Geographies of Transnational Domesticity: Migration Risks, Intersectional Disadvantage, and Mitigation Strategies by Foreign Domestic Workers from Myanmar

Abstract

Low-paid domestic work abroad is particularly devalued in Myanmar’s traditional culture but an increasing number of women from Myanmar are taking up such work. Negative perceptions of domestic worker migration in Myanmar—rationalizing as well as reinforced by a government ban on women’s migration as domestic labor (from 2014–2019)—entrenches gender inequalities in the country and individualizes the risks that women encounter during migration. The stigma attached to paid domestic work is extended to a transnational context during migration to Singapore. This article contributes geographical perspectives to the literature on migration risk by highlighting the scalar and transnational dimensions of risk, as well as the entanglement of the public and private spheres. The article also proposes the concept of “multiple intersectional domains” to capture how intersectional identities crosscut with particular social locations to produce cumulative disadvantage during migration. The Myanmar government’s lack of recognition and protection for migrant domestic workers, alongside the “hidden” geographies of domestic work in Singapore, result in structural conditions that entrench risks across multiple intersectional domains thereby enacting slow violence on such migrants. The article draws on qualitative multisited field work conducted in Myanmar and Singapore between 2018 and 2019.

缅甸的传统文化特别蔑视低薪海外家政工作。但是，越来越多的缅甸女性从事这项工作。缅甸对家政雇工移民的负面看法，以及家政雇工女性移民的政府禁令（2014年至2019年）对这种看法的合理化和强化，都加剧了缅甸的性别不平等，也使女性移民风险变得个性化。在移民新加坡期间，带薪家政工作的耻辱延伸到跨国背景。本文强调风险的强度和跨国性以及公共和个人的纠结，提供了移民风险研究的地理视角。本文还提出“多交叉领域”的概念，能捕捉交叉身份如何与特定社会位置相互作用，从而在移民过程中产生累积弱势。缅甸政府对家政移民雇工缺乏认识和保护，加上新加坡家政雇工在地理位置上的“隐蔽”，产生了强化多交叉领域的风险和慢性移民暴力的结构性条件。本文基于2018年至2019年对缅甸和新加坡多地的定性考察。

El trabajo doméstico mal remunerado en el extranjero está particularmente devaluado en la cultura tradicional de Myanmar; no obstante, un creciente número de mujeres de ese país están optando por desempeñar tal oficio. Las percepciones negativas de la migración de trabajadoras domésticas en Myanmar –que se racionalizan lo mismo que se refuerzan por la prohibición del gobierno de la migración de las mujeres como empleadas domésticas (desde 2014 a 2019)– agudizan las desigualdades de género en el país e individualizan los riesgos que las mujeres encuentran durante las migraciones. El estigma asociado con el trabajo doméstico remunerado se extiende a un contexto transnacional durante la migración a Singapur. El artículo contribuye una visión geográfica a la literatura sobre el riesgo migratorio, destacando las dimensiones escalares y transnacionales del riesgo, lo mismo que su vinculación con el entrelazamiento de las esferas públicas y privadas. Se propone también en el artículo el concepto de “dominios interseccionales múltiples” para tratar de entender cómo las identidades interseccionales se entrecruzan con particulares locaciones sociales para producir una desventaja acumulativa durante la migración. La falta de reconocimiento y protección de las trabajadoras domésticas migrantes por el gobierno de Myanmar, junto con las geografías “escondidas” del trabajo doméstico en Singapur, resultan en condiciones estructurales que fortalecen el riesgo en múltiples dominios interseccionales, como resultado de lo cual se desata una violencia lenta sobre tales migrantes. El artículo se basa en trabajo de campo cualitativo multisituado, llevado a cabo en Myanmar y Singapur entre 20018 y 2019.

