"Hope it’s not just the honeymoon phase" : online discursive portrayals of migrant domestic helpers

This paper examines online discursive representations of migrant domestic helpers (MDHs) by Hong Kong employers. Unlike existing research, which concentrates on the experiences of MDHs from their own perspectives, this study focuses on positive narrations about MDHs by their employers. Using critical discourse analysis, this study identified the discursive strategies deployed to portray MDHs in more than 2,000 Facebook posts. The findings reveal that, although the interlocutors attempted to commend the MDHs in their employ, they also emphasised their own superiority by portraying themselves as gastronomic experts, good educators, and benefactors, thus developing an ideological paradox. Another dimension of ideological ambivalence concerned the discursive conflict between their high expectations from the MDHs and their underlying belief that domestic work neither requires skills nor deserves high pay. Taken together, these factors are responsible for the entrenchment of the inferior image of MDHs in Hong Kong society, despite the persistent endeavours of activist groups to spread awareness of their exploitation.