Migrants In Singapore Research Articles

Valuation of domestic work: Construction of stay‐at‐home motherhood among elite Chinese migrants in Singapore

AbstractThis study contributes to the literature on migration, motherhood, and work by exploring how migrant stay‐at‐home mothers view and interpret the values of the unpaid work that they are conducting. Using semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with 36 college‐educated Chinese stay‐at‐home mothers in Singapore, we demonstrate migrant mothers' agency, efforts, and strategies in valuing domestic work and their stay‐at‐home mother status. Drawing on their migration status and relatively privileged educational backgrounds, elite migrant mothers re‐imagine and construct values of stay‐at‐home motherhood by framing their role as productive workers and by linking private and public spheres. Findings demonstrate four distinctive yet related processes that shape how mothers value and validate their domestic work and current status: emphasizing the agentic nature of their work decision, framing their maternal practice as having high quality, identifying the merits of current stay‐at‐home motherhood experiences on their future career pathway, and constructing a shared value of domestic work with their spouses. In the end, this study highlights the importance of going beyond the separate‐spheres ideology in understanding how skilled migrant mothers construct the productive meaning of their stay‐at‐home motherhood.

Homeland, Host Country, and Beyond: Identity Transformation among Chinese Migrants in Singapore

Abstract This paper examines identity transformation among Chinese migrants in Singapore in the context of transnationalism and widespread use of ICT s (Information and Communication Technologies). Based on how strongly migrants identify with the homeland and the host country, the paper constructs four ideal types of identity: transnational, assimilatory, sojourning, and cosmopolitan. The study finds that the most common identity is the transnational sort, characterized by the migrant identifying strongly with both homeland and host country. Nevertheless, migrants also hold other identities including those beyond the four ideal types, demonstrating the diversity and fluidity of migrants’ identity transformation. The paper also examines the factors that affect migrants’ identity transformation.

Temporariness and Post-Migration Adaptation of Older Migrants: The Case of Chinese Grandparenting Migrants in Singapore

Post-migration adaptation has been a major theme in migration studies. Yet extant research has typically focused on immigrants who will presumably settle in the host society and overlooked temporary migrants, especially those who move in later life. While the former are expected to assimilate into the host society over time, temporary migrants spend limited and intermittent periods of time in the host society only. The normative frameworks of migrant adaptation are, therefore, inadequate for analyzing the experience of older temporary migrants. Drawing on ethnographic data collected from 41 Chinese grandparenting migrants in Singapore, this article uses temporariness as a central analytic lens to examine their post-migration adaption experience, including their attitudes toward their temporary presence in the host country, the constraints they encountered as temporary migrants, and the strategies they used to cope with such experiences. We introduce the concepts of “objective temporariness” and “subjective temporariness” to illustrate how the duration of stay allowed by the host state and migrants’ feelings toward their temporary presence, respectively, affect migrants’ intentions and ability to adapt to the new environment. Conceptualizing temporariness as a continuum, we show how diverse forms of temporariness (transient versus extended) differentially shaped the adaptation patterns of short-term stayers (staying one to three months each time) and long-term stayers (staying at least a year or more). Our findings underscore the importance of analyzing the temporal alongside the spatial when examining temporariness as a condition experienced by older temporary migrants and as a tool used by nation-states to regulate migrant populations.

Cross-sectional study of prevalence and risk factors, and a cost-effectiveness evaluation of screening and preventive treatment strategies for latent tuberculosis among migrants in Singapore

ObjectivesWHO recommends that low burden countries consider systematic screening and treatment of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in migrants from high incidence countries. We aimed to determine LTBI prevalence and risk...