Key Words:

• intersectionality
• migration risk
• Myanmar
• Singapore
• slow violence

关键词:

• 交叉性
• 移民风险
• 缅甸
• 新加坡
• 慢性暴力

Palabras clave:

• interseccionalidad
• Myanmar
• riesgo migratorio
• Singapur
• violencia lenta

Labor migration is often regarded as a strategy to make ends meet and to diversify household income sources. Myanmarese domestic workers have embarked on risky migration journeys to Singapore despite a ban by the Myanmar government restricting domestic worker migration from 2014 to 2019.¹ During this period, domestic workers departed from Myanmar as irregular migrants but on arrival in Singapore, through the tactics of migration brokers in both countries, they would qualify for low-skilled work permits and become documented migrants.² Across the different stages of migration and work, they encounter multiple risks. The migration literature has examined how migrants experience risk in the context of labor, marriage, and forced and irregular migrations (e.g., Kindler 2008; Williams and Baláž 2012; Mandić and Simpson 2017; Bemmel 2020; Parreñas et al. 2021). Geographers have contributed to analyses of risks by highlighting the sociospatial construction, anticipatory politics, and moralizing dimensions of risks (Anderson 2010; Yeoh et al. 2017; Lin and Yeoh 2021). This article extends geographical perspectives on migration risk by bringing in intersectional analyses of how migrant domestic workers experience risk spatially.

First, we ask what risks are Myanmarese domestic workers exposed to when they undertake migration? Second, how do their identities (e.g., gender and nationality) intersect with their social locations (e.g., category of work and legal status) in multiple and connected ways to compound the risks they bear? Third, how do they mitigate such risks? Our work elicits the geographical dimensions of migration risk, namely the scalar and transnational contexts in which domestic worker migration unfolds, as well as the entanglement of the public and private spheres (and their corollary spaces) in which such workers are embedded. We further demonstrate how “multiple intersectional domains”—referring to how intersectional identities crosscut with particular social locations—can contribute to cumulative disadvantage during migration. Thereafter we consider the strategies the domestic workers use to mitigate risks, emphasizing, however, that individualized efforts do not adequately address the structural conditions that create risks during domestic worker migration. A lack of recognition and protection for domestic worker migration in Myanmar, coupled with the “hidden” geographies of domestic work in Singapore, produce structural risks across multiple intersectional domains that become individualized and enact slow violence (Parreñas et al. 2021) on such migrants.

Risk and Intersectionality: Domestic Worker Migration from Myanmar to Singapore

The concept of risk has been widely discussed in the social sciences (Giddens 1990; Beck 1992; Douglas 1992; Anderson 2010). Sociologists, anthropologists, and geographers approach risk as a social construct that is “constantly negotiated and interpreted within particular social contexts and cultural histories” (Yeoh et al. 2017, 643). Risk, as Renn and Klinke (2013) observed, is characterized by complexity, uncertainty, and sociopolitical ambiguity. Within migration studies, scholars have studied how risk is manifested and managed during marriage migration (e.g., Yeoh et al. 2017), forced migration (e.g., Mandić and Simpson 2017), human trafficking (e.g., Busza et al. 2017), irregular migration (e.g., Bemmel 2020) and labor migration (e.g., Parreñas et al. 2021). These studies highlight that the conditions that produce risk often originate in the migrant-sending country and extend into the postarrival context of the migrant-receiving country, thus interfacing to exacerbate the risks borne by migrants in a transnational setting (i.e., spanning national spaces). For example, irregular migrants risk arrest in either country and many endure poor working and living conditions abroad to repay debt back home. For migration researchers, risk has been a topic of considerable interest because “risk shapes, and is shaped by, migration” (Williams and Baláž 2012, 167). Although migration itself is geographically constituted, there remains limited understanding of the geographical dimensions of migration risk (for exceptions, see Anderson 2010; Yeoh et al. 2017; Lin and Yeoh 2021), a gap that this article addresses.

