| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, September 24, 2010 | 3:00PM - 5:00PM | Seminar Room 208N, Munk School of Global Affairs, 1 Devonshire Place |
Dr. David Chu Distinguished Leaders Lecture
Sizeable numbers of labour migrants moving for care work characterise the transnational flows from less well-off countries to richer economies. Like many developed countries with a high level of female force participation alongside an ageing population, Singapore is alleviating its eldercare crisis by looking to foreign domestic workers and healthcare workers to shore up its homes and nursing homes. Research on care work has tended to focus on the transnational migration of women for either domestic work (regarded as unskilled) or nursing (regarded as skilled), and the two bodies of work have remained largely separate. Recognising that the transnational labour migrations of women as domestic and healthcare workers are integrally linked in the care chain, this paper attempts to bring the two together. The paper first examines state policy that differentially regulates the entry of these two groups of female migrant workers into Singapore. Drawing on interviews with employers, the paper goes on to argue that while the institutional mechanisms differ for the two groups, Singapore’s solution to its care predicament – employing migrant domestic workers in the reproductive space of the home and foreign healthcare workers in the productive space of the nursing home – is one that is predicated on the construction of the worker’s body as a (re)productive subject governed not just by gendered discourses but also those of race and nationality.
An alumnus of the University of Toronto, Shirlena Huang is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Research Associate at NUS’ Asia Research Institute. She is also a Regional Editor (Asia) of Women’s Studies International Forum and on the editorial boards of the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography and the soon-to-be launched International Journal of Population Research. Her research and publications focus mainly on gender and migration (particularly within the Asia-Pacific region), as well as urbanization and heritage conservation. Her current research projects examine transnational mobilities in the contexts of healthcare worker migration (in Asia), transnational families and national identity (comparing PRC and American families in Singapore), as well as the internet and religion (comparing Singapore and Los Angeles). She was also Head of Department of Geography, NUS, from 2005-2010.
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