1 Introduction

Domestic workers have a six-day workweek. Leisure happens in a day, and they make good use of their time. Every Sunday, thousands of Filipino domestic workers gather in Hong Kong’s Central District to pack balikbayan boxes (see Camposano, 2012), send money home, engage in worship, and socialize with each other. Most foreign domestic workers in the Special Administrative Region are from the Philippines (191,783 out of the 339,451 total) and are overwhelmingly composed of women (334,054 women and 5,397 men) (Census and Statistics Department, 2022). Their numbers unsurprisingly transform Chater Road and adjacent areas into places of frenetic activity. These places become a locus of exchanges for services (e.g., hairdressing, pedicures, and manicures). Groups of friends place cardboard boxes on the pavement to serve as temporary gathering places to share food and swap stories, like small fiestas in transitional spaces (Kwok, 2019). At times, these small fiestas coalesce to self-organize large public events. Chen (2015) described how they organized and participated in beauty pageants in vivid detail. These pageants were given fresh focus because of the documentary Sunday Beauty Queen, which won Best Picture in the 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival (Hapal, 2017).

Their working conditions suggest the importance of leisure for their general well-being. In Hong Kong, they are required to stay in their employers’ homes (HKSAR Immigration Department, n.d.), leaving little distinction between home and work life. Living with their employers means their working hours are not properly circumscribed because of the absence of spatial distinctions, taken for granted in more formal arrangements. It also creates risks for abuse. At least “6.5% of the respondents [foreign domestic workers] reported that they had been sexually harassed at work or at a work-related event in the 12 months prior to the survey” (Equal Opportunities Commission, 2014, p. 1). During the pandemic, there were also reports of increasing sexual and physical abuse against domestic workers (Cheng, 2021). Lacking space that they can properly call their own in the city and living away from their home country, their Sunday leisure arrangements could be their only chance to recuperate from the vicissitudes of work and engage in personally meaningful non-work activities.

All such arrangements were disrupted, however, when the pandemic hit. On January 2020, the Hong Kong government declared the spread of the new coronavirus an emergency (Agence France-Presse, 2020) and subsequently recommended working from home, suspending schools, and closing down leisure sites (Cheng, 2020; Grundy, 2020). Some new and returning domestic workers’ flights to Hong Kong were delayed because of stringent coronavirus measures (Yeo, 2020). Others were laid off because their employers relocated (Liem et al., 2020). An advisory from the Labor Department included in the series of announcements is of interest: it asked migrant domestic workers “to stay home on their rest day in order to safeguard their personal health and to reduce the risk of the spread of the novel coronavirus in the community.” (Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 2020b, para 1). By March 2020, the government had banned group gatherings of more than four in public and meted out fines and penalties (Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 2020a). Lamentably, those who were asked to stay home may be asked to continue working even on their days off, and there were even vocal calls for the government to prevent domestic helpers from leaving their workplaces (Ho, 2020; Sun, 2021). The regulations have also effectively banned the organization of large public events mentioned earlier. But while disadvantageous to the performance of their leisure activities, I will show below that some domestic workers were able to adapt to continue their pursuits.

Given these considerations, how did migrant domestic workers accomplish serious leisure during the pandemic? Stebbins (1982) used the term serious leisure in describing leisure activities that require commitment from its practitioners premised on the accumulation of knowledge and skills from which they gain benefits of self-development and integrate themselves within a community of fellow practitioners. In this paper, I look at the uneven effects of the disruptions in leisure activities as governments introduced lockdowns and physical distancing measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus. While the restrictions were applied broadly across societies, how these played out is filtered through an individual’s social position. For example, ‘temporary’ migrant communities face particular challenges in accomplishing leisure. They are subjected to different conditions of stay in their host countries and may face legal impediments in asserting their demands. Their home governments may also have little power to protect their welfare in foreign jurisdictions. Lastly, ‘temporary’ migrants are also separated from their families back in their home countries and may experience isolation.

I demonstrate these uneven effects by looking at the experience of One Filipino Migrants – a network of Filipino domestic workers and domestic worker organizations in Hong Kong engaged in advocacy work for Filipino migrant workers’ welfare even prior to the pandemic. Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, this organization held online rallies for better working and living conditions, arranged film showings, participated in the One Billion Rising Campaign to oppose violence against womenFootnote 1, and set up help desks on Chater Road to assist victims of illegal recruitment fees (see Ellao, 2021 for an example). Additionally, they organized Overseas Filipino WorkersFootnote 2 (OFW) to complain to the Philippine Consulate about said fees, held meetings to address the homelessness of fired domestic workers, and assisted them in looking for alternative housing. Finally, along with all this community organizing, the organization has also laid down mats and shared meals, danced their stress away, and swapped stories and woes. During my fieldwork, I realized that Filipino domestic workers’ leisure time is inextricably tied to their advocacies.