In the context of migration, intersectionality³ is analytically important as it sheds light on the multiple and connected reasons why migrants embark on risky journeys and how they manage risks. With regard to domestic work, Blunt (1999, 431) argued in research on colonial India that gendered expectations of who should run the household and how it should be done meant that British women who managed households were pressured to assert authority over their domestic servants. Domestic inequalities between the British mistress and domestic servants were constructed as allegedly “unbridgeable racial differences in physical and behavioural terms” (Blunt 1999, 430). These observations continue to resonate in contemporary domestic worker migration, albeit existing on a “spectrum of unfreedom that not only encompasses a range of forms and relations of commodification, but a variety of individual work relations that are not static across time or in place” (Fudge and Strauss 2017, 528). Put differently, the spectrum of unfreedom is constituted through the multiple and intersecting domains (McDowell 2008) in which domestic workers experience “cumulative disadvantage” (De Silva 2020). Studying lived experiences of intersectionality (Valentine 2007) reveals the interwoven dimensions of these domains; for example, social relations in the private sphere (e.g., gendered identities and hierarchies of domestic work in home spaces) are entangled with the public sphere (e.g., male vs. female migrants; citizens vs. foreigners; separation of domestic work from public space; see Grosfoguel, Oso, and Christou 2015). An intersectional approach also recognizes the entwined nature of identities and the hierarchical structures relating to different identities in society within both translocal and transnational contexts (Floya 2012). As Choo and Ferree (2010) emphasized, a “complex intersectional approach” that examines “multilevel systems and situates them in local relations of power” can “expose the processes that both create and transform inequalities over time” (145).

This article seeks to fill two gaps in knowledge. First, it elicits three geographical dimensions of risk observable through domestic worker migration: the scalar, the transnational, and the entanglement of the private and public spheres. Second, the article proposes and develops the concept of “multiple intersectional domains,” which captures the cross-cutting links between intersectional identities and the various social locations in which migrants are situated. Hereafter, we provide an overview of the study context and methods informing this article. Next, we discuss how the scalar and transnational contexts of Myanmarese domestic worker migration produce risks geographically. We then focus on the multiple intersectional domains of social life and how these intensify inequality and oppression, producing cumulative disadvantage. This analysis illuminates the third geographical dimension of risk, namely how private and public spheres are entangled. Domestic work takes place in the private sphere of home spaces, but it is precisely the separation of domestic work from public space and the public sphere that creates the possibility of exploitation. We then consider how domestic workers mitigate risks, albeit highlighting the way that structural biases (discussed in the earlier sections) can limit the efficacy of individual efforts. We conclude by recapping the article’s contributions to geographical knowledge on risk and intersectionality.

Study Context and Methodology

Demand for care work in Singapore is met through the migration of foreign domestic workers⁴ (FDWs) from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Myanmar. There were 255,800 such domestic workers in Singapore as of June 2019 (Singapore Department of Statistics 2019, vi), translating into about one in every five households. The Singapore government relies on the rules and regulations of a work permit system to manage Singapore’s low-wage migrant workers. The immediate responsibility of regulating domestic workers’ behavior, however, is outsourced to employers and employment agents who will face penalties if their workers contravene the work permit regulations (Ministry of Manpower, Singapore [MOM] 2010, 2021). As a result, there are gaps over how domestic work in the private sphere is actually regulated in the public sphere.

In Myanmar, information on domestic worker migration is extremely fragmented given the illegality associated with the ban on domestic work abroad, the multiple stakeholders operating illicitly, as well as weak laws, ambiguous policies, and poor enforcement (United Nations [UN] Women 2017; Deshingkar 2021). The Myanmar government’s plans to officially promote the regular migration of Myanmarese domestic workers started in 2013, initially by sending such workers to Hong Kong and Singapore (Chit 2014). News about the mistreatment of Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong made headlines, however, and the Myanmar government curbed domestic worker migration. During the ban from September 2014 to April 2018, there were no official statistics on the number of Myanmar women working abroad. More recently, Myanmar’s national newspaper, Myanmar Time, reported that there were approximately 50,000 Myanmarese domestic workers work in Singapore (Htwe 2019).

