This essay draws on multi-sited, performance art-led research with Filipinx migrant domestic workers in the UK and Lebanon. It explores a dichotomy at work in the portrayal of some workers as bagong bayani or ‘modern heroes’—a phrase coined by then Philippine president Corazon Aquino—and as ‘modern slaves’, a term more recently associated with the humanitarian and state processing of survivors of human trafficking and labour abuse. Simultaneously victimising and venerating workers, I argue that both terms spectacularise experiences of migrant domestic work, untethering it from lived, material conditions. In so doing, the everyday nature of exploitation and abuse encountered by many migrant domestic workers is obscured, as well as the everyday expertise that enables them to evade, de-escalate, and survive it. Through making collaborative soundwalks with migrant domestic workers—a creative form similar to site-specific audio guides—my research identifies ways in which performance methodologies can be attentive to the specific temporalities of their lived experiences and to their decisions about self-representation.

中文翻译：

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现代英雄，现代奴隶？聆听外来务工人员的日常情况

本文借鉴了英国和黎巴嫩的菲律宾移民家庭佣工进行的多地点，以行为艺术为主导的研究。它探讨了一些工人在工作中的二分法，将其描述为巴东巴亚尼或“现代英雄”（这是当时的菲律宾总统科拉松·阿基诺（Corazon Aquino）创造的短语）和“现代奴隶”，这是一个最近与人道主义和国家处理有关的术语。人口贩运和劳工虐待的幸存者。同时，我认为工人是受害人和受尊敬的人，这两个术语都使移民家政工作的经历更加壮观，而不受生活，物质条件的束缚。这样一来，许多移徙家庭佣工遇到的剥削和虐待的日常性质以及使他们能够逃避，降级和生存的专业知识都被掩盖了。