me decide from then on to wear my hijab and then I tried
to face reality. I tried to talk to my friends in the church and say that if you put a
dividing line between us because of my religion*I hope we can still be friends*
but if you put some dividing line maybe we are going to part our ways now. But it
doesn’t go that way because they respect me.

Others, including kin and neighbours in the Philippines, are less accepting, so
when she goes back she remains indoors and does not ‘flaunt the differences’ so as to
spare her family difficulties or criticism from their neighbours. To that extent she
feels much ‘freer’ to overtly and proudly practise her religion in Hong Kong than in
the Philippines.

Here, thank God, for the Muslims in Hong Kong in general, we don’t have any
problems. In the Philippines we are born into a Christian family and then if we
embrace Islam it will be difficult. The neighbours will all talk. But sometimes it
doesn’t matter. We just need to ignore everything. We just need to ignore. Or when
we are in the Philippines we won’t go out of our own houses, so we wear what we
are going to wear unless we go to the mosque. If we want to go to the mosque we
have to respect the place. But in Hong Kong it is not difficult. In Hong Kong no one
will bother you.
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 319

For some converts, she explained, such as those whose families raise pigs, or whose
uncles are priests and aunts nuns, their religious choice is seen as betrayal. They are
met with bitter hostility and rejection; some are disowned.
Sister Fareedah considers herself a student of Islam, also a teacher and da’wah
(propagation) worker among Filipinas. With her personal understanding of
Christianity and Islam, of what it is like for a Filipina to convert to Islam, and
with her knowledge of Hong Kong and migrant workers, she teaches about the Koran,
about how to practise the proper rituals of absolution and prayer, and how to apply
Islam and its lessons to their daily lives. Like Sister Fareedah, a majority of Filipina
Muslims at the Islamic Union were born into the Roman Catholic faith. Many of
them became interested in Islam as a result of introductions to Islamic men and the
prospect of marriage (Hawwa 2000; Allievi 2006). Yet some were drawn to Islam not
for marriage per se, but in the wake of failed marriages. In answer to my question,
Fareedah said that she had been married once, long ago ‘but it was not a very
successful marriage. I only had one daughter’. One of the attractions of Islam, as
Sister Fareedah succinctly put it, is that ‘Catholics can say ‘‘I do.’’ Muslims can say ‘‘I
do’’ and ‘‘I don’t’’’ (they are permitted to divorce).
The Muslim partners of the Filipinas I met were mostly Pakistani men, with some
Egyptians and Malaysians. A woman who had married a Muslim man might
introduce her single friends and relatives to her husband’s friends and relatives. In
some cases the woman’s religious conversion preceded marriage and was a
prerequisite. In some cases, couples split up before they married, but the woman
still converted or remained with the faith. Some women traced their conversion or
their original interest in Islam to a variety of sources: a friend working in Saudi, a
sibling in the Middle East, information accessed online, or conversations with a
Muslim neighbour.4
When I asked Sister Fareedah about activism she explained that according to Islam,
women should not make public spectacles of themselves, but Helpers of Islam has
nonetheless become involved in some specific worker issues in Hong Kong. She
distinguished between politics and activism.

Muslims are not allowed to participate in political issues. In the Philippines we

can’t join because we are too easy to recognise . . . We avoid it to protect our
families . . . We give some support, but we don’t always go out in front. What we are
really protecting is our families in the Philippines because it [the government] is
too critical of Muslims. We are always being talked about as terrorists, and all that,
so we want to protect our families. Human rights issues*sometimes [we join
rallies] if it is about fellow Filipinos being maltreated. [We support] some issues
about our work here, about racial discrimination, our salaries, the levy, like that.

We try to mingle with the NGOs here in Hong Kong as long as it doesn’t conflict
with our activities here. We can join them. If it’s something like ousting the
President, No. But if it’s about our levy, salary, or something like those human
rights violations, we join. Actually we women are not really allowed to do all these
things in the street. But as long as it is useful for the society and we keep our dress
320 N. Constable

code I think there is no harm when we do this. We are just trying to express our
own opinion when it comes to that . . .