While the prescribed living-in arrangements and the absence of spatial separation between home and work life steer these workers to spend their leisure time outside their employer’s domicile, the spread of COVID-19 now meant that their leisure activities are met with stringent physical distancing measures. Through interviews and participant observation, I detail how One Filipino Migrants’ pre-pandemic activities were scaled down through the government and their employer’s limitation of their use of leisure spaces and mandated time off. But I also show their capacity to negotiate with constraints through behavioral changes while challenging notions that portray them as virus carriers. This paper adds to the discussions of leisure constraints in disaster situations (Kono, 2018; Koskinen & Leinonen, 2022; Lashua et al., 2021; Roberts, 2020) by highlighting the growth of control over their lives. It also highlights how leisure agents can come up with negotiation tactics to maintain participation.

2 Review of Related Literature

2.1 Domestic Worker Precarity and Leisure

My goal in this paper is to contribute to conversations about migrant domestic leisure during the pandemic. The topic is important for the following reasons. First, the sheer number of migrant domestic workers warrants attention. It is estimated that there are at least 11.5 million migrant domestic workers across the globe (Gallotti, 2016). Moreover, the pandemic exacerbated their already perilous working conditions. Research on migrant domestic workers has rightfully focused on the falling labor standards brought about by the contingencies of the pandemic (Anwar & Brukwe, 2023; Banta & Pratt, 2023; Villani & Talamini, 2023; Chan & Piper, 2022; Kaur-Gill et al., 2021; Lui et al., 2021; Pandey et al., 2021; Rao et al., 2021; Migrant Rights Network, 2020). For example, Chan and Piper (2022, p. 272) described the situation of foreign domestic workers as “sporadic hyper-precarity” to underscore the profound uncertainty and vulnerability introduced by the pandemic to an already precarious population. Moreover, Pandey et al. (2021, p. 1287) describe domestic workers in the United States as “expendable essential workers” to capture the neglect they experience from both social protection institutions and their employers despite performing care work. This paper proposes to add another area of contention to the conversation: the capability to engage in leisure activities. While these are indeed treated in the literature, little is said about how new limitations on these activities were resisted and negotiated.

Second, this research contributes to the intersections of the sociology of leisure and the sociology of disasters. The coronavirus pandemic disrupted much of our taken-for-granted realities and revealed underlying power inequalities. “Disasters can lift veils”, so to speak (Curato & Ong, 2015, p. 1). The pandemic situation can legitimize pre-existing racial, gender, or class discrimination in the guise of protecting the health of the community through seemingly neutral guidelines on ‘acceptable’ leisure activities. Additionally, the closure of many leisure sites and its negative effects underscored the importance of leisure activities and how it is integral to human well-being, cohesion, and even economic prosperity (Roberts, 2020). Leisure is so easily sacrificed for public health. But while this sacrifice happens in private spaces for much of the population in Hong Kong, its domestic workers do not enjoy such a luxury. The separation between work and life is unachievable for the domestic worker without some form of spatial distinction to demarcate it. This problem existed before the coronavirus pandemic, but new forms of reasoning and social control have exacerbated this power inequality.

2.2 Serious Leisure and Domestic Workers

I approach this research from the lenses of serious leisure. In contrast with ‘unserious’ leisure, Stebbins (1982) distinguished serious leisure using these six characteristics: (1) persisting in the activity despite its difficulty, (2) having stages through which a practitioner progresses, (3) that the activity requires a combination of effort and knowledge, (4) have long terms benefits such as self-actualization, (5) the development of a ‘unique ethos’ among its practitioners, and (6) that there is a strong practitioner identification on the activities (Stebbins, 1982, pp. 256–257). As I mentioned earlier, serious leisure requires commitment from its practitioners premised on accumulating knowledge and skills from which they gain benefits of self-actualization and integrate themselves within a community of fellow practitioners. Stebbins counted volunteerism for community improvement as an example of serious leisure. As an extension to the concept, Mair (2002, p. 213) suggested the term “civil leisure” to highlight instances when leisure and activism mix. Her work draws from her time with activists protesting high-level meetings by world leaders. I argue that the working conditions of these domestic workers represent a prime example where leisure and activism can combine to show characteristics of serious leisure. Their engagement in advocacy work during their days off is a conscious rejection of individualist, consumerist leisure to focus on collective undertakings as a form of leisure and thus a possible model for the “post-coronavirus leisure futures” (Lashua et al., 2021, p. 8).

Focusing on serious leisure adds “self-realisation and self-expression” to discussions of migrant integration or temporarily coping with job concerns which have been a usual focus of migrant leisure research (Mata-Codesal et al., 2015, p. 1). While leisure during Sundays plays a key role in coping with work-related stress, many of these overseas workers have stayed in Hong Kong for decades. Rather than a short-term coping mechanism, their leisure is motivated by instrumental and even nationalist reasons. By showing a manifestation of migrant serious leisure that adapted to the coronavirus as a self-directed activity towards their own ends, my discussion on marginalized migrants practicing leisure also converses with leisure understood as a form of social control (Agergaard et al., 2016) or the mixture of politics and leisure as exploitation by a neoliberal state (Parker et al., 2020).

In my analysis of serious leisure, I draw from the insights of the leisure constraints model. More than 30 years ago, Crawford et al. (1991) proposed the hierarchical model of leisure constraints to understand why people participate in or avoid engagement in leisure. Drawing from an earlier work (see Crawford & Godbey, 1987), they propose that there are three main kinds of constraints to leisure: from individual-level variables that affect leisure preferences (intrapersonal), to more group-oriented behavior that affects preferences and participation (interpersonal), to society-level constraints (structural). But they introduce the revision that these constraints do not operate in a vacuum. They propose looking at leisure participation as a product of overcoming constraints. If the individual can overcome them, then she participates in leisure activities.

