CHAPTER ELEVEN

“WE ARE THE LEGIONARIES!”: FILIPINA DOMESTIC WORKERS IN ISTANBUL

AYŞE AKALIN

It’s   about   ten   past   eleven   a.m.   Marlene   is   going   into   the   room   as   she  gabbles to Jean about the bowling tournament next month. Acosta is already seated in her usual chair by the window, while her sister Elsa is seated next to her with her wonted countenance of sour contemplation. Saluda is checking to see if everyone has bought their tickets to the charity concert next week for the lady with cancer. Cathy barges through Julietta and Maria, who are standing by the door, to put the rice pot for the lunch afterwards on the coffee table by the cupboard. Rebecca, the president of the group, finishes her chat with the lady in the blue sweater, checks her cell phone squinting her 63-year-old eyes to see how long it has been since the Mass ended. She then rises from her seat at the head of the table, looks around to see who has stayed for the meeting that day and asks who would like to recite the Rosary. When the needed volunteers for the Five Glorious Mysteries1 are found, Rebecca nods towards those standing by the door who read the gesture immediately that it is time to start. As the women spread around the room come closer to the big table in the middle, Rebecca begins: In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Come, O Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.

I In talking of Filipino transnationalism, Claudia Liebelt mentions the

particularity of the fact that Filipino workers do not merely travel back and forth in shuttle mode between the Philippines and their host locations, but 1 The Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary recount the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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rather they “move on [within] a global hierarchy of desirable destination countries” (2008, 567). Liebelt suggests that in the global hierarchy of countries, Israel holds a middle position, “above most Asian and Middle Eastern destination countries, but clearly below Western Europe and North America” (568).

Liebelt’s  observation  is  not  only  an  apt  description  of  the  tenacity  with  which many overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) pursue migrancy globally, but also explains how a place like Turkey has emerged as a destination site in their journeys. A country with a total population of 92,337,852 people (The Republic of the Philippines, National Statistics Office 2012), the Philippines has 10,455,788 people (The Commission on Filipinos Overseas 2011), or over one tenth of the population, working in more than 190 countries around the world. This means that a large proportion of the society has at least one family member working overseas. While it would be a reification to suggest that migration is deeply embedded in the culture,2 it is certainly safe to suggest that it is an integral part of the Filipino mode of living.

While the Philippines government treats Filipino citizens abroad as a source of remittances, and thus as a part of its labour diaspora, the actual backbone of the Philippine migration regime consists of a system of “contract labor.” The latter was inaugurated in 1974 with the passing of the Labor Code as a direct response to the financial vulnerabilities caused by the increasing oil prices, ensuing in the Oil Crisis of 1973. Since the launching of the system the government has excelled in locating emerging or expanding markets that are in need of foreign labour and in making bilateral agreements with the related governments to provide the needed labour force. In a transfer of labour power involving various sections of the Philippines Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), as well as private recruitment and placement agencies, the workers are contracted for periods of about two years, though on a renewable basis. In other words, the main mechanism of the system is set and operated in a mode of circular migration that treats the labour inflow as flexible by having them work for renewable contracts (Rodriguez 2010) and denying them various working rights like unionization and other benefits. Regarding current circumstances, the official figures state that while there are 4,513,171 Filipinos (The Commission on Filipinos Overseas 2011) living overseas 2 My major reservation in calling the beliefs and practices weaved around migration  in  the  Philippines  a  “culture,”  even  though  they  are  very  much  embraced  by the society itself, is to do with the managing position the Philippines government has held in making migration an intrinsic part of the society. For more on this, see two excellent studies by Gueverra (2010) and Rodriguez (2010).

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temporarily, of that total figure 2.2 million are registered as OFWs, with about 95% employed officially as overseas contract workers (OCW) (The Republic of the Philippines, National Statistics Office 2012).

Although initially the workers travelling overseas were mostly men, the gender composition of OFWs has changed over time.

In 1975, 70% of the deployment were men (Gueverra 2010, 33), while in 1987 the service sector began replacing the construction sector as the main site of attraction, which was directly reflected in the gender composition (Fernandez 1997, 411), turning the Filipino case into one of the major examples of the feminization of migration (Castles & Miller 1998). While women constituted only 18% of the outflow in 1980, this figure rose to 36% in 1987 and to 69% in 2002 (Lan 2006, 46).

