Debt,precarity and gender: male and female temporary labour migrants in Singapore

As one of Asia’s key hubs for transient workers, Singapore’s migration regime creates particularly gendered streams of labour, especially among lower skilled occupations, as is apparent in two key sectors – domestic work and construction work. Drawing on surveys with Bangladeshi construction workers and Indonesian domestic workers based in Singapore, as well as in-depth interviews with each group, this paper examines gendered issues of temporary labour migration, precarity and risk, as they occur against a backdrop of migrant indebtedness. In this paper, we argue that migrant indebtedness occurs along a spectrum that ranges from less visible, or what we call ‘silently’ incurred forms of debt, through to more ‘resonant’ types of debt that are acquired upfront and thus more readily quantifiable. Using this spectrum of migrant indebtedness, we aim to complicate debates about debt-financed migration by underscoring the ways in which notions of debt and unfreedom can be imbricated with both constraints and opportunities for migrants’ agency.     

Labour and life in the global Asian city: the discrepant mobilities of migrant workers and English teachers in Seoul

ABSTRACT

Transnational mobilities are often conceived as interconnected with cities as ‘magnets’ for migrants, ‘nodes’ in mobility trajectories or ‘destinations’ for settlement. This paper frames the urban as critical to conceptualising the manner that mobility is actively and contingently assembled across the border and in the constitution of migrant lives. This argument builds on understanding the relationship between urban life and migration regimes in South Korea where the state and infrastructures of migration play a strong role in moulding the forms and outcomes of transnational mobilities in the everyday spaces of cities. The paper examines the urban lives of two differently positioned mobile populations in the Seoul Metropolitan Region: migrant workers in the manufacturing industries and English teachers working in schools, private academies and universities. Drawing on Said’s ‘contrapuntal’ analysis, the paper explores the ways in which these migrant lives overlap and diverge: in recent political-economic transformations and the regulation of migration, the urban geographies of labour and life, and the timing of migration. In doing so, the paper offers a window into Seoul’s emerging reliance on and differential incorporation of migrants and demonstrates the critical interlinkages between the governmental technologies of border crossing, everyday life and possibilities for the future.     

1.5 generation Asian migrants and intergenerational transnationalism: Thoughts and challenges from New Zealand

This article analyses New Zealand's post-1987 immigration patterns, specifically the arrival of East Asian professionals and their families, and their impact on the demographic and cultural composition of New Zealand society. The discussion addresses a specific and under-theorised category of migrants: school-aged children who migrate with their parents, identified as the ‘1.5 generation’. Focusing on the unique position and attributes of the 1.5 generation, it is posited that New Zealand's new intergenerational transmigrant communities seriously challenge conventional attempts to explain – and manage – migrant settlement and incorporation into host societies.     

Am I allowed to be pregnant? Awareness of pregnancy protection laws among migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, pregnancy is not legal grounds for employers to dismiss their migrant domestic workers (MDWs). However a survey of 589 Filipino and Indonesian MDWs in Hong Kong demonstrates that only a third of respondents know their pregnancy rights. Regression analysis of the survey data highlight the statistically significant positive role of being Filipino and length of tenure in Hong Kong in increasing respondents’ rights awareness. Follow-up conversations reveal that workers understand their rights to be contingent upon the presumed morality of their pregnancy (whether they are married, whether their husband is the father) and their employer’s generosity. These findings reveal the influence of the socio-structural frames migrants carry with them from their home countries, and the ones in which they are embedded in their host destinations, in the lack of purchase of a pregnancy rights discourse among MDWs in Hong Kong. Our findings provide new insight into the power of symbolic violence in women migrant workers’ understanding of their rights, and their emphasis on their ‘work ethics’ over their ‘work rights’.     

