Elsevier

Geoforum

Volume 78, January 2017, Pages 179-188
Geoforum

The art of not being caught: Temporal strategies for disciplining unfree labour in Singapore’s contract migration

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.05.003Get rights and content

Abstract

Adopting a case study approach, this paper examines unfree labour amongst labour migrants from a temporal perspective. I draw on the notion of temporality specifically to refer to the spontaneous and arbitrary imposition of strategies by employers as a response to situations in which workers attempt to bargain to ameliorate exploitation in the workplace or in response to workplace injuries. Although there is a significant literature discussing employer tactics to control and discipline workers, very little of this specifically addresses migrant workers or proceeds through a thick description of individual company strategies. I suggest that strategies to discipline migrant workers are often embedded in the broader migration regimes and state laws that underwrite migrant workers’ positions, and should be attributed equal weight in understanding how unfree labour is produced and maintained in practice. The case studies are taken from experiences of South Asian male migrant workers in four different small-medium enterprises (SMEs) that are subcontracting companies (sub-cons) in the construction and shipyard sectors in Singapore, and one man who suffered serious injury as a result of his work. Through these five case studies I hope to develop a characterization of migrant worker unfreedom that goes beyond descriptions of broad structural factors that discipline migrant workers, or characterisations of migrant worker conditions, to an examination of the micro-dynamics of workplace discipline. In this understanding I extend current conceptualisations of unfree labour by arguing that unfreedom must, in part, be understood as the inability to contest exploitation, including the strategies companies impose on workers at specific times to enable this.

Introduction

There is now a robust engagement by geographers and others with precarious work and unfree labour (LeBaron and Ayers, 2013, Lewis et al., 2015, Anderson, 2010, McDowell et al., 2009, Wills et al., 2009, McGrath, 2013, Datta et al., 2007). This work has made significant advances in characterising the compendium of conditions that both create uncertainty in the labour arena and mitigate against effective labour bargaining, thus rendering labourers vulnerable and without security in their working situations and relations. Some observers contend that these conditions are a product of the changing nature of the labour bargain associated with the rise of flexible production systems (especially in the global north) (Peck and Theodore, 2001, Kalleberg, 2008), whilst others suggest that such conditions have constituted the mainstay of labour relations for a much longer period (especially in the global south where they have begun to intersect with relations and structures of neoliberal globalization in recent times) (Mezzadri, 2008, LeBaron and Ayers, 2013). For migrant workers, often traversing north-south or south-south contexts in their labour trajectories, there has been particular emphasis on the role of debt relations/debt bondage and, relatedly, on institutional regimes governing migrant workers’ positions and (il)legality, as producing situations of heightened precarity in the workplace (Lewis et al., 2015, Anderson, 2010). Debts, arbitrary contracts, state laws, and migration restrictions can all conspire – often in concert – to produce ‘hyper-precarious’ migrant workers (Lewis et al., 2015). This recognition (McDowell et al., 2009, Wills et al., 2009, McGrath, 2013, Datta et al., 2007) has enabled us to make inroads into understanding the conditions that define the experiences of precarious work specifically for migrant labour, including where these may lead to unfree labour.

Despite these advances in academic understanding of both precarious work and unfree labour, employer strategies to discipline and intimidate migrant workers at specific points in time (such as when workers attempt to leave the company or bargain for better conditions) have not been well-conceptualised in this growing geographical and related literature. As Strauss (2012: 138) has suggested in relation to unfree labour, there is a, “relative paucity of empirical studies of unfree labour, from a sector-specific, geographical or micro-scale (fine-grained qualitative) perspectives, on the one hand, and the need for greater conceptual clarity on the other”. Even for the European context where documentation of migrant worker conditions has been most prolific, it has been noted that, “empirical data on migrant worker experiences is relatively scarce” (Cross, 2013: 515), with, “little detailed empirical research about labour market practices experienced by migrant workers” (Dundon, 2007: 501). Rather, much of the scholarship on employer-employee relations and worker intimidation where migrant workers are concerned has tended to examine the role (or absence of) unions (for example, Hardy, 2015, Hardy et al., 2012, Bernsten and Lillie, 2016, Vosko, 2014) or other actors such as non-government organisations (for example, Ford, 2012, Bal, 2014, Pangsaya, 2015) as key determinants of worker agency and rights, or lack thereof.