Gaps in migration and labor laws in Singapore thus intersect with the origin context of Myanmar to entrench the vulnerability of migrant domestic workers. To understand the transnational context of such migration, we carried out multisited field work in both countries, with four rounds of data collections from 2018 to 2019. We started our field work in Yangon because Myanmarese female migrants in Singapore are mainly from the Yangon region (14,921; International Organisation for Migration 2016, 17). It is also the main hub where prospective domestic workers would meet brokers, receive training, and be deployed abroad. We conducted interviews with Myanmarese domestic workers in Singapore (n = 14) and with returnee domestic workers (n = 14). We also interviewed licensed agents and trainers in Singapore (n = 7), as well as licensed agents, trainers, nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers, and informal brokers in Myanmar (n = 14). We recruited them through personal contacts and the recommendations of earlier interviewed domestic workers. All names in this article are pseudonyms. As the interviewees or translators use English as a second language or use pidgin English, the interview excerpts have been edited lightly for grammar.

Scalar and Transnational Dimensions of Risk

Scholars have pointed out that prospective migrants might be informed of risks but they still undertake those risks to migrate (Kindler 2008, 3; Williams and Baláž 2012, 167). Risks associated with migration can emerge across different stages of migration and scales. Our discussion illustrates how such risks are extended to a transnational context (i.e., embedded and yet spanning national boundaries) when gaps in migration protection in the migrant-sending country (Myanmar) interface with gaps in labor protection in the migrant-receiving country (Singapore).

At the individual level, Myanmarese domestic workers absorb risks by incurring debt to migrate to Singapore.⁵ Some domestic workers migrate under Singapore’s Advance Placement Scheme (APS), which allows them to arrive without a confirmed employer, but they have to find an employer within thirty days or leave the country (MOM2020). This scheme enables employment agencies to deploy domestic workers (specifically for elder care) quickly to meet the needs of potential employers at short notice. Domestic workers using the APS, however, bear considerable risk by departing in debt without a confirmed employment contract. Domestic workers start debt repayment once they begin work in Singapore, paying between five and nine months of their salaries to employment agencies. They start saving money and sending remittances only after repaying the loan. If domestic workers change employers, they could be charged for additional placement fees. Our research also found out that during the ban in Myanmar, informal brokers would fabricate the worker’s personal details in passports or educational certificates. The informal brokers also train domestic workers to lie to immigration officers and bribe “airport runners” to facilitate their migration journeys. Recounting her experience, Kyi Kyi Win (current FDW, thirty-three years old) said, “Someone introduced [the runner to] me, we paid some money to go in [and] they [the immigration officers] did not ask any other questions.” Nonetheless, domestic workers risk arrest for using fraudulent documents and transgressing the Myanmar government’s ban. Clearly, the advice and actions of migration brokers can exacerbate the vulnerability of migrant workers (Silvey 2004; Lindquist 2018).

At the household level, domestic workers work long hours and are confined to their employers’ homes, sometimes without days off (depending on private arrangements with the employer). Both their labor and potentially exploitative working conditions thus become “hidden” from public eyes. The Employment of Foreign Manpower Act in Singapore does not regulate their working hours (Singapore Statutes Online 2021). Reuben, a trainer in Singapore, said,

The agent can tell employers, “[if] you don’t want to give off days, pay her money because she wants the money.” … You can hear those sorts of stories. [Domestic workers] wake up at 5 a.m. and can only take a rest at 12 midnight.

Isolation in the employer’s home, with limited access to communication devices, exposes domestic workers to risks such as overwork, privacy invasion, physical or verbal abuse, and even rape. They could be subject to unfair treatment such as passport retentions; being assigned work outside of their contracts; delay or retention of their wages; and safety risks, such as falling from high-rise flats when they clean exterior windows or hang laundry. Cho Cho (current FDW, twenty-four years old) described how her employer disregarded her safety while she was cleaning the windows of a high-rise flat:

They stayed at [the] thirteenth floor [and I] need to use the ladder [to clean] outside. … They gave me … a stick [for cleaning] … [I was] very scared.

