Injured citizenship civil society and governmentality in malaysia and singapore

INJURED CITIZENSHIP: CIVIL SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENTALITY IN MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE By Yee Yeong Chong B.Soc.Sci. (Hons.), NUS Supervisor: Assistant Professor Daniel PS Goh A Masters Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters of Social Sciences (Research) to the DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2009 The truly painful goodbyes are the ones that are never said and never explained Contents Acknowledgements / ii Summary / v List of Abbreviations / vii List of Tables and Illustrations / ix 1. Civil Society and the Rights of Foreign Domestic Workers / 1 The Concept of Civil Society / 8 Outline of the Thesis and the Ethnographic Fieldwork Process / 13 2. National Development and Labour Feminisation in Malaysia and Singapore / 17 The „Wife of the Wife‟ / 18 Nationalism and „Working Mothers‟ in Singapore / 24 Modernisation, Reproduction and Malaysia‟s Family Values / 27 Confinement and Securitization in Domestic Work/ 34 3. Dayoff.sg and ‘Active Citizens’in Singapore / 44 The Dayoff.sg Campaign / 48 „Active Citizens‟ and New Possibilities / 56 4. Tenaganita and Human Rights in Malaysia / 63 Tenaganita: Constrained or Transgressive Contention? / 66 The Fruits of Contention? / 76 5. The Subject of Rights / 79 Conclusion: Freedom as a Practice / 83 Bibliography / 85 Appendices / 99 i Acknowledgements Writing is one of the most painful activities known to mankind. I learnt this in the period of 2006-2009 as I struggled to form coherent sentences for the thesis you now hold in your hands, a protracted process no words could ever describe adequately. People with similar predicaments often look back and wonder about the miracles that they have been bestowed upon to survive the ordeals of writing. Luck and divine interventions are common explanatory variables. But I believe Émile Durkheim‟s wisdom that anomie is a socially curable condition came at an opportune moment, and so I turned to the people around me as my life buoy in these times. Here I pay homage to these lifesavers around me, even if the activity of writing can often be an isolating experience. First and foremost, I think Daniel Goh has redefined what it means to be a supervisor in the National University of Singapore. I am deeply indebted to his friendship and close guidance (especially during those mind-boggling lunches where he would grill me with questions on the sociological classics), and also his detachment for me to pursue my own intellectual distractions during my candidature. I will also remember Daniel for being the only professor who would literally chase me for late work, running after me on one occasion when I tried to avoid him, and planting messengers in my social circle as reminders of my looming deadlines. If anything, his most important lesson to me was to sublimate personal issues into academic writing and to practice a technology of the self to surmount my problems. I have the counsel of Daniel to thank for, if I consider myself to have survived this trying period largely unscathed. Standing beside Daniel are other pillars of strength like Anne Raffin and Leong Wai Teng, who have taught me many things not only as academic mentors but also as seasoned veterans of life. The transition from teacher-student relationship to eventually friendship took some getting used to, but it proved to be so gratifying to learn that your mentors are also people with a similar set of issues facing them in life. Anne‟s courage ii and generosity as a mother has been an inspiration for the department, and I wish the best for her and Lucie. As one of the most misunderstood teachers in the department, Wai Teng‟s patience and wit have been under-appreciated by many undergraduates. If I have been a good teaching assistant to many students, I believe it was only because much of Wai Teng‟s pedagogical philosophy has rubbed off on me. Besides them, the friendship of professors Ananda Rajah, Chua Beng Huat, Vedi Hadiz, Hing Ai Yun and Ho Kong Chong have also proved to be key motivators to me, especially in reminding me that the less-taken path of academia is a worthwhile one. Graduate life would have been impossible had it not involved people who are equally committed to academic production and enjoyment. My roommates Justin Lee and Cheryl Tan are exemplars of this maxim and I miss the time we‟ve spent at AS1 #03-27, a private bubble of discussions on varied topics ranging from boyfriends to Bourdieu. This is not forgetting the entire bunch of graduate students who cram themselves into that sorry excuse of a “graduate room”, especially the regular fixtures like Eugene Liow, Daniel Tham, Sheela Cheong, Thomas Barker, Seuty Sabur, Audrey Verma, Johan Suen, Melissa Sim, Lou Janssen Dangzalan, Lim Weida, Siti Nuraidah, Siti Shafaa, Nadia Abdullah, Adlina Maulod, Nurhaizatu Jamil, Alvin Tay, Sarbeswar Sahoo, Chand Somaiah, Nurul Huda, Mamta Sachan Kumar, Xu Minghua and Anil Singh Sona. Not to forget the support and assistance rendered by the administrative staff, where KS Raja, Chia Choon Lan, Jameelah Bte Mohamed, Brenda Lim, Cecelia Sham, Tham Chuey Peng, Shirley Chua and Jane Ong, who made my liminal role as staff and student a much tolerable subject-position than I had initially imagined. As an ethnographic study, this thesis would have been impossible without the assistance from members of Singapore‟s NGO community, who had welcomed this budding activist into their midst in early 2008. From Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), they are John Gee, Imran Price, Russell Heng, Noor Abdul Rahman, Wang Eng Eng, Sha Najak, Shelley Thio, Debbie Fordyce, Margaret Thomas, Caroline Lim, Maureen Donelly and Malini Xavier. From the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME), I would like to thank Bridget Lew, Jolovan Wham and Charanpal Bal Singh. Others include Alvin Tan from The Necessary Stage, who spoke passionately iii about local politics and forum theatre; Shaun Teo and Susy Bungsu from Migrant Voices; Eva Nurifah and Ummai Umairoh from the Indonesian Family Network (IFN); Constance Singam and Caris Lim from the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE); Sinapan Samydorai from The Think Centre; Braema Mathi from MARUAH; and independent filmmaker Martyn See, who incidentally shared his first protest march experience with me while in Malaysia. Last but not least, the tireless duo of Stephanie Chok and Patrick Chng have demonstrated how human compassion through activism is possible despite the blasé political environment of Singapore. Over at Kuala Lumpur, Alice Nah has been a key figure during my visits in 2007 not only in her generosity in offering accommodation, but also for her intellectual discussions on human rights and her embedment within the refugee NGOs of Malaysia, which had opened a lot of doors for me. Through Alice, I have had the opportunity to meet other activists such as Irene and Aegile Fernandez of Tenaganita; Cynthia Gabriel of Coordination of Action Research on AIDS & Mobility (CARAM Asia); John Liu and Wong Chai Yee of Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM); Jerald Joseph and Mien Ly of Pusat KOMAS; Malik Imtiaz Sarwar of the National Human Rights Society (HAKAM); the late Toni Kassim; Chua Yee Ling of Youth 4 Change; Pang Khee Teik of The Annex Gallery; and Kerina Francis of Women‟s Aid Organization (WAO). Above all, it was the patience and generosity of Associate Professor Saliha Hassan of University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), who had assisted me in obtaining a Malaysian research permit from the Economic Planning Unit of the Malaysian Prime Minister‟s Office. Lastly, I offer thanks to my mother for her silent and unyielding support on those days when everything seemed impossible. If anyone were to ask me about the contributions made by this thesis, if any, I think I can safely say that its biggest contribution is that I can finally move on with my life. iv Summary In multicultural Malaysia and Singapore, where ethnic markers persist as categories of governance, the plight of abused foreign domestic workers is still conditioned by racial notions of humanity