Since outbound-migration is a government undertaking, the figures of Filipinos overseas are followed very closely to determine the total remittances to be sent home. In doing so, the Commission on Filipinos Overseas treats those overseas in three major categories. Besides those working with “permanent residence status” and those on a “temporary” basis, there is a third label in the official categorization of the Philippine government, the ostensible “irregulars” who are defined as those migrants who are not properly documented, who lack valid residence or work permits, or who have overstayed their visas. While treated almost as an excess   category   in   the   Philippine   government’s   official   cartography   of  OFWs, the irregulars are, in fact, the focal point of the current global migration debate, with cases like the sans papier in France (Rodríguez  2004; McNevin 2006; McNevin 2009) or the three hundred hunger strikers in Greece (Mantanika & Kouki 2011), as Western nations struggle to implement austerity measures and erect their borders while their economies shrink. In a nutshell, the irregulars are those that would once be called “illegal” migrants.   In   today’s   world, however, there are various reasons for this discursive switch; one being the increasing variety of statuses that can no longer be reduced to a singular category of mere negativity vis-à-vis the nation-state   (İçduygu   2007; Cvajner & Sciortino 2010), another being a more thorough problematization of the effects of the normalizing language, as well as the policies of deeming some people “illegal” by the management of labour at large (De Genova 2002; Mezzadra 2010; Papadopoulos, Stephenson & Tsianos 2008). In any case, however, from the perspective of the Philippines administration of migration, the irregulars constitute a semi-desirable category. While on the one hand they contribute to the overall system of remittances, their

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mobility, on the other, is presented on the official front as more tolerated than endorsed3 since it occurs without the authorization of the state.

As of 2011 there were 5,593 Filipinos in Turkey, 3,950 of them with irregular status (Commission on Filipinos Overseas 2011). Filipinos in Turkey predominantly belong to this category since Turkey is a country that has been neither open to the immigration of those that are not historically deemed “of Turkish descent and culture” (Parla 2006; Kaşlı  & Parla 2009), nor has the government made any labour agreements with the Philippines government that would carve a gateway for foreign labour inflow.  Going  back  to  Liebelt’s  observation  above,  the  percentage  of  those  working with irregular status in Turkey verifies her comments regarding the migratory mode of the Filipinos “moving on.” Turkey’s   eventual  appearance in Filipino migration networks in the early 1990s has mainly to do with its “middle position” of being between Europe and the countries of the Middle East, as reminiscent of that of Israel. The countries of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar, despite being major buyers of contract labour from the Philippines, are also notorious for the negative working conditions the workers find themselves in (Human Rights Watch 2013). Thus, between the abuse of rights in that region and the allure of Europe, Turkey initially emerged as a transit location for those who wished to pursue opportunities elsewhere, especially following the Gulf War. During that process, as some were waiting to move on to Europe, there were people who found work opportunities and opted to settle in Turkey instead. This, in time, turned Turkey into a plausible option for seeking employment in the larger Filipino cognitive map, even though obtaining regular residential status is known to be hard. The initial settlers then yielded a novel source of social capital for the newcomers from the Philippines. As more workers joined them, there emerged the current small and low-key Filipino community of Istanbul.

*** Before the recital of Catena Legionis, Rebecca asked everyone to report what kind of problems the members encountered that week. A couple of people spoke about the issues they had with their employers. After listening to them all, Rebecca responded to the rantings and told the group, that

3 I am arriving at this conclusion partly based on my interview with the Secretary of the Department of Labor and Employment, Ms. Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz, who was in Istanbul for the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC-IV) in May 2011.

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although we are not perfect, we should remember that patience is valuable only when it comes from the heart. As we remember that Mary is our perfect model and that Jesus Christ is our king, we always find the path we are looking for because when we believe in God, he will hear us. Then, Acosta spoke up and said that she was a bit worried this week because her employers were going away for the week and they were leaving their two children, 5 and 3 years old, under her guardianship. Acosta is overwhelmed by the scope of this responsibility and worried she might not live up to the task. She asked that God be with her in this daunting task.

II About 85% of the Filipino community in Turkey is estimated to be

women who have predominantly arrived alone to work in the domestic work sector. Filipinos enter the market as part of a globally-acclaimed labour aristocracy because of their knowledge of English and their renowned discipline and diligence (Ong 2009, 163) and try to market their labour through these assets. While some of them are indeed successful in this endeavour and can earn as much as $1,200–$1,800 per month, others, specifically the newcomers, have to start from the bottom, making as low as $400 a month.

