My study focuses on analyzing how the foreign domestic workers in the Maldives resist the cultural alienation that they experience within their workplace and the society at large. The relatively large migrant worker population in the Maldives lives in an environment with heavy restrictions on their rights, limited mobility and limited physical space and privacy. Their vulnerability is emphasized by the limited legal protection, inadequate institutional support and limited voice of migrant workers in the media. The domestic workers work in households, and are often isolated and hidden from the view, making the group potentially an even more vulnerable group within the migrant workers. However, several studies on migrant workers had described their agency in finding ways to resist and respond to socially, culturally and politically restrictive situations. Through participatory fieldwork with Sri Lankan Singhalese domestic workers, I explore how they resist their cultural alienation by redefining their identities and through the use of social networks and by negotiating place and space.

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