Regionalization,economic restructuring and labour migration in Singapore

This paper documents the impact of economic development on changes in employment and labour migration in Singapore.
High export-led growth and the relaxation of immigration policies in the late 1960s enabled employment of substantial numbers of unskilled foreign labour in manufacturing, construction and domestic service sectors. Unskilled foreign labour in Singapore now totals about 350,000 or 20 per cent of the labour force. It has made possible an augmentation of domestic labour supply and skills which helped Singapore to achieve higher rates of economic growth. On the negative side, the influx of foreigners has been cited as one possible cause of low productivity growth in the 1970s. In addition to the increased demand on housing, the social costs of crime and the potential economic consequence arising from strained diplomatic ties with the source countries are also areas of concern.
Economic development in the 1990s, characterized by the regionalization drive which relocates relatively resource-intensive operations of Singapore-based companies overseas, has led to increased retrenchments and a moderation of demand for foreign workers. The upgrading of remaining production operations in Singapore is expected to increase demand for workers with higher skill levels. Emigration of highly educated and skilled professionals from Singapore became a national concern in the late 1980s. However, with regionalization, the new challenge in the 1990s has become one of encouraging Singaporeans to temporarily take up overseas positions.
The future foreign labour pool in Singapore is expected to comprise a growing proportion of skilled workers to sustain the 7–8 per cent economic growth rate in the medium term. Slower economic growth in the developed economies and the internationally competitive salaries paid to professionals in Singapore are expected to continue to reduce the outflow of permanent emigrants from Singapore.     

Migrant female domestic workers: debating the economic,social and political impacts in Singapore

This article analyzes the impact of migrant female domestic workers on the socioeconomic and political context in Singapore. Although Singapore state policy opposes long-term immigration, there is a labor shortage which permits a transient work force of low-skilled foreign workers. In the late 1990s, Singapore had over 100,000 foreign maids, of whom 75% were from the Philippines, 20% were from Indonesia, and the rest were from Sri Lanka. Legislation ensures their short-term migrant status, restricts their numbers, and governs their employment. Migrant workers are also regulated through a stringent allocation system based on household income of employers and the need for caregivers for children. Work permits are conditioned on non-marriage to citizens of Singapore or pregnancy. Terms and conditions of migrant employment are not specified, which permits long hours of work and potential for inhumane treatment. Migrant women fulfill jobs not desired by natives and accept these jobs at lower wages. There is disagreement about the motivation for the maid levy and its need, fairness, and effectiveness in reducing demand for foreign maids. Most public discussion focuses on social values and morality of foreign maids. Politically, tensions arise over the legality of migration, which results from tourist worker migration to Singapore and circumvents Filipino labor controls. Most of the adjustment cases that come to the attention of OWWA are tourist workers. Policies should be gender sensitive.     

Care Diamonds and Welfare Regimes in East and South-East Asian Societies: Bridging Family and Welfare Sociology

This paper tries to bridge the micro-level analyses of social networks for "care" provision which have been conducted in the field of family sociology, and the macro-level framework on welfare mix which has been developed in the area of welfare sociology, because the options for creating social networks are given to individuals by society. A group of Asian researchers including the author have conducted comparative research on social networks for childcare and elderly care in six Asian societies, namely Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Japan. To reexamine the results, the author draws diagrams of the care diamonds in each society for each type of care (childcare or elderly care) to show the balance between four sectors (the state, market, family and relatives, and the community) which determines the pattern of welfare mix. The most prevalent pattern in Asian societies today is the pattern with a large family and relatives sector and a large market sector. We can interpret it as a familistic welfare regime combined with liberalism. However, Japan alone shows a pattern close to pure familism because the development of the market sector is restricted by immigration policies prohibiting the employment of foreign domestic workers. Unlike other Asian societies which were exposed to the global market before the family could become a closed organization and marketization of care work took place easily, in Japan, where the modern family system had been established, both socialization and marketization of care work have stagnated.     

Associations of eldercare and competing demands with health and work outcomes among manufacturing workers

Employees juggling eldercare and work report work–family conflicts and poor health-related outcomes, but little is known about eldercare demands (ECDs) in the context of competing demands in the manufacturing workforce. This study determines how ECDs vary by age, gender, income, and job category, and how ECDs and competing demands are associated with health-related and work-related outcomes, among manufacturing workers. Employees from six manufacturing companies completed questionnaires. ECDs were defined as providing assistance to an adult aged 65 and older due to disability or chronic illness; those with ECDs were asked how many care-hours per week and whether assistance included personal care. Workers over age 45 were more likely than younger workers to report ECDs. After adjusting for competing demands and socio-demographic characteristics, ECDs were associated with greater depressive symptoms and family-to-work conflict (FWC), providing 5 or more hours of eldercare weekly was associated with greater depressive symptoms, and providing personal care was associated with greater FWC.     

