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Opinion | Foreign domestic helpers must get fairer media treatment in Hong Kong’s new normal
- Local media reports often emphasise employer difficulties, which shifts the perception of blame to domestic helpers and makes their mistreatment seem inevitable
- Even well-meaning public exhibitions showcasing their contributions to Hong Kong may unintentionally mislead
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It has been nearly seven months since Hong Kong scrapped its mask mandate and begun returning to a “new normal”. As the city’s government and business sectors think about how to make the “Hello Hong Kong” campaign a success, it is worth asking how Hongkongers can develop a more open and welcoming attitude towards both visitors and migrants living here.
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In conversations with my South Asian friends and students, one thing being reiterated is the stereotyping and prejudice they face almost daily.
For foreign domestic workers in particular, online discussions can portray them as dishonest, lazy, disobedient and inferior outsiders. But even the mainstream media in Hong Kong, such as the press, TV shows and advertisements, contribute to constructing prejudiced images that can present foreign domestic workers as an eerie and dehumanised cultural other. Last year, the use of brownface to depict a Filipino domestic helper in a local TV series made international headlines.
This year, it is good to see two exhibitions at the Tai Kwun Centre and HK News Expo on the contributions of foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong. But even at such well-meaning exhibitions, the way that migrant workers are portrayed may still be unintentionally misleading.
Attracted by the theme “Our Women Warriors”, I went to the HK News Expo. The exhibition showed how foreign domestic workers had integrated into Hong Kong, how they overcame the difficulty of being separated from their families and the discrimination experienced during the pandemic, and how they gained support from their employers and other migrant workers. The selection of news headlines and photographs from the local media was, however, problematic, I felt.
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Confirming the findings of one of my recent research projects, many of the news stories tended to emphasise the difficulties faced by employers. One of the display boards acknowledged that “foreign domestic helpers leave their home country to live and work in a foreign city” but also noted that employers had to “accommodate an extra person in their cramped apartments”.
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