Migration governance and the migration industry in Asia: moving domestic workers from Indonesia to Singapore

Goh, Charmian; Wee, Kellynn; Yeoh, Brenda S. A.

doi:10.1093/irap/lcx010

Cited by 45 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Migrant worker rights in dominant discourse have been mostly absent. Goh et al (2017) posit the limitations of a rights discourse in illiberal contexts, illiberal contexts referring to authoritarian governance that limit freedoms and coercively subdues dissent through institutional, state, and legal entities. According to Goh et al (2017), the human rights discourse has limited appeal in changing state behavior toward the treatment of vulnerable migrants in places like Singapore.…”

Section: Media Frames and Migrant Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Outbreak Inequality: Mainstream Reporting of Singapore's Migrant Workers in the Margins

Kaur‐Gill

2020

Front. Commun.

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Singapore saw a majority of COVID-19 infections plaguing low-skilled migrant construction workers by late April 2020. In the initial phases of the outbreak, mainstream frames were quick to highlight the gathering of low-skilled workers in open areas as sites to be surveilled, shaping the divisive practices of othering in early frames on migrant worker behaviors. These reports were manufactured as Singaporeans continued to gather in public spaces in large groups during the outbreak. Mainstream reports were quick to inform audiences of the surveillance and control on display for disciplining migrant workers. As the crisis developed to impact migrant workers predominantly, the erasures are recovered with mainstream press reporting worker vulnerabilities and discussing the structural implications of managing migrant labor as neoliberal subjects. The structural conditions of migrant labor were, in fact, centered in mainstream narratives, and dormitories as public health threats were extensively discussed, shedding light on discourses relating to outbreak inequality. The rights framework, however, remained largely absent in mainstream news frames about migrant workers.

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Section: Media Frames and Migrant Workersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Outbreak Inequality: Mainstream Reporting of Singapore's Migrant Workers in the Margins

Kaur‐Gill

2020

Front. Commun.

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“…Licensed employment agents play a significant role in the incorporation of migrant workers into the fabric of life in Singapore (Wee et al., ). In fact, the Singapore state has devolved many significant functions of migration governance to brokers and intermediaries (Goh et al., ). Not only do agents work with their counterparts in countries of origin to recruit and deploy women to families in Singapore, they also play a large role in mitigating domestic workers’ access to urban social participation, such as by helping to determine their number of days off.…”

Section: Singapore's Labour Migration Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

Choreographing the rhythms of encounter in Singapore's maid agencies

Wee

Goh

Yeoh

2019

Trans Inst British Geog

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This paper builds on Lefebvre's concept of rhythmanalysis in order to extend our understanding of geographies of encounter in everyday social life. Focusing on the encounters that take place at maid agencies that match migrant domestic workers with local employers in Singapore, we develop the conceptual construct of choreography to show how bodies in spaces of encounter are rhythmically ordered to move through space in particular ways at specific speeds and times. The concept is also useful in studying encounters between migrants and citizens not just as serendipitous events but as purposively designed. Foregrounding the tangled relationalities that exist between maid agents, domestic workers, and employers, we show how employers’ interactions with the materialities of the migration industry – such as the spatial arrangement of the maid agency and the biodata used in the selection of workers – set particular diagrammatic rhythms into motion, prefiguring corporeal migrant–local encounters before they begin. We depict migrant women's punctuated rhythms of moving and waiting, revealing how the eurythmia of the maid agency both conceals and is dependent on the arrhythmia of their bodies. Finally, by emphasising that choreography requires both design and performance, we investigate how migrant women are able to overturn the ordering of rhythms through improvisational moments. Attending to the practices of the maid agency allows us to reveal how relations of power between migrants and locals are reproduced within contexts of temporary labour migration.

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“…Focussing on a subsystem of local recruiters and informal intermediaries in Indonesia, Lindquist (2010Lindquist ( , 2012 showed that agencies can play a key role in creating trust between would-be migrants and employers. Other studies stress the important role agencies play in facilitating complicated bureaucratic procedures to enable migration and in elevating standards for migrants (Goh et al 2017;Kern & Müller-Böker 2015). In Europe, scholars have noted that care agencies often work with recruitment agencies in the recruitment countries to access care workers (Bachinger 2009;Krawietz 2014;Rossow & Leiber 2017).…”

Section: Migrant Care Work and Agenciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Producing (im)mobilities in home care for the elderly: the role of home care agencies in Switzerland

Chau

2019

Int J Ageing Later Life

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The Free Movement of Persons Agreement has fostered the emergence of a new market for live-in care in Switzerland. Private care agencies recruit women from the European Union (EU) accession states and place them as live-in carers for the elderly in private households. This paper focuses on how these agencies organise these live-in care arrangements. Drawing on concepts of the politics of mobility, I analyse the production of (im)mobilities through the placement and recruitment practices of care agencies and the power relations that underlie live-in care arrangements. The findings show that live-in care is constituted both by mobilities, exemplified by care workers’ circular movements and need to be highly mobile, and by care workers’ immobilities once they start working in a household. The care workers’ mobility is in turn enabled by the agencies’ placement practices and by infrastructures specialised in their movements, which serve as moorings.

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Migration governance and the migration industry in Asia: moving domestic workers from Indonesia to Singapore

Cited by 45 publications

References 34 publications

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Outbreak Inequality: Mainstream Reporting of Singapore's Migrant Workers in the Margins

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Outbreak Inequality: Mainstream Reporting of Singapore's Migrant Workers in the Margins

Choreographing the rhythms of encounter in Singapore's maid agencies

Producing (im)mobilities in home care for the elderly: the role of home care agencies in Switzerland

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