Subsequent developments in the theory began emphasizing agency among those who would participate in leisure activities. Jackson et al. (1993) proposed that having constraints on leisure activities does not necessarily lead to non-participation. Instead, scholars must also investigate the capacity of people to negotiate with those constraints. Moreover, Schneider and Stanis (2007) differentiate between ‘negotiation’ and ‘accommodation,’ suggesting that the former best describes situations when compromises can be made to change constraints. Accommodation is more apt in many situations when the individual adjusts their behavior even if the constraints remain. Raymore (2002) also proposed distinctions between ‘facilitators’ and ‘constraints’, arguing that the lack of constraints does not guarantee participation, pointing to the necessity of facilitators of leisure. Kono (2018) has applied these concepts in his study on post-disaster leisure in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Post-disaster life introduced constraints such as a lack of resources and difficulty in finding meaning in leisure activities. Nevertheless, they negotiated these constraints by acquiring new skills. The support from their social groups, as well as finding meaning in altruistic activities, also facilitated their leisure engagement.

Applying these concepts to a group in the margins of a foreign city raises the sensitivity of leisure to working conditions. The study of leisure seems to have had presuppositions that it is a problem of the affluent (Berger, 1962) despite leisure being a phenomenon across stratifications. To complicate our understanding of leisure, it is important to have accounts of how working conditions constrain it. Kuykendall et al. (2020, p. 1) suggest looking at “work scheduling…ideal worker norms…and work supervisors”.

In sum, using the concept of serious leisure as a starting point, I identify constraints and facilitators of leisure for Filipino migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong. I also talk about how they negotiated with these constraints to continue participation in their activities.

3 Methodology

I took a qualitative approach to understand how foreign domestic workers accomplished serious leisure. My research site is on Chater Road, located in the Central District of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. But there were also instances when I did observations or interviews in areas adjacent to or near it, such as the piers or in Victoria Park. Chater Road is one of the largest gathering spots of domestic workers on Sundays, although there are other gatherings in public parks across the city. My initial access to the field was facilitated by an organization affiliated with One Filipino Migrants, which I connected to via Facebook. One Filipino Migrants is a federation of migrant workers and migrant organizations organized to promote their rights and welfare in Hong Kong. I was comfortable initiating a conversation with this page because of my familiarity with their activities back in the Philippines even if they did not know me personally. This federation later became the focus of this study.

The management of my fieldwork was iterative and evolved based on what I ‘found’ in the field. Initially, I was simply interested in the empirical question of how domestic workers generally spent their leisure time during the pandemic. Aside from One Filipino Migrants, I also observed other groups dedicated to various undertakings, such as modeling, entrepreneurship, collaborations with the Philippine Consulate in Hong Kong, and even political campaigns for the upcoming Philippine elections. But as I immersed myself in the field, I saw the novelty of One Filipino Migrants and began seeing their activities as an example of serious leisure. It was then that I decided to focus on the group exclusively.

I started my observations by participating in an online demonstration on February 14, 2021, and holding an interview via Zoom with one of their members. From there, I asked for referrals on whom to interview next with the following criteria: (1) they are current domestic workers in Hong Kong, and (2) they are members of the One Filipino Migrant network. Later, I actively sought out referrals for participants who had experienced being barred from leaving the household because doing interviews in Chater Road meant I was already speaking with those who were able to leave their homes/workplaces. Except for the first interview I did with one of the leaders, my participants were either referred to me by members or those who became personally known to me as I participated in their activities. My two earlier interviews were online in consideration of the pandemic situation and to also allow for a weekday meeting. As vaccines rolled out and restrictions were loosened, I started going to Chater Road for face-to-face engagements on March 7, 2021; my last interview was held on December 12, 2021. In total, I conducted 11 interviews (two online and nine face-to-face). This number was sufficient because subsequent interviews generated similar responses.

My participants were all female, given that most foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong are female. Their stay in Hong Kong ranged from almost three years to as long as 28 years. As One Filipino Migrants is a diverse group, some of my participants come from the federation itself, but others are affiliated through their various organizations focused on different advocacies relating to gender, geographical similarities, or engaged in the performing arts. The shortest of my interviews was 22 min, and the longest was a little more than an hour. Interviews were semi-structured, and the questionnaire evolved based on my experience in the field. For example, I earlier emphasized questions about international care and social media use. As my focus turned to serious leisure, these became less important even as the ‘core’ questions remained the same. I also added questions about how they differentiated themselves from other groups based on their activities. The interviews were also done in Filipino. Therefore, I experienced fewer obstacles to comprehensibility and establishing rapport. These interviews were transcribed and thematically analyzed both through codes that emerged organically from the transcripts and from codes that come from the serious leisure and leisure constraint literature. So, for example, “changes in working conditions due to the pandemic” is an organically derived code, but “ethos for serious leisure” comes from the literature. In the analysis below, I discuss the experience of individuals who belong to the federation. I do not generalize about the federation itself.