Scenarios such as the one described by Cho Cho persist despite the Ministry of Manpower’s advisory urging employers to ensure the safety of their domestic workers (MOM n.d.).

National-level policies on migration in Myanmar and Singapore also put domestic workers at risk. The Myanmar government’s ban drove prospective domestic workers to seek risky, irregular migration routes. State policies that “construct women as particularly ‘at risk’” and thus in need of protection can have the opposite effect of “creating the conditions that make them vulnerable to being with” (Platt 2018, 100). The risks originating from the migrant-sending country are extended to a transnational context when there are gaps in labor protection in the migrant-receiving country, too. Neither Myanmar nor Singapore is signatory to international conventions that protect domestic workers (i.e., International Labour Organization 2011; see UN Women 2017 for fuller discussion). Although Yeoh, Goh, and Wee (2020) highlighted that criminal law in Singapore has been expanded to directly address the wrongdoings of errant employers, such cases represent the most extreme forms of abuse (e.g., starvation and malnutrition or physical cruelty). In their everyday lives, domestic workers still experience gaps in legal protection. Nwe Nwe Win (current FDW, twenty-nine years old) highlighted that if the employer expects it, “We must work twenty-four hours. Because it is their country’s [Singapore] rules, we cannot change them.” This response signals the powerlessness of domestic workers because of structural biases in regulations over domestic work in the migrant-receiving country.

Our findings demonstrated how focusing on the geographical dimensions of scale and the transnational contexts of domestic worker migration can expose the multiple risks that such migrants encounter during different stages of their migration. The ban in Myanmar compels them to undertake risky migration journeys, such as by obtaining fraudulent documentation, which in turn compounds the risks to which they are exposed on arrival in Singapore. The risks they encounter are accentuated by the multiple intersectional domains through which they experience cumulative disadvantage, which we examine next. This discussion also illuminates the third geographical dimension of risk, namely how domestic workers are caught in the entanglement of the private and public spheres.

Multiple Intersectional Domains and Their Effects on Compounding Risks

Paying attention to the multiple intersectional domains of social life—referring to how identities and social locations intersect in multifarious ways—can illuminate the way intersectional inequalities, cumulative disadvantage, and risks are produced (Choo and Ferree 2010; De Silva 2020). Although the Myanmar government’s ban is allegedly to protect women (i.e., gender-based reason), it is culpable of inflicting state violence by creating unequal access to resources for migration. For example, male construction workers and nurses with qualifications can migrate through legal channels managed by formally recognized brokers in Myanmar. Migrant domestic workers are not given the same recognition and are thus pushed into the informal sector and irregular migration (UN Women 2017). Their gender and occupation type disadvantage them at the start.

The nationality backgrounds of the Myanmarese domestic workers add a cumulative layer of disadvantage. Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower does not stipulate a minimum salary for domestic workers; rather, the minimum monthly wage is set by the source country. The Philippines and Indonesian governments require their workers in Singapore to be paid at least S$570 (U.S.$425) and S$550 (U.S.$410) monthly, respectively, a rate much higher than the minimum rate of S$450 (U.S.$335) set by the Myanmar government (Mahmud 2019; also see Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics [HOME] 2019, 30). The lower wages earned by Myanmarese domestic workers reflect Singaporean employers’ perception that they have weaker English language skills and are less well-trained. The Singaporean government does not mandate a minimum wage. Both states’ “lack of policy” (Silvey 2004, 249) in their respective public spheres contributes inadvertently to the exploitation of migrant domestic workers in the “hidden” private sphere (i.e., the home spaces where they work).

This structural bias in the entangled public and private spheres further limit any help that Myanmarese domestic workers might receive from other stakeholders. Daniel, a trainer at an agency in Singapore, explained:

The level of protection that we [the agency] can give to the girl [FDW] is actually very low [because] before the ban was lifted, the Myanmar embassy here in Singapore—even though they may have the heart to help the girl who are in trouble, they have little levers to pull. In the sense that the [Myanmar] government doesn’t allow [them to migrate], doesn’t recognize them as workers.

