Invisible Exports
Shagalla TikTok Performances and Kenya’s Transnational Creative Economy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52907/wahia.v2i1.645Keywords:
Shagalla, TikTok performance, feminised digital labour, transnational creative economy, algorithmic labourAbstract
This paper is interested in the digital activities of the “Shagalla”, a term popularly employed to describe a domestic worker based in the Gulf (Arabian countries). The paper observes that the Shagalla, from Kenya, have employed TikTok to create an online community, complete with its own language and grammar, through which they can humanize themselves, particularly in view of the ambiguity of their identities. The shagallas occupy that uncomfortable in-betwixt space where they are neither accepted as “family” by their host employers nor repulsed as complete outsiders in these private spaces, even when they live in foreign lands, with national languages far removed from Kiswahili and English. The paper argues that the digital world has given the shagallas space where they can enact, or perform, their identities, or even show defiance in the face of their daily struggles. Artificial Intelligence then becomes essential in mapping out, or even sustaining, their audience through algorithmic intervention.
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