The myth of migrant transience: racializing new Chinese migrants in mobile Singapore

ABSTRACT This paper highlights the politics of mobility through investigating Singaporean-Chinese imaginaries of mobility which are tied to the racialization of mainland Chinese migrants in Singapore. Host societies imbue (im)mobility with meanings; in the case of Singapore, mobility is imagined as transience and even immorality. The myth of migrants’ transience, both in time and in space, posits them as simultaneously marginal and threatening, and is pertinent in the case of Singapore where 29% of the population is recorded as transient labour. As a state whose population growth owes more to immigration than natural increase, Singapore must maintain its mobile labour to fulfill its aspirations to keep moving forward as a mobile city. Its high-wage mobile labour also provides a pool from which Singapore sources its potential citizens, to make up for low birth-rates and to maintain an ethnic Chinese dominance in the state. As such, a substantial number of migrants including the mainland Chinese have attained permanent residence or citizenship in Singapore, to the discontent of its Singaporean-Chinese majority. Imagined as embodiments of mobility and of a lesser Chineseness, Chinese migrants are racialized as more transient than other groups of migrants and made ‘stranger than other others.’

A delectable set of offerings to close off 2020

A delectable set of offerings to close off 2020

Serial migration, multiple belongings and orientations toward the future: The perspective of middle-class migrants in Singapore

The growing phenomenon of serial migrants – people who have moved at least three times and profess belongings to more than two places – challenges the dialogic relationship imagined in studies of transnationalism. This is particularly true in the case of the mobile middle class, which has attracted less attention than the multiple migrations of low-waged labour migrants and the global professional elite. Drawing on interviews with 35 Australian and Indonesian migrants in Singapore, this article proposes the idea of orientation in order to understand the serial migration biographies of middle-class migrants. Rather than focusing on the propulsion and direction of movement, the notion of orientation suspends a migrant between reflection, action and imagination as they forge provisional pathways that upend or cleave to more conventional social trajectories. Developing this concept helps us to understand how migrants with middling resources navigate post-national socio-political formations contoured by race, gender, and class.

Transnational care circulations, changing intergenerational relations and the ageing aspirations of Chinese grandparenting migrants in Singapore

Contrary to the perception that older adults are passive care dependents of their children, some Chinese older adults are becoming primary caregivers in migrant families. Using the case of Chinese older migrants who move temporarily to Singapore for grandparenting duties, this article examines the grandparenting migrants’ contributions to social reproduction through transnational care circulation and underscores how their migratory experience changes their perspectives of intergenerational familial contract. While previous studies on older migrants tend to consider the impacts of welfare support in the migrant‐receiving context, we extend that body of work by integrating analyses of the private sphere with the public sphere across the migrant‐sending and ‐receiving contexts to examine how transformations in both domains impact the grandparenting migrants’ ageing subjectivities. Our findings reveal gradual changes to the intergenerational familial contract in Chinese migrant families. The grandparenting migrants minimise their expectations of intergenerational reciprocity and instead emphasise the well‐being of the next generation and maintaining their autonomy in later life. Their aspiration for independent ageing, we argue, is made possible by the expanded state social protection in the homeland and the realisation that depending on their migrant children for old age care could be impractical and unfavourable for both generations

Arrival or Transient Spaces? Differentiated Politics of Mobilities, Socio-Technological Orderings and Migrants’ Socio-Spatial Embeddedness

<p>For the last decade there has been a lively debate on urban arrival spaces. Saunders’ (2011) widely received book <em>Arrival Cities</em> can be seen as catalyst of this debate. Taking a hitherto largely unexplored comparative approach, based on two empirical research studies on migrant workers and highly-skilled migrants in Singapore, this study debates the notion of arrival cities and spaces and argues for a differentiated perspective on the complex and interdependent processes of spatially and socially arriving. By comparing how the politics of mobilities, migration management and differential inclusion influence the migration trajectories of workers and professionals we argue that the concept of transient spaces might be a more fruitful approach for understanding the differentiated processes of arriving and (not) becoming socio-spatially embedded. In order to educe the relevance of a processual perspective, and for a systematic comparison, we apply four analytical dimensions that shed light on the process of migrating, arriving, and passing through. These four dimensions comprise (1) arriving, (2) settling, (3) mingling locally and translocally, and (4) planning ahead for future mobilities. We argue that the scholarship on politics of mobilities needs to take note of the combined effects of states’ and companies’ neoliberal politics of mobility throughout the migration process, and of the increasing relevance of socio-technological orderings, which imprint migrants’ socio-spatial embedding.</p>