Sister Fareedah’s group gets involved in activism and in providing social services
for workers. They were involved in the April 5, 2009 Anti-discrimination Rally
spurred by Hong Kong journalist Chip Tsao’s editorial in which he referred to the
Philippines as ‘a nation of servants’. They also protested Israeli West Bank policies
and helped to organise a peace rally. Yet they must tread a finer line than many other
Filipinas and Indonesians, she explained. Drawing too much attention can bring
problems to their families in the Philippines where there is still fear and prejudice
against Muslims, reinforced by the political violence in Mindanao.

During the war in Mindanao we [helped to] arrange a meeting in Central with
Christians. We tried to have a prayer meeting without mentioning Yahweh, Allah;
we just simply used the word ‘God’. We were asking God to bless the place so that
peace will prevail. We were covered and they [Christians] were not covered. Of
course we didn’t use words that will offend anybody. Of course we don’t think that
Jesus is the son of God, so they don’t use that [word]. They only used ‘God
Almighty’ so everyone can agree.

In reexamining her past and her earlier ‘hate’ of Muslims, Sister Fareedah
reiterated the stereotypes of Muslims as terrorists, rapists, killers, and bombers. The
conflicts in the Philippines involve Muslims but, she insists, they are based on land,
politics, and economics, not religion. Her current life script*shaped by her
conversion to Islam*casts her as a single woman who is content with her life,
motivated to learn all she can about Islam, and proud of her role as a leader, teacher,
and ‘mommy’ to Filipina Muslim converts. She runs a shelter funded by the Islamic
Centre that houses unemployed or abused domestic workers. She proudly showed me
a copy of the certificate she awards to new converts (approximately sixty Filipinas a
year) who participate in an awards ceremony. She is also working to raise funds to
establish a mosque outside of Manila, partly in anticipation of her eventual return
home to the Philippines.
In sum, in a dramatic reversal of her earlier beliefs about Muslims, Sister Fareeda
rejected Catholicism and embraced Islam. She literally renamed herself, scripting a
new identity via Islam which allows women ‘to say I don’t’, in contrast to the
Philippine strict religious and legal prohibition against divorce (Constable 2003).
Significantly, she recognises herself*not as yet another rejected and abandoned
married Filipina who has gone to Hong to escape her failures*but as a divorced and
proudly single mother, as a respected, Muslim da’wah worker, and as someone who
has cooperated with Filipino activist groups, discussed workers’ issues with UNIFIL
members, and has worked to define haram (what is forbidden) in such a way that
permits Filipina Muslims to stand up for human rights. These aspects of her life are
much more difficult to negotiate when she is in the Philippines. But like Javanese
women who choose to adopt the veil, Fareedah has used her ‘newfound knowledge
and practice of Islam to bring about personal change’ and to distance herself from her
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 321

own past (Brenner 1996, p. 673) and to engage in what she considers meaningful
activism.