As indicated in this excerpt, Myanmarese domestic workers face greater precarity because of the ban, which renders them irregular migrants in the eye of Myanmarese government officials. Although using false documentation to migrate is common in Myanmar, using false documentation in Singapore can create challenges for domestic workers to seek legal redress if they encounter problems at work. Well-meaning trainers and embassy staff find their hands tied because Myanmar’s refusal to recognize their domestic workers abroad, coupled with regulatory loopholes over domestic work in Singapore, means that any assistance rendered is considered individualized and ad-hoc.

Daniel further observed another problem arising from gaps in training arising from the weak regulatory ecosystem in Myanmar:

[T]he girls [from Myanmar] are less prepared as compared to Indonesians and Filipinos. Less prepared in a sense that they do not quite understand what domestic work entails. … [Also] you almost won’t see underage workers from Philippines and Indonesia. The reason why you don’t see [that] is because [these] countries have very established systems for sending domestic workers abroad—especially Philippines. [In] the Philippines they have specific departments that look into this. Indonesia they are pulling up their capabilities as well but Myanmar still lacks this capability … why [domestic workers] run away from [their] employer[s], why they come to our office, it gives us the impression that the Myanmarese are less prepared because sometimes [why] the Myanmarese girls run away from the employer, a Filipino would not run away.

As Daniel alluded, the Myanmar government’s ban resulted in a weak ecosystem of training, deployment, and governmental capacity to enforce protection for Myanmarese domestic workers. The Singapore-based NGO, HOME, reported that a growing number of Myanmarese domestic workers are seeking help. The problems they encounter range from unpaid wages to verbal, physical, and sexual abuse by their employers, or even insufficient food. With poor English, they are more likely to be isolated in the employers’ homes without the rest days stipulated in their contracts and access to a phone (Gooch 2017; HOME 2019).

This section identified the multiple intersectional domains that produce cumulative layers of disadvantage endured by Myanmarese domestic workers. These multiple intersectional domains arise from structural biases in the entanglement of the public and private spheres. Whereas the Philippines and Indonesian governments have created an image of respect for their domestic workers abroad (Parreñas 2001), Myanmarese domestic workers suffer a debased image in Myanmar. Their gender and nationality intersect with social locations that devalue domestic work and remove them from legal protection in both the migrant-sending and -receiving countries, thus compounding the risks they endure in a transnational context.

Mitigating Risk in a Transnational Context

As discussed already, the risks faced by Myanmarese domestic workers are constituted by three key factors: gendered expectations of how they should behave, the domestic work they carry out in the private sphere of their employers’ homes, and related to that, their limited recourse to legal protection. Earlier we noted the relative powerlessness that domestic workers feel; nonetheless, they express various degrees of agency to mitigate risks by drawing on resources in both Myanmar and Singapore; in other words, their risk mitigation strategies extend across a transnational context. Yet as we show next, the strategies that they deploy are Janus-faced or predicated on conditions that are structurally beyond the control of individual domestic workers.

While in Myanmar, prospective domestic workers would turn to their personal social networks to identify informal agents who can help them migrate. They approach the same informal brokers who had helped people they know, believing that doing so reduces the risk of being trafficked. Yin Yin (FDW returnee, thirty years old) recounted, “my eldest brother recommended [the agency]. One of his friends [went] to Singapore [through this agency so] he asked me to go to this agency to ask.” Some domestic workers would even trust informal brokers who are complete strangers, simply because they were introduced by a mutual contact. For example, Nyo Nyo (current FDW, forty-two years old) mentioned that she did whatever the informal broker taught her, including following “a guy” (i.e., an airport runner) she did not know but who would help her to navigate immigration checks at the airport. Nyo Nyo shared that the reason she trusted the broker is because he is from the same ethnic group (Karen) as her. She said,

I believe in my agent. My agent is also Karen people. … I know that this person [will] not cheat me, like selling me there.

