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ABSTRACT
In Singapore, the temporary legal status of migrant domestic workers binds them in servitude to their employer-sponsor as their residency is contingent on their continuous and sole live-in employment with a sponsor whose permission they must secure in order to transfer jobs. This legal status technically renders domestic workers unfree and precarious as it gives employers tremendous power over domestic workers. Based on 30 in-depth interviews with employers, this article examines how employers in Singapore negotiate their power over domestic workers. We identify ‘soft violence’ as a tool that employer’s utilise in their management of domestic workers. By ‘soft violence’, we refer to the practice of cloaking the unequal relationship in domestic work via the cultivation of a relationship of ‘personalism’ while simultaneously amplifying one’s control of domestic workers. Representing a strategy utilised by employers to maximise the labour of domestic workers, ‘soft violence’ emerges from the paradoxical relationship of simultaneously relieving and amplifying servitude.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Information gathered from interviews with outgoing migrants at offices of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration in Manila on July 2016 as well as interviews with staff at employment agencies in Manila on August 2014.
2 Information gathered from interviews with domestic workers in Dubai in July, November, and December 2014.
3 In contrast, domestic workers in other destinations, for instance Israel, take out a private loan.
4 Employers visit agencies to make inquiries, interviews as well as to return domestic workers they wish to terminate.
5 The two interviewees were not accustomed to being recorded and expressed concern about their anonymity. To appease their worries, we agreed to not record our interview.
6 We make this assessment based on interviews and observations in an employment agency.
7 See Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2). 2015. The Right to Rest: The Effectiveness of the ‘Day Off’ Legislation for Foreign Domestic Workers. Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2).
8 Explaining why she prefers Indonesians over Filipinos, a Chinese Singaporean employer emphatically states, ‘Salary is lower is one and other thing is communication, they are dumber. If you compare to Filipino, Filipino are smarter. So we prefer to have a dumber maid’.
9 In general, ‘open kitchen’ policy means that domestic workers are allowed to eat any food that is located in the kitchen without needing to ask for a permission from employers.
10 Employers observed in the employment agency include those who confiscate the mobile phone of the domestic worker from Monday to Friday or from 8 am to 8 pm from Monday to Saturday.
11 States the MOM employer handbook: ‘You should not withhold the salaries of your FDW on the pretext of safekeeping her salary or delaying payment for extended periods’ (Ministry of Manpower Citation2018b, 12).
12 The eight employers who opted to cover the cost of the placement fee include locals and expats as well as those from a variety of class backgrounds.
13 Explaining the vulnerability of employers is a 37-year old Chinese Singaporean journalist: ‘The whole burden is thrown to us. If the maid comes in and said nope I want to go home, I don’t want to work anymore, we got to provide her the air ticket to go back. All the money we paid, down the drain’.