Lia
Maybe activism is my new religion? *Lia

Lia is an Indonesian domestic worker who was born Muslim but has explored diverse
forms of religiosity in Hong Kong. Younger than Amor by more than a decade, we
shared some friends in common but did not meet until 2009. After a Sunday visit to
the mosque, I rushed to meet her at a Causeway Bay MTR station. I imagined she
might easily spot me, a light-haired Westerner, but as I scanned the mostly
Indonesian crowd of young women outside the station I wondered if I could identify
her as a church-going Christian, wearing stereotypical conservative clothing (a knee-
length skirt, black pumps, and a loose, long-sleeved white blouse). Instead, I was
greeted by a stylish woman looking younger than her 30 years, in black leggings and a
long bright-yellow tank top, layered over a camisole, adorned with a thick shiny chain
with a colourful three-inch pendant in the shape of a cross. While the Sunday crowds
swarmed, we found a coffee shop in which to spend the next few hours.
Lia’s religious subjectivity began shifting when she lived in Indonesia. As a teenager
she was attracted to Christianity because it seemed modern, interesting, and different
and she occasionally attended a Protestant charismatic church with school friends in
Jakarta. Her parents, who were not observant Muslims, had mixed feelings, but given
her youth, and emphasising the importance of ‘good behaviour’ that they trusted was
a feature of all religions, they were tolerant. Not everyone in their community shared
their tolerance. Her uncle, who had converted to Roman Catholicism, fled to a
distant town for several years until he and his wife returned with four children and
less fear of intimidation.
Lia was introduced to me by Aisha, a staunchly Muslim domestic worker, the
daughter of a conservative Imam in Indonesia. She described Lia as an ‘Indonesian
Christian convert’. However, Lia was more ambivalent and pragmatic about religious
labels and her projected identity shifted markedly in the course of our conversation as
she learned more about me and my research. At first she assumed I must be Christian
and she presented herself as such (with her cross in full view). Later, when I said I was
not Christian but that I was ‘open to learning about many religions’ her expression
visibly brightened and described her own interest in ‘all religions’, including her visits
to a Buddhist temple with her Nepalese boyfriend, her growing frustration with
Christianity, and her cynicism about religion in general.
At the beginning of our conversation she explained that other Indonesians assume
her to be a Muslim. ‘And that is not really untrue’ she said, since she was born and
raised as a Muslim in Indonesia. She allows Indonesians to define her as Muslim, but
when she meets other Hong Kong people she thinks it is ‘a lot easier to be a Christian
like Filipinas’ and she displays her cross to emphasise the point. Visually, she
explained, given her style and appearance, she can pass as a Filipina, and she
322 N. Constable

considers that an advantage in Hong Kong. By the end of our conversation, it was
clear that she had hardly attended church at all in the last 2 years.
Since 2005, Lia has become more interested in participating in the Association of
Indonesian Domestic Workers (ATKI) than in attending church. She first encoun-
tered ATKI during the anti-WTO protests in December 2005. Since then, she had
given a lot of thought to church-promoted passivity, ‘which tells us to pray and to do
as Christ did: when an employer is violent that we should turn the other cheek.’
Activism, she said, is what has opened her eyes, not the church. Lia contrasted her
own irregular church attendance to that of her devout older sister, a Christian convert
who attends the International Christian Alliance church all day, every Sunday, and
even assists the pastor. Despite Lia’s own good employment situation, she feels she
ought to be more active and take greater responsibility. Laughing, she said that
activism may be her ‘new religion’.
Lia has worked in Hong Kong for 10 years. She has been with her Nepalese
boyfriend for 7 years; for the past six he has asked her to marry him. His parents
pressure him to marry and have children because he is their only son. While other
women might jump at the offer, given that she ‘loves him’ and that marriage would
allow her to obtain Hong Kong permanent residency and work legally as something
other than a ‘domestic helper’, she is nonetheless reluctant to marry him yet and she
is happy with the status quo. As she explained, her current life in Hong Kong is ideal
and she hopes she can keep it that way until she reaches at least thirty-five; but, she
reflected, that will be old if she wants children. She was originally introduced to her
boyfriend by her Chinese employer. He is a construction and maintenance worker
who has permanent residence in Hong Kong by virtue of his Gurkha father who
worked there before 1997. She speaks with him daily; he visits at her employer’s
home, and she sees him on her day off.
Marriage would entail many risks and drawbacks. This Lia knows from observing
the growing tension in her employer’s marriage (the ‘Sir’ is likely having an affair)
and from her own family. Several years ago, after her father died, her mother
remarried. The man’s children were abusive towards Lia’s mother and although he
contributed generously to his children’s welfare, he did not provide Lia’s mother with
economic or emotional support. After a year she divorced him. If Lia were to marry,
she speculated, she could get a better job, perhaps in an Indonesian bank in Hong
Kong, but they would likely live in a tiny flat and if the marriage didn’t work out,
where would she go?
Lia praised her work situation. Her employers rely on her and appreciate her.
Unless they have houseguests, she has her own bedroom, and because her employers
are experiencing marital problems they value her cheerfulness and the stability that
she provides to the household. The children, whom she has known since they were
little, are now independent teenagers. Her life is very good, especially compared with
less fortunate migrant workers she has met. Her current live-in work arrangement
offers security, comfort, and a high degree of freedom. Moreover, she reasoned aloud,
when she is old she wants to live in Indonesia, and it is clear that her boyfriend
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 323

