Shirlena Huang

Migrant female domestic workers: debating the economic, social and political impacts in Singapore.

As a small labor-short city-state with over 100,000 migrant domestic workers mainly from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka and amounting to one foreign maid to every eight households, Singapore provides a case study of a country where foreign maids are seen as an economic necessity but not without important social consequences and political ramifications. Beginning with a brief examination of state policy on transnational labor migration relating to female domestic workers, this article goes on to explore the debates within public discourse as well as private accounts on the impact of foreign maids on a range of issues, including female participation in the workforce; the social reproduction of everyday life including the delegation of the domestic burden and the upbringing of the young; the presence of “enclaves” of foreign nationals in public space; and bilateral relations between host and sending countries. It concludes that the transnational labor migration is a multifaceted phenomenon with important repercussions on all spheres of life, hence requiring dynamic policy intervention on the part of the authorities concerned.

“Home” and “away”: Foreign domestic workers and negotiations of diasporic identity in singapore

Abstract World cities produced by the processes of globalization and international migration increasingly take on shifting kaleidoscopic ethnoscapes constituted by gathering subjects of diaspora ranging from highly skilled international “denizens” to low-skilled guest workers. In this context, we focus on migrant women from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka who enter Singapore to work as domestic workers and examine the ways these women (re)configure their social identities under conditions of diaspora. More specifically, we consider the strategies employed in navigating the space between “home” and “host,” including the ways in which these women try to maintain or strengthen ties (social, emotional, financial, and imagined) to “homeland” as well as their attempts to (re)create a “home away from home” in literal and metaphorical ways. The paper argues that notions of gender differences clearly underlie migrant womens (re)negotiations of self vis-a-vis the construction imposed by others as they seek to occupy and challenge the sociocultural spaces in which they are inserted in their host country.

Ties that bind: State policy and migrant female domestic helpers in Singapore

The introduction to this paper reviews the global economic restructuring that has led to theories of a new international division of labor (NIDL) marked by a global feminization of labor that exploits traditional feminine qualities. The argument is made that the NIDL theory fails to cover international labor migration such as that undertaken by female domestic servants in East and Southeast Asia. After summarizing recent research on international waged domestic labor, it is noted that policies of labor-sending countries have, until recently, reflected concerns with enhancing the flow of remittances home to relieve international debt rather than with the well-being of the workers. The paper goes on to focus on the effect of Singapores state policies on incoming labor migration. After examining the conditions that created the demand for foreign maids, the paper investigates how state policy facilitated the exploitation of these women and perpetuated the social ideology of housework both as womens work and as non-work. It is shown that the official view that paid or unpaid productive labor belongs to the private domain beyond the purview of the state has detrimental repercussions for foreign domestic helpers. These arguments are bolstered with data from secondary sources and from field work conducted in 1995 involving a survey of 162 matched pairs of foreign domestic helpers and employers and in-depth interviews with 15 workers and 15 employers (13 matched pairs).

Spaces at the Margins: Migrant Domestic Workers and the Development of Civil Society in Singapore

It has been argued in the feminist literature that the state often contributes to patriarchal constructions of womens subordinate positions by providing political space for womens incorporation into civil society not as individuals and citizens but as members of a family belonging to the private sphere. In this paper the authors explore this question in the broad context of international labour migration in the Asia Pacific region, where migrant women are moving as paid reproductive labour in large numbers from less-developed countries to rapidly industrialising urban nodes in the region. The authors ground the ensuing issues in the specific case of Singapore, a country currently engaged in constructing a sense of nationhood among its people. Even as there is now some debate on the emergence of civil society as part of the nation-building project and possibly a larger role for social agencies which lie outside the rubric of state parameters, there are groups of women who are excluded from this embryonic discourse. One such group is the more than 100 000 female migrant domestic workers (from the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and a number of other South and Southeast Asian countries) who, as women, domestics, and noncitizens, are identified with the confines of the private sphere and proscribed from public space in the dominant (and emerging) discourses. With use of a questionnaire survey, as well as in-depth interviews with foreign domestic workers, their employers, and a number of social organisations, the authors examine the politics of exclusion at the margins of society. The aims are to explore the types of social organisations which have opened up some ‘space’ within their structures for foreign domestic workers, as well as interest groups which have certain claims to represent these women, and to clarify the roles these marginal spaces play. This helps illumine the way these women interact with mainstream Singaporean society beyond the confines of the domestic sphere and broadens the understanding of the boundaries of civil society in Singapore and the politics of being ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.

TOURISM AND HERITAGE CONSERVATION IN SINGAPORE

Abstract Using a survey of tourists and locals, this study investigates the success of Singapores Civic and Cultural District as a conservation project. The survey revealed that tourists were attracted by the facades of old colonial buildings that have been carefully restored. In contrast, Singaporeans attach a great deal more to activities and lifestyles within the district that have since been removed or have disappeared because of conservation. Planning authorities have concentrated mainly on the issue of economic viability and favor commercial activities such as retail and recreation/leisure. As such, Singaporeans feel that conservation in the district, because it “museumizes” or makes “elitist” to encourage tourism, has failed to preserve their heritage.

Foreign domestic workers and home-based care for elders in Singapore.