Transnational ageing and “care technologies”: Chinese grandparenting migrants in Singapore and Sydney

AbstractTransnational grandparenting examines the care that grandparents provide across borders, recreating familyhood. This paper investigates how Information Communication Technologies (ICT) mediate ageing in localised and transnational contexts. We focus on grandparenting migrants from the People's Republic of China who moved temporarily to Singapore and Sydney, Australia. We introduce the concept of “care technologies” to explicate two dimensions of governmentality. The first dimension considers how governmentality underpins care relations that extend from the individual and family to wider migration, care, and welfare regimes. The second dimension considers how ICT mediates care relations that are situated in place (i.e., localised) and those that extend across borders (i.e., transnational). These two dimensions of care technologies are intertwined: while ICT is given social meaning through care relations, it is their co‐constitution—seemingly offering possibilities of/for care—that entrench the governmentality effects of regimes that position grandparenting migrants as transient older carers.

New dynamics of multinational migration: Chinese and Indian migrants in Singapore and Los Angeles

AbstractThe emerging literature on multinational migration highlights migratory journeys that involve more than one country of destination. This article focuses on the lived experiences of new Chinese and Indian migrants in Singapore and Los Angeles. We conduct a novel three‐way comparison to examine personal choices to engage in additional migration(s) and to consider the reasons behind such moves. Drawing on in‐depth interviews and analyses of policy documents, we find that new, especially skilled, migrants from China and India actively participate in multinational migration. However, variations exist between these two national origin groups and between the two global cities. Factors affecting decisions about whether and where to further migrate include immigration policy of the host country, job opportunities, homeland economic development, and migration networks. Singapore regulates migrants' long‐term settlement more tightly than does the United States; thus, migrants in the former are more likely than the latter to move onward to another country. Due to a more robust economy in the homeland, Chinese migrants are more likely to return and are thus less likely to migrate to a third country than their Indian counterparts. Job opportunities and migration networks also have strong effects on personal decisions concerning additional migration(s).

Fractured Lives, Newfound Freedoms? The Dialectics of Religious Seekership among Chinese Migrants in Singapore

ABSTRACT This article explores the negotiations involved in the process of Chinese migrants converting to Christianity in Singapore. For many Chinese people, migration involves being exposed to religion for the first time, and for some, it involves them converting to Christianity. In Singapore, the conversion of Chinese migrants to Christianity occurs in a context of “shared” Chinese ethnicity, which can provide both bridges and barriers to the formation of Chinese Christian identities and communities. This “shared” ethnicity causes many Christian groups in Singapore to target Chinese migrants in their evangelisation efforts, which can result in migrant and non-migrant Chinese communities being formed and fractured through religion. Drawing on qualitative data, we use four dialectical pairings – freedom and control, giving and receiving, questioning and authority, community and identity – to understand the negotiations and compromises involved in the conversion of Chinese migrants to Christianity. Through these understandings, we show how conversion often involves reconciling different mindsets, practices and expectations in the transition to Christianity for Chinese migrants in Singapore.

Mobile practices and the production of professionals on the move: Filipino highly skilled migrants in Singapore

Recent geographical scholarship on skilled migration has developed a strand of research on the role of mobility in the constitution and production of the highly skilled migrant. In particular, scholars have forwarded the notion of geographical mobility as a form of capital to explain career development, employability and occupational mobility among skilled migrants and international students. While recognising capital-oriented approaches, this paper shifts the focus to how mobility is appropriated into practice in producing highly skilled and professional migrants across phases of movement and settlement. Through the lens of ‘mobile practices,’ the paper suggests that skilled migrants craft themselves into mobile professionals, through embodied practices that appropriate education, credentials and cosmopolitan attitudes and lifestyles, and the enactment of international geographical mobility across phases of re-location, settlement and re-migration. Drawing from interviews with 33 Filipino highly skilled migrants in Singapore, the paper shows how their aspirations drive their use of mobile practices to fulfil three aims. First, they engage in mobile practices to fashion themselves as skilled migrants qualified for the international labor market. Second, they disengage from mobile practices during their emplacement in the host country to produce themselves as skilled professionals that can adapt and settle in the local environment. Third, mobile practices are re-activated in mapping new routes for re-migration or return, shaped by aspirations of further mobility, family considerations and the life course. Overall, mobile practices as conceptual lens foregrounds how highly skilled migrants produce themselves as mobile professionals across shifts of mobility and immobility.

