Singapore’s national discourse on foreign domestic workers: Exploring perceptions of the margins

Abstract

Foreign domestic workers from industrializing economies migrate to Singapore to feed its labor market, meeting the growing need for performing feminized labor. Although foreign domestic workers have been an integral part of Singaporean households since the 1970s, the presence of foreign domestic workers in contemporary public discourse remains eclipsed. However, the civil society landscape has witnessed increasing articulations and mobilization of civil society actors on the rights of foreign domestic workers, framing the problems experienced by foreign domestic workers in the language of rights. Given the role of mainstream media as a developmental structure in carrying out the information dissemination function of the state in predominantly economic terms that serve the pragmatic ideology of the state, how are foreign domestic workers constructed in mainstream media discourse? What do we learn from these constructions about the interplays of feminized labor, media discourse, civil society, and the state? The article examines the kinds of media frames present in the discussion and portrayal of foreign domestic workers using a mixed-methods approach.

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

“…While the mainstream press created dialogic moments for frames on structural remediation to emerge, unlike in previous studies (e.g., Tan, 2016;Goh et al, 2017;Ahmed et al, 2019;Kaur-Gill et al, 2019), the press also continued to center sensationalist articles that evoked streams of xenophobia. The various opposing dialectics play out in mainstream reporting.…”

“…The study located that migrants worker voices were activated in media reports to discuss their health crisis, they still remained in the peripheries of reporting. However migrant worker voices were not absent or largely erased as discussed in previous research (Kaur et al, 2016;Tan, 2016;Goh et al, 2017;Kaur-Gill et al, 2019). A rights discourse, however, remained inconsiderable in mainstream news about migrant workers and their health.…”

“…In adopting grounded theory to analyze news articles for theme development, this research was able to move beyond the already established categories on migrant worker frames (e.g., Hilsdon, 2003;Kaur et al, 2016;Kaur-Gill et al, 2019). Grounded theory analysis assisted with establishing inductive insight without pre-conception on themes and allowing for more significant discovery of how subaltern voice was erased or represented (Charmaz and Belgrave, 2007).…”

Filipino Home Care Workers: Invisible Frontline Workers in the COVID-19 Crisis in the United States

“…Various studies have demonstrated how home care workers are rarely protected by local, state, and federal legislation particularly because of the abjection of care work and care workers ( Kaur-Gill et al, 2019 ; Müller, 2019 ; Riley et al, 2016 ). For instance, Singapore has used the othering of care workers’ bodies as a way to respond to its crisis of care through discourses of gender and nationality.…”

Social support and coping among female foreign domestic helpers experiencing abuse and exploitation in Hong Kong

“…However, the trade-off of pursuing financial benefits is the risk of losing social and ethnic status in the host society (Chiu and Asian Migrant Centre, 2005). Domestic work has long been criticized for producing subalternity of the workers by the intersection of gender ideology, class ideology, and a "culture of servitude" (Qayum and Ray, 2003, p. 527;Kaur-Gill et al, 2021). The unbalanced power structure inherent in the work environments render FDHs vulnerable to exploitation and abuse that could have adverse impacts on their health (Yeoh and Huang, 2010;Parreñas et al, 2021).…”