COVID19 and low-wage migrant worker rights in Singapore

Image courtesy Julio Etchart as part of CARE's "Migrant Worker Rights" campaign
(with Thanks to Monishankar Prasad, Julio Etchart and Abdul Rahman)

Epidemics render visible the grossest forms of inequalities that constitute and reflect the societies we live in.

In Singapore, the record number of single-day cases, with the largest concentrations in dorms housing low-wage migrant workers, makes visible the political, economic and social organizing  that render legitimate these inequalities.

The plight of low-wage migrant workers, often tucked away by carefully crafted public relations narratives mainfests the deep inequalities that constitute Singapore. The poor working conditions, eevryday racisms, workplace abuse, and poor living conditions experienced by migrant construction workers in Singapore is juxtaposed in the backdrop of their labour that forms the foundation of Singapore's "smart" urban infrastructure. The techno-seductive appeal of a sustainable utopian Singapore, laced with environmentally-conditioned domes and stratosphere-reaching trees sits on the erased stories of poor worker rights, worker abuse, and worker exploitation.

Low-wage migrant workers in Singapore struggle with securing some of the most fundamental resources of life and livelihood.

Erasure of migrant worker voices

In my decade-long work with low-wage migrant workers, and in the ongoing work of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), what is most revealing is the systematic erasure of migrant worker voices, which I will argue, is integral to the perpetuation of the poor working and living conditions migrant workers negotiate in Singapore.

The workplace exploitation of low-wage migrant workers in Singapore is fundamentally perpetuated by a repressive policy that prevents workplace organizing and collectivization, and violently attacks any form of worker-driven organizing. This policy environment that silences even a hint of migrant worker collectivization lies at the heart of the erasure of migrant worker voice.

The city state has put into place an array of authoritarian policies that surveil and discipline migrant worker bodies. Walk into Little India where migrant workers congregate on Sundays, and you will be greeted with glaring lights and police presence. That migrant worker bodies need to be policed, mapped, and controlled is a basic element of Singapore's governing ideology.

Limits of civil society in authoritarianism

In this backdrop of the techniques of surveilling and disciplining low-wage migrant workers, a handful of civil society organizations carry out the work of placing migrant worker rights on the policy agenda, mediating migrant worker-related issues by placing them on discursive spaces and simultaneously negotiating these issues mostly through closed-door meetings with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).

After the crackdown on Catholic groups serving migrant workers in 1987 under the chador of Marxist Conspiracy, the spaces for articulation of migrant issues are carefully negotiated. The ongoing struggles of civil society have forged the grounds for negotiating policy changes. The growth of digital platforms has certainly opened up the spaces for articulating the challenges and issues experienced by low-wage migrant workers in Singapore.

Yet, the absence of infrastructures for collectivization and migrant worker voice translates into a political economy of mediation. Mediation appeals to a politics of altruism, speaking to the kindness of those in privilege to "speak for" the margins. With issues related to migrant work, the politics of mediation keeps intact the status quo, while denying migrant construction workers their fundamental right to voice.

"Our food rights" campaign

In 2015, based on decisions made by an advisory group of migrant construction workers and a research design that was shaped by the insights developed by them drawing on their everyday lived experiences, CARE collaborated with the civil society organization Health Serve in producing a white paper, doing a press conference, and launching a campaign designed by migrant construction workers "Respect our Food Rights."

The earlier efforts at co-creating the research project with an advisory group of migrant construction workers had halted because after the advisory group highlighted the challenges with food, the partnering civil society organization didn't feel quality of food was an important issue. In a meeting of the academic team with the civil society organization, the members of the board articulated that there were other issues such as wage-related disputes that were more important. One of the board members, a white woman, even articulated, the migrant workers often don't really know what is best for them, or the best way to advocate for issues. Our team responded to the interaction with the note that co-creating the communicative infrastructure meant that the decision of the advisory group on highlighting the problems with food needed to be respected.

Losing the civil society partner meant that the advisory group meetings had to continue for a while without a civil society infrastructure. With the support of HealthServe on board at a later point, additional advisory groups were created, shaping further the research design and the ongoing analysis of the emergent findings. The advisory group met regularly with our research team to make sense of the findings, to prioritize key problems and to develop solutions based on them. This process of creating a voice infrastructure shaped the campaign, with advisory group members identifying solutions and developing strategies for the solutions to be implemented.

In workshops, advisory group members developed creative storyboards, voted on them, and worked on them collaboratively to develop the framework of the campaign. They picked the media strategy, including the communication channels and message forms. The work of our production team translated into following the scripts and tactics developed by the advisory group, going through an iterative process, with the advisory group voting on the decisions made at each level. The campaign thus developed was created by the advisory group and was anchored in their lived experiences.

Solutions for infrastructure

The key solution proposed by the advisory group of workers was one that enabled them basic decent living conditions, where they would have the freedom to cook their own food. Anticipating the often-used argument that the catered food is cheaper, the advisory group collectivized, putting up a cooking show. They procured the materials, and performed the preparation of culturally meaningful food. They demonstrated that preparing the food themselves was key to having culturally-centered, quality food.




They wanted to have a say in how their living facilities were designed, noting that every living facility should have enough space and the infrastructure for migrant workers to cook their own food. The design of spaces of living anchored in the everyday needs of migrant workers was the first step toward addressing their health and wellbeing.

The research documented in the white paper generated media coverage, accompanied by conversations on social media platforms. The advertising on televisions and placed on public transport placed the issue of food insecurity among migrant construction workers in the discursive space. A number of social enterprises emerged amidst this media coverage, seeking to address the food needs of migrant workers.

As the campaign released, many of our advisory group members felt that placing the media messages in public conversations would create the openings for change. They were hopeful that the public sentiments aroused by the campaign would bring about change.

Our advisory group felt excited in seeing their faces on campaign collaterals. They felt even more excited about the imaginations they have seeded.

COVID19: What could be foreseen

Five years have passed since the "Respect our food rights" campaign. Not much has changed in these five years. COVID19 makes visible the ongoing challenges of living and livelihood experienced by migrant workers in Singapore. The struggles with food and adequate shelter are ongoing. The standards remain poor, with the lack of accountability to migrant workers. That a pandemic would disproportionately attack the low-wage migrant workers, often packed 20 in a room, shipped 20 on the back of a lorry, would certainly have been "foreseen" by Singapore's "smart urban governance" if it chose to see it.

I am hopeful that the next round of OpEds and social media posts (including this one) will create enough public outrage to initiate changes. Yet, immediate outrage is mostly limited in creating, manifesting and sustaining long term change. Sure some immediate public relations gimmicks, rife with Photo Ops, but little in terms of actual structural transformations.

Migrant worker organizing: Transformative futures

Long term commitments are integral to keeping the pressures up and to keep drawing attention to the lived experiences of migrant workers. And migrant workers themselves are best suited to do this, to be their best advocates.

Now is the time to ask our policy makers the question: Why don't low-wage migrant workers have rights? Why aren't low-wage migrant workers allowed to collectivize? Why aren't low-wage migrant workers allowed to protest unacceptable workplace and living conditions?

This space for advocacy by migrant workers for migrant workers can only happen when there are communicative infrastructures for migrant workers to advocate for their needs and offer the solutions that they most need. While specific issue advocacy by civil society is a good  short-term bandaid, the transformation of deplorable workplace conditions for low-wage migrant workers can only happen through the legalization of frameworks for them to collectivize.

Communicative equality that respects and recognizes the dignity of migrant workers as human beings with voice is the basis for securing their health and wellbeing. The erasure of communicative infrastructures perpetuates a climate of fear and silence. Even as I talk to many of our advisory group members, they express a perpetual sense of fear. This sense of fear is manifest in anxieties that they would be deported or placed in trouble if they complain too much. The vast inequality of power ensures that the oppressive conditions at workplace and of living arrangements are kept intact.

COVID-19 makes visible the urgency for building these communicative spaces. COVID19 is an opening for transformative imaginaries, for recognizing that more of the same-old will not change these deep inequalities we live amidst.

If COVID-19 teaches us an urgent lesson, it is this. Those at the margins of our societies must have the fundamental rights to organize to challenge the deeply neoliberal structures that are the breeding grounds of pandemics. Migrant workers in Singapore, like workers in precarious positions elsewhere across the globe, ought to be the driving forces for advocacy. We must work everyday to make spaces for migrant workers to advocate for their own challenges, putting forth solutions they envision. Our advocacy must begin and end with fostering infrastructures for workers to voice their rights. It is in these imaginations seeded by migrant workers that transformative openings for decent work, decent housing, decent food, and wellbeing will be fostered. It is in workplace democracies that we have the resources needed to fight pandemics and the inequalities that catalyze their spread.

It is only by seeing this as an issue of worker rights, not one of kindness or altruism, do we start building transformative spaces.