Camouflaged by Compassion: South Africans’ Paradoxical Understandings of Domestic Employment Relations following Emigration to New Zealand

Abstract:Nonwhite women still commonly work as maids in white or affluent South African households despite the fall of apartheid more than twenty years ago. Their employers provide insight into the renegotiation of privilege when they move to a country that has different understandings of race and servitude. The accounts of eight white South African immigrants living in New Zealand are here deconstructed via Foucauldian discourse analysis. As these immigrants reflect on their past, they camouflage an oppressive and prejudicial relationship through notions of friendship and compassion. Their struggles with opposing ideologies reveal well-rehearsed racial scripts, which buffer the impact of white supremacy that is culturally inappropriate in New Zealand. These scripts suggest that South African emigrants take their “post” apartheid space with them, challenging a status quo that transcends spatial boundaries.