The Singapore state's response to migration

Migration trends in Singapore are traced since 1819. Immigration has been encouraged to advance economic development. Local and international factors fuel migration to Singapore. Singapore depends upon foreign labor. Population growth has been mainly due to migration from China, India, Malaysia, and countries surrounding Singapore. Independence in 1965 led to policies aimed at controlling high population growth. Policies became pronatalist after 1987. Foreigners in 1998 were over 18% of the total population, which was six times the number in 1970. About 2000 Singaporeans per year emigrated during the 1990s. Singapore is encouraging overseas industrial development. In 1997, the Prime Minister called for recruitment of foreign talent in order to meet the challenges of an increasingly globalized world, low fertility, and an aging society. Economic planners recommend short-term migration of unskilled foreign workers who would be a revolving pool to fill jobs natives do not want. Singapore is promoting arts and culture in order to keep people in Singapore. The government has issued assurances that natives will have first priority on jobs, education, and training. Singapore's ability to absorb workers will depend upon its economic performance.     

The Business of Caring: Women's Self‐Employment and the Marketization of Care

Our goal in this article is to contribute to a differentiated analysis of paid caring work by considering whether and how women's experiences of such work is shaped by their employment status (for example, self‐employed versus employee) and the nature of care provided (direct or indirect). Self‐employed care workers have not been widely studied compared with other types of care workers, such as employees providing domestic or childcare in private firms or private homes. Yet their experiences may be quite distinct. Existing research suggests that self‐employed workers earn less than employees and are often excluded from employment protection. Nonetheless, they often report greater autonomy and job satisfaction in their day‐to‐day work. Understanding more about the experiences of self‐employed caregivers is thus important for enriching existing theory, research and policy on the marketization of care. Addressing this gap, our article explores the working conditions, pay and levels of satisfaction of care workers who are self‐employed. We draw on interviews from a small‐scale study of Canadian women engaged in providing direct care (for example, childcare) and indirect care (for example, cleaning).     

Structural shifts in the employment of foreign workers in Austria

The full economic importance of immigration becomes clear only when one examines the concentration of immigrant workers in certain industries and occupations, and this is done in the case of Austria to show the degree of segmentation of the labor market between indigenous and foreign labor. In the course of the 1960s the employment of foreign labor gained importance in Austria. As a consequence, bilateral agreements with the major recruiting countries were made, e.g., with Spain in 1962 and 1969, with Turkey in 1964, and with Yugoslavia in 1966. The reason for the increasing demand for foreign labor was the short supply of indigenous labor due to increasing participation rates and strong economic growth. The demand-pull for foreign labor gained momentum with the onset of the economic boom in 1970, so that by the end of 1973 the number of foreign workers had doubled in comparison to 1970. The 226,800 foreign workers accounted for 8.7% of total employment. The 1974-75 recession and the weak economic development ever since resulted in a decreasing demand for labor. At the same time, the supply of indigenous labor increased as a consequence of a demographic effect and because of increasing participation rates of women. From 1981 to the present, foreign employment decreased again due to the unusually long period of economic stagnation. During 1983, 145,300 foreign workers were engaged, i.e., 5.3% of total employment. The structure for foreign employment now differs greatly from that in the 1960s. The share of women in foreign employment has increased steadily from some 20% in the early 1960s to 31% in 1973 and 40% in 1983 -- a value comparable to the Austrian female share in employment. The reduction of foreign employment since 1973 affected, above all, Yugoslav men. the share of Yugoslavs in foreign employment decreased from 196,300 or 79% in 1973 to 92,200 or 61.7% in 1983. With the duration of foreign employment rising, the disribution of foreign labor over economic branches increased. In the early 1960s the employment of foreign workers was concentrated in 3 branches -- the construction sector (32% of all foreign workers), metal industries (16%), and textile industries (10%). In 1982 only 1/3 of all foreign workers were still employed in these branches as an infiltration by foreign labor had taken place in all sectors. The services sector showed the greatest increase in foreign employment since 1975. There has never been as strong a concentration of 1 nationality in a particular economic branch as in Switzerland, Germany, or France. Case studies in Austria reveal that it was an explicit policy for firms (and also unions and entrepreneur representatives) not to depend on only 1 nationality of foreign workers. According to the case studies, about 1/3 of all foreign workers today occupy jobs which are in direct competition with indigenous labor. Another 1/3 fill jobs which are complementary to indigenous labor. For the remainder it is difficult to say to what extent they belong to one or the other segment of the labor market, because there is no information available on the occupational job structure.     

