Precarity and Agency within Relationships in the South Asian Foreign Domestic Worker Community

By Keerthi Ganesh, Loo Min Shuen, Samihah Niquat Safeel, and Samira Hassan

Tags: Migration

Low-wage migrant workers continue to be an area of interest studied by scholars from multiple perspectives, including the economic, social, political, and health considerations. A vast array of literature highlights the various perspectives on how low-wage migrant workers may be subject to labor precarity, migration im(mobilities), and health vulnerabilities. In this study, Keerthi, Min Shuen, Samihah, and Samira added to the literature on low-wage migrant workers in Singapore by interrogating whose voices are rendered in the margins of the margin. They asked which foreign domestic worker community in Singapore remains absent from the dominant and mainstream discourses.

While a majority of studies on domestic workers in Singapore look at the larger populations of migrant workers such as Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers, this group’s study sought to explore narratives of migration among lesser-known South Asian domestic workers (both descent or place of origin) in Singapore. They conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with n=15 domestic workers that either originate from South Asia or are of South Asian descent and discovered their insights on migration mobility and domestic work. Their report highlights the migration journeys of South Asian workers that pose different challenges and vulnerabilities faced. This piece provides an insightful, in-depth analysis of the storied perspectives of migration that remains limited in the literature.