considers Hong Kong home. If she married him and spent most of her life in Hong
Kong, who would there be to take care of her when she eventually returns to
Indonesia when she is old?
In Lia’s life script she is born Muslim and is a one-time Indonesian Christian
convert who has become increasingly ambivalent about religion in the course of her
migratory experience. She has done what some call ‘religion hopping’*a common
practice among migrant workers. Insightful, expressive, and critical of religion that
serves as a cocoon or an excuse for inaction, she is suspicious of the well-worn and
over-scripted path of marriage, especially given her mother’s and her employer’s
experiences, and her overall satisfaction with the current status of her relationship
with her Nepalese boyfriend. Lia’s ability to claim a space of independence comes not
from religion or salvation, but from her ability to be critical and sceptical about all
religions, to reject certain kinship obligations and gendered expectations within her
migratory home, to script a new path within the context of Hong Kong for the time
being if not forever.

Eni Lestari Andayani

Eni doesn’t seem like a Muslim, but she is very involved in human rights*Sister
Fareedah.

Since the time she spent in a Filipino-run shelter almost 10 years ago, after leaving
her abusive employer, Eni has become deeply involved in migrant worker activism.
She was influential in establishing ATKI (Asosiasi Tenaga Kerja Inonesia di Hong
Kong*Association of Indonesia Migrant Workers) and more recently established
GAMMI (Gabungan Migran Muslim Indonesia*Indonesian Migrant Muslim
Alliance, a coalition of Muslim Indonesian groups). I have known her for several
years, and had talked to her previously about her life and her activism, but we had
never spoken specifically about religion. Eni was especially reflexive and insightful on
the topic of migrant workers, religion and activism as this topic is near and dear to
her political concerns. She was raised a Muslim, like most Indonesian domestic
workers in Hong Kong, and she prayed five times a day, but her family was not strict
about dressing modestly. Each time she returned home over the past decade, she was
shocked at the visible intensification of public expressions of piety among her family,
her neighbours, the media, and the markets (where much of the clothing sold is
Islamic-style). In her words, Indonesia has become, even among the poor and rural
villages, increasingly Islamicised (Brenner 1996; Robinson 2008).

From 2004 to 2007 people start to be so Muslim. Even my own family! How I can
notice this? By the clothes they wear. It had become so massive! All the media, all
the newspapers, all are targeting only women. So Hong Kong was partly influenced
by Indonesia, partly migrants from the Middle East, but the big influence after
2004, 2005, is the extended areas of Islamicisation from Indonesia. The number of
people wearing the hijab is increasing. TV, newspaper, singers, models, all are
Muslim . . .
324 N. Constable