Interestingly, what Filipinas contend to bring to the market has not been appreciated in the same manner by Turkish employers, whose employment patterns reveal that they are not necessarily after the most trained domestic worker, but those who can perform the work more like the  mother  of  the  family  (Akalın  2007).  Consequently,  whenever  they  can,  Filipinos would rather not work for Turkish families but for expats, not only because the latter are reported to appreciate their work and have better their language skills, but also because they are more respectful of the boundaries regarding working hours and extra services, when compared with Turkish employers.

Their relatively high wages should not, however, be misinterpreted to suggest that Filipina labour is not precarious. The common definition of exploitation imagines an abstract worker who is settled close to where they work and is surrounded by some form of relationship of affective belonging, whether to a family or to some circle of relations. To sell their labour at work, they then leave those relations on a daily basis, though only to come back to them again once the shift is over. The affective exploitation of migrant labour, especially that of women, however, does not quite work on the same terms, since the labour of the worker gets valorised not only through the unit of time, but also through a mechanism of dislocation that has disrupted the daily lives of migrants so that they are

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now fully bound by the conditions of work in the host country. In the case of the migrant woman who works as a domestic worker, the economic value of this dislocation becomes even more apparent, as the definition of the job expects the worker to project all those affects that have been disconnected from the original source of her loved ones toward those she now cares for professionally. Thus, the exploitation of the migrant domestic worker occurs not merely on the basis of working hours or low wages, but also through her affective eviction from her own personal life (Akalın  forthcoming).  

This, I argue, is an essential, though neglected quality in the valorisation of migrant labour in domestic work and is an aspect that demands further deliberation in contemplating the demand for migrant labour around the world. Filipinas are a well-known example of international labour migration not only because they abound in numbers, but also because they end up working overseas, which renders them a position in the labour diaspora. Thus, their lives are critically marked by a kind of affective displacement, as mentioned. Furthermore, in a predominantly Catholic country where gendered practices like divorce and abortion are hard to attain, Filipinas come from big families4 with many children and close relatives to care for transnationally. Thus, even if Filipino wages appear relatively high, it is well worth remembering that those salaries make up the major source of income for many people in their families back home.

*** After the opening prayers, Rebecca asked the group if they would like to report anything. Somyot, the only man who attends the meetings regularly and the only other person who is not Filipino but Thai, told them about the two hospital visits that he had recently made. One was to a Filipina with breast cancer, which had now also spread into the lymph nodes. She could not go back home because she did not have family there or insurance here. So she spent all her savings, which they said were about three thousand liras,  on  her  treatment.  She  was  in  treatment  at  Çapa  Hospital.  Everyone  was now upset by the news. Rebecca said she was going to go and visit her. Then Rebecca wanted to report something. She said she had free minutes from her mobile network operator and she had used them to call this one lady, who is 57 years old and working in a four-story house and is up

4 The total fertility rate was 3.1 in 2011 (The Republic of the Philippines, National Statistics Office 2012).

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working until as late as 3 a.m. in the morning because her employers do not let her go to sleep before they do. So she is up in the middle of the night doing things like ironing. As the employers are up all night, they gorge on snacks and also offer some to the Filipina lady. When the girls in the group heard this, they were a little relieved, saying there are also those Filipinas who are kept up working all night and not even given any food, either. So at least, this lady is not one of them. But Rebecca said this can be no consolation. The lady has no papers (work or residence permits), which is why  she  can’t  quit  and  leave.  Rebecca  then  exhorted  the  group  that  while  they should always pray, they should also tell their bosses that such working conditions are just unacceptable. She said that although we should never give up praying, it also becomes an apostolic duty when working conditions get as severe as these, the Filipinas should tell their employers that they cannot work under such conditions.

III Filipinos are generally considered to be a pious people. About 80% of

the total population follows the Catholic faith. Congruent to this, in Istanbul Catholics also constitute the majority. The religiosity of the Filipino people is a legacy of their colonization by Spain, which brought with it a countrywide conversion to Catholicism and also a cosmology saturated with narratives of suffering, sacrifice and martyrdom symbolized in  the  representations  of  Jesus  Christ’s  redemption  (Gueverra  2010).  Even  when working overseas, piety follows the workers. Places like Israel and Rome, for example, are reported to attract Filipino migration as they are spiritual places (Liebert 2008; 2010; Magat 2007).5 This means that if migrancy  is  an  unavoidable  manifestation  of  a  Filipino’s  fate,  being  close  to places deemed holy by the Church at least makes life overseas more livable.

