Production Politics and Migrant Labour Advocacy in Singapore

Bal, Charanpal Singh

doi:10.1080/00472336.2014.960880

Cited by 29 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Moreover, workers tend to be deployed by subcontractors in small teams across several construction sites. So they lack the power of collective action when they informally negotiate workloads and rest periods with supervisors (Bal 2015b). Instead, they are susceptible to threats of early termination and repatriation, which are occasionally used as a disciplinary technique to direct work Yea 2017).…”

Section: Diffusion Of Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5). Even when the unions offer support, they do so in a way which undercuts the collective mobilisation of workers (Bal 2015b). For instance, in 2009, the National Trades Union Congress set up the Migrant Workers Centre to address the welfare needs of workers in workplace disputes.…”

Section: Displacement Of Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than unions, some small NGOs advocate on behalf of the workers' well-being through formal complaints at the Ministry of Manpower and public campaigns (Bal 2015b;). With the help of these organisations, the workers' acts of resistance can occasionally lead to state reform.…”

Section: Displacement Of Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Domestic workers are required to live and work in their employers' homes . Construction workers are often deployed in small groups at different work sites (Bal 2015b). As a result, these two groups bear some different social vulnerabilities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Precarious Work and its Complicit Network: Migrant Labour in Singapore

Chin

2019

Journal of Contemporary Asia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How does precarious work entail social vulnerabilities and moral complicities? Theorists of precarity pose two challenges for analysing labour conditions in Asia. Their first challenge is to distinguish the new kinds of social vulnerability which constitute precarious work. The second is to assign moral responsibility in the social network that produces vulnerability in depoliticised and morally detached ways. In this article, the social and normative dimensions of precarious work are connected through a conceptual investigation into how Singapore allocates responsibility for managing temporary migrant labour. First, it analyses how various management strategies, driven by globalisation and government deregulation, increase worker vulnerabilities. These strategies intensify relations of dependence, disempowerment and discrimination, which the workers may accommodate or resist in limited ways. Second, it assesses why the strategies leave the state, employers, agents and others complicit in producing the vulnerabilities. These actors enable, collaborate with, or condone the production of precarity. Their complicity is complicated by varying support or resistance to reforms. The result is a novel conceptual scheme for analysing the complicit network behind precarious work, which can be used in other sites of precarity where some are complicit in the vulnerability of others.

show abstract

Section: Diffusion Of Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Displacement Of Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Displacement Of Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Precarious Work and its Complicit Network: Migrant Labour in Singapore

Chin

2019

Journal of Contemporary Asia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While academic interest in civil society in Singapore has grown in parallel with these developments, existing literature remains largely preoccupied with the dominant role played by the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) in opening up and closing down spaces for civil society engagement (Chua, ; Lee, ; Lyons, ; Piper, ; Chua, ; Ortmann, ). In these accounts, the political opportunity structure for civil society has generally been described as “closed”, or as Bal (: 220) more baldly puts it, a “near‐absolute lack of opportunity for NGOs to pursue their agendas”. Yet in focusing on the constraining impact that political institutions and national structures exert on Singapore's civil society, the latter's agency in carving its own political space of contention is often overlooked (Kemp and Kfir, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural mediation through vernacularization: framing rights claims through the day‐off campaign for migrant domestic workers in Singapore

Koh

Wee

Goh

et al. 2017

International Migration

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholarship on civil society in Singapore has tended to emphasize the structural and institutional constraints on civil society space. Conversely, little attention is paid to the broader cultural and discursive realms in which civil society and state actors operate. This article seeks to address this gap by analysing the day‐off campaign for migrant domestic workers in Singapore. We demonstrate that by employing the cultural mediation strategy of vernacularization, civil society was able to frame migrant rights claims in a manner that resonated with the institutional logics and cultural repertoire of Singapore society. Civil society actors gained headway by adapting the discourse on migrant rights to Singapore's socio‐cultural and political context in three ways: by reframing rights claims into a moral appeal; by appealing to the cost‐benefit logics of Singaporean employers of migrant domestic workers; and by situating the provision of migrant labour protections as a relative market position.

show abstract

Civil Society Activism in Singapore

Wijeysingha

2024

The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Production Politics and Migrant Labour Advocacy in Singapore

Cited by 29 publications

References 28 publications

Precarious Work and its Complicit Network: Migrant Labour in Singapore

Precarious Work and its Complicit Network: Migrant Labour in Singapore

Cultural mediation through vernacularization: framing rights claims through the day‐off campaign for migrant domestic workers in Singapore

Civil Society Activism in Singapore

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About