One evening at dinner Eni and four friends explained how Hong Kong provides a
fertile setting for new experiences and a welcome break from Indonesia’s Islamic
discipline. Things like smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and eating pork can be
done in Hong Kong, away from the watchful eye of family members and eager critics.
Homosexual and heterosexual relationships that would not be possible in Indonesia
are possible in Hong Kong. As one friend jokingly explained, ‘when I talk to my
mother on the phone, she always asks, ‘‘are you dressed modestly, do you pray five
times a day, do you avoid pork?’’ (a well-known Cantonese favourite). She replies,
‘No mom, [big sigh], unfortunately my employer won’t let me dress and pray, and
they make me eat pork.’ We all laughed because of the comical reversal of the better
known ‘oppressive employer’ who is easily transformed into a convenient excuse for
migrant women to bend or to avoid religious expectations. Eni’s experience is more
common. She explained to her first employer that she would pray for 5 minutes five
times a day and the woman agreed. Soon after, however, the male employer
complained, so his wife told Eni that she must stop ‘kissing the floor’. They pressured
her to eat pork, giving her only eggs for months on end.
For Aisha, the one in the group who I always saw wearing a jilbab and whose father
was a well-known conservative Imam in Indonesia, smoking, drinking, and pork
offered little temptation. What changed for her in Hong Kong were her regular visits to
the mosque and her patterns of prayer. Given that she only has Sundays off, and that day
she is frantically busy with GAMMI, and given that her employers do not allow her to
interrupt her work to pray or to wear a jilbab in their flat, she has made adjustments. She
slips her jilbab on in the elevator after she leaves the flat and she works closely with
observant and devout Muslim Indonesians to teach them that activism and religious
devotion are compatible, a topic that she and Eni are both passionate about.
For Eni, her journey to Hong Kong and to becoming a vocal activist leader meant
learning about migrant workers’ rights and understanding the obstacles that stand in
the way of activism. One of the greatest obstacles*but not a necessary one, she
argued*is religion. Outlining the history of Islam, Eni explained that the Prophet
Mohammed was originally sent by God to free the slaves and that the roots of Islam are
libratory and revolutionary. These Muslim roots are in keeping with her progressive
politics and activism. She is critical of an Islam that promotes passivity and prayer as
solutions to problems; such a perspective supports the interests of the wealthy and elite
in Indonesia and globally.

In Indonesia they [Muslims] promoted more passivity. People there are so passive.
Religion is [considered] a way to endure suffering, not a way to liberate
yourself . . . The meaning [of Islam] has been interpreted by what is good for the
rulers . . . as anti-political. In the past, people were exploited, but then they fought
against colonisation in Indonesia and tried to understand the link between their
faith in Islam and liberation and freedom. They found many Muslim ideals
that oppose exploitation. Islam thus helped to strengthen their resistance to
colonisation. Conservative Muslims are pro-exploitation and pro-power; pro-
Suharto.
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 325

GAMMI, as she and her friends explained, was established as a response to the growth
of conservative Islam in Hong Kong. Conservative Muslims (including Indonesian
consular officials) began a campaign criticising the morals of Indonesian migrant
workers, in an attempt to curb their freedom and make them more disciplined and
submissive.

When I first came here, for example 1999 to 2004, you also witnessed this: Victoria
Park was full of tomboys [Indonesian slang for lesbians], youngsters, and many
people who just stay and sing and play music, pray and have a very free life. And
when I had my holiday [day off] that is what I observed... And then in 2004 there
was a transformation of people who are occupying Victoria Park, from those who
are very tomboy or butch or maybe just ordinary, into more religious costumes
from green, blue, yellow hijabs. It’s so massive! Unbelievable! I was wondering why?
That gradually started to increase and so did the religious activities. Even the
[Indonesian] consulate ran and funded activities for religious people to come here.
Every year they have a budget for public forums. And during Ramadan, during the
fasting month, they sponsored activities and they worked through one of the
Muslim alliances . . . . This alliance is of six or seven Muslim conservative groups:
conservative and pro-government, and they were committed to so-called ‘cure’ the
lesbians and to make people more devoted Muslims . . . . Every Sunday their
mission was to convert people and to cure lesbians.

Eni, Aisha, and their friends, spend much of their free time teaching, planning, and
organising outreach. They are part of a large, diverse network of Indonesian workers
who embody different degrees of religious commitment. Although some migrant
workers have moved far from Islam, Eni and her friends share a commitment to the
importance of Islam in relation to the human rights and the well-being of migrant
workers, and they are drawn to Islamic teachings about resisting exploitation. As Aisha
and Eni explained, one purpose of establishing GAMMI was to encourage Indonesian
women to talk, to become leaders, and to take up migrant issues (as opposed to serving
as moral police). According to Aisha, who has never waivered in her religious
commitment, the challenge is for Indonesian Muslims to strike a balance between
prayer and action. Whereas some of the Islamic public speakers condemned women
who marched and expressed their views publicly, others support their activism. One
Muslim member of ATKI gave a speech in which she outlined the connection between
Islam and labour issues. ‘Publicly we announced that those who are actually against
fighting for our rights in fact do not understand the religion very well. At that time
people were saying that it is haram (prohibited) to join a rally and expose your body and
your voice’. Gradually, Eni alongside more conservative Indonesian Muslim women like
Aisha, conducted a study of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) to ascertain how activism
could be compatible with Islam, and they worked to convey to conservative Muslims
that religion and activism are not incompatible, that good Muslims ought to fight for
human rights.
This image was vividly portrayed at the May 1, 2009 Labour Day rally and protest
march that led from Victoria Park in Causeway Bay to the Central Government Office.
Indonesian Muslim activists from the GAMMI member group Azuria, as well as
326 N. Constable