Since the majority of the Filipina community in Istanbul is composed of domestic workers, the way their professional lives are organized directly reflects on the collective life of the community as well. This specifically means the ostensible dissociation between working days and time off. To clarify, most Filipinas in Turkey, like other migrant domestics, work as live-in workers. Live-in working means a temporal reorganization of the week into a six-plus-one layout. The worker is expected   to   be   present   in   the   employer’s   house   (unless   instructed  otherwise) for six full days. Then, depending on the oral contract that was 5 Although it is hard to make a parallel argument for Istanbul, spiritual venues in different places of Turkey, including Hagios Giorgios Church in  Büyükada  and  the  House of the Virgin in Ephesus, have also attained special importance.

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made initially, she is either going to take a full day, or at least a day time, off. As a corollary, full-scale performance is extracted out of a live-in worker only with a specific disciplining of her labour through her confinement  in  the  employer’s  house  that  continues  until  the  day off.

The day off is thus a regulated process of repetition performed by the bodies of migrant domestics as they are let out of, and then back into, the employers’  houses   in   the   six-plus-one format mentioned above. Working in such a way, migrant labour becomes “available labour” (Akalın  2009)  as their professional performance now defies conventional working hours. What’s   critical   about   availability   is   that   it   does   not   precede   the   bodily  movement of migrant domestics, but is enacted through being physically at work. Thus, as the working days constitute the “inside” of  the  migrants’  domestic work, the day off becomes its “outside,” the two elements constituting a “binary distinction that stabilizes and consolidates the coherent subject” (Butler 1990, 134), who in the present case is a migrant domestic.

Thus, as  the  worker  gets  out  of  her  employer’s  house  for  her  time off she concomitantly moves out of her identity of available-at-all-times. The making of the migrant domestic into available labour rests on her discharge  from  the  confines  of  her  employer’s  house on a regular basis so that her labour can then be re-appropriated back to work with its initial terms of docility and compliance once the time off is over.

While the six-plus-one format is the general working scheme for all live-in domestics, the particularity regarding Filipinas stems from their request to specifically take Sundays off to attend Mass. Yet, because there is no standard contract in the sector, employers may or may not be willing to designate Sunday as the off day. For some Filipinas this may then be a deal breaker. Others end up giving in to the demand of taking a different day off, depending on how much they are offered.

In contemplating the significance of church attendance on Sundays for Filipinos, one needs to approach the issue regarding its multi layers. In Charles Hirschman’s   formulation,   for  migrant   communities   anywhere   in  the world, religion becomes a search for three basic things: refuge, respect and resources (2004, 1228). Regarding the last item, besides the acknowledged reasons, the church congregation also becomes a wide platform of resources for migrants who find themselves spending an indefinite period of their lives outside their countries. Thus, the literature on migration and social capital has widely reported the critical role that institutions involving worship, or even conversion to another faith, can play in accessing resources in the migration experience (Levitt 1998; Akçapar  2006; Kalir 2009). Thus, whether one is looking for contacts to

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find a job, someone to borrow money from, contact information, a fellow Filipino who is going home so one can send money along, or for friends to go to a mall and hang out with after Mass, the church is the place to go. In the words of a Filipina domestic worker, “church attendance is a spiritual and social activity.”

Yet the sociological reading here should not misinterpret these words to suggest that church attendance matters only for accessing material things. The spiritual side of church attendance is, in fact, just as important, since the religious devotion of Filipinos becomes crucial in their self-empowerment as it refuels them on a regular basis to endure the hardships of working overseas. For Filipinas the Sunday Mass also functions as a therapy session. In fact, there is considerable literature examining how the piety of Filipinos plays itself out during their migrancy experiences (Liebelt 2008; Liebelt 2010; Kim 2005; Johnson & Webner 2010; Nakonz & Shik 2009; Magat 2007; Parrenas 2001), which concur on the significant place that piety plays in how “Filipinas construct their migration process as a meaningful and virtuous moral career” (Liebelt 2010, 19).

