Managing the non-integration of transient migrant workers: Urban strategies of enclavisation and enclosure in Singapore

Abstract

Research on migration in arrival cities, particularly in the west, has traditionally focused on spatial formations such as ‘ethnic enclaves’ or ‘immigrant neighbourhoods’ in order to investigate questions around assimilation, integration and settlement issues relating to more permanent forms of migration. By shifting attention to the cities of migration in Asia that operate largely under a regime of temporary migration, we foreground the twin concepts of enclavisation and enclosure not as fixed entities but as ongoing spatial-temporal strategies of disciplinary power with uneven consequences for migrant life and labour in the city. Set within the context of Singapore, we draw on qualitative interviews with two groups of transient migrant workers – male construction workers and female domestic workers – to examine two sets of conjoined processes underpinning their spatial containment in the city-state: ground-driven enclavisation or the formation of ‘weekend enclaves’ /gathering grounds as co-national social spaces of support and comfort zones of co-ethnic belonging; and state-driven enclosure in dormitories or home-workspaces as a set of containment measures in response to gender-differentiated concerns about enclavisation. As spatial–temporal processes that shape the migrant’s place in, and mobility through, the city in highly gendered and disciplined ways, enclavisation and enclosure work in tandem to reinforce the non-integration of low-waged transient migrants in the city.

Migrant-led diversification and differential inclusion in arrival cities across Asia and the Pacific

“…The temporal experience of commuting, waiting, and passing through customs with other people crossing borders becomes part of the ‘throwntogetherness’ (Massey, 2005) of the spatio-temporal patterning of school children’s mobilities. In a different context, Yeoh and Lam’s (2022) paper also locates the temporal as an integral part of the processes of enclosure and enclavisation that reinforce the non-integration of low-waged transient migrants in Singapore. In their analysis, enclosure and enclavisation represent, respectively, top-down and ground-up spatio-temporal processes that hold disciplinary and discretionary powers in regulating the ‘rhythms of labour and life’ (Yeoh and Lam, 2022).…”

“…In a different context, Yeoh and Lam’s (2022) paper also locates the temporal as an integral part of the processes of enclosure and enclavisation that reinforce the non-integration of low-waged transient migrants in Singapore. In their analysis, enclosure and enclavisation represent, respectively, top-down and ground-up spatio-temporal processes that hold disciplinary and discretionary powers in regulating the ‘rhythms of labour and life’ (Yeoh and Lam, 2022). These everyday routines and ordered patterns traced by migrants are important constitutive dimensions of differential inclusion in the diversifying city.…”

“…Using the examples of state-provided recreational spaces as sites of ‘accidental diversities’, they demonstrate where contact zones have developed to highlight the unexpected socio-spatial relationalities that can emerge through migration-driven diversification. Also focused on Singapore, Yeoh and Lam’s (2022) paper further highlights the place-based, locally-contingent processes of differential inclusion among two groups of migrant workers in the city-state – female domestic workers who live in employers’ homes and male construction and manual workers housed in workers’ dormitories. Gendered patterns of spatial containment result as a response to state-driven enclosure in dormitories (in the case of male workers) and confinement to home-spaces (in the case of female workers) on the one hand, and the formation of ‘weekend enclaves’ as co-national social spaces of support and comfort on the other.…”

Arrival cities and the mobility of concepts

“…In many ways Migrant-led Diversification and Differential Inclusion in Arrival Cities Across Asia-Pacific deploys ‘arrival cities’ as a heuristic, working across and between very different cities, forms of migration and (non)settlement. This includes a city-state with sustained migration-led demographic growth, transient labour migration and institutionalised differential inclusion (Bork-Hüffer, 2022; Goh and Lee, 2022; Yeoh and Lam, 2022; Ye et al, 2022); a post-earthquake city undergoing unexpected forms of migrant-driven diversification (Collins and Friesen, 2022) and cities shaped by the specificities of education-based migration, deterritorialisations and cross-border mobilities (Koh, 2022; Leung and Waters, 2022). It also covers the affective hospitality of forced migrants who may or may not be offered permanent settlement to remain (Sidhu and Rossi-Sackey, 2022); the complex reconfiguration of suburban spaces by new settlements and generational diversity (Robertson et al, 2022); the elite transnational migrants that are shaping the socio-spatialities of a city haunted by the myth of homogeneity (Yamamura, 2022) and the urban transformations of island archipelagos that are facilitated by the interacial relationships of foreign investors (Ortega, 2022).…”

“…Studies and concepts of urban diversity criss-crossed and coalesced around shared concerns, while drawing inspiration from theories as diverse as Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis and Bhabha’s (1994) third space . But, as Ye (2019) and Yeoh and Lam (2022) note, work on migrant-led diversification has nevertheless tended to focus on western examples, where a focus on migration, settlement and questions of social integration hinder consideration of contexts that are shaped by temporary migration regimes (although there remains a considerable gap between newly arriving, highly skilled elites and low-skilled migrants and asylum seekers who continue to experience the sharp-end of differential inclusion (see e.g. Darling, 2022).…”