Those who do focus on relations between workers and their superiors in sites of labour exploitation have variously noted the importance of employer strategies that rely on spatial tactics (for example, Kelly, 2002, Yea, 2016, Wainright, 2007). From my study, conceptualisations of migrant worker unfreedom in these micro-spaces can also be enhanced through a temporal perspective.1 This entails an exploration of the ways migrant labourers’ freedom to contest workplace exploitation is stymied through a range of strategies imposed by employers at specific junctures. These strategies are enacted in response to instances when migrant workers attempt to bargain with employers to ameliorate exploitation in labour conditions or in response to workplace injuries. Medium and small sized firms in the construction and shipyard sectors in Singapore discipline or remove workers who are unproductive (for example, because they are injured or refuse to work excessively long shifts) and therefore impose a cost to firms, or because they complain (in which case they are often viewed as ‘troublemakers’) and therefore are likely to threaten company profitability in future if they are not controlled. These threats are actualised, for example, when a worker deserts the workplace and makes a complaint to Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM), the government authority charged with mediating employer-employee disputes (see Yea, in press). Here, deserting the workplace means resigning without notice and, for migrant workmen in Singapore, will normally render the worker irregular, since change of employer is only permitted in exceptional cases. Many of these company strategies are thus responsive to worker actions, but only during times of threat of worker demands or in response to inefficiencies associated with particular workers. Other strategies are aimed at anticipating and thwarting worker complaints, and may only be invoked when workers threaten to complain.

The findings from the following case studies can assist in developing more comprehensive understandings of unfree labour in other contexts, particularly Europe and United States, where both precarious work and unfree labour have been most extensively researched to date. Geographers situated in Southeast and East Asia have long sought to consider the ways (post)colonial subjectivities and knowledge can de-centre the hegemonic knowledge of that which is produced in ‘core’ regions of the world, and advance alternative characterisations of urgent contemporary concerns that do not rest on a priori conceptualisations derived from the global north. In a region where it is estimated that approximately 11.7 million of the world’s 21 million forced labourers are located, it would indeed seem peculiar to overlook Asia in developing conceptualisations of unfree labour (ILO, 2014). Indeed, Kalleberg and Hewison (2012) have emphasized the need to provide a geographically sensitive reading of precarious work in Asia, to which this paper hopes to contribute.

Section snippets

Conceptualising unfree labour

The terms unfree labour, labour trafficking, forced labour and precarious work are often used in conjunction when describing exploitative migrant laboring situations, both in Singapore and elsewhere. Here I draw out the ways they are related, but nonetheless distinct processes, focusing particularly on current conceptualisations of unfree labour. Forced labour, according to the International Labour Organisation (hereafter ILO) describes any work extracted against the free will of the worker. In

Methodology & approach

The paper draws on material from a recently completed research project on the transnational lives and labour of South Asian migrant workers in Singapore (2012–2015). For the broader project I conducted in-depth interviews with 120 men (82 Bangladeshis, 35 Tamils, and 3 Sri Lankans). I also engaged in participant observation with seven groups of Bangladeshi men (ranging from 3 to 18 men) in the context of their labour disputes, particularly their trajectories after deserting their workplaces.

Labour exploitation and precarious work amongst migrant workmen in Singapore

Before proceeding to a thick description of worker problems and company tactics through the case studies, this section briefly overviews the structures and institutions that govern migrant worker status in Singapore. Such structures and institutions constitute the meso- and macro-elements that contribute to migrant worker unfreedom, and productively intersect with the company strategies examined in this paper. The incorporation of different types of workers by skill level and nationality is

Disciplining workers through filing police reports

One extremely commonplace strategy companies utilize to discipline workers in Singapore in the face of worker complaints to MOM, is to file false police reports against them. Common charges include stealing, gambling, and use of illegal substances. In the case considered here, the director of Lewie contractors reported that its three Bangladeshi employees had stolen money from the company office. Lewie Contractors is small company, employing only three men, that makes metal fixtures for use in

Manipulation of documents by companies

Document manipulation has two purposes when imposed on migrant workers in Singapore; first, to extract additional (and not originally agreed to) money from worker’s salaries, and; second, as a form of ‘insurance’ for the company in the face of possible worker complaints. The first of these motivations approximate arrangements described by Allain et al. (2013) for additional revenue generation, and three of the four case study companies in this paper invoked contract and condition papers to

Company distortion of worker’s accounts of events during mediation

If documentation is often strategically used during MOM mediation to prove the legitimacy of employers claims concerning payment of salary or supposedly agreed to deductions, then distortion of events is an equally important strategy on which employers draw, and especially so where workplace injuries are concerned. Unsafe working conditions are also a key element of migrant worker vulnerability in Singapore. In Singapore’s construction and shipyard sectors in particular, common injuries of

Conclusion

This paper has attempted to build on recent academic discussions of unfree labour by discussing the arbitrary imposition of strategies by companies to discipline migrant workers. For workers with disputes around salary or other conditions of work the aim is to ensure these workers continue to labour under exploitative conditions knowing prospects of benefitting from economic justice are likely to be thwarted. For injured workers the aim is to remove workers from the company in a way that

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