Thus, Sundays yield all live-in domestic workers, on the one hand, an ephemeral experience to bracket their schedule as live-in workers and relieve them temporarily from the toil of work, and most specifically from being accountable at all times to their employers. On the other, Sundays also provide a spatial experience, as the live-in workers are let out of their professional   confinement   in   their   employers’   houses.   They   then   are  relocated within the solid space that the church provides for them and where they are given a chance to sojourn in their own skin, almost as they would back home. The walls of the church not only render a realm for participation without preconditions, they also allow the migrant workers to “reconnect” in   multiple   ways.   The   high   and   solid   walls   of   Istanbul’s  churches, erected to once nestle a few thousand remaining Christian worshippers out of the oppressive gaze of a predominantly Muslim nation, now render an unprecedented space for Filipinas to re-associate with all that they currently cannot, i.e. their relatives at home, their fellow workers overseas and their own faith.

*** When Rebecca asked around for the people they would like to pray for that day, Marlene asked that prayers be said for her daughter who had caught smallpox  and  was  being  cared   for  by  Marlene’s  sister   in   the  Philippines.  Then Maria asked for prayers   for   her   employer’s   mother,   who lives in Izmir and has terminal cancer. The doctors said she has three months to

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live. As Maria began praying for her employer, all the others started to pray with her for their employers, as well. Then, Julietta had a long emotional blow up about how she  had  been  feeling  regarding  her  father’s  illness as he had been hospitalized earlier. Julietta is usually so tranquil and at ease that it was weird to see her in such sorrow and so messed up. Once she was quiet, Rebecca asked that prayers also be said for the workers in Africa and those in the Middle East, especially Libya and Syria, and also Egypt, including the unemployed and the injured. Then after the prayer, the table was set to start lunch. Once everything was ready, everyone was back to their usual   vivacious  mood,   almost   as   if   it   wasn’t  them earlier.

IV In Istanbul there are two churches that function as the main centres of

the Filipino community and in which Mass in English is held. Although both places are located in the Taksim-Şişli  vicinity  on   the European side, the social proximity the two places hold within the urban setting that surrounds them is very different. Of these two places, one is an Italian church located on an extremely busy pedestrian street and is also a major tourist attraction. The other, however, is a cathedral located within the campus of a high school. While the cathedral where I did my research is located only a few metres off the street, it is known to very few people thanks to the high walls that surround it. While in the beginning the Italian church was the main hub of the community, later on it emerged as a major centre after the appointment of a Filipino priest in the late 1990s who would hold masses in Tagalog on Saturdays. Although he was later appointed elsewhere, some Filipinos continued to frequent this church.

Organized in each church community is also a Legio Mariae Praesidium. The Legio Mariae (Legion of Mary) is an association of the Catholic laity that is very popular in the Philippines and was created for Catholic lay people to fulfil their baptismal promises, and which also supports fraternity and prayer.6 Legio Mariae services are conducted under the guardianship of the holy spirit of Virgin Mary, who herself is a figure of critical importance in the Filipino cosmology as she epitomizes women’s  “vigour” and “the concepts of sin, redemption, and good deeds” (Nakonz & Wai Yan Shikb 2009, 27). The Legio meetings follow strict

6 To be an active member of Legio Mariae one must be a baptized and practicing Catholic. Since these were criteria that I lacked I was accepted as an auxiliary member, a position that exists in the protocol and which allowed me to join all the activities as an observer.

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liturgical prescriptions where prayers that include the Rosary and the Catena Legionis are recited.

In the cathedral where I attended Sunday Mass, the Legio Praesidium would meet separately in a secluded room in the rear of the church, following   the   end   of   the   ten   o’clock   English  Mass.  Unlike the scope of attendance at the Mass, where there would be about two hundred people (though not just Filipinos), the Legio meetings would be attended by fewer people, something that Nakonz & Wai Yan Shikb also note for Hong Kong (2009, 27), which would include about ten to fifteen regulars and a few occasional attendees every week. Among the members of the Praesidium, this topic of why more Filipinas did not stay for the Legio meetings was something that would come up occasionally. The answer, however, was more or less clear for everyone. As central as the Sunday Massis for the larger community was, so were the activities afterwards, such as going to the call shop to call home, or going to a nearby mall.7

In fact, what happens among Filipinas at the mall and at the Legio meeting are not all that different. If the Sunday gatherings indeed render a platform for live-in workers to regenerate themselves, that goal is pursued whether one stays on at the church or absconds to the mall. While all the migrants  will   in   some  ways  be  after   the   three  R’s  of   refuge,   respect  and  resources, the Legio meetings became an inviting home particularly for those  who  see  the  church  as  the  address  for  accessing  all  three  R’s.  

