The COVID-19 Pandemic and Outbreak Inequality: Mainstream Reporting of Singapore's Migrant Workers in the Margins

Satveer Kaur-Gill

doi:10.3389/fcomm.2020.00065

Abstract

Singapore saw a majority of COVID-19 infections plaguing low-skilled migrant construction workers by late April 2020. In the initial phases of the outbreak, mainstream frames were quick to highlight the gathering of low-skilled workers in open areas as sites to be surveilled, shaping the divisive practices of othering in early frames on migrant worker behaviors. These reports were manufactured as Singaporeans continued to gather in public spaces in large groups during the outbreak. Mainstream reports were quick to inform audiences of the surveillance and control for disciplining migrant workers. As the crisis developed to impact migrant workers predominantly, the erasures are recovered with mainstream press reporting worker vulnerabilities and discussing the structural implications of managing migrant labor as neoliberal subjects. The structural conditions of migrant labor were, in fact, centered in mainstream narratives, and dormitories as public health threats were extensively discussed, shedding light on discourses relating to outbreak inequality. The rights framework, however, remained largely absent in mainstream news frames about migrant workers

Highlights

The media is a crucial source of information about migrants and migration, influencing how they are portrayed and constructed
Migrant worker frames surfaced increasingly in media reporting during the COVID-19 crisis due to infections primarily afflicting the migrant construction worker (MCW) community in the months of late March, April, and May 2020
The conditions of migrant workers surfaced; the positioning of structural factors relating to migrant labor is attributable to the competing voices leveraged by the media in the championing for better treatment of MCWs discussed in Theme 3

Summary

Introduction

The media is a crucial source of information about migrants and migration, influencing how they are portrayed and constructed. Studying the mainstream media for representing or limiting the enactment of subaltern agency informs us the role of the media in shaping migrant narratives. This paper interrogates how the mainstream media shaped frames about low-wage migrant workers and the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore. In discussing the context of migrant workers and the COVID-19 infections in Singapore, Dutta (2020a) critiques the pernicious use of neoliberal techniques in the control and management of low-wage migrant workers. He argues that these techniques of labor management led to the rapid and exponential infections among this vulnerable group of workers

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