Abstract:
In this paper the author explores the issue of how meals are eaten in expatriate households in Singapore, where live-in migrant domestic workers are employed. This is an issue that is both practical and richly symbolic. It is argued that commensality (or its absence) is a key point through which many of the features of the migrant domestic worker-employer relationship can be read: privilege and exclusion, shame, ambivalence, othering, gender and power.