and sub-humanity. Furthermore, the state‟s hegemonic imperative to secure middle-class entitlements depends on the influx of cheap foreign others, and thus the regulation of foriegn bodies - via differentiated citizenship regimes that attach value according to skills, gender and ethno-race - is necessary for the reproduction of class privileges for the electorate. Into this nexus of situated power and ethics, civil society groups campaigning for a legislated day-off for domestic workers introduce a debate on their plight and articulate claims for their dignity. As case studies of how civil society activism may develop differently despite a shared colonial history, the divergent styles of the day-off campaigns of Malaysia‟s Tenaganita and Singapore‟s Transient Workers Count Too present new directions on the well examined topics of political agency, civil society and human rights in both countries. This study has two objectives. Firstly, I discuss how nationalist discourses on development have structured the institution of domestic service in both countries. In reorganizing the family and the economic role of women, the developmental mission of Malaysia and Singapore induces the labour participation of women while maintaining conceptions of housework as feminine labour. In facilitating the influx of foreign women as replacement labour without comprehensive legal protection, the state tacitly subjects the worker to a regime that ranks her according to her identity marker as „manual labour,‟ „female‟ and „ethno-racial alien‟. Secondly, I illustrate how civil society interventions into this current configuration of domestic work have to address specific questions on entitlements of non-citizens, gender equality and human rights in the respective national contexts. In Singapore, where material stakeholding and multiracialism have displaced rights claims as „anti-national,‟ advocacy groups operate instead through extra-legal ethical interventions and training to improve the domestic worker‟s market position. In contrast, where elite factionalism and ethnic policies in Malaysia continually place v identity claims at the forefront of political contention, groups still leverage upon rights claims for the protection of new migrants. vi List of Acronyms AHRB ASEAN Human Rights Body APWLD Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law, and Development ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations AWAM All Women‟s Action Society, Malaysia AWARE Association of Women for Action and Research, Singapore BN Barisan Nasional (National Front of Malaysia) CARAM Coordination of Action Research on AIDS & Mobility, Asia FDW Foreign domestic worker FIDA Federal Industrial Development Authority, Malaysia HOME Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics, Singapore ILO International Labour Organization ISA Internal Security Act MARUAH The Singapore Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism MCA Malaysian Chinese Association MIC Malaysian Indian Congress MOM Ministry of Manpower, Singapore NEP New Economic Policy of Malaysia, 1971-1990 NGO Non-governmental organization NPP New Population Policy of Malaysia, 1987 PAP People‟s Action Party, Singapore POEA Philippine Overseas Employment Administration PRA Pembantu Rumah Asing (governmental term for foreign domestic workers in Malaysia) RELA Ikatan Relawan Rakyat Malaysia (Volunteers of Malaysian People) SUARAM Suara Rakyat Malaysia (Voice of Malaysian People) SUHAKAM Suruhanjaya Hak Asasi Malaysia (Human Rights Commission of Malaysia) TWC2 Transient Workers Count Too, Singapore vii UMNO United Malays National Organization, Malaysia UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women, Singapore Charter WAO Women‟s Aid Organization, Malaysia viii List of Tables and Illustrations Fig. 2.1 Maid agency advertisements in Singapore‟s mainstream press Table 2.2 NEP Restructuring Targets and Achievements / 20 / 28 Fig. 2.3 Presentation by Ishak Mohamed, Director of Malaysia‟s Immigration Enforcement Branch at the “Bar Council Conference on Developing a Comprehensive Framework for Migrant Labour”, Crystal Crown Hotel, Petaling Jaya, 18-19 February 2008 / 41 Fig. 3.1 A poster by TWC2 for its day-off campaign in 2009 / 51 Fig. 3.2 Selections from A Day Off photo exhibition by Sim Chi Yin / 53 Table 4.1 Number of undocumented immigrants in Malaysia (1993-99) / 71 Fig. 4.2 “Positive” and “Negative” posters for Tenaganita‟s day-off campaign / 73 Fig. 4.3 Tenaganita‟s conducts „gender sensitization‟ training for Royal Malaysian Police officers handling domestic workers in Malacca, 14-15 November 2007 / 74 Fig. 4.4 Police officers lining up for an ice-breaker game during the training / 76 Fig. 4.5 Tenaganita‟s booth at “Fiesta Femina: Young Women's Carnival”, Taman Bandaran, Kelana Jaya, 7 June 2008 / 79 Fig. 4.6 Women from Tenaganita‟s shelter performing at “Track of Talents” in Puchong, Selangor, 10 November 2008 / 83 ix CHAPTER ONE Civil Society and the Rights of Foreign Domestic Workers With the rise of the deterritorializing forces of migration and economic globalization that unsettle the political and spatial borders of the nation-state, the question of „migrant rights‟ raises questions about citizenship and national sovereignty. Where unified models of citizenship previously erect a binary between the citizenship rights as premised on national membership and the „stateless‟ condition as a position external to the nationstate, emerging conditions call for a rethink of some of these theoretical traditions. 1 For one, the politico-legal assumption that only the nation-state can secure citizenship protection and entitlements is increasingly disrupted by the observation that non-citizens can accumulate partial and “flexible” rights during cross-border processes.2 A disruption to this conceptualization of citizenship occurs where the invocation of rights by international and regional migrant groups now hold nation-states accountable for the protection of transnational bodies as persons in themselves or as citizens of other nationstates. 1 Writing in the early twentieth century, T.H. Marshall recognizes that the formal equality attached to citizenship as a legal status rarely embodies the manifestation of substantive equality in social terms. As such, the Marshallian concept of “social rights” highlights the need to extend protection to vulnerable segments of the nation against the boundaries of ethno-race, class and gender that undercuts their standing as equal citizens. However, this approach problematically assumes that the nation-state is able to control and manage a population confined to a fixed national territory. Similarly, Talal Asad (2000, para 11) argues that “Human rights depend, it has been said, on national rights. States are essential to the protection they offer. This means that states can and do use human rights discourse against their citizens as colonial empires used it against their subjects - to realize their civilizing project.” 2 Ong, 1999. 2 On the other hand, rather than a complete dissolution of national sovereignty, transnational flows have also strengthened other activities of the nation-state, especially in the creation of new citizenship regimes for governance. 3 Witness for instance, the inclusion of foreigners on the terms of economic instrumentality. Where skills have now become the new currency of entitlements, an emerging transnational class of knowledge workers now plies the migratory channels of Asia, enjoying citizenship-like benefits but without a social contract with their host states.4 Separately, the influx of blue-collar migrants is also engineered, but this group does not enjoy similar rights because of their „unskilled‟ status. Especially where the „dirty, demeaning and dangerous‟ jobs continue to support the developmental aspirations of Asia‟s tiger economies, the inflow of this group is encouraged, but only as highly-regulated, transient labour that can be easily rotated out when market demand dips. Into the nexus of state sovereignty and citizenship regimes described above, the plight of foreign domestic workers (hereafter FDWs) in Malaysia and Singapore exposes the intersection of such inclusionary and exclusionary politics as global forces interact with local conditions. More specifically, the problem of „maid abuse‟ brings into stark relief, the processes by which universalistic rights are played out in a particularistic and localized context for the protection/repudiation of these vulnerable women. Since the 1970s, low wage labour migration has become a long term policy response of sending states to battle unemployment and declining resources for social 3 4 See, for instance, Sassen, 1996: 1-30. Ong (2006: 181-6) has argued that many of these „knowledge workers‟ are wooed into Singapore for its “technopreneurial network” of laboratories, universities and high-tech companies under promises of local citizenship, attractive remuneration packages and generous scholarships. Increasingly, a sizable number of them arrive from Mainland China, who besides their requisite skills and qualifications, also possess the „preferred‟ ethnicity. 