Identity Struggles

This chapter draws on a large corpus of life stories of foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) in Hong Kong. Narratives were recorded at a church shelter that provides temporary accommodation to domestic workers, and the analyses focus on the identity struggles the women are engaged in. They have to accept an enforced identity as maids, who cannot even claim the right to be respected as human beings, but they are also struggling to claim a positive identity as ‘helpers’ who are in Hong Kong to serve Go