Prof. Hans J LADEGAARD, Department of English and Communication

The experience of trauma in domestic migrant workers’ storytelling: Sociolinguistic and psychological perspectives (Invited Lectures). School of Education & Sport, University of Edinburgh; School of Education, Durham University; School of Education, University of Glasgow and School of English, Communication & Philosophy, Cardiff University, 9, 11, 12 and 25 October 2023.

Abstract
Every year, thousands of women leave their families in developing countries like Indonesia and the Philippines to work as domestic migrant workers (DMWs) in developed economies in Asia and the Middle East. They do it to support their families, not least their children’s education. But migration comes at a high price for DMWs: they have to endure separation from their loved ones, and many are exploited and abused. Drawing on a large corpus of more than 500 domestic migrant worker narratives, this talk analyses narratives of suffering. The women talk about their painful encounters with verbal and physical assault, sexual assault, starvation, and the fear they experienced while working for an abusive employer. The talk outlines some of the characteristics of trauma storytelling, including a broken disruptive style, incoherent stories that break with ordinary logic, and lack of appropriate vocabulary to account for extreme suffering. Finally, I discuss how we as researchers deal with other people’s stories of suffering.