To explicate, the liturgical structure of the Legio meetings prescribes the following order; first, the president makes an opening speech thanking God for bringing them all together and for all his blessings. They then list all the names given for prayer intentions, that is the names of all the people who the Filipinas are either grateful to for a favour, those acquaintances and relatives that are sick, those that have upcoming birthdays, or those that have passed away recently. This opening section is then followed by the recital of the Rosary, then the opening prayers, followed by the reading of a passage from the Legio handbook. After that the meeting is opened to a general discussion where the members are asked to report any problems they have had in the last week to the group, as well as the apostolic work they have accomplished. Then, the group recites the Catena, followed by the concluding prayers of the Legio 7 Mall  attendance  is  a  whole  other  activity  that  is  also  “faithfully”  performed  (even  though the cathedral is located in the hub of the city, surrounded with all kinds of café, restaurants and shops). As I have observed, the activity opens in one fast food restaurant where they serve crisp fried chicken, the sine qua non of any Filipino meal, which is then followed by a round of chatting and gossiping until it is time to go home again.

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Mariae, then the Novena to Mary. The meeting is concluded by the recital of the Prayer for the Beatification of Frank Duff.8

In the Legio liturgy there are specific sections that are opened for the members to share their personal experiences. In the opening section, the president mentions the prayer intentions and we get to hear the importance of the people that the group is asked to pray for as they relate to the members. Then, in two other places, one preceding the Catena and the other half way into the Novena, the members are given room to talk about their own problems and experiences, which renders a platform to reveal stories about the transnational lives of the members.

As the field notes taken from different Legio meetings sprinkled throughout this text have aimed to illustrate, the Legio meetings in and of themselves become an arena where everything   about   the   Filipinas’  displacement and working identities are collectively deliberated. As I would sit in on those meetings week after week, the prayer room would feel less like a room in Istanbul; yet, it would not feel like a room in the Philippines, either. As the Legio members would mention and reveal stories of who they had met and known, be they relatives in the Philippines or their employers in Istanbul or some fellow workers in Syria or Egypt, the room would become saturated with moments of faith and dislocation, ambiguity and experience, suffering and pride. The prayer room would transcend and outlive the actual participation of the Legio members by assembling its own substantiality. It would exceed the status of a product that is complete and would instead become a realm of liveliness that is in perpetual movement. It would thus open up room for constant re-significations in terms of belonging and non-belonging. As Jeremy F. Walden points out (2010, 89), the difference between a represented object and signification is reminiscent of the difference between place and “space” in the Lefebvrian sense (1991), the latter as that which is “not located in a definite geographic area” but as that which is constituted by “networked social relationships” (Fresnoza-Flot 2010, 346). Similarly, as we moved through moments of sharing that prayer room would turn from being a place in Istanbul into a Filipino transnational space.

***

This week Rebecca was busy in the rear building of the church, coordinating for the Embassy officials the renewal of passports and the issuing of yellow cards. So Father Piero, the priest of the cathedral,

8 The founder of the Legio Mariae.

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presided over the meeting. We studied the passage, the Magnificent, from the Gospel of Luke. The first part of the poem is evidently about thankfulness and gratitude. Father preached about what it means to be grateful. To substantiate his teaching, he suggested that we imagine a Filipina who is looking for a job, so she prays for it everyday. Then a few days later, she is called for an interview, so she is grateful and thanks the person who offered her the job. When we receive favors or graces from God, they come through human interventions. God did not, of course, say to the employer, “give that lady a job.” But you see that the prayer has been answered via that person who offered the job. So the Filipina thanks that person. But she should also come to the church to offer thanks and show her gratitude because it was actually God who was behind that job offering. Then   we   went   on   to   study   the   second   part   of   the   poem   about   Mary’s  preference for the poor and hungry. Father Piero reminded us that in Catholicism they say, “blessed are the poor” and not “blessed are the rich,” because Catholics do not believe in the theology of success. He then went on to give examples from around the world, including the Philippines. And even though the poor may sometimes envy the rich and wish to enjoy what they do, Father stressed that though the rich may be enjoying life that does not mean that they are happy. He then went on to substantiate the emotional poverty the rich actually live in by highlighting the fact that they never feel the need to say “thank you,” because they feel they have paid for  things,  so  they  don’t  need  to  feel  gratitude.  As  he  said  this,  one  woman  from the group cut in and said, “they   don’t   say   please,   either.” Then Father continued that even the children pick up such behaviour from their parents and do not say “thank you” to   their   nannies   because   they   don’t  feel compelled to show gratitude. Hearing these words, all the Filipinas in the room started chuckling and nodding.