Shanghai: Front-Runner of Community-Based Eldercare in China

Facing dramatic growth in its elderly population, Shanghai, China’s economic center, has strategically exercised decentralized policy-making power to develop community-based service centers for the elderly. A growing number of elders have been using such services, particular dining services, since 2007. We discuss the evolution in community-based eldercare services in Shanghai, using dining services as an example. We also compare these service centers in Shanghai to multipurpose senior centers in the United States to offer policy recommendations for Shanghai and China’s growing eldercare industry. Tailored policy recommendations are discussed.     

Foreign Domestic Workers and Eldercare in Singapore: Who Hires Them?

In Singapore, policy makers expect families to remain actively involved in the care of their frail older relatives, as manifestly expressed in its Many Helping Hands approach to long-term care. To enable families to fulfill this expectation, the government has enacted policies that encourage the hiring of foreign domestic workers (FDWs) to complement or supplement informal caregiving efforts. Using the Andersen Behavioral Model, we were interested in identifying caregiver and care receiver characteristics that might predict the hiring of FDWs. With data from a convenience sample of 488 informal caregivers, we ran logistic regression regressing the hiring of an FDW on various predisposing, enabling, and need factors. Of interest, enabling factors such as household income, housing type, and educational level were predictive of hiring an FDW in the home. Only one need factor, time spent in caregiving, was predictive of the increased likelihood to hire an FDW. Policies that encourage the marketization of care are likely to favor those with financial means and inadvertently ignore the caregiving burdens of lower income families. In addition, we suggest research and policies to ensure the well-being and protection of FDWs who have become a key component of the long-term care policy and practice in Singapore.     

Long-Term Care Policy: Singapore’s Experience

Singapore, like many developed countries, is facing the challenge of a rapidly aging population and the increasing need to provide long-term care (LTC) services for elderly in the community. The Singapore government’s philosophy on care for the elderly is that the family should be the first line of support, and it has relied on voluntary welfare organizations (VWOs) or charities for the bulk of LTC service provision. For LTC financing, it has emphasized the principles of co-payment and targeting of state support to the low-income population through means-tested government subsidies. It has also instituted ElderShield, a national severe disability insurance scheme. This paper discusses some of the challenges facing LTC policy in Singapore, particularly the presence of perverse financial incentives for hospitalization, the pitfalls of over-reliance on VWOs, and the challenges facing informal family caregivers. It discusses the role of private LTC insurance in LTC financing, bearing in mind demand- and supply-side failures that have plagued the private LTC insurance market. It suggests the need for more standardized needs assessment and portable LTC benefits, with reference to the Japanese Long-Term Care Insurance program, and also discusses the need to provide more support to informal family caregivers.     

Granny as Nanny: Positive Outcomes for Grandparents providing Childcare for Dual-Income Families. Fact or Myth?

The proliferation of dual-income families has led to the prevalence of grandparents providing child care in Singapore. The Chinese culture and values have tasked grandparents to fill the role of providing child care while mothers seek employment. Literature on grandparents providing informal care posits this situation to be a rewarding experience and a protective factor for grandparents’ stability in old age. This study uses the Social Relational Theory framework to examine the experiences of Chinese grandparents who provide care for dual-income families in Singapore. In-depth interviews were conducted to understand the experiences of the grandparents and common themes guided by the framework. Through the exploration of the narratives of grandparents, this study sieves out the issues they face in the Singaporean context and analyzes the motivations that spur grandparents to provide care for their grandchildren. Despite informal caregiving being positively framed in many studies, this study found that grandparents also faced a variety of challenges. Chinese grandparents were bound to the caregiving roles by cultural and familial obligations despite the high costs associated with providing care.     