3 welfare programs. Concomintantly, the inflow of remittances supports the foreign exchange earnings of sending states and migrant returnees is expected to contribute eventually to modernization by practicing skills learnt overseas. At the host countries, the immigration of female servants is a reactive solution to electoral pressures from the middle classes, with regards to childcare services as the labour force undergoes restructuring. Yet, as domestic work is considered „unskilled‟, a perception compounded by the influx of foreign women from different racial-ethnic groups, legal protection of FDWs does not rank high among the priorities of receiving countries. The presence and quality of life of Fillipino, Indoensian and South Asian FDWs throughout Southeast Asia has been well documented by recent interest in the subject. Thus far, research has ranged from the relationship between the international division of labour and the transnaitonalization of domestic work, to the persistent absence of rights for FDWs within the host countries. Within the latter, there has been an emerging trend of extending the legal rights associated with citizenship to immigrants and their descendants in western liberal democracies.5 Proponents typically highlight equal citizenship as a way of securing the basic interests and needs of immigrants. Political theorist Joseph Carens has highlighted the obligation of nation-states towards resident foreign workers, because their “long term membership in civil society creates a moral entitlement to the legal rights of membership, including citizenship itself.”6 Following Charles Taylor‟s formulation of multiculturalism as a “politics of recognition”, many believe that genuine cultural inclusion is possible when it is premised on a respect for individual dignity and the difference of others, in turn arguing for the public recognition 5 See Weil, 2001: 32-33 for a comparison of twenty five nationality laws across the world. 4 of equal worth across various collective identities.7 Will Kymlicka‟s work on multicultural rights similarly threads this path in arguing that social justice requires equal recognition of different ethno-cultural groups within the same state, and that this should be extended to long term migrant populations.8 However, as a question of resource allocation between different cultural collectives, the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights for one group within a nation-state may come at the expense of another, despite the ideal of rights as universal. In reality, where the political language of rights has been successfully used by some international non-governmental organizations (hereafter NGOs) in securing the entitlements of migrants, local NGOs often have to strategize around constraints (such as „Asian Values‟) on how best to extend their humanitarian goals. This is especially so in the context of some Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore, where rights talk can be more of an impediment than an enabler, given the conservative political environment that are suspicious of rights as articulations of Western imperialism.9 On the other hand, the question of citizenship is of less importance for FDWs than their labour rights, partly due to their common experience of unpaid wages, lack of day-offs and their transient nature as temporary workers. Yet despite these problems, it is in this context of inequalities in access to citizenship status and rising incidence of temporary and return migration, that a call for a “transnational approach to migrant rights” has been made.10 6 Carens quoted in Bell, 2006: 282. Taylor, 1994,: 37-9. 8 Kymlicka, 2005: 129. 9 Chua (2000; 2003) has written extensively on the constrained civil society and the limitations on liberal rights in the context of Singapore. For a comparison between Malaysia and Singapore‟s approach to the question of human rights activism by civil society, see Rodan, 2009. 10 Piper 2008: 290. 7 5 This thesis offers an analysis of the attempts by two NGOs in Malaysia and Singapore in addressing some of these complexities surrounding rights as they search for the best way to campaign for the interests of FDWs. The countries‟ resistance to rights talk has been well documented and it provides a chance to explore and evaluate the different strategies of enacting rights claims within illiberal polities. Furthermore, as Malaysia and Singapore views FDWs as a transient, unskilled labour force occupying an almost invisible position within the legal-politico terrain, these women are caught in a liminal position without access to many liberties. Under these circumstances, how would NGOs convince other citizens that the immigrants should have equal access to resources on the terms of rights? Would these groups persist with the notion of universal rights, or would they turn to extra-legal interventions so that the moral protection of FDWs may be achieved in lieu of legal safeguards? What are the payoffs and risks in reconfiguring rights discourses to adjust to local political contingencies? Preliminarily, the data presented do suggest that pro-migrant NGOs in both countries are keen to adopt the language of universal human rights and make reference to international labour and humanitarian standards in their work. However, despite the value of such tools, the recourse to rights is not always a clear and easy choice for NGOs. Rather than dismiss these groups because the commitment to rights is not always pursued or articulated, the thesis argues that a more nuanced evaluation of NGO efforts needs to delineate the typical constraints and dilemmas they face in their attempts to achieve their aims. My arguments are supported by my ethnographic discussion of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that work with foreign domestic workers (FDWs); Tenaganita in Peninsular Malaysia and Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) in Singapore. My 6 selection of the groups was informed by their prominence as key NGOs that work on migrant labour issues at the time. For two years (late 2006 - early 2009), I carried out extensive fieldwork amongst a group of individuals who generously pooled their time and resources to render direct social services such as help lines, skills training and enhancement, case management and organizing public campaigns for the rights of migrant workers. In Singapore, I participated in the TWC2‟s internal meetings and closed door sessions with governmental bodies, interviewed key members, answered helpline calls, observed skills training classes conducted for the migrant workers, took part in cultural activities organised by FDWs and construction workers. I spoke with five employers and two employment agents to get at their perceptions of FDWs. Notably, the enlarged public presence of TWC2 and its partner organizations marked the first time in Singapore‟s history where such a large number of citizens have mobilized on behalf of non-citizens, thereby expanding the historically national-oriented character of civil society movements to a transnational one. Turning to Malaysia for a comparative dimension, Tenaganita becomes an obvious choice for several reasons. Under the leadership of Irene and Aegile Fernandez, Tenaganita has emerged as Malaysia‟s foremost organization on migrant issues in the past fifteen years. Like TWC2, Tenaganita is concerned with