Risky business and geographies of refugee capitalism in the Somali migrant economy of Gauteng,South Africa

Research on migrant livelihoods in South Africa reveals links between social exclusion and migrant ‘cosmopolitan tactics’, including multi-sited socialities, diverse spatial business strategies and orientations precluding integration into a ‘xenophobic’ host society. Drawing on 10 months of ethnographic research, this study explores how Somali migrants’ business practices and tactics of mobility within and beyond Gauteng Province, South Africa (which encompasses Johannesburg and Pretoria) articulate with both broader transnational flows and investments in the local economy. Since the end of apartheid, Somalis and other migrants from the Horn of Africa have carved out an economic niche in peri-urban townships where high risk and frequent movement characterise workers’ lives. The Somali enclave in the neighbourhood of Mayfair, Johannesburg, links local and national circulations of people, goods and money to international circuits of the Somali ethnic economy—an economy that also involves non-Somali groups, mainly from Kenya and Ethiopia. These diverse dynamics of human mobility and financial circulation complicate bounded conceptualisations of transnationalism and also illustrate how tactical cosmopolitanisms may be grounded in spatial and social arrangements. The convergence of migrant mobility and financial flows produces distinctive patterns of livelihood embedded in a multi-scalar geography of movement, remittance, investment, risk and opportunity.     

The effects of multilevel governance on the rights of migrant domestic workers in Singapore

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effects of multilevel governance (MLG) on the rights of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Singapore, focusing in particular on the case of Filipino MDWs. The paper argues that in the highly centralised, authoritarian setting of Singapore, there are very few instances of MLG in the field of migrant domestic work. The Singapore state has resisted the diffusion of norms and initiatives regarding labour migration at the international and regional levels into the national level, and the dispersion of authority to non-state actors such as civil society. However, there are a limited number of cases of MLG in this area, such as unilateral initiatives of the Philippines to protect its overseas workers, and an agreement between the Philippine Embassy and an association of employment agencies in Singapore. The paper contends that while these initiatives can provide an ad hoc and limited improvement of the working conditions of Filipino MDWs, they do not contribute to improved rights of all MDWs in Singapore. Instead, they increase the inequalities between the different national groups of MDWs, and they may have the effect of perpetuating Singapore’s existing policies with regard to MDWs.     

The social quarantining of migrant labour: everyday effects of temporary foreign worker regulation in Canada

Low-wage migrant workers in wealthy nations occupy an ambiguous social and legal status that is inseparable from global economics and politics. This article adds to the growing and diverse literature on temporariness in labour and citizenship by reviewing Canada’s internationally recognised ‘model’ programme, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). Specifically, we present research on a small but rapidly growing peripheral pocket of workers in Nova Scotia, a less populated and more economically depressed province. Interview with former SAWP participants demonstrate how the uncertainty characterising the legal, immigration, and employment status of seasonal agricultural workers is socially practised and individually experienced. In particular, we show how specific elements of current migrant labour regulation have everyday effects in organising and delimiting non-work dimensions of migrant workers’ lives. In attending to the spatio-temporal dimensions of migrant workers’ lives we develop the concept social quarantining as a characteristic feature of former workers’ experiences ‘on the contract’.     

Care-full failure: how auxiliary assistance to poor Roma migrant women in Spain compounds marginalization

ABSTRACT

In Spain, the national and local authorities boast in recent years about their progressive programs for the integration of Roma migrants from Romania. Many state efforts to work with Roma on their integration are specifically directed at women. Economic integration into the waged labor market is considered a major goal as it, supposedly, leads to the empowerment of Roma migrant women while also securing decent standards of living for entire families. This article argues that integration programs adversely result in the further discrimination and exclusion of those they pretend to relief. This adverse result is produced through a two-tier intervention in the lives of Roma families. The caring state works with a general category of ‘vulnerability’ for targeting populations, in which Roma migrant women are specifically incorporated through designated social programs. The performance of Roma as the subject–object of these programs is carefully evaluated. According to these evaluations, Roma women often fail to meet the normative standards of ‘good mothers’, ‘decent wives’, and ‘diligent workers’. Subsequently, to deal with ‘failing subjects’, the disciplining state, a-la Foucault, inflicts an array of penalties on Roma women and their families: cut-offs of social benefits, evictions from poor dwellings, withdrawal of children’s custody, and forced removals to Romania. We thus argue that initiatives by the caring state (and civil society) often prescribe or go hand-in-hand with repression from the correcting state. In welfare states, social programs can thus conclusively ‘evidence’ existing stereotypes about marginalized Roma families and about women in particular.     