As with other developed nations where rapid population aging has led to increasing health care and social care burdens, Singapore has searched for ways of paying for and providing long-term care for its increasing numbers of elders. The Singapore state, faced with the prospect of one-fifth of the population aged 65 or older by 2030, has reinforced its basic principle of rendering the family the “primary caregiving unit” and home-based care as the highly preferred option for eldercare. Our paper demonstrates why, despite the range of alternative care arrangements available or emerging on Singapores eldercare landscape, the employment of live-in foreign domestic workers as care workers for the elderly has become one of the more common de facto modes of providing care for the elderly. In this context, we discuss the politics of eldercare in the privatized sphere of homespace and conclude with policy implications relating to the employment of foreign domestic workers as caregivers for the elderly.

Diasporic subjects in the nation: Foreign domestic workers, the reach of law and civil society in Singapore

Transnational practices and networks of capital, labour, business and commodity markets, political movements and cultural flows are both the products of, and catalyst for, contemporary globalisation processes. In these spatially fluid times, what Faist calls “transnational social spaces” have emerged, “constituted by the various forms of resources or capital of migrants and spatially immobiles, on the one hand, and the regulations imposed by nation-states and various other opportunities and constraints, on the other; for example, including state-controlled immigration and refugee policies” (Faist, 1999, p. 40). Within this frame, “transnationalism” has attracted the attention of a wide range of social and political theorists. Some social science scholars have explored transnational connectivities in terms of the flows of people – undocumented migrant workers, refugees, asylum-seekers, business and professional elites, creative specialists, tourists – as well as the “contested politics of place-making, the social construction of power differentials, and the making of individual, group, national, and transnational identities, and their corresponding fields of difference” (Smith, 2001, p. 5). Indeed, hypermobility and the easy transgression of national borders in today’s globalising world may be liberating or emancipatory for some of the individuals involved, but may well subject others to constricting, repressive or exploitative social ideologies and policies, including those generated by the nation-state (both “sending” and “receiving”). This has stimulated interest in new notions of the relationship of rights and responsibilities between an individual, or group, and a particular nation-state, leading to work on new forms of citizenship (for example, dual citizenship, dual nationality, two-tier citizenship, and postnational membership), as well as new transnational frameworks for alliance-making and networking among social movements and non-governmental organisations coming together to assert pressure for social change spanning national boundaries (Law, 2002). In this rethinking of the ties between person and place, sociolegal scholars have also been interested in the “reach”, or impact of the law in a globalising world, and the “extent to which law regulates social and political life within and across borders, how law defines the experiences and treatment of diverse groups within societies, . . . and the significance of law in everyday life” in transnational social space (www.lawandsociety.org). Asian Studies Review March 2004, Vol. 28, pp. 7–23

The conservation-redevelopment dilemma in Singapore: The case of the Kampong Glam historic district

Abstract Conservation-redevelopment conflicts are increasingly gaining prominence on the urban agendas of cities in the developing world. This paper examines the role urban conservation plays within the broader framework of national ideology and policies in Singapore, a city which faces intensive redevelopment pressures. It explains how, from the perspective of the state, redevelopment and conservation can both be accommodated within the ambit of modernist planning and goals. After outlining various preservation and conservation schemes initiated by state agencies, the paper goes on to argue that, contrary to state rhetoric and despite the fact that conservation is given some priority in the planning of the city, the conservation-redevelopment dilemma has not been solved but has taken on new dimensions in the 1990s. Specifically, the paper shows by means of a case study of the Kampong Glam Historic District that conflict arises because gazetted monuments and conservation areas often slice up the organic form and texture of cultural hearths in an arbitrary fashion, legislating boundaries between a defended zone perceived to be of historical value and an excluded landscape, which is threatened with excision.

Emotional Labour and Transnational Domestic Work: The Moving Geographies of 'Maid Abuse' in Singapore

This paper demonstrates how the emotional disruptions and disconnections associated with transnational mobility and moving are aggravated when abuse is perpetrated on transnational domestic workers who provide emotional labour in the homes of their employers. While research on the home as a cage or prison has focused on domestic violence against women and children in the family, we investigate – through an analysis of court transcripts and newspaper reports – the home as a site not only of domestic service, but also of domestic abuse, of vulnerable foreign ‘others’ taken into the home, often masked by the discourse of being ‘one of the family’. The analysis and conclusions in our paper chime with work by feminists for the need to challenge taken‐for‐granted associations between gender oppression in the home and patriarchy. Additionally, we draw attention to how a focus on the moving experiences of emotional pain at the personal level can contribute to a richer appreciation of how structural changes at the societal level are spawned.

Transnational Domestic Workers and the Negotiation of Mobility and Work Practices in Singapore’s Home‐Spaces

Abstract With global economic restructuring, one of the most striking migration flows within Asia has been that of women migrating to work as paid domestic workers in the region’s higher growth economies. Drawing on in‐depth interviews, we focus on the negotiation of mobility and work practices between employers in Singapore and their ‘foreign maids’ within home‐space. We investigate the way employers define domestic work practices through ‘ground rules’ which fix and confine the body to specific time‐spaces and postures, rendering the migrant domestic worker a non‐mobile subject. We also explore the strategies of the domestic worker in circumventing rules in a bid to regain mobility. Using ‘homespace’ as the site of analysis, the paper illustrates the everyday production of (im)mobilities in a city‐state where ‘migration’ and ‘migrants’ occupy a paradoxical place in its bid for global‐city status.