migrant labour issues from a rights-based perspective and has a series of initiatives towards these humanitarian goals. Although it shares with TWC2 the element of service provision and closed-door lobbying, Tenaganita differs significantly in its willingness to draw upon international rights instruments to openly hold the Malaysian state accountable. Especially where Malaysia‟s own human rights rhetoric has backfired on its political elite, Tenaganita has 7 also used the state-propagated accountability platforms to varying degrees of success for reforms. To make these assessments, I attended keynote presentations by Irene and Aegile Fernandez of Tenaganita, observed a closed door discussion on migration organized by a group of Malaysian NGOs (including Tenganita), and attended presentations by state officials from Malaysia‟s Immigration Department. I attend to the formal presentation of both groups‟ activities, and to the „hidden transcripts‟ through which activism is adjusted to respond to contingencies and reversals. Specifically, I examine the tensions in the legal-technical domain, where uneasy collaborations take place between state and civil society on instrumental grounds, and the simultaneously disciplined and empowered positions of FDWs who are at the receiving end of these collaborations. The NGO practices and collaborations with the state include: (a) reframing dominant discourses and rhetoric so that the protection of FDWs may be reincluded into governmental policies, and (b) counselling and training the FDWs to elevate their position as empowered economic agents. Looking at how NGOs employ and refigure rights discourses can tell us many things about the contingent nature of a rightsbased approach to migration across both countries. As case studies of how civil society organizations may develop differently despite a common colonial history, Tenaganita‟s comparatively aggressive rights-based approach to state engagement vis à vis TWC2‟s technical partnership form analytical mirrors that reflect back on the structure of cultural citizenships in the two countries. 8 The Concept of Civil Society With the resurgence of „civil society‟ as a popular analytical register in the nineties, contemporary scholarship has favoured a liberal perspective in studying the relatively impoverished political conditions for social mobilization. In viewing the state and civil society as distinctively separate spheres, some observers have argued for the „cutting back‟ of state intervention and control for a greater liberalization of participatory politics, with civil society as the „natural‟ crucible for democratic ends. The concept of civil society in this tradition precludes the social institutions of an independent judiciary, a free press, competition between political parties, as well as the general freedoms of speech, association, assembly and representation. For instance, John Keane defines civil society as “an aggregate of institutions whose members are engaged primarily in a complex of non-state activities – economic and cultural production, household life and voluntary association – and who in this way preserve and transform their identity by exercising all sorts of pressure or controls upon state institutions.” 11 In a similar vein, Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato refer to it as a sphere of social interaction between economy and state, composed above all the intimate sphere (especially the family), the sphere of association (especially voluntary associations), social movements and the public sphere.12 As such, scholarship of this tradition is troubled by the many cases of Asian civil society that exist in mutually complementary capacities alongside the state. 13 Even among analysts who are skeptical of the promise underlying these ostensibly progressive prescriptions, many continue to frame the issue in terms of a fundamental opposition 11 12 Keane, 1988: 14. Cohen & Arato, 1992: 440-2. 9 between a hegemonic state and a constrained but democratic civil society.14 This has been thecentral approach to the work of Lenore Lyons, who have been long regarded as the expert on transnational migration and on the case studies of Tenaganita and TWC2. Lenore Lyons‟s recent works contributes to the emerging debate on the evolution and maturation of migrant advocacy movements in the Malaysia and Singapore.15 In arguing that the circumscribed attempts at „scaling up‟ by migrant advocacy groups of Singapore do not necessarily involve cross-border organizing, Lyons presents important modifications to earlier studies that assume cross-border activism and „transnational framing‟ as natural products of migrant worker movements. She uses the examples of TWC2 and HOME (Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics) to argue that while these two groups may belong to regional or international networks for the purposes of networking and mobilizing international solidarity for their domestic projects, both organizations often position themselves as partners to national development and thus articulate their responses in national, and not transnational terms. On the topic of „transnational framing‟, Lyons cautions readers against the strategy of subsuming migrant advocacy work under the rhetoric of „national interests‟. Because the symbolic entrepreneurship performed by TWC2 and HOME in campaigning against the exploitation of female migrant workers do not problematize but reify the gendered notions of vulnerability that inscribe the identity of these women, Lyons considers them to be supportive of the interests of the state and employers. Instead, Lyons points to 13 For examples in Thailand, refer to the discussion in Banpasirichote, 2004. Abrahamsen, 2000; Alagappa, 2004; Angeles, 2004; Prasartset, 2004. 15 Ibid. 14 10 Tenaganita‟s firmer rights-based advocacy initiatives as a preferred alternative, citing it as representative of a stronger civil society that counters state ideology. For example, recent discourses within „trans-national‟ groups are oriented towards the aim of „empowerment‟ of subjugated groups. The re-orientation of social behaviours within empowerment discourses form part of a discourse supporting „participatory‟ approaches that emphasise „listening to the people,‟ „strengthening local organisational capacity‟ and developing „alternative strategies from below‟. But notions of what is „participatory‟ and „progressive‟ invariably denotes a value judgement on what is „good‟ for the consitituences served by the NGOs, and how „best‟ to do so. Such formulations still do not escape the managerialist and interventionist undertones inherent in subjectifying technologies inherent in „biowelfare‟. Of course, many field practitioners who face the everyday problems of project implementation, including those in Tenaganita, TWC2 and HOME, show an acute awareness of this paradox of participatory strategies. But in the optimistic insistence that “rights talk at least challenges existing gendered power relations,” it is easy to overlook how Lyons‟ preferred „trans-national‟ movements, such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), similarly re-inscribe vulnerable subjectivities through the eligibility rules of their programmes. 16 Whether the advantages outweigh the risks remain unclear, especially if overt challenges by NGOs to existing power relations may come at a social and economic cost to the FDWs. Altogether, her position shares the assumption with many authors that civil society should be predisposed to act in ways that challenge the state‟s encroachment into 16 See ILO, 2009. 