Emotions and cosmopolitan sociability: Barriers and opportunities for intercultural encounters amongst new Chinese migrants in New Zealand

Emotions matter, particularly in experiences of migration. This article explores how emotions are involved in everyday intercultural encounters and the role of emotions in generating cosmopolitan sociability in the context of migration. The article is based upon qualitative research with 80 Chinese 1st and 1.5 generation migrants in New Zealand. We focus on ‘contact zones’ as social spaces where migrants have uneven opportunities to encounter cultural others and where ‘emotional dissonance’ can emerge through unsuccessful intercultural exchanges. In order to generate a sense of comfort and familiarity in such conflicted spaces, migrants need to invest in ‘emotional labour’ to engage in more cosmopolitan sociability as an attempt to transform ‘contact zone’ to ‘comfort zone’. Through this article we argue that emotions can both promote and encourage, but also undermine and limit the capacity to perform cosmopolitan sociability and build intercultural relations.     

Inclusion,exclusion or indifference? Redefining migrant and refugee host state engagement options in Mediterranean ‘transit’ countries

What determines policies toward migrants and refugees in the transit-turned-host countries? Compared to the vast literature examining migration to Europe and North America, we know relatively little about why ‘newer’ host states pursue a liberal strategy with access to residency, employment and services on par with citizens, or what drives them to treat migrants and refugees with exclusion. This paper argues that there is a third choice: the idea of indifference-as-policy. Indifference refers to indirect action on the part of the host state, whereby a state defers to international organisations and civil society actors to provide basic services to migrants and refugees. The paper uses data collected over two years in Egypt, Morocco and Turkey to examine how this tripartite understanding of engagement maps onto empirical reality. Drawing on this analysis, the argument in this paper is two-fold. First, indifference is a strategic form of engagement utilised by host states, and that it creates a specific type of environment that allows for the de facto integration of migrants and refugees. Second, even when host states take steps toward a more liberal engagement strategy, examining policy outcomes, rather than outputs, demonstrates that indifference is still the dominant policy.     

Becoming cosmopolitan: encountering difference in a city of mobile labour

ABSTRACT

Many who move countries today do so for work, and labour mobility – both temporary and permanent – is the mechanism by which countless people (both movers and stayers) come into contact with cultural difference. The domain of mobile labour is thus an important context through which to consider the transformative possibilities of encounters with racial and cultural difference. Situated within debates on everyday multi-culture and vernacular cosmopolitanisms, this essay considers the question of intercultural encounter at work in relation to the layered histories of race and variegated citizenships of mobile labour in Singapore. Exploring the micro-nature of cosmopolitan practices, the paper considers under what labour conditions might an outward-looking cosmopolitan sensibility and a convivial openness to otherness emerge among migrant workers, as against a set of survival-based intercultural capacities. I reflect specifically upon two cases of ‘incongruous encounter’ in workplaces reliant on precariously employed migrant labour: a mainland Chinese man and a Filipina woman who, because of Singapore’s racialised system of work visas, find themselves working in South Asian restaurants in Singapore’s Little India. They both engage ‘cosmopolitan practices’, yet their sensibilities differ sharply. Their stories highlight how, in a place like Singapore, the ‘encounter’ needs to be understood within a regime of mobile labour, situated racial hierarchies, and a highly stratified system of work visas. I further suggest that situational factors such as the nature of work including its spatial and temporal qualities, the mixture of co-workers, and recognition relations with superiors all mattered in framing the affective atmospheres of encounter. In a context of forced encounter, I argue that learnt capacities to function and interact across difference should not necessarily be romanticised as a cosmopolitan sensibility.     

Racism and xenophobia experienced by Polish migrants in the UK before and after Brexit vote

In recent years the public discourses on Polish migration in the UK have rapidly turned hostile, especially in the context of economic crisis in 2008, and subsequently after the EU referendum in 2016. While initially Poles have been perceived as a ‘desirable’ migrant group and labelled as ‘invisible’ due to their whiteness, this perception shifted to the representation of these migrants as taking jobs from British workers, putting a strain on public services and welfare. While racist and xenophobic violence has been particularly noted following the Brexit vote, Polish migrants experienced various forms of racist abuse before that. This paper draws on narrative interviews with Polish migrant women illustrating their experiences of racism and xenophobia in Greater Manchester before and after the Brexit vote, and how they make sense of anti-Polish discourses and attitudes. This paper illustrates the importance of the interplay between the media and political discourses, class, race and the local context in shaping relations between Polish migrants and the local population.     