Indonesian members of PILAR (Persatuan Buruh Migran Indonesia Tolak Over-

charging
United Indonesians Against Overcharging), and many others, joined local
labour activists, trade unionists and other migrant workers to demand a ‘standard
minimum wage’. Some GAMMI members marched wearing their characteristic flaming
red headscarves that match the Indonesian flag and signal patriotism, lack of timidity,
and the visual pairing of gendered religiosity and progressive activist politics. As Eni
explained, in Hong Kong the once rigid dichotomy between modest dress and piety
versus immodest clothing and immorality has faded over the past few years. There is
less official focus on enforcing morality and less condemnation of those who do not
dress conservatively. Space has been created for a more constructive focus on political
issues.
Hong Kong has allowed Eni and her friends to develop their political passions and to
rethink and relearn Islam to match their politics. Aisha recently married an Indonesian
man and plans to finish her contract and then return to Indonesia for good as a married
women and an activist. Another of Eni’s friends also married an Indonesian man, an
activist, when she went home in 2008. In 2010 he plans to join her in Hong Kong so they
can both continue to support the interests of migrant workers. Eni plans to remain in
Hong Kong as long as possible, despite family pressure to return and marry. Her
commitment to migrant worker activism is the central theme of her life script, a script
that would have been far less likely had she not experienced and witnessed first hand the
challenges facing Muslim migrant workers in Hong Kong. Had Eni remained in
Indonesia, where she was expected to work and marry and raise children, it is unlikely
she would have become a leader and activist. Nor is she likely to have felt a need to
critically rethink the importance of Islam in relation to human rights and activism.

Religion, Activism, and New Subjectivities

Most migrant workers identify themselves with one religion or another, but many
consider their Christian or Muslim faith incompatible with activist politics and the
majority choose not to participate in worker protests. Amor, Fareedah, Lia, and Eni
have all grappled with the issues of religion and migrant worker activism. For these
women, their life scripts and their changing subjectivities are linked to religious
opportunities and new understandings that developed and are talked about in the
context of their migrant experiences. They have reviewed and reconsidered their life
experiences from afar and have rejected and reinterpreted their pasts as they carve out
new spaces of activism, independence, and authority within the transnational
migratory context of Hong Kong.
For Amor, migration provided distance from the religious beliefs and practices of
her childhood, and exposed her to an institutional framework that supports and
reinforces her activism. Religion does not take centre stage in her life story, but it
provides an entry point for talking about and reflecting on the changes she has
experienced in the course of migration. For Sister Fareedah, as a devout convert,
Hong Kong has provided space for religious freedom of expression and a new form of
 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 327