11 other spheres of public life.17 However, we must be clear in our usage of the concept and not to conflate it with normative prescriptions on political spaces. I am less optimistic about the direct relationship between political liberalization and an expansionary civil society, as actually existing conditions in Asia do not fit with the assumption of the state and civil society as mutually exclusive spaces.18 Turning to scholars who have long argued that citizenship possess negotiated, mutable contours have been most useful to helping me understanding the parameters where migrants rights claims might emerge in the restrictive environments of Malaysia and Singapore. Rather than an ideal type situation, as a relationship individually obtained and passively granted by a given state to an individual, Aihwa Ong and Pheng Cheah have separately looked at the plight of foreign domestic workers in Asia and argued that the rights claims through procedural or institutional mechanisms, such as rights associated with citizenship or through advocacy efforts by NGOs, are only part of the story for these women.19 Subject to change, citizenship and rights are acted upon collectively, or among individuals existing within social, political, and economic relations of collective conflict, which are in turn shaped by gendered, racial, class and internationally based state hierarchies. Framed this way, the prescription of political participation in civil society is misplaced because it benchmarks existing forms of citizenship against ideal types.20 17 See, for example, Habermas, 1989 and Hayek, 1944. See Rodan, 1997 for a discussion. This link between an expansionary civil society and democratisation is famously captured in Gellner, 1994. Other examples include Diamond, 1999; Misztal, 2000; Putnam et. al., 1993. 19 See Ong, 2006 and Pheng, 2006. 20 The edited volumes by Quadir & Lele, 2004, fall within this category of recent works. 18 12 In developed Asian societies such as Malaysia and Singapore, the largest proportion of migrant workers work on short-term contracts without the realistic hope that they will ever be equal members of the political community. As one might expect, this gives rise to many injustices. It does not follow, however, that prescriptions of citizenship or an expansionary civil society will help to secure the interests of migrant workers. Daniel Bell has taken the argument further by suggesting that the special circumstances of some Asian societies may justify arrangements for differential rights. In these differentiated matrices of entitlements, migrants may receive citizenship-like protection based on a confluence of factors such as ethno-race, marketable skills, to name a few. Under the broad terms of „flexible citizenship‟ and „biowelfare‟, Ong and Pheng have also separately demonstrated how the mutable contours of citizenship can be shaped by NGOs like TWC2 and HOME to strategically include migrants within national discourses on gender and domestic work. Such an approach is a double edged sword; it is problematic because it involves the subjectification of migrant women as vulnerable mothers and daughters under biowelfare, but it can be useful in post-authoritarian contexts with costs attached to rights talk. Rather than an „unwillingness‟ to engage in a critique of exisitng NGO practices and state ideologies and thus deploy the „progressive‟ avenue of rights talk, my study is concerned with the empirical understanding of the specific reasons and costs as to why rights enacted through civil society is not always an option for FDWs. In doing so, I move away from a dichotomy between rights talk and biowelfare, and examine both as fluid discourses in themselves, without affixing either to a „progressive‟ and „conservative‟ label. This is not to fail to recognise the gendered, racialized and often 13 much restricted space for individual initative, but rather to examine, within the constraints encountered, how actors identify and create space for their own interests and for change. That is the crux of my study of the NGOs of this thesis, in understanding how strategic action takes shape within discursive limits, and not to offer a prescription on advocating „progressive‟ outcomes that overlook the empirical realities. Outline of the Thesis and the Ethnographic Fieldwork Process My decision to select groups that campaign on behalf of foreign women is informed by a framework of cultural studies and political theory that seeks to explore how identities traditionally denied from the national imagination may lay claim to rights. In doing so, it is to examine how these claims are organized and articulated publicly, and how certain discursive traditions regarding citizenship either attenuate or enhance their emergence. As a fragment of the postcolonial nation, the „woman question‟ asks us to consider how male-centric narratives of nationhood condition her inclusion and exclusion from complete citizenship.21 Feminist scholarship reminds us that beyond the bureaucracy and intelligentsia, women are critical for the biological, cultural and economical (re)production of the nation, and yet who are disqualified from the public political sphere. Her simultaneous recognition and repudiation by the nationalist project is revealing for feminist politics because it points to the spaces where claims through gender may be effected in some but not in others. 21 Chatterjee, 1993: 116-57. 14 Where developmentalist states like Malaysia and Singapore increasingly link the modernization of their economies with the reproduction of the conventional nuclear family unit, the rights accrued to women ties her entitlements to her caregiver role in the family. For instance in Chapter 2, I discuss how the governments in Malaysia and Singapore have historically instituted incentives for female citizens to participate in the formal national economy without disrupting their expected roles as mothers. At the same time, feminist movements have, on occasion, taken the cue from these gendered subjectivities in lobbying for the reproductive rights and conjugal entitlements of women. In looking at some of the nationalist narratives of development, one can appreciate how the gendered inscriptions on women‟s citizenship can be simultaneously enabling and disempowering for women‟s groups. But for groups like TWC2 and Tenaganita, their activism on behalf of FDWs squares with nationality, in that the constituency they campaign for are comprised not only of women, but foreign women who have difficulty staking claims on their host societies. As citizens who help non-citizens, the „foreign‟ category of migrant workers complicates the activist‟s own subjective understanding of his/her own citizenship rights. Where white-collar non-citizens now accumulate partial and “flexible” rights during cross-border processes, citizens have also become sensitized to the idea that national membership no longer secures their protection.22 Instead, it is marketable skills that increasingly guarantee entitlements in this knowledge economy. FDWs, in addition to being „female‟ and „foreign‟ also lack the requisite skills for social mobility, and unsurprisingly encounter exploitative working conditions that entrench them in a vulnerable position. Thus the graduated approach to governing populations regardless of national membership, fostering some while denying others, is indicative of 22 Ong, 1999. See also the discussion on asylum seekers and female citizens by Sassen, 2006: 294-7. 15 larger shifts in national sovereignty that structure personal autonomy and social collectives. Far from closing off the spaces available for humanitarian claims, I argue in the later halves of Chapters 3 and 4, that these emerging trends in citizenship regimes and mutating state sovereignty do offer spaces for novel forms of political agency. Like her female citizen employer whose status as „working mother‟ legally guarantees her certain entitlements, the FDW‟s gendered and alien positionalities by no means signal her complete exclusion from the body politic of the host nation. CHAPTER TWO National Development and Labour Feminisation in Malaysia and Singapore Asia‟s participation in global economic configurations has sped up transnational migration, and the number of domestic workers circulating in the region has risen exponentially in the past decade.1 Due to the confluence of the changing conditions of the international division of labour and the policy responses of sending and receiving countries, these migrational inflows are highly-gendered in nature, both in terms of the increased levels of female migration and in the stratification of the migrant labour market along the lines of gender, ethnicity and nationality. For the labour-sending states, remittances by FDWs provide foreign exchange earnings while the outflow of manpower alleviates the burden on state welfare programs and the unemployment rate. It is also expected that return migrants will eventually contribute to the sending country‟s modernization with skills acquired from overseas employment. Whereas for host countries, the inflow of foreign manpower allows states to materially pursue its developmental goals without substantial costs, maintaining its legitimacy with a burgeoning middle-class electorate that views the rights of foreigners as subordinate to their quest for the „good life‟. 