Social networks within villages or those developed through identity affiliations (e.g., ethnicity⁶ or religion) in Myanmar are perceived as resources through which domestic workers can minimize migration risk. Relying on personal social networks to ensure one’s protection, however, does not address the structural disadvantages they face.

At the predeparture stage in Myanmar, although the scope of training by informal brokers can vary greatly, knowledge from training prepares domestic workers to meet the expectations of their Singaporean employers to an extent. For example, during predeparture training, informal brokers would advise domestic workers to be resilient so that they can successfully complete their employment contract. Nyunt Nyunt (current FDW, thirty-one years old) shared how she had been advised by the informal broker to respond to her employer:

If the grandmother scolds me, I should not say anything back to her and [maintain] a smile even if I am getting scolded from employer. … Just stay the way that the employers like to avoid them sending[me] back.

The informal trainers also advise domestic workers to be “defeminized” and “desexualized” (e.g., wear less makeup or have short hair; Lan 2008; Chee 2020). This way they would be “inferior” to their female employers (Constable 1997; Killias 2018) and avoid the potential risks of sexual harassment, or being accused of flirting with their male employers.

Although these strategies prepare domestic workers to cope with their employers’ work expectations, such strategies also perpetuate stereotypes about the behaviors expected of domestic workers (e.g., docility). Migration agents (including informal brokers) play complex roles in the industry (Chee 2020). Starting from the predeparture stage in Myanmar, domestic workers are socialized into thinking that they should tolerate expectations of servility and subordination. This framing of transnational domesticity fixes “immutable differences between rulers [i.e., employers] and [those] ruled [i.e., domestic workers] within the home” (Blunt 1999, 430). Paradoxically, as Prusinski (2017) observed, domestic workers’ mental preparedness to accept mistreatment could be “a way of managing the fear and uncertainty that comes with the lack of choice and control” (342).

Once in Singapore, the domestic workers’ ability to communicate with the outside world (beyond the confines of their employers’ homes) and to access external resources through their personal networks are important. They are required to attend a settling-in program arranged by the Ministry of Manpower upon their arrival. This program prepares domestic workers to adapt to their new lives in Singapore. It is a one-time session, though, and domestic workers are likely to meet new situations and challenges. Developing new social networks in Singapore enables them to exchange information with fellow domestic workers, who they get to know through religious groups, NGOs, training centers, and in Peninsula Plaza where Myanmarese migrants gather on their days off (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Peninsula Plaza in Singapore where Myanmarese domestic workers gather.

For Kyi Kyi Win (current FDW, thirty-three years old), it is advice from her fellow domestic workers that she values most when she encounters difficulties. She said, “[Whatever] I don’t understand, my friends will explain to me what to do then I will follow the instruction.” Another interviewee, Hla Hla (current FDW, forty-three years old) had contacted an NGO for help through her Filipino friends’ connections:

At that time, I did not know about HOME. But I was friend with Filipinos and they helped me to contact HOME. … They gave me numbers and address too. … I called them and I went to HOME office at Lucky Plaza there.

These excerpts support findings in the wider literature on migrant domestic work (e.g., Busza et al. 2017; Bhuyan et al. 2018) regarding the significance of social networks to such workers. The Myanmarese domestic workers’ social networks allow them to share with one another about their work conditions and interactions with employers, creating a social space that reduces their psychological distress and for everyday practices of solidarity.

Other than providing direct help, NGOs like HOME also enable domestic workers to obtain postdeparture training. During an NGO-organized training session that we observed, the trainer (an experienced FDW herself) imparted practical caregiving skills and motivational words to the trainees. The trainer said, “coming to work in Singapore is not just to broaden your views [and] increase your knowledge, but also to change your behavior and your mindset.”