To ensure my participants’ protection, I wore a mask when doing the interviews to avoid spreading or contracting the virus. To ensure informed consent, I explained before the interviews the purpose of my research, that they could withdraw from the study at any time, and that I would ensure confidentiality by removing any identifiers from the final manuscript. I changed their names in this manuscript to ensure confidentiality. Most interviews were done in their resting spots on Chater Road and away from their workplaces. Since this is about the experience of domestic workers, I did not ask for consent from employers. I did not probe for any information about employers and confined myself to questions about how they negotiated their days off with them. I also made every effort to keep the identities of the employers confidential.

My positionality in this research is that I am a male Filipino student doing my PhD studies in Hong Kong. In my field notes, I first expressed some discomfort entering what I perceived as a predominantly female space. I felt that I was invading their personal space, even as it was a public space. But this discomfort attenuated as rapport was built among us. I was also very conscious of COVID-19 regulations in Hong Kong at that time, having just arrived from the Philippines in January 2021. I was thus viewing the constraints in their leisure from someone who was just introduced to a new pandemic response compared to my origin. Most importantly, I think of sociology as both an intellectual and practical discipline. I thus emphasize inequalities in the hope that they could be addressed. This is why, as my relationship with them developed, I transitioned from a Filipino student doing research to a helper doing tasks for them, such as translating Filipino to English or acting as master of ceremonies in Zoom events. I see this as an indication that a certain level of trust has already been developed and as a form of solidarity with people who share my nationality. As they have made it a point to engage with Filipino and local students in Hong Kong, I continue my engagement with them to this day.

Nevertheless, a limitation of this research is the number of participants. More participants could have generated more mechanisms than the ones I identified in the next section. However, my interviews and observations are sufficient to validate the generalizations I made below. Another limitation is the absence of male participants. I did not explicitly exclude male participants from this research, but the nature of snowballing and the demographic composition of domestic workers in Hong Kong created a certain level of path dependence. The perspective of male workers is an important variation that could reveal gender inequalities in serious leisure among migrants. Future research should consider making comparative studies in relation to this.

4 Analysis

4.1 Serious Leisure under a Pandemic

In this section, I show that members of One Filipino Migrants are engaged in a form of serious leisure. I discuss how it fits within Stebbins’ (1982) conceptualization of serious leisure as they show commitment to their cause despite difficulties, develop a unique ethos, and derive durable benefits from their engagements. I also explain the relationship between leisure and activism in One Filipino Migrants.

Sundays for Filipino domestic workers are an opportunity for international care work and restful socialization. Prior to the pandemic, they used their Sundays to engage in religious coping (Nakonz & Shik, 2009) or perform international care work. The World-wide House in Central serves as a focal point for Sunday activities for domestic workers. In the area, OFWs send remittances and balikbayan boxes back home. There are also stalls and shops that sell Filipino-made products that may be consumed later as they sit, talk, and even celebrate birthdays along Chater Road and its adjacent areas. Personal errands can also be done on Sundays. It was not unusual to see Filipinas getting massages and eyebrow grooming on the streets. Despite the pandemic, although on a much smaller scale, according to my participants, Filipino domestic workers’ activities still subvert the city’s public spaces for their own purposes (Kwok, 2019). My participants are no strangers to these kinds of activities.

Alongside these goings-on, my participants are also engaged in a form of career volunteering through One Filipino Migrants. Their operations fit into what Stebbins (1982, p. 264 drawing from Carter 1975) described as career volunteering in the “political and civic sphere” where individuals engage in political action and advocacy work. They are also similar to other leisure studies that dealt with those who conceptualized political activities as blending with experiences of leisure, such as those engaged in large-scale protests and political squats (Genova, 2021; Mair, 2002). For example, on the Sundays I was with them, my participants sold tickets to raise funds either for their member organizations or to contribute to the objectives of the Mission for Migrant WorkersFootnote 3. They set up booths and called for donations in disaster-stricken areas in the Philippines. They put up Migrant Care Centers (MCC) that provided free blood pressure testing and distributed masks and sanitizers to fellow domestic workers. The MCC also serves as a help desk informing domestic workers about their rights in Hong Kong and assisting them in connecting with concerned civil society organizations when they are terminated from work and need a place to stay. On top of all these activities, my participants also encouraged their fellows to avail themselves of the free COVID-19 testing provided by the Hong Kong governmentFootnote 4, campaigned for wage increases, fend off accusations that domestic workers are abusing the tight labor market through job hopping, registered for the upcoming Philippine elections, protested against government-imposed fees for OFWs back home, participated in international campaigns such as One Billion Rising, and provided claims assistance for victims of illegal recruitment fees.

That my participants exhibited a commitment to their tasks is made apparent by their persistence throughout the pandemic. Continuing with their planned activities entailed health and economic risks for them, such as contracting the disease or getting fined for breaking physical distancing protocols. Nevertheless, they negotiated with these constraints and trudged on with their advocacies. Their commitment is dependent not only on the benefits they receive from the performance of their leisure activities but also on their willingness to continue despite the health and economic risks that they face. The commitment required for political serious leisure is thus of a different quality than other forms of serious leisure identified by Stebbins (Mair, 2002). This may be because of my participants’ unique ethos to which I now turn.