2 This chapter examines the human costs to national development by tracing the historical conditions that foster the mistreatment of FDWs. I begin by examining the 1 United Nations, 2003: 2. 17 developmental discourses of Malaysia and Singapore to reveal how ideas on gender and citizenship have marked the institution of domestic labour. In the early phases of national growth, the engineered feminization of the labour force brought about changes in women‟s roles in both countries. While required to participate in the burgeoning manufacturing sector, women are culturally expected to perform the role of the sole reproductive agent within the family, thereby revealing the highly gendered inflexions in the nationalist discourses on development. Without unsettling these cultural norms regarding housework and child rearing, the state facilitates the influx of foreigners as substitute labour in the domestic sphere. Using the framework of biopolitics, the chapter argues that FDWs are suspended within a liminal state through processes of household incarceration and surveillance, as well as securitization discourses on the national-level. The ‘Wife of the Wife’ As a fixture of many middle-class families in the region, FDWs originate from the neighbouring countries of Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Singapore is a major receiving country with 170,000 domestic workers now employed in every one of six households.3 Malaysia‟s occupational restructuring has also induced a demand for low wage, unskilled workers as Malaysians move up the labour value chain. In 2008, governmental figures pegged the number of documented migrant workers in Malaysia at 2.1 million, amongst whom a sizeable group of 315,703 women are deployed as domestic 2 3 Ford & Piper, 2006. UNIFEM, 2008b; Yeoh et al., 2004. 18 workers.4 According to 2004 governmental statistics, 44.9 percent of female nonMalaysians were employed in the category “private households with employed persons” compared to just 2.6 percent of Malaysian female citizens. With the rising demand, maid agencies have sprung up, notably with more than two thousand agencies in Singapore offering local employers a wide selection of female migrant labour for their household needs. Today, maid agency endorsements by celebrities are hardly novel within a national consciousness that has tied class aspirations with bonded labour. In Singapore, a newspaper advertisement by privately owned Nation Employment Agency features Xiang-Yun, a forty-five year old actress typecasted for her motherly demeanour, next to a smiling FDW, signifying an idealized version of employer-employee relations. Readers are brought to the attention of the agency‟s quality service, which is measured by the preparation of FDWs through rigorous training standards, including infant care, cooking, and spoken English. The agency also emphasizes its ethical and efficient operation through accreditation schemes, simultaneously guaranteeing a low price point for employers. 4 Immigration Department of Malaysia, 2008. 19 Fig. 2.1: Maid agency advertisements in Singapore‟s mainstream press. The above description is pertinent for the forthcoming discussion on Malaysia and Singapore because it encodes the productive FDW as a specific vision of the „good life‟ for the career woman. Historically, the developmentalist expectations on the female citizens in both countries – as productive women contributing to national growth and as reproductive housewives – encourages the circulation of foreign women to fill in domestic labour gaps brought about by local women‟s entry into the workforce.5 Within the nationalist project of human betterment through hyper-industrialisation, two interdependent but asymmetrical subject-positions emerge; the highly-educated „working mother‟ and the alien domestic worker.6 While the FDWs‟ contribution to the household allows local women to participate in the workforce without undermining assumptions of housework as feminine labour, the introduction of FDWs destabilizes local women‟s position as the household‟s de-facto caregiver.7 Instances of abuse occur when the 5 Pyle, 1997: 221. Cheah, 2006: 201-202. 7 Hing, 1996: 37-38; Chin, 2003. 6 20 unequal power relationship between the two is unmoderated, culminating in what anthropologist Aihwa Ong has described as the eruption of “neoslavery” in Asia.8 In her landmark study of Malaysia‟s domestic service, Christine Chin argues that the Malaysian public has been able to ignore the plight of Filipino and Indonesian domestic workers because of the emerging convergence of interests between the middleclasses and the state elite.9 While the ability to consume the services of domestic helpers allows the Malaysian middle-classes to attain their material aspirations of the „good life‟, Chin views the state‟s concurrent role in shaping contemporary domestic service as encouraging the middle-class adoption of the nuclear family form.10 At the national level, members of Malaysia‟s dual-income nuclear family form become the exemplar subjects of an „Asian modernity‟, and are expected to contribute to the economic advantage of the country‟s modernization project of „Wawasan 2020‟ (Vision 2020). In turn, the feminization of the workforce has precipitated a desirable „modern‟ identity for the educated woman who excels at the reproductive duties of a homemaker, while simultaneously contributing to national development as a professional working woman.11 Chin‟s insight; that the tethering of modernization projects with the reorganization of reproductive labour actually preconditions maid abuse is important on two accounts. Firstly, it shifts attention away from cases of personal pathology among employers as commonly portrayed by mainstream media, bringing instead the structural conditions of poor employment conditions to stark relief. Secondly, in tying the issue of abuse with the 8 Ong, 2006: 196. Chin, 1998. 10 Ibid., p.165-7. 11 Yumi Lee (1995: 172) similarly noted that it was only in the Sixth Malaysian Plan, that the role of women in national development is recognized, albeit in gendered terms: “Despite the lip service paid to 9 21 gendered element of reproductive labour, Chin‟s analysis also probes the ways in which discourses on national growth requires the differentiated regulation of two female bodies; the middle-class female citizen and the FDW. Interestingly, while Chin‟s discussion is still couched within Gramscian terms, she does refer to the „infrapolitics‟ of domestic service, highlighting the techniques of surveillance practised by employers on the FDWs. The disciplinarian element has since been greatly elaborated by the themes of biopower and biopolitics in the separate but similar works of Pheng Cheah and Aihwa Ong.12 I take up some of these perspectives in examining the question of maid abuse as exposing ruptures in the matrix of four separate but related fields: (a) between the middle class „working mother‟ and the state over her rights to secure affordable replacement reproductive labour while she enters the workforce under the auspices of national development, (b) between the FDW and the state over the under-protection of her body as expatriate labour, (c) between the employer and the FDW, where in the absence of clear legislation governing their relationship, the care and discipline of the FDW is situationally managed by the household, and (d) between the developmentalist state and the two subject-populations, where a hierarchical system of citizenship ranks the „working mothers‟ above FDWs according to their perceived worth in the economy. Here I refer to Ong, who deploys the concept of “graduated sovereignty” in highlighting the flexible modes of governance in developmentalist states.13 Graduated sovereignty allows the state to address FDW claims against abuse without undermining its legitimacy with an increasingly nationalistic electorate. A combination of direct the contribution by women to „overall national development‟, the identity of the female citizens is shaped by her child-bearing and child-rearing capabilities.” 