Ordering Diversity: Co‐Producing the Pandemic and the Migrant in Singapore during COVID‐19

Abstract

What do measures of management during this exceptional and volatile time tell us about the regulation of migrant‐driven diversity and its implications in the arrival city? Using the term “differential diversification” from Singapore, I examine how the socio‐political life of the pandemic is deeply entangled with the management of low‐waged labour migrants. Techno‐political discourses and practices of pandemic management accelerated the state’s attempts to differently include migrant workers, revealing the bare viscerality of biopolitics already in place prior to the pandemic. I argue that diversity is ordered through a striking co‐production of migrant management and pandemic management. This paper draws upon government discourses to demonstrate that measures of pandemic management contribute not only to the spatial regime of migrant management. They also articulate and rationalise the subject transformation of the low‐waged migrant to the extent that, on top of being a moral risk, they are also now a medical risk.

How Deteriorating Conditions in Myanmar Affect Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore: A Transnational Analysis of Migrant Labour Regulation

“…An official statistical breakdown of migrant worker nationalities is unavailable, as Singapore's government considers such numbers sensitive (Low, 2002: 96). Nonetheless, Singapore's Work Permit requirements distinguish between “traditional” and “non-traditional” source countries, with the majority of Work Permit holders hailing from the latter, such as from Bangladesh, India, and the Philippines (Ye, 2021: 8).…”

“…All of this is relevant for analysing the impact of shifting global political-economic inequality on MDW regulation in Singapore. Junjia Ye (2021: 5, 8), for instance, argues that domestic Singaporean state policy and practice have constructed a hierarchically segmented migrant labour market. Her account makes clear that this regulatory bifurcation of migrant labour operates through pre-existing racialised, gendered, and classed inequalities, with resulting wage disparities closely correlated to country of origin (Ye, 2021: 4).…”

“…Junjia Ye (2021: 5, 8), for instance, argues that domestic Singaporean state policy and practice have constructed a hierarchically segmented migrant labour market. Her account makes clear that this regulatory bifurcation of migrant labour operates through pre-existing racialised, gendered, and classed inequalities, with resulting wage disparities closely correlated to country of origin (Ye, 2021: 4). In Singapore, MDWs are registered under the low-income Work Permit category, which limits source countries to Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Thailand (MOM, 2022).…”

“…Critical scholarship on migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Singapore has focused on two main topics of analysis. The first is a regulatory bifurcation, which creates a segmented labour market structured by unequal restrictions and privileges – most notably, between salaried foreign professionals and low-waged migrant workers (Huang and Yeoh, 2003; Ye, 2021; Yeoh, 2006; Yeoh, 2004). The second topic of analysis has been the everyday, and often abusive, interpersonal dynamics between household employers and live-in MDWs (Huang and Yeoh, 2007; Kaur-Gill et al, 2021; Parreñas et al, 2021; Yeoh and Huang, 2010).…”

Moralising racial regimes: surveillance and control after Singapore’s ‘Little India riots’

“…For those living in dormitories, daily movement is tightly supervised through surveillance regimes, a system that has become stricter in the wake of Covid-19. 22 The immigration regime tolerates an exploitative system of exorbitant fee-charging, where migrants must indebt themselves to enter Singapore and find employment. 23 This system operates both in sending countries and within Singapore when migrants wish to change employer.…”