The ‘unique ethos’ taken on by my participants is informed by the idea of nationhood and service. Either owing to their previous experience back home in the Philippines or a subsequent ‘awakening’ during their stay in Hong Kong, they develop this sense that their time should be spent engaging in advocacies. My participants know that their stay in Hong Kong is temporary, and through their advocacies, they hope to ensure a better future for themselves and others. They are also motivated by a wish to extricate others from their own experience of maltreatment. Anna, a participant with experience of being maltreated, told me:

It is here in One Filipino Migrants that I stood up to fight for the rights of Overseas Filipino Workers, of Domestic Helpers. It is not that I just want to help. I do not want them to experience what I experienced when I was maltreated by my employer. I do not want that they [other domestic workers] are getting hurt. So, what I say is, I can, we can fight for our rights if we know it.

This kind of unique ethos for their group also builds on an understanding of their distinction from other domestic worker groups in Hong Kong. My participants are aware that their activities are far from ‘traditional’. They recognize that their activities directly relate to the political-economic situation in the Philippines and maintain that the target of their welfare activities is not only their organizations’ members but the Overseas Filipino Community in general.

Discussions on the durability of benefits must be contextualized within the time frame that migrant domestic workers operate. Boersma (2018) rightly pointed out that while domestic workers have temporary two-year contracts, their continuous renewal of said contracts means that being employed as a domestic worker is almost like a permanent position. She points to religious experiences and positive self-affirmations as coping practices. My view is that my participants’ serious leisure engagements move beyond individual coping into self-realization within their own communities as a durable benefit. This is not to say that their structural position brings about no constraints. Instead, I advance that their serious leisure has become an avenue for personal expression and growth during their long stay in Hong Kong. I asked Ophelia why she chose to spend her day off doing advocacy work instead of hiking and dragon boating, and she replied:

There is no problem with relaxing from time to time. Everyone needs relaxation, right? But serve your fellows to add meaning to your life here in Hong Kong. That’s what I think…To meet not just my interests but the interests of all.

The significance of their political work in their life in Hong Kong is also attested to by the dynamic that has already developed to balance their familial responsibilities back home and their responsibilities in One Filipino Migrants. When I asked Libby whether she calls home on Sundays, she told me:

I explained to my daughter that my Sundays are dedicated to serving the people. So she waits for me to call around evening time or earlier in the morning. If I do not call, they know that I am in meetings. I am performing my tasks. I made her understand that. I made her aware that her mother has a duty to her fellow Filipinos and she understands that. Unless there is an emergency.

Lastly, there is a need to address the question of whether their actions are better conceptualized as serious leisure and not some form of activism. Genova (2021) interpreted youth squats in Italian cities as both activism and leisure owing to the complex motivations that his respondents have. Mair’s (2002) respondents rejected the view that their political involvement constituted leisure but admitted that certain components of it are enjoyable, such as social activities. My view is that One Filipino Migrants’ activities involve both leisure and activism, which are difficult to uncouple. First, their legally mandated leisure time is a condition of possibility for their activism. My participants’ work in their organizations’ activities would be limited if they could not gather. The pandemic-driven obstacles to domestic workers’ mobility confined One Filipino Migrants to reaching out primarily to leaders and narrowed (but did not extinguish) some of their member’s participation to just online tasks. Second, the organizations within the federation also served as a meeting point, allowing the exchange of sociable behavior and fulfilling their emotional needs. I saw an expectation of interpersonal relationships that they find worthy of maintaining and can act as an alternative family unit given their geographical separation from their families. As Danica explained when I asked her why she continuously goes to Central:

This [place] is like my home. My family is here. These are my family [referring to her organization within One Filipino Migrants]. This is why I say that even if I do not have my family from the Philippines, they are my family here. This is our house. I have already assigned this as our house.

The intermingling of ‘serious’ activities and leisure is not unique to One Filipino Migrants. Chen’s (2015, p. 60 emphasis on the original) work also speaks of a similar dynamic of sociability within a group of domestic workers that are building “a meaningful social world, a humane and corporeal community, that is not far away and not digitalized”. The difference is that my participants are geared towards nationalistic goals that seek to improve the general welfare of OFWs in Hong Kong. There is thus a multiplicity of desired outcomes, even as it is all built on the foundation of sociability. These dynamics persisted even with the limitations imposed by COVID-19.

In this section, I proposed to look at the activities of migrant domestic workers as a form of serious leisure. This is suggested by their activities’ characteristics, commitment to their organization, and subsequent identities and norms. However, I do note some deviations from Stebbins’ original conceptualization. First, my data hint that commitment to political serious leisure may be qualitatively different compared to other forms. This is because there is a commitment not only because of the good derived from the activities but also despite the potential negative effects (as Mair, 2002 discussed). Secondly, I also noted that leisure and activism in their serious leisure are irreducible to one or the other. Instead, they are difficult to uncouple because their legally mandated leisure time forms the condition of possibility for their political action, and they accomplish both leisure and activism with a relatively stable set of people.