12 Cheah, 2006; Ong, 2006. 22 intervention in legislating aspects of the domestic worker hiring processes is erected to protect her welfare, and yet a dissociation is achieved by delegating the organizing of her everyday life to the employer.14 This novel form of population management, which fits within a „calculus‟ of citizenship that subdivides populations according to economic value, debunks earlier arguments that the onset of globalization and migration would necessitate the erosion of state sovereignty.15 Rather, the mutation of citizenship beyond a dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion affirms the shift towards a system of governance that disregards territorial boundaries.16 More importantly, the frame of biopolitics captures the disciplinary nature of domestic service and its elements of securitization that were previously implied but not developed in Chin‟s work. The next two sections will sketch out an overview of the body-politics of reproductive labour in Singapore and Malaysia, where I explain how the reworking of gender ideologies by developmentalist narratives fosters (a) a female citizen-subjectivity that oscillates between the public and private roles of career woman and housewife, and (b) the creation of the subjugated category of FDWs through a disciplinary household regime and techniques of national securitization. I return in the final section to discuss the implications of these gendered developmental discourses and how they enact the conditions for maid abuse. 13 Ong, 2006. Cheah, 2006: 243. 15 Sassen, 1996: 1-30. 16 Ong, 1999: 214-39. 14 23 Nationalism and ‘Working Mothers’ in Singapore As a nation scarce in natural resources, Singapore‟s developmental vision was driven by export-oriented manufacturing since the 1970s and supported by an educational emphasis on its citizens as skilled labourers. This developmentalist model of statecraft implies disciplinary techniques that seek to improve the labour force through innumerable schemes of training and subjectification, including the quelling of labour unions and an overhaul of the education system to suit market demands for a cheap and competent labour force.17 The gradual inclusion of women into the formal economy channelled women‟s reproductive labour beyond the confines of the domestic sphere; the female labour force participation rates (LFPR) in services and manufacturing rose from 19.3% in 1957 to 24.6% in 1970.18 As Singapore moved beyond manufacturing to consolidate its position in Asia as a financial and communications hub in the 1980s, women continued to join the ranks of professional workers, and the female LFPR soared to 47% in 1987 and subsequently 51% in 1997.19 While the industrialisation process was seemingly a high point for gender equality, the mobilisation of women into the economy does not entail a clear commitment to the principle of a gender-equal citizenship, but are motivated by the urgent needs of development.20 Indeed, state paternalism became evident when the impact of industrialisation on falling marriage and reproductive rates were threatening to unravel Singapore‟s economic growth. In the early 1980s, the „National Father‟ and erstwhile Prime Minister Lee Kuan 17 Hill & Lian, 1995: 149. Hing, 1996: 37-38; Huang & Yeoh, 1996: 482. 19 Pyle, 1997: 218-9; Singapore Department of Statistics, 1998: 7. 20 Lazar, 2001: 64-5 18 24 Yew enunciated a reproductive crisis that threatened to halt the country‟s development.21 Framed as the „Great Marriage Debate‟, Lee‟s concern was that graduate women were not producing sufficient babies to reach a desired replacement ratio, either because of a reluctance to marry, or a failure to bear more than a desired number of children per couple after marriage. On the other hand, Lee was concerned that the „genetic quality‟ of the nation would be compromised as lower-educated women were reproducing too freely. Speaking at the National Day Rally of 1983, Lee articulated that, If we continue to reproduce ourselves in this lopsided way, we will be unable to maintain our present standards. Levels of competency will decline. Our economy will falter, the administration will suffer, and the society will decline. For how can we avoid lowering performance when for every two graduates, in twenty-five years time, there will be one graduate, and for every two uneducated workers, there will be three? Worse, the coming society of computers and robotics needs more, not less, well-educated workers.22 Operating on the trope of society as body-machine, Lee‟s dystopic vision of a Singapore ravaged by an „errant‟ female sexuality reveals a desire to control women‟s sexuality and to engineer marriage between „genetically superior‟ graduates. In response to the demographic crisis, the government instituted the Graduate Mother‟s Scheme in 1983, aimed at regulating the „overly productive‟ sexuality of working-class females by disbursing awards of $10,000 to restrict their childbearing to two children, after which recipients were to register for sterilisation.23 On the other hand, the state sought to entice the graduate mother with tax incentives, medical insurance privileges and priority school entrance for her children. 21 Heng & Devan 1995: 196. Lee quoted in Lazar, 2001: 67. 23 The unpopularity of the policy eventually crystallised into an electoral setback for the PAP in the 1984 general elections. 22 25 While the eugenic dimensions of the Graduate Mother‟s Scheme have drawn objections as class-inflected,24 little has been said about the relationship between the state and the „working mother‟ formed within these developmental discourses. For one, the expectation that women publicly (re)produce nationalism with their work and wombs engenders a twin demand on women as professionals and mothers.25 While the conflict between both subject-positions were historically resolved by employing lived-in domestic servants (mui tsai or amahs) that helped with domestic work or through the extended family,26 the decline of traditional arrangements for reproductive work created a shortage of domestic help available for working women.27 This was exacerbated by the growth of the manufacturing and services industry immediately after Singapore‟s independence, which siphoned off young female entrants previously employed in domestic services.28 In recognizing that its expectation of female citizen LFPRs depended on a cheap and steady supply of replacement domestic labour, the government acknowledged its obligations to professional women by introducing a work permit system in 1978 to allow for the limited recruitment of domestic helpers from neighbouring countries.29 Within this transnational relay of reproductive labour, the state asserts that there is no contradiction between its developmentalist demand on women to (re)produce both publicly and privately, and refers to a series of policies that inscribe a dual role of female citizen-subjects as „working mothers‟. These incentives form part of the state‟s postindependence delivery of entitlements to women, and include legislated maternity leave, 24 Tremewan, 1994: 114-7 Lazar, 2001: 68-9; Heng & Devan, 1995: 202. 26 Gaw, 1988. 27 Huang & Yeoh, 1996: 483. 28 Hing, 1996: 37. 29 Huang & Yeoh, 1996: 484. 