Similar to their predeparture training, domestic workers learn from trainers in Singapore that practicing flexibility and adaptation are key for them to successfully complete their contract. They are also informed, however, that they should not hesitate to report their grievances to Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower if the employers mistreat them. The support of formal NGOs who are familiar with policy and legislation in the destination country provides another means by which domestic workers can mitigate risks abroad. Nonetheless, the ability to access such resources in Singapore—expanding one’s social networks and going for training—can materialize only if domestic workers are given time off from work. As highlighted earlier, indebtedness, the devaluation of domestic work, and unequal power relations with employers mean domestic workers might forgo days off to avoid premature contract termination.

Conclusion

This article has contributed to the literature on migration risk by showing how risk is not only socially but also geographically constructed. The article examined how Myanmarese domestic workers are exposed to multiple dimensions of risk that extend across different scales and span national spaces (i.e., transnationally). At the national scale, governments in both the source and destination countries withhold adequate protection measures. On the Myanmar side, a lack of recognition for domestic worker migration pushed individual migrants into the informal sector, leaving only irregular migration routes open to them. On the Singapore side, the government refrains from regulating domestic work in the “hidden” private sphere of employers’ homes to the same extent as it does for other migrant work sectors that are more visible to the public (e.g., construction and shipping). Undertaking domestic work at the household level thus accentuates the risks that Myanmarese domestic workers face. The risks at these scales are, moreover, individualized by the Myanmarese domestic workers as they undertake significant debt to migrate, endure isolation in their employers’ homes, and internalize potentially exploitative working conditions. Such transgressions represent forms of mundane, yet potentially no less damaging, exposure to risks and slow violence.

The article further proposed and developed the concept of multiple intersectional domains to show how intersectional identities cross-cut with social locations to produce the cumulative layers of disadvantages that Myanmarese domestic workers experience. The article thus also contributes an intersectional analysis to understanding migration risk. Although the domestic workers’ social networks and training preparation (at an individual level) in Myanmar and Singapore can help mitigate some risks, there remain structural biases in government policies and societal attitudes that individual domestic workers are unable to change. In Singapore, advocacy efforts by NGOs and community organizations have started to increase awareness among Singaporeans about the unequal power relations that domestic workers face, but the political will to intervene in the private sphere of employers’ homes remains half-hearted. In Myanmar, although the ban on domestic worker migration was lifted by the National League of Democracy government in 2019, the military coup that took place in February 2021 has set back those initial efforts to recognize and regularize such migration. By bringing together geographical perspectives and an intersectional approach toward understanding migration risk, this article has shown that rectifying structural inequalities in both the migrant-sending and -receiving contexts—and across multiple intersectional domains—will be necessary to address the vulnerabilities that domestic workers face transnationally.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the reviewers and guest editor for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research project is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 2 (Award No. MOET2017-T2-019).

Notes on contributors

Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho

ELAINE LYNN-EE HO is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Senior Research Fellow in the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 100051 Singapore. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include transnationalism, migration and citizenship, diaspora strategies, and care and aging.

Wen-Ching Ting

TING WEN-CHING is an Assistant Professor in the Southeast Asian Cultures and Industries Programme, Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan, 71101, Taiwan. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research interests include cross-border mobility, the conditions of forced migrants in Asia, the migration industry, and aid and development.

Notes

1 During this period, Myanmar was initially under military rule. It then transitioned to a civil government and now it has returned to military rule.

2 More information on how they convert from undocumented to documented status can be found in Ho and Ting (2021).

3 Intersectionality has its roots in activist and Black feminism, pointing to issues of representation, recognition, and social justice (Crenshaw 1991; Mollett and Faria 2018; Hopkins 2019).

4 This is a term used in Singapore.

5 Due to word constraints, details of their irregular migration cannot be provided in this article, but readers can refer to Ho and Ting (2021).

6 We recognize that ethnonationality arising from ethnic affiliation is not the same as nationality in multicultural Myanmar, but the topic of ethnonationalism is a complex one in Myanmar and beyond the scope of this article to detail.