This new Expressions of Humanity event will begin with the screening of the film Overseas (2019), directed by Yoon Sung‑A, and will end with a discussion around the movie.
In the Philippines, women get deployed abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies. They frequently leave their own children behind, before throwing themselves into the unknown. In one of the many training centers dedicated to domestic work that can be found in the Philippines, a group of trainees are getting ready to face both homesickness and the possible abuses lying ahead. During role playing exercises, they alternatively play both the roles of the employee and that of the employers.
Bordering on fiction, Overseas brings to light the question of modern servitude in our globalized world, while emphasizing these women’s determination, their sisterhood, and the strategies they find to face the ordeals that awaits them in the near future.
For the discussion following the movie, we will be joined by Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot, a PhD Sociology and FNRS research associate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is the author of Mères migrantes sans frontières (Migrant mothers without borders) on the invisible dimension of Filipino immigration in France.