4.2 Leisure Constraints in the Pandemic: Government and Employers

I found that domestic workers’ constraints in their leisure time are mainly structural. In this section, I will show how government and employer-led restrictions during the pandemic scaled down the leisure activities of Filipino foreign domestic workers.

On February 23, 2021, a few weeks before I started my face-to-face fieldwork in Central, the government reminded the public that gatherings of more than four people are not allowed because of the pandemic situation and that violators will be fined HKD 5000 (Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 2021d). The fine overpowers the relatively low median monthly wage of HKD 4,500 (Census and Statistics Department, 2021). In fact, lower wages are one of the most cited reasons for employing foreign domestic workers (Census and Statistics Department, 2021). The main way these regulations were imposed on foreign domestic workers was through the policing of space. During my fieldwork, it is not uncommon to see members of the Hong Kong Police Force and the Labor Department roving around Chater Road and Victoria Park, reminding foreign domestic workers about prohibitions in group gatherings, the requirement to wear masks, informing them about free COVID-19 testing centers, and penalizing those whom they consider violating the health measures (see Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c for examples and photos). The pamphlets and reminders they carried were written in various languages to ensure comprehension. Barricades were also set up across Chater Road, limiting occupiable space and squeezing overseas domestic workers together. Areas in the adjacent Statue Square were cordoned off, and various signs hung in ubiquitous areas again as a reminder to foreign domestic workers. In fact, Villani and Talamini (2023) observed that domestic workers activities in Chater Road and Mong Kok Skywalk during the third wave peak of the pandemic in Hong Kong have been reduced by more than 60% compared to pre-pandemic observations.

One emotional effect of all these is fear. In the One Billion Rising 2021 event, where members of One Filipino Migrant danced in Victoria Park, the sight of approaching police officers several meters away rushed the picture-taking session for fear of being fined. Even on regular days spent in restful socialization, seeing police officers creates tension in what would otherwise be leisure time. As Mimi narrates,

For example, we sit in groups here. We are having a good time swapping stories, then suddenly, you see a police officer, and your immediate reaction is fear. There is that kind of reaction. Seeing them far away [you will hear people exclaim], the police, the police. So, we separate. So, the regular group relaxation we’re having, that’s not happening anymore.

I asked her to elaborate on where that fear was coming from, and she continues,

Because if you are found to be in violation, we know there is a fee, a penalty. The penalty is much higher than our salary. Where will we get HKD 5000? So that is the impact of the social distancing protocol.

These social distancing measures mean that activities such as an organization’s anniversary celebrations or demonstration would have to be scaled down, moved online, delayed, or canceled. Moving online entailed training some of their members in using Zoom, and I witnessed and participated in events where the platform has been utilized to raise their issues. They also used features on Facebook to host online weekly discussions on migrant affairs and even feature film showings. As for scaled-down events, their political protests at the Philippine consulate adhere to the maximum number of people that can be gathered. In their events leading up to the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of then-President Rodrigo Duterte, they held a physically distanced SONA protest at Chater Road. Rather than forming a big group, they changed the format of their protest to a ‘talk show type’, and participants were separated into fours to follow the rules.

Aside from government restrictions, my participants also had to contend with limitations imposed on them by their employers. Many of my participants reported that much fewer domestic workers occupy Central on Sunday. At least five of my participants were imposed “mobility control[s]” (Chan & Piper, 2022, p. 280) and were asked not to leave their employers’ homes during their days off at some point to avoid spreading infection in the household. The result is that, within the One Filipino Migrants network, engagement happened primarily with leaders because individual members became more difficult to reach.

Operationally, these mobility controls could be imposed through an outright ban on leaving the premises or through curfews. For example, at the onset of the pandemic, many domestic workers were asked to go home earlier in the afternoon. As Dorothy explains:

Y: Why are people [domestic workers] going home by 3 PM [during the height of the pandemic].

Dorothy: Because of the high infection rates of COVID, they are asked to leave for home earlier by their employers because if they stay too long, they might get infected. That is the mindset of the employer. Thus, they say to go home early. You are allowed outside just to remit, go to church, then if there’s a friend you urgently need to meet. After that, travel back home.

For the outright ban, Libby tells me:

Y: How did they tell you not to go out?

Libby: During the first wave, our [the employers’] baby was very young, so I understand [their concern]. We were also afraid then because we did not know what COVID is. That is March or April. I was not allowed to go out for two months. They tell me it is for the baby’s sake because I take care of the baby and they know that on Sundays, I deal with people. So, I told them…I spoke to them…and I said, yes, I agree. So, the organization [One Filipino Migrants] gave me social media work at that time…for two months because I couldn’t go out.

In this section, I showed that it is structural constraints that were primarily encountered by my participants during the pandemic. Both of these structural constraints can be seen as a “sanitized divide” (Chan & Piper, 2022, p. 271) instituted in the pandemic, where domestic workers are subject to new regulations not expected of other segments of the population. Chan and Piper also explain that these are legitimized by government discourse on domestic workers. I showed that the divide was manifested by the government through patrolling as well as spatial limitations. I also demonstrated that employers constrained domestic worker leisure through mobility controls such as outright bans from going out or through curfews. Critically, these limitations overlooked their specific working conditions. The fines imposed are almost equal to or even exceed their monthly salaries. The request to keep them home presupposes recreation could be accomplished even within one’s workplace. This raises the need for contextualizing limitations on leisure activities based on working conditions if such situations are again made necessary. But the domestic workers did not take this sitting down. In the following section, I illustrate how workers negotiated with these constraints.