25 26 monthly subsidies for the use of child care centres and tax rebates for hiring a FDW. 30 However, the solution of importing foreign maids did not address the demands of all local women. In stating that its intention was not to “encourage women with low skills to hire maids to look after their families so that they can take up low-paying jobs” since that would “merely be replacing one group of unskilled workers with another”, a maid levy imposed on employers ensured that only professional women can afford FDWs, since the “government‟s objective is primarily to encourage women with higher skills to remain in the workforce and to have children.”31 The state‟s developmental calculus thus consigns domestic labour to the „unskilled‟ category and that it should be performed only by women who have low economic value in the knowledge economy.32 Modernisation, Reproduction and Malaysia’s Family Values The majority of FDWs began arriving during the period of heavy industrialization, largely an outcome of Malaysia‟s New Economic Policy (NEP) 1971-1990.33 As an official intervention into Malay middle-class constitution and the modern consumption of FDWs, the NEP offers a historical backdrop to the modernization project of Wawasan 2020. Where it differs from Singapore is in its overt articulation of the racial element in speaking about national development. Since independence in 1957, Malaysian politics has been premised on the management of „bangsa‟ (races). Following colonial „divide- 30 Pyle, 1997. Huang & Yeoh, 1996: 485. See also The Straits Times, 6 March 1992, 11 March 1992. Meant primarily as a mechanism to dampen the demand for foreign workers and to enforce their transience, the levy has risen with the number of foreign maids: first set in 1982, it remained at its initial level of S$120 per month until January 1989 but has since steadily and rapidly risen to its 2008 rate of S$265 per month due to rising demand. 32 Lazar, 2001: 71. 31 27 and-rule‟ policies which concentrated formal political power in the Malay majority while distributing the economy between European and Chinese control, the inter-ethnic socioeconomic gaps were compounded by the influx of peasant Malays without a corresponding effort in their economic reintegration.34 Table 2.2 NEP Restructuring Targets and Achievements Target (%) Achieved (%) 1970 1990 1990 EMPLOYMENT RESTRUCTURING Bumiputera/Malay Primary Sector 67.6 61.4 71.2 Secondary Sector 30.8 51.9 48.0 Tertiary Sector 37.9 48.4 51.0 Non-Bumiputera/Non-Malay Primary Sector 32.4 38.6 28.8 Secondary Sector 69.2 48.1 52.0 Tertiary Sector 62.1 51.6 49.0 OWNERSHIP RESTRUCTURING Bumiputera 2.4 30.0 20.3 Other Malaysians 32.3 40.0 46.2 Foreigners 63.3 30.0 25.1 Nominee 2.0 8.4 Companies Source: Economic Planning Unit, Prime Minister‟s Office, Malaysia, ([n.d.]). It was during the 1960s that the ethno-racialized and gendered term of „Bumiputera‟ (literally „princes of the soil‟ but more commonly circulated as „sons of the soil‟) entered public consciousness with the discontentment against the state‟s failure to protect Malay privilege. Ethnic violence between the Malays and the Chinese after the May 1969 general elections eventually forced the leading United Malays National Organization (UMNO) to introduce the NEP to “eradicate poverty” and to restructure society by 33 34 Jomo, 1993; Kahn, 1996 Hirschman, 1986. 28 detaching ethnic identity from economic role. However, the net effect of the NEP was the simultaneous de-emphasizing of ethno-racial cleavages in certain domains while renewing them in others. For instance, not only would the NEP perpetuate Malay political dominance, it also instituted a racial balance sheet for the economy by projecting a redistribution of corporate wealth from non-Malays to Bumiputera from 2.4 percent in 1971 to 30 percent in 1990. Concurrently, the state ideology of „Rukunegara‟, spelt out in a series of FiveYear Plans, envisions a Malaysia in which the Bumiputera were to become capitalists, professionals and knowledge workers; modern „sons of the soil‟ who were to know themselves through their rights to national wealth. More recently, the state-propagated ideological emphasis on Melayu Baru (New Malay) and Islam Hadhari (entrepreneurial Islam) continues along this thread of attaching value to upwardly-mobile Malay men as the ideal citizen-subjects of Malaysia‟s modernization.35 In forging a new class of modern Malays through industrial restructuring, ideas on women and the family were also remodeled. Despite ideological exclusion of women from these discourses, one outcome of the NEP was the general economic demand for female workers. Official census data between 1970 and 1980 saw 73,000 women joining the secondary industries of Malaysia‟s economy. In setting up free-trade zones (FTZs) and wooing foreign capital to set up factories, Malaysia‟s female LFPR for the manufacturing sector rose from 29% in 1970 to 40% in 1980. 36 The rising economic independence of women should not be mistaken for a concurrent improvement in gender equality. Rather, the high rate of female participation 35 See for example, Muhammed 1996; Chong, 2005; Badawi 2006. 29 in the labour-intensive manufacturing sector owes itself to the stratification of labour that continues to ascribe certain economic functions for women. In a revealing brochure produced by the Federal Industrial Development Authority (FIDA), the „natural‟ talents of Malaysian women were peddled to multinational corporations to encourage them to set up „pioneer-status‟ industries in the FTZs: “The manual dexterity of the Oriental Female is famous the world over. Her hands are small and she works with extreme care. Who, therefore, could be better qualified by nature and inheritance to contribute to the efficiency of a production line than the Oriental girl?”37 Through the feminization of the workforce, the industrialization strategy that was originally premised on creating a male Malay working class had gradually produced a female industrial force because of the demand for cheaper workers. However, as women‟s participation in occupational restructuring was never recognized by the state (Malaysia has no „equal pay for equal work‟ clause in its labour laws), the fruits of the NEP accrued to women are only „accidental‟ in nature.38 The persistence of these gendered inflections is captured in the responses against women‟s newfound independence in the seventies, often circulating under the metaphors of „minah karan‟ and „bohsia girls‟.39 Within the kampung (village), Aihwa Ong notes the evisceration of gender norms as more and more Muslim men came to associate the economic ascendancy of women with an emasculation of paternity rights.40 She notes that for the first time in Malay history, industrialization had induced a large number of young 36 Malaysian Census Reports 1970 and 1980, cited in Kaur, 1986: 9. Quoted in Kaur, 1986: 9-10. 38 Wahidin quoted in Chin, 1998: 171. 39 See Daud, 1985, and especially Nagata, 1984: 73, who describes minah karan as “unchaperoned” girls who seek thrills “like an electric current”. For Yang, (2006: 191) the term bohsia girls conjures up the image of „silent‟ young girls who tacitly accept illicit solicitations from bypassing men. 40 Ong, 1987; 1990. 37 30 Muslim women with “the money and social freedom to experiment with a new sense of self”.41 As thousands of Malay peasant girls migrated into cities, they contributed their income to consumer durables and home renovations that were presentations of the new wealth of kampung (village) families.42 Unsurprisingly, the dakwah (Islamicist) movement came to conflate women‟s economic independence with the dystopia of family crisis and moral decay.43 In this state of moral confusion over gender roles and conjugal relations, women‟s newfound freedom was perceived to have been achieved at the cost of the country‟s socio-economic future. In seeking to resolve the tension between economic restructuring and the moral social order, Malaysia chose to redomesticate women through idealized images of wife and mother to diffuse male fears of female domination in the labour market. It also implemented policies for a larger population and workforce that could sustain the labour and market demands of modernization. In 1984, erstwhile Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed inaugurated the National Population Policy (NPP), which involved a shift towards pro-natalist policies to achieve the state‟s target of a population of 70 million in 115 years: “Recognizing that a larger population constitutes an important human resource to create a larger consumer base with an increasing purchasing power to generate and support industrial growth through productive exploitation of natural resources, Malaysia could, therefore, plan for a larger population which could ultimately reach 70 million.”44 Put differently, the pro-natalist NPP was a concerted effort to derive a sizeable workforce and domestic market to fuel the productive and consumptive power required 41 Ibid. Ackerman, 1984: 53 43 Nