Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore: A Neglected Social Issue?

Abstract

Foreign domestic workers are a conspicuous presence in Singapore. A stroll through any residential neighbourhood any day of the week will reveal these women accompanying their young charges to childcare or school, taking a slow stroll with an elderly charge for the latter’s daily exercise, hanging out the laundry, washing their employers’ cars, shopping for groceries, or in small groups chatting as they walk their employers’ dogs. On Sundays, they become even more visible in public parks, shopping malls, places of worship, training centres and other public areas as they enjoy a day off. Indeed, foreign domestic workers, or “maids” as they are widely referred to in Singapore, are now a crucial part of Singapore’s care and housekeeping landscape, enabling scores of Singaporean women (and, more indirectly, men as well) to go out to work each day or simply enjoy more quality time. Ironically, while visible in this physical sense, too often, the contributions and plight of foreign domestic workers in Singapore — as in many other major cities around the world — are often overlooked. Not surprisingly, foreign domestic workers have been paradoxically described as the “invisible backbone” of many metropolitan economies in which they are found (Sternberg, 2014). The story of modern Singapore’s economic success will not be complete if we focus solely on the contributions by Singapore citizens. In this chapter, we widen the lens of nation building to include the role played by migrant women who work in many Singapore homes to fill the care vacuum created when citizens are unwilling or unable to take on this work. Comprising mainly nationals from less developed economies in Southeast Asia, these women migrate across borders to take up what is generally regarded as undesirable and low-level service work. Following Said (1978), scholars (e.g., Aguilar, 1999; Hogan, 2009; van der Veer, 1995) have argued that the presence of migrants provides a useful reflexive and refractory lens, a “mirror