4.3 Negotiating Constraints

Negotiations about leisure occurred between domestic workers and their employers even before the pandemic. During their days off, domestic workers may choose to deviate from prior routines and get up later than usual. Others seek to push back on curfew limitations to extend the time that they can spend with friends outside. Interestingly, some of my participants narrated how they proactively protected their capability to contribute to One Filipino Migrants. Samara, for example, explained to her employer what the organization meant for her and asked if she could perform her volunteer work after her work tasks. She told me:

My current arrangement with my employer is really something I worked out…I spoke with my employer and asked, “Do you really need me the whole day?”. I really worked out that I got a good employer. Before I signed my contract, I asked if it was all right that I volunteer after work. My employer said okay. I then explained how important this organization is to me, and it was understood.

Remarkably, some of my participants considered their membership in organizations a bargaining chip in this negotiation process. Anna thought that her membership in One Filipino Migrants signaled to her employer that she knew her rights and made the employer more acquiescent to her demands. It is not infrequent that the discourse of rights is being deployed. Danica also said it is within her rights to respond to her employer. Tong and Jiang (2020) found associations between social capital and rights protection, such as lower working hours and avoiding working on rest days. I propose that participation in organizations such as One Filipino Migrants create one of the mechanisms for this association to manifest.

During the pandemic, my participants experienced work intensification. Some of their employers asked relatives to move with them during the pandemic, increasing the number of people who needed care. Moreover, because of restrictions on physical presence in schools and workplaces, employers mostly stay at home, adding to the usual tasks of domestic workers before the pandemic. In general, some domestic workers were working– on average – 13.0 h a day during the COVID-19 pandemic (Yeung et al., 2020). Yeung and colleagues also found that problems in the acquisition of the necessary protective equipment, work intensification, and having their employment terminated because of COVID-19 were significant predictors of probable anxiety among Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong. As I mentioned earlier, the lack of separation between work and home for these domestic workers increases the salience of going out for leisure activities. My participants, consequently, negotiated with the constraints they experienced from their employers and the government.

There is a moral calculation between the employee and employer in relation to employer constraints. I see this moral calculation as part of ‘boundary work’ (see Lan, 2003) between employer and employee, where the regulations around COVID-19 are negotiated and localized in the workplace/home. From the employer’s perspective, the moral calculation invokes the vulnerabilities of the employer and the possibility of foregoing ‘comforts’ to preserve such vulnerable lives. Those who are caring for children or for the elderly may be expected to give up their Sunday activities for the sake of keeping vulnerable groups safe. This point of view gains legitimacy, especially when it is reflected in public policy, as when all domestic workers were ordered to test for COVID-19 (news.gov.hk, 2021) or when some government officials tried to impose vaccination as a contractual requirement, which was eventually backtracked following protests (Agence France-Presse, 2021).

On the other hand, my participants asserted their right to rest by invoking the justification that they performed the necessary health precautions. They also encounter risks in performing their daily duties (e.g., purchasing goods from the market) while noting that their employers socialize in restaurants or have people visiting their homes. Aside from these aspects, my participants highlight how they maintain the safety guidelines during their leisure time, such as the use of alcohol and mask-wearing. Olivia volunteered to undergo swab tests because she wanted to avoid being responsible for the virus spread in the household. In other words, the idea that domestic workers are virus carriers is challenged by showing that they can take responsibility for their health while lamenting ‘double standards’ between employer and employee behavior. The quotations from Danica and Leila below demonstrate their questioning of their respective employers’ decision to forbid them from leaving the house and the ‘double standard’ underlying these decisions.

Danica: But sometimes I also reply to them. I am within my rights to reply. Like this pandemic, they did not allow me to leave for one month, yes. But I told them that this was discrimination; you don’t let me have my day off, but you make me go to the marketplace every day. What’s the use? Then I will get infected in the market.

Leila, on the other hand, said:

Leila: They told me not to have my day off because I could be infected with the virus.

Y: What did you say to them?

Leila: Even if we go out, who wants to be infected? If you take care to avoid being infected, even more for us who lack protections [from the virus]. If you, our employers, leave the home while you forbid us to, have you considered the possibility that you would infect us?… So I told them that if no one should leave the house, we would no longer go to the market, no longer buy groceries, and all just stay here.

This moral weighing is not always resolved explicitly. Libby, one of my participants, gradually let herself into her ‘normal’ days off depending on the level of exposure that her employer has to people outside of the household without them explicitly bargaining about this action. This experience highlights the uniqueness of the domestic worker’s position in the pandemic in relation to leisure time. Protective gear can minimize the risk for workers with clearly delineated homes and workspaces, which is unlikely for domestic workers.

Pertaining to government constraints, as an organization, domestic workers presented themselves as the government’s ally in countering the spread of COVID-19 among themselves and promoting the use of vaccines. They distributed masks and sanitizers from sponsors and reminded people to practice social distancing during their public events. Furthermore, being seen as responsible acts as a status enhancer that facilitates the accomplishment of leisure. They tried to use their resources to keep themselves safe and project the image that they were ‘worthy’ of such leisure. Dorothy narrates how being seen as a reliable partner in the fight against COVID-19 enhanced their organization’s status.

