Hiring foreign domestic workers out of status, not necessity: reflections on some preliminary findings from Malaysia

Research on foreign domestic workers has been heavily featured in sociology, and to lesser extents, work and employment, economics and international relations. We take an alternative viewpoint seeing the hiring households as consumers in order to investigate their real intentions for hiring foreign domestic workers. This study reports some preliminary findings from a larger scale study which suggests that, surprisingly, hiring intentions have no significant relationship with either necessity or convenience. On the other hand, social status appears to be the most significant predictor of hiring intentions. This study provides some discussions and reflections on this alternative view of foreign domestic workers and calls for further research.