gendered legitimacy as a respected and mature single (divorced) woman. Her

religious conviction has provided a legitimate position from which to work as a
Muslim activist and service provider. For Lia, Hong Kong is a space in which to
experiment with her beliefs, becoming independent and making her own choices
about who and when to marry. She has rejected religious expectations about her life
course, and she is increasingly critical of religious passivity as opposed to activism.
Given Eni’s understanding of the historical precedents for combining Islam with
progressive politics and activism, and her desire to attract conservative Muslim
workers to activism, she prefers to grapple with Islam and maintain it as her faith
rather than to discard it altogether. Indeed, she and her friends have worked hard to
promote a view of Islam as progressive, one that can further their political goals.
The four women’s stories, experiences, and conversations about religion illustrate
the ‘plasticity’ of self in the context of migration (Nietzche 1955). For all of them,
religion has helped to redefine their understandings of their gendered roles and
familial obligations (Chen 2005) and their subjectivities as global migrant workers.
Religious decisions*as reflected in women’s telling of their own lives*facilitate or
obstruct visions of their futures in Hong Kong or back home, or somewhere else
altogether, with husbands, as single women, or with temporary or long-term partners
of the same or opposite sex. Life narratives serve to claim legitimacy (Cruikshank
1994), reconstruct a sense of self (Brenner 1996), bring together the past and the new.
They tell ‘of healing wounds, replacing what is lost’ (Biehl 2005), of scripting lives
and thus moulding and performing new subjectivities while struggling for worker’s
rights and better living conditions for migrant workers.
All four women’s life scripts are highly dependent on the Hong Kong migratory
context. For them, Hong Kong is not only a site of exploitative migrant labour that
supports the middle-class lifestyle of privileged locals. It is a place in which migrant
worker’s words have become action. Within the cosmopolitan space of Hong Kong,
away from the immediate constraints of family and kin, religions are more easily
reexamined and questioned*rejected and changed*in relation to individual lives
and especially the collective difficulties and indignities experienced by migrant
workers. To some, religion is seen as a barrier to action and activism. To others
religion offers an institutional platform, historical lessons, fuel for insight and
creativity, a tool for building alliances, and a means to strengthening and inspiring
migrant worker activism.

Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to Pnina Werbner, Mark Johnson, Claudia Liebelt, Kathryn
Robinson and the ‘Disaporic Encounters, Sacred Journeys’ conference participants at
Keele University (June 2009). I am deeply indebted to migrant workers, activists,
friends, and colleagues in Hong Kong. Research funding for this project was provided
by the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pittsburgh.
328 N. Constable

Notes
[1] Ninety-five per cent of Hong Kong’s population is ethnic Chinese and among them
Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are the most popular religions (loosely defined and
often combined). Among Hong Kong’s permanent population are also some 240,000 Roman
Catholics, 300,000 Protestants, 80,000 Muslims, and smaller numbers of Sikhs, Jews, and
Hindus. Hong Kong’s Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim groups provide a range of educational
and social services including medical clinics, elderly homes, and welfare programmes.
[2] My earliest work among Filipina migrant domestic workers included analysis of how
fundamentalist Christianity can deter women from activism, prompting them to ‘learn to love
their employers’ and to prepare themselves for the rewards and blessings of the next life rather
than dwelling on the difficulties of this one (Constable 1997).
[3] Eni Lestari Andayani has requested that I use her real name. All other names of migrant
workers are pseudonyms.
[4] Fadima, a sister in Fareedah’s group, converted to Islam to her parent’s dismay when she
attended the University in Mindanao. She married a Malaysian man whom she met on a visit
to her sister in Malaysia. Years later, after he lost his wealth in the 1990s economic downturn
and stopped supporting her and their children, she discovered that she was his second wife.
Out of financial necessity she went to work in Saudi, selecting that location in the hope of
deepening her faith. To her dismay, her Saudi employers were Muslim ‘only by birth’; they had
little interest in religion and no intent to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, much less bring her
along. Unhappy in Saudi, she arranged to work in Hong Kong, mainly because it pays well.
Hong Kong, as it turned out, offered her what Saudi had not: an opportunity to deepen her
faith. At first she attended El Shaddai church, then she shifted to Jesus is Lord, and then
recently found her way to the Islamic Union where she has remained for the past year
‘rediscovering’ Islam. Another sister, Zina, was married to a Chinese non-Muslim Hong Kong
resident and converted to Islam after their divorce. Subsequently her teenage sons converted.
She had recently met an Egyptian man online. Lissa, like Fadima, had tried various
charismatic churches but ultimately stuck with Islam because ‘it makes most sense’. Originally,
she was introduced to Islam a decade ago by a Pakistani man. The relationship never
developed, but she continued her commitment to Islam, leaning heavily on Sister Fareedah for
support. Sister Fareedah’s youngest biological sister married a Pakistani Hong Kong resident
and is applying for residency but prefers to live with her employer than with her husband
fulltime.

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