10.1177/0891243202250730 ARTICLE GENDER & SOCIETY /April 2003 Lan / MAID OR MADAM? MAID OR MADAM? Filipina Migrant Workers and the Continuity of Domestic Labor PEI-CHIA LAN National Taiwan University This article examines the complexity of feminized domestic labor in the context of global migration. I view unpaid household labor and paid domestic work not as dichotomous categories but as structural continuities across the public and private spheres. Based on a qualitative study of Filipina migrant domestic workers in Taiwan, I demonstrate how women travel through the maid/madam boundary— housewives in home countries become breadwinners by doing domestic work overseas, and foreign maids turn into foreign brides. While migrant women sell their domestic labor in the market, they remain burdened with gendered responsibilities in their own families. Their simultaneous occupancy of paid and unpaid domestic labor is segmented into distinct spatial settings. I underscore women’s agency by presenting how they articulate their paid and unpaid domestic labor and bargain with the monetary and emotional value of their labor. Keywords: domestic labor; domestic work; migrant worker; migrant women; the Philippines Recently, feminist scholars have paid attention to the gendered division of house- work and domestic employment across class and racial lines. Yet as Mary Romero (1992) has pointed out, these studies are still divided into two distinct groups: Most studies of unpaid housework address only white, middle-class women, whereas the literature on domestic service is generally about women of color. To separate these two topics ignores their articulation and embeddedness. The gender battle over housework at home is influenced by the availability of domestic service in the mar- ket; those who offer domestic service are often wives and mothers who take care of 187 AUTHOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this article won the 2001 Sally Hacker Graduate Student Paper Award given by the Sex and Gender Section of the American Sociological Association. This research was funded by a Dissertation Year Fellowship at Northwestern University, Chiang Ching-Kwo Foundation, and the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. I am thankful for the comments of Christine Bose, Sharon Hays, Carol Heimer, Arlie Hochschild, Gary Alan Fine, Jacqueline Litt, Teri Silvio, Barrie Thorne, Mary Zimmerman, and three anonymous Gender & Society reviewers. My last but not the least gratitude goes to all the informants who shared their stories and lives with me. REPRINT REQUESTS: Pei-Chia Lan, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; e-mail: pclan@ccms.ntu.edu.tw. GENDER & SOCIETY, Vol. 17 No. 2, April 2003 187-208 DOI: 10.1177/0891243202250730 © 2003 Sociologists for Women in Society