Economic growth and inequality in Singapore: The case for a minimum wage

In the context of Singapore's ageing population, the employment of large numbers of low‐skilled foreign workers is proving to be a major challenge to inclusive growth because of the stagnation of low‐wage workers' incomes. In order to address this problem, the author makes the case for introducing a minimum wage to complement existing in‐work benefit schemes. After addressing the commonly voiced objections to a minimum wage system, he suggests ways in which a minimum wage could be implemented in Singapore. New measures to enhance the social safety net and foster more sustainable economic growth are also proposed.     

Mobile phones,communities and social networks among foreign workers in Singapore

Transnational mobility affects both high‐status and low‐income workers, disrupting traditional assumptions of the boundedness of communities. There is a need to reconfigure our most basic theoretical and analytical constructs. In this article I engage in this task by illustrating a complex set of distinctions (as well as connections) between ‘communities’ as ideationally constituted through cultural practices and ‘social networks’ constituted through interaction and exchange. I have grounded the analysis ethnographically in the experiences of foreign workers in Singapore, focusing on domestic and construction workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh. I examine the cultural, social and communicative role that mobile phones play in the lives of workers who are otherwise constrained in terms of mobility, living patterns and activities. Mobile phones are constituted as symbol status markers in relationship to foreign workers. Local representations construct foreign workers as users and consumers of mobile telephony, reinscribing ideas of transnational identities as well as foreignness within the context of Singapore. Migrant workers demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the various telephony options available, but the desire to use phones to communicate can overwhelm their self‐control and lead to very high expenditures. The research highlights the constraints – as well as possibilities – individuals experience as subjects and agents within both social and cultural systems, and the ways in which those constraints and possibilities are mediated by a particular technology – in this case, mobile phones.     

Aging on the job

The older population is growing faster than the population as a whole. Paid work is the main mechanism for physical activity in humans. We, therefore, wanted to ascertain whether work practices (such as employment status and the types of tasks workers perform) follow the biological decline in physical activity that occurs with aging in humans and many other species. We recorded work practices in 3352 adults in the Ivory Coast to establish how work burdens are distributed across different age groups in a community that is minimally fettered by legal constraints. We found a decrease in the amount of work performed with increasing age, and we found that elderly persons performed more skilled, less exothermic tasks than younger workers. These data mirror global workforce distribution trends expressed by age. If the trend continues, a major portion of the population will be unlikely to contribute to the labor force in the near future, producing potentially adverse economic consequences in some populations. Although the problem might be averted or at least minimized by implementing different employment policies, biological factors could overlay and supervene any economic planning.     

Urban development and employment in Abidjan

The city of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast has grown physically, economically, and demographically at rates exceeding all reasonable expectation. Yet, as in many other development nations, the employment generated by Abidjan's rapid economic expansion has failed to keep pace with the increase in working population it has attracted. Consequently, economic success has been accompanied by a variety of social strains. Some of these have been discussed in earlier issues of the "International Labour Review" by Louis Roussel. This discussion expands on Roussel's earlier treatment by focusing more specifically on several facets of the urban employment problem created by the rapid growth of Abidjan. Attention is directed to labor supply and employment, factors affecting migration, foreign Africans in the Ivory Coast labor force; the urban informal sector; urban infrastructure and development; social problems of population pressure; employment policy options (current government policies and other policy options); and general issues and policy alternatives (motivations for rural urban migration, smaller urban centers as alternative growth poles, and distributing the gains from development). Several essential features of the employment problem stem from the rural urban distribution of the workforce. The rural labor force, including temporary seasonal workers from the savannah countries to the north, remains more or less in balance with increasing rural employment opportunities, since the migration of Ivory Coast nationals to the cities is balanced by the inflow of foreign workers. In contrast, the influx of migrants into urban areas has led to a more rapid increase in the urban labor force than in urban employment, with a consequent rise in unemployment. In 1970 the Abidjan rate of open unemployment was probably around 20%. At this time, most people's idea of a desirable job is one in the formal sector of the urban economy. If there is to be any hope of an eventual balance between expectations and reality, it must be realized that an increasing share of the urban labor force will have to end up in the informal sector. Different attitudes towards work in the informal sector are needed on the part of both young people entering the labor force and of government policy makers. The latter should be seeking ways to increase productivity and incomes in the informal sector rather than for ways to destroy it. Current government policies include the training and educating of nationals to replace foreign technicians and managers, increasing the attractiveness of the rural milieu by the promotion of cooperatives, attempts to reform the land tenure system, the supply of electricity to villages, and the introduction of educational television; and adapting the educational system and technical training programs to the needs of the economy.     

