Transnational Civil Society in Asia by Simon Avenell Akihiro Ogawa

Author:Simon Avenell, Akihiro Ogawa [Simon Avenell, Akihiro Ogawa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367627119
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

Civil society’s response to migrant worker issues

Migrant worker issues gained traction within civil society in the late 1990s as activists became aware of the problems faced by Singapore’s rapidly growing number of transient foreign workers (Constable 2013). With few legal protections and the debt burden incurred when seeking employment in Singapore, they were prey to coercive and unfair treatment. But it was a seemingly unrelated case of murder by a foreign domestic worker that did the most to raise public awareness of these issues.

In a case that drew extensive international media attention in 1995, a Filipino domestic worker, Ms. Flor Contemplacion, was executed in Singapore for murdering two people after due process. This, however, soured diplomatic relations with the Philippines and raised public pressure to improve the working conditions of migrant labor (Shenon 1995). The groundswell of interest prompted existing civil society actors to attend to the needs of migrant workers even though the crimes at the heart of the Contemplacion case were not about the conditions of work and pay (Constable 2013).

This was the context for the formation of TWC2 and HOME. TWC2 was the successor of The Working Committee 2, an informal group that attended to the needs of foreign female domestic workers. After TWC2 registered in 2004, it expanded its mandate to serve both female and male work permit holders (who tend to be in blue-collar sectors) (Gee 2018). In 2008, TWC2 launched the Cuff Road Project which continues to provide free meals to jobless or injured migrant workers awaiting the outcome of legal processes and claims. The project served its one millionth meal in 2018 (Yang 2018).

HOME was also registered in 2004 by Bridget Lew, a former coordinator in the Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People (ACMI). The group works primarily to serve foreign domestic workers in crisis and to promote social respect and dignity for them in Singapore (Sheena 2019). Their main services include a helpline and helpdesk for domestic workers, a large shelter, and an academy that equips them with skills and provides a sense of community in their otherwise relatively isolated daily lives (Sheena 2019).

A third organization that has been supportive of migrant worker issues over several years is the Singapore Committee for UN Women (previously known as UNIFEM Singapore). While not exclusively focused on migrant workers, UNIFEM Singapore cooperated with TWC2 and HOME to launch the ‘Day Off’ campaign in 2007 to legislate for days off for foreign domestic workers. It supported research into human trafficking in 2011 and organized a conference of regional activists working on human trafficking issues (Saleemah 2018).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.