In and out from the European margins: reshuffling mobilities and legal statuses of Romani minorities between the Post-Yugoslav space and the European Union

ABSTRACT

This paper traces the mobilities of Romani minorities between the ‘old’ EU Member States and the non-EU Post-Yugoslav space. It unravels how the mobilities of Romani individuals, who are Non-EU Post-Yugoslav citizens, were different from the mobilities of Roma coming from other post-socialist spaces, now EU Member States. Instead of focusing on motivations for mobility of Romani individuals as some previous work has done, this paper investigates the treatment of these mobilities by different states and the legal statuses these states ascribe to those labelled as Romani migrants. By using the combination historical and socio-legal analysis, this paper diachronically examines the precarious migrant statuses of Post-Yugoslav Romani minorities in the old EU, such as Yugoslav labour migrants, Post-Yugoslav forced migrants and subsequently the ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. The paper points to the interconnectedness of these statuses, but also to their interminable liminality: they are constantly on the verge of being rendered ‘illegal’ and are hence subject to deportability. I claim that while their legal statuses are being reshuffled, their liminality and interconnectedness also contribute to circular mobilities between the Post-Yugoslav space and the EU. I investigate how these mobilities are not only socially produced, but are also legally and politically conditioned by the hierarchical relationship between the Post-Yugoslav space and the EU. As a side effect of this relationship, Roma are positioned as a racialized minority, treated only as temporary migrants in their ‘host country’ and without prospects of inclusion in their ‘country of origin’ as minority citizens.     

The Global Forum on Migration and Development as a venue of state socialisation: a stepping stone for multi-level migration governance?

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) which has become one of the major global spaces for deliberations on migration but remains informal and non-binding. Drawing from literature on norm diffusion and state socialisation, it debates the role of the GFMD as a stepping stone for a more robust, multi-level and networked global migration governance by bringing together governments, global institutions, civil society and to a lesser degree the private sector. It is argued that the GFMD has the potential to socialise states in two ways that are conducive to establishing a multi-level global migration governance: First, states are exposed to discourses on migration as a truly global issue. The second way in which the GFMD process can socialise states is in the interaction with migrant civil society, thus potentially ‘blurring’ previously distant if not openly antagonistic relations. Since most states regard migration as one of their last ‘bastions of sovereignty’, the GFMD could provide a necessary first step as a trust-building measure. Providing participatory spaces and allowing agency for migrants and their organisations is not a mere optional feature but a crucial component for a truly multi-level and thus multi-stakeholder global migration governance.     

The present of forgetting: diasporic identity and migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong

Against current privileging of diasporic identity as the (trans)migrants’ challenge to the normativity of national identity and belonging, this paper considers the case of contract migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong to explore the critical potential of diasporic identification in challenging hegemonic national discourses outside much-discussed European and American contexts. While acknowledging the transnational connections and linkages migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong maintain with their home communities, the paper argues the significance of attending to the simultaneous importance of forgetting in their own understanding and representation of their situation. In light of the common refrain of forgetting observed among these migrant women, the paper elucidates the politics of diasporic identification in their situation, especially the dependence of diasporic identification on consolidating national identity and allegiance through the mediation of gendered norms of family duties.     

Labour migrants in post-Soviet Moscow: patterns of settlement*

This article explores the impact of the social and the spatial structures of Moscow on the patterns of settlement of labour migrants. It emphasizes the ways in which the structure of post-Soviet urban environment differs from the European and U.S. one, and uses interviews with guest workers from Central Asia to map out the strategies they employ in their search for accommodation in Moscow, as well as the barriers they encounter. Special attention is paid to the role played by ethnic networks in the lives of migrant workers, and the ways in which these networks are configured by the urban space. This article demonstrates how the absence of spatial segregation in the post-Soviet city, inherited from the Soviet period, affects the trajectories of social and economic integration of migrants and explains the absence of ‘ethnic areas’ in today’s Moscow.     

