This paper draws on in-depth qualitative research to investigate the link between the precarious lives of female migrant domestic workers in Cape Town and their use of digital media technologies in the context of an asymmetrical relationship with their predominantly white, wealthy employers. I investigate racial and gendered politics in previously circumscribed domestic spaces where digital technologies have become increasingly significant.
The research draws on interviews and focus group discussions conducted between 2016 and 2017 to explore female migrant domestic workers’ communicative strategies, appropriation patterns and coping mechanisms in a precarious environment.
I find that ICTs have opened up the private spaces of domestic work into a digitally mediated space that is contested politically and contradictory site of dissidents. These spaces are where domestic workers can renegotiate their domestic responsibilities and attempt to subvert the social structures that deeply embed them. However, these negotiations are subjected to power and hierarchy. Thus ICTs use by migrant domestic workers is subjected to control and surveillance. Nevertheless, the restricted access to employers’ WIFI, for example, generates an ingenious form of appropriation that produces agency.
A polarized and unequal society such as South Africa provides poignant examples of complex machinations of class differentiated oppression and exploitation. These operate between women of lower upper classes while exploring the limits and possibilities of loyalty within the boundaries of tenuous relationships. The paper elaborates on the overt and covert instances of participants’ resistance to exploitation, surveillance and employer control.
The paper also argues that access to digital media has enabled spaces for the expression of discontentment needed to overcome notions of docility and precarity. At the same time, digital communication technologies reinforced asymmetrical power relationships between these workers and their wealthy employers. I find that, on the one hand, being mobile and connected digitally subjected the workers to more control, surveillance and vulnerabilities. On the other hand, connection to ICTs and digital technologies opened up opportunities to claim agency and to negotiate consensual relations. Ultimately, the study provides valuable insights for designing public policies geared towards improving internet and reduce digital inequalities in the global South. It also highlights how such policies can improve relationships between female migrant domestic workers and their employers to reduce vulnerabilities and asymmetry.