Maid-in-Singapore: representing and consuming foreign domestic workers in Singapore cinema

The Maid, a Singapore-made horror film featuring a foreign domestic worker as its protagonist, was released in 2005 to very favourable reviews in the local press. The critical audience generally used the film to praise the development of the local film industry while ignoring the social commentary of the foreign domestic worker experience in Singapore. This paper aims to address this lack of commentary on the issues and circumstances surrounding foreign domestic service in The Maid. Doing so reveals a multilayered representation of order in Singapore based firmly on ethnicity and class, where the images of foreign maids are dramatised, reconstructed and consumed in various discursive forms by various social agents.     

‘More like a daughter than an employee’: the kinning process between migrant care workers,elderly care receivers and their extended families

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the intersections of formal and informal care in the relationships that develop between elderly care receivers and their families and migrant domestic care workers and their families. The domestic migrant care literature has tended to focus on two main ‘hidden costs’ of this ‘care-chain’: the ‘care exploitation’ of paid carers by their employers and the ‘care drain’ impact on the family members left behind by the migrant. In this paper, we employ a care circulation framework to examine the process of becoming kin-like – or ‘kinning’, which remains relatively under-explored and warrants further research. An analysis of this process of kinning helps to highlight how the domestic space of care receiver homes are transformed – through the negotiation of relationships with migrant care workers – into transnational social fields that bring the diaspora worlds of the migrants into the everyday worlds of the locals.     

Migrant Care Workers or Migrants Working in Long-Term Care? A Review of Australian Experience

Discussion of the role of migrant care workers in long-term care (LTC) that has gained increasing attention in the United States and other developed countries in recent years is of particular relevance to Australia, where 24% of the total population is overseas-born, two-thirds of them coming from countries where English is not the primary language. Issues of interest arise regarding meeting LTC workforce demands in general and responding to the particular cultural and linguistic needs of postwar immigrants who are now reaching old age in increasing numbers. This review begins with an account of the overseas-born components of the aged care workforce and then examines this representation with reference to the four factors identified as shaping international flows of care workers in the comparative study carried out for the AARP Public Policy Institute in 2005: migration policies, LTC financing arrangements, worker recruitment and training, and credentialing. The ways in which these factors play out in Australia mean that while overseas-born workers are overrepresented in the LTC workforce, migrant care workers are not identifiable as a marginalized group experiencing disadvantage in employment conditions, nor do they offer a solution to workforce shortages. The Australian experience is different from those of other countries in many respects, but it does show that the experience of migrant care workers is not unique to LTC and points to the need to extend the search for solutions to workforce shortages and improving conditions of all care workers well beyond LTC systems to wider policy settings.     

Telemedicine,rural elderly,and policy issues

Historically, rural America has had a difficult time providing health care to its residents, particularly its frail elderly population. Rural health care is often faced with a shortage of health care specialists, facilities with inferior equipment, and insufficient resources compared to health care in more urban areas. It is anticipated that the use of telemedicine will help address many of the problems facing the delivery of health care services to rural elderly. This paper reviews some innovative projects delivering services to the elderly. Also, the paper discusses several issues that need to be addressed before telemedicine can reach its full potential in improving access to health care, including reimbursement policies, patient and provider liability and confidentiality, and the infrastructure supporting telemedicine. Although telecommunications has tremendous potential to address the care needs of frail isolated elderly, without comprehensive reimbursement policies, guidelines for ethical conduct of a teleconsultation, acceptable security measures of patient records, and adequate as well as compatible infrastructure, that potential cannot be completely realized.     

Economic,Social, and Cultural Contexts for Market and Product Diversification of the Lithuanian Tourism Sector

Lithuania has shown a 7% or greater increase in gross domestic product since joining the European Union, an increasing employment rate, and in part because of the greater incorporation of older people, especially females, a numerical increase in the employed; yet its population is declining because of both a low birth rate and migration. Both domestic and inbound tourism are rising. Yet because of the greater population in the Vilnius–Kaunas corridor, and because many people have left other counties to work there, tourist income in less developed parts of the country would help correct income disparities and foster sustainable regional development. While tourism attracts limited foreign direct investment, tourist infrastructure (boutique hotels, upgraded houses in the countryside, local restaurants, culture and language tourism) would be a good investment for smaller investors if strategically placed alongside a designated publicity campaign, in tandem with other eastern Baltic states or sponsored by EC delegations outside the EU, to attract small investors (including Lithuanians resident abroad) to the less developed regions of the country.