V

In another article, Claude Liebelt (2011) follows up on Saba Mahmood’s   seminal   work   Politics of Piety (2005) on the Al-da’wa movement   in   Egypt.   As   Mahmood’s   study   contests   the   Western   liberal  framework that denies agency to pious Muslim women, she argues that there is an “ethical self-formation” (32) in acts that that may be deemed as oppressive by a teleology of progressive politics. Along these lines, Liebelt makes a similar point about the piety of Filipinas in Israel, arguing that “religious organization, ritual performance and spiritual practice, among other things, enable present-day Filipina migrants to take collective action and defy the stereotype of them as docile and subservient bodies” (2011, 76). As these feminist scholars distinguish ethics as those

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techniques “through which a subject transforms herself to achieve a particular state of being, happiness, or truth” (Mahmood 2005, 28) from the normative rules and values of morals, they endeavour to reconstitute the historically undermined woman of the non-West as a feminist subject who is well equipped to claim her own “self-conscious identity” (Mahmood 2005, 17).

The praying bodies of the Filipinas, in the transnational lives that they lead in Istanbul, are no doubt in search of an ethical position reminiscent of what Liebelt talks about for the Filipinas in Israel. Yet, what I would also like to bring to mind is the “binary distinction” (Butler 1990, 134) in which this search takes place. The prayer room becomes a transnational space of migrancy only through the collective deliberation of the migrant Filipinas, which can only take place on their off days. As the insulation between a Filipina as a “praying body” and as a “labouring body” is kept so strictly by the workings of the migrant-domestic- workers’  market,  the  transnational space of endless significations that the prayer room becomes every week can only transpire within the bounds of the labour relations at large that constitute the outside. While the prayer room is a “space” in the Lefebvrian sense, that space emerges within a set of relations that solidify strictly as a specific “place,” that is the home of the Filipina domestic worker’s   employer.   As   the   day off elapses and yields to the incoming working days, the transnational space weaved in that room by those stories of loss and belonging gets redeemed by the actual reason why the migrant stepped onto Turkish soil in the first place—to be a labouring body as a live-in worker. Hence, as praying on the one hand empowers and asserts the individual identities of the Filipinas, it also serves to extend the period of time they get to work within the labour diaspora overseas.

***

After reciting the Prayer for Frank Duff, we ended the prayer session and proceeded with the potluck lunch. The big, long, solid table that was a few minutes ago covered with a white cloth and adorned with the statue of the Virgin Mary, as well as a vase of white flowers brought fresh every week, was transformed into the new site for that of the feast. We have the funniest tablecloth ever; the floor mat of a Twister game! But even funnier, as the room becomes brightened by the many coloured dots on the mat, so do the faces of the girls, who no one in the world would have believed were praying solemnly only a few minutes ago. As the Twister mat gets laid on the table, the girls concomitantly get into their usual boisterous mode, taking maybe 50 pictures of one another, pictures in every combination of posing possible, as is done every Sunday.

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The potluck lunch took about an hour. After the lunch, we threw all the used plastic plates into the trash, put all the emptied pots (we had chicken and rice, again!) in the large, hard-paper shopping bags. All the unused plastic plates, the glasses and forks went back on their shelf in the cupboard to be used next week. When it was time to leave, the room had reacquired its original state; a small secluded room overlooking a quiet rear patio, though only a few meters away from the hubbub of the street. After we left the cathedral from the back door (as we do every week) around 1:30 p.m., Marlene and Saluda were heading to the mall in the direction  of   Şişli   for   a  new   round   of   chat,   gossip  and   clamouring, while Elsa, Rebecca and I walked to Taksim to go to our respective homes. Jean went  directly  to  her  employer’s  in  Anadolu  Hisarı.  

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