On the threshold: becoming Romanian Roma,everyday racism and residency rights in transition

ABSTRACT

This article examines the reaction of welfare state actors and ‘Romanian Roma’ migrants to the political environment on migration in the UK. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork between January 2013 and March 2014, the article focuses on how processes of everyday racism infused understandings of the legal framework for European migrants’ residency rights. The article first explores how state actors developed ideas about ‘Romanian Roma families’ as opposed to ‘Romanian-not-Roma families’ in a context marked by pervasive uncertainty about legal entitlements, welfare restructuring and decreasing resources. Second, I draw on new migrants’ accounts to identify their perceptions and understandings of discrimination placed within their previous experiences of racism and state violence. The article argues that processes of racialisation are subtly enfolded into everyday life shaping the narratives through which both welfare state actors and new migrants understand their situated experiences and future plans. The article reveals the small and mundane practices that reproduce racialised hierarchies which maintain the notion of ‘Roma’ as a group with particular proclivities and the affects for their socio-legal status as European migrants in the UK.     

Impossible children: illegality and excluded belonging among children of migrants in Sabah,East Malaysia

This article makes a case for attending to the specificities of child illegality in migrant contexts. This is not simply because children have been left out of previous accounts, but also because their status as minors makes both their citizenship and their illegality different to that of adults. The analysis is based on research with children born to migrants in the state of Sabah, East Malaysia. I argue that such children are configured as Sabah’s impossible children, and that this configuration influences their experiences of illegality and exclusion in distinctive ways. From a young age, children are aware of document ‘checking’ raids and, as ‘foreigners’, are unable to attend Malaysian schools. However, informal documents from learning centres, as well as age and contingent circumstances, may give them a temporary, ‘liminal’ legality. Finally, given that irregular migrants experience both exclusion and inclusion in a host nation, the article describes children’s urban forms of belonging. These forms of inclusion demonstrate children’s engagement with Sabah as a home, as against their political construction as an impossible problem.     

Migrancy,Gender and Social Class in Domestic Labour and Social Care in Italy: An Intersectional Analysis of Demand

Since the 1980s, welfare provision in Italy has been dramatically transformed, due to demographic changes, changes in gender orders and, most importantly, the increased employment of migrants for domestic and care work. Drawing first on statistical data, I explore how the intersections of ‘migrancy’ and gender configure in the domestic-work and social-care sector in Italy. I conclude that, even though gender remains the most important stratifying factor in this field, migrancy is almost as important. I then explore the demand for domestic work and the different forms of care work through in-depth interviews with Neapolitan employers in Naples. I posit that the demand for housekeepers is a class-specific phenomenon related to a particular life-style, including the traditional gendered division of labour and a symbolic hierarchy of household tasks according to which certain jobs are deemed too ‘dirty’ for the ‘madams’, or female employers. The demand for childcarers, on the other hand, is more connected to Italian women's increasing labour participation and men's absence from caring responsibilities. However, here, too, social class is not irrelevant. It affects the demand for elderly care in a slightly different way: the availability of an inexpensive migrant labour force, combined with state subventions, has made it possible for families from lower social strata to employ home carers.     

Restricted entitlements for skilled temporary migrants: the limits of migrant consent

Temporary labour migration programmes have often attracted significant controversy, particularly with regard to provisions that restrict the social entitlements available to temporary migrant workers, compared with other categories of residents. Advocates of such restrictions have argued that migrants freely choose to participate in temporary migration schemes on the prevailing terms, and are free to leave at any time if such participation no longer serves their interests. Our central goal in this paper is to critically evaluate such consent-based justifications for restricted social entitlements of temporary migrant workers, with reference to empirical evidence concerning the practical social and economic conditions of choice experienced by these temporary migrants. Drawing on evidence from one major receiving country – Australia – we show that consent-based justifications for restricted social entitlements fail to fully account for either the practical complexity of individual migration choices, or the de facto operation of Australia’s skilled temporary migration programme as a ‘test run’ for potential future permanent residents or citizens. By bringing sociological analysis of lived migrant experiences into critical engagement with normative debates about restricted social entitlements, we contribute to the bridging of empirical and normative migration debates, which too often evolve in parallel.