Sometimes what we do…not just sometimes…we started an information dissemination campaign about COVID, what people needed to do. We even had visuals so when the police see this, you can see that they calm down because they see us as helping. Sometimes they are thankful but in the absence of it [campaign materials], they mainly see us as people violating the gathering ordinances. We cannot gather. Sometimes, they do not speak to you respectfully. Because we are domestic workers, they raise their voice against us. So what we do is we tell them that they can talk to us in a nice way. You don’t have to shout.

Dorothy also presents an alternative view on the relationship between COVID-19 and domestic workers. Rather than seeing them merely as vectors of the virus whose bodies need to be regulated, she proposes to see domestic workers as right-bearers who must be granted access to treatment if they catch the disease. She narrates:

We questioned the HK government. Why would domestic workers suffer when they are not virus carriers? We are not at fault. And even if we get COVID-19, the right thing to do would be for them to receive treatment. Heal them. Not to prevent them from having days off.

This section detailed how domestic workers negotiated with their leisure constraints. I described how their relationship with their employers involved moral reasoning, making assessments based on the current pandemic situation, the vulnerabilities of those under their care, and the ethics of preventing the accomplishment of their chosen recreation. I also discuss how presenting themselves as responsible allies of the government during the pandemic enhanced their status among those implementing physical distancing rules, such as the police. Finally, I wrote about their alternative conceptualization of the pandemic response: one that emphasizes treatment for right-bearers rather than limitations imposed on second-class citizens.

But while I emphasize the capacity of domestic workers to negotiate, I do not wish to downplay the hierarchical relationship between an employer and an employee. While domestic workers are significant drivers of economic participation in Hong Kong, they are still subjected to different and discriminatory rules than other groups. For example, women with domestic workers are more likely to be doing paid work (He & Wu, 2019), and hiring domestic workers reduces the time spent on chores and allows parents to focus on childcare (Cheung & Lui, 2022). But the workers that have made this possible, though many have stayed in Hong Kong for decades, cannot acquire permanent resident status according to Sect. 2(4) of the Immigration Ordinance (Baig & Chang, 2020; HKU Community Legal Information Centre, 2020). Their stay is thus easily constrained by the Immigration Department regardless of their tenure in Hong Kong, as when the government tried to impose vaccination as a requirement for VISA renewal (Siu et al., 2021).

5 Conclusion

This study applied the concept of serious leisure to understand the entanglements of activism and leisure among Filipino domestic workers belonging to One Filipino Migrants. Domestic workers, in general, were faced with structural leisure constraints from both the Hong Kong government and their employers. Hong Kong imposed limitations on their leisure through the control of space and the deployment of the police force to remind and fine domestic workers to obey established pandemic measures. On the other hand, employers created mobility controls on their domestic workers to protect their families from the virus’ spread.

Nevertheless, my participants continued to accomplish serious leisure through an active adaptation with government regulations and engaging in moral reasoning with their employers. My participants have modified their protest actions to fit into the ban on gathering more than four people together, moved their activities online, and presented themselves as an ally of the government in reminding their fellows about safety and health precautions. Their moral reasoning with their employers involves asserting themselves as responsible agents able to care for themselves and questioning narratives portraying them as vectors of the virus.

In general, my work demonstrated the sensitivity of leisure to one’s working conditions and how the pandemic enabled the exercise of more control over the lives of these workers. The intensified control is apparent in Hong Kong as well as in Canada (Banta & Pratt, 2023; Migrant Rights Network, 2020), South Africa (Anwar & Brukwe, 2023), Singapore (Kaur-Gill et al., 2021), and various countries in the Middle-East (Rao et al., 2021). These examples suggest that the constraints I have identified are common issues arising from an occupation within the confines of the ‘private’ sphere.

Moreover, I showed that the intermingling of advocacy and leisure – as serious leisure – is significant in finding meaningfulness in non-work life and is an important portion of my participants’ identities as migrant domestic workers. It provides a unique ethos and a sense of mission for its members while also allowing them to socialize in non-virtual communities of caring. When the domestic worker is thus faced with the question of staying at home at the behest of their employers or of the state, what could be given up is the complex realization of worthwhile activities integral to their identities and well-being, which cannot be replaced by the mere absence of tasks.

But beyond individual benefits, their engagement in serious leisure also facilitated lobbying and advocacy activities to improve their well-being in their host and home countries. It demonstrates that leisure constraints could be negotiated even amidst a global epidemic. Rather than simply recipients of aid or bodies to be disciplined, migrant domestic workers can organize, voice their demands, and challenge unfair characterizations through these kinds of arrangements. This study exhibits the possibilities of calls made by scholars for migrant domestic workers to organize to challenge unfair rules and regulations, especially when some rights are given up because of the precarities introduced by the pandemic (Anwar & Brukwe, 2023; Banta & Pratt, 2023). Policymakers and civil society groups concerned with their welfare may benefit from fostering collaborations with similar groups.