Food contact zones and kitchen politics: migrant domestic helpers in Hong Kong

Making and sharing food plays an essential role in foreign domestic
helpers’ work and leisure life. However, this has seldom been
addressed in the voluminous migrant domestic helper literature.
In Hong Kong, overseas helpers are employed in over three hundred
thousand households. This article explores their food experiences
in both their leisure and work spaces. It first examines the
“contact zones” in which these workers share food with co-ethnics.
It then considers the kitchen space in which foreign domestic
workers serve their employers. It shows how these domestic
helpers make use of their culinary skills to secure better human
relationships and gain extra bargaining power through the provision
of tasty ethnic dishes. Despite the immense power imbalance
between the employer and the domestic helper, such food contact
has shed light on the everyday resilience embedded in kitchen
politics in Hong Kong.