Reimagining social protection: financialised futures among ageing migrant domestic workers in Asia

A common narrative among Filipino migrant domestic workers in Singapore and Hong Kong is that their work abroad is to guarantee a better future for their families. Migrant women frequently extend their temporary contracts, sometimes over decades to support family life projects. Yet their contracts can only be extended until retirement age, after which they must return to their countries of origin. This paper focuses on migrant women approaching this critical juncture as they begin to shift their focus towards themselves, in the face of precarious futures with limited state-based forms of social protection and uncertainties around kinship care in later life. As a consequence, domestic workers increasingly enrol in courses on 'financial literacy' to prepare for their retirement. Such courses are led by an array of state, corporate and non-governmental actors. They generate new financialised aspirations among migrant women which revolve around self-responsibility for success and security in later life. This cultivation of a self-oriented and 'purpose-driven' ethos remains entangled in existing (inter)dependencies in migrant women's lives. Financialised modes of thinking furthermore exist alongside, and in tension with alternative imaginaries around social protection and how to live a meaningful life.