Bursting the Bubble: Spatialising Safety for Privileged Migrant Women in Singapore

AbstractThis paper develops geographical work that is attentive to, and critical of, how safety is lived and narrated. In contrast to previous work on safety that focuses on fear, the paper looks at safety as something more than aspiration for women. To do so, the paper utilises the metaphor of the “expatriate bubble” to explore how safety is constructed and experienced by privileged migrants in Singapore. Utilising research from two projects, we argue that we need to think about how gender and Othering intersect to construct safety. In doing so, we explore how we can use conceptualisations of privileged migrants to research how safety can be understood and therefore practised more widely.

Return to Mecca: Balik-Islam among Filipino migrants in Singapore

Abstract The narrative of the globalization of labour and the demands of the labour market dominates most of the scholarship on Filipino migration, emphasizing their contribution to the Philippine economy via remittances even while these migrants endure difficulties working in forbidding terrain – a companion narrative of sacrifice and endurance. What remains below the surface, however, is the enchantment with the discovery of a new world-view among them. Balik-Islam, the ‘return’ to Islam, is part of the imaginary among Filipinos who have travelled, lived and worked across territories, connecting them to Mecca, both physically and spiritually. While their labour skills brought them to the Middle East and other Muslim-majority countries, their journey expanded into the discovery of meanings beyond their labour value. In this article, I regard Mecca as an imaginary among Filipino travellers who have somehow bridged the connection between their lost Islamic heritage and their labour, the latter allowing them to reclaim this heritage as authentic to their identity. In this article, I discuss the reconfiguration of Mecca as ‘home’, ‘redemption’ and ‘resurrection’ among itinerant Filipinos: first, as a salve to constant dislocations in an impersonal and aggressive global economy, second, as a source of salvation from indulgence in otherwise forbidden behaviour in foreign territories where the codes of behaviour back home have been transgressed (e.g., adultery) and third, as a spiritual resurrection in which a return to Mecca erases the past and provides a new path, a new identity and a rebirth. However, a more instrumentalist view of conversion, one that depicts conversion as part of a rational strategy to ease the tensions in intimate relations between Catholics and Muslims, also forms part of this article. In this latter dimension, Mecca is an ‘absent’ place bereft of spiritual meaning and serves to reinforce the homelessness of the migration experience.

Queer temporalities: The past, present and future of ‘gay’ migrants from India in Singapore

This article examines the temporal dimensions of migration trajectories by focusing on a small number of Indian migrants in Singapore who identify as gay. In particular it does so by examining the way ‘being gay’ factored into their decision to come to Singapore (the past), the way it plays a role in their ongoing trajectories (the present) and the way it gradually starts taking up a more prominent role in their plans for ‘the future’. Drawing upon queer migration studies as well as recent studies with a renewed focus on the temporalities of migration, this article argues that ‘queer temporalities’ need to be understood as doubly layered. On the one hand it relates to the im/possibility of a queer (migrant) future while on the other hand pointing at an issue a growing group of migrants in general are faced with: the way rights, opportunities and ‘futures’ are queered from mainstream society. While so far the attention with reference to this has mainly been focused on low skilled migrants who, as is the case also in Singapore, are often excluded from ever permanently staying on in their host nation, with the increasing fine-tuning of migration programmes, this article argues that we need to expand our attention to other groups of variously skilled migrants as well.

Pengembangan Potensi Kepariwisataan Berbasis Masyarakat di Desa Pengkol, Kabupaten Sukoharjo, Jawa Tengah

Administratively, Pengkol Village is listed in Sub-district Pengkol, Nguter District, Sukoharjo Regency, Central Java. While this village is not categorized as a poor village, income earned from wet-feld rice farming and fshing in Colo dam is not sufcient to support villagers’ daily life. It is not surprising that most of the productive age population prefer to work in factory or as labor migrants in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia. A glimpse, of natural resources, cultural heritage and everyday life shows that Desa Pengkol can be managed as a Tourism Village Attraction. Tis article delineates the way in which Pengkol village is developed, managed, and empowered by short, middle and long community service program of the Community Based Tourism. Focusing on identifcation of tourism object attraction, this preliminary -short program- makes an effort to improve, not only the economic, social, and cultural, but also the villagers day to day life welfare. Given such efforts the Pengkol villagers are expected to stay during their productive age in their village as the owner and manager of tourism village attraction business. Further, they will not work as an industry worker or labor migrants.

Prevalence of and risk factors associated with latent tuberculosis in Singapore: A cross-sectional survey

ObjectivesThis first cross-sectional survey on latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in Singapore was performed by utilizing the QuantiFERON Gold In-tube (QFT-GIT) assay to collect data on the prevalence of LTBI and to identify potential risk factors associated with LTBI. MethodsNationwide household addresses were selected randomly for enumeration, and Singaporeans or Permanent Residents aged 18–79 years were identified. One eligible member per household was selected using the Kish grid. Each participant answered a questionnaire assessing their medical history (including tuberculosis (TB)), socio-economic factors, and lifestyle factors. They also provided a blood specimen for the QFT-GIT assay. Participants with a positive QFT-GIT result were defined as having LTBI if they were asymptomatic. To identify independent risk factors, adjusted hazard ratios were obtained using the multivariable modified Breslow–Cox proportional hazards model. ResultsAn overall QFT-GIT positivity rate of 12.7% was detected amongst 1682 Singapore residents. There was a wide variation in the positivity rate according to the participants’ country of birth. Higher LTBI prevalence was also significantly associated with increasing age, lower educational and socio-economic status, and alcohol use. ConclusionsGiven the high prevalence of LTBI amongst foreign-born residents from regional countries, similar studies should be conducted amongst migrants in Singapore to improve national guidelines on screening and preventive treatment against LTBI.

Between the village and the global city: the production and decay of translocal spaces of Thai migrant workers in Singapore

This paper explores the mobilities and structural moorings of Thai labour migrants in Singapore from a translocal perspective. We argue that combining the mobilities paradigm with the concept of translocality offers a fruitful avenue of investigation not only of the production of translocal spaces, but also of their temporality and mutability. Through a multi-sited research approach we shed light on the genesis as well as the decay of translocal connections. This paper shows that translocal structures are important moorings of migration, and raises the question of what happens to translocal spaces when migration flows dissolve.

A pathway to ‘constant becoming’: time, temporalities and the construction of self among South Korean educational migrants in Singapore

ABSTRACTThis study explores the significance and complexity of time practices and experiences in understanding the emerging identities and aspirations of South Korean pre-college students and their mothers who moved to Singapore for the children’s education. I adopt the notion of chronotope, a spatial-temporal frame for a specific type of personhood, to analyze (1) the discrepant experiences of time and temporalities between Korean students and their accompanying mothers, and (2) the intersections between the Korean migrants’ subjective experiences of time and their imaginings of social positioning in transnational contexts. The Korean students’ identities were often imagined and constituted through a chronotope of ‘constant becoming’ oriented toward the future and the global, while their mothers typically conceptualized and expressed their migration experiences as a confined time of ‘intensive mothering’, reflecting a chronotope of traditional mothering that often belongs to pre-modern time and space. Thus, revealing the chronotopes of the different generations promotes understanding of their shifting identities as articulated through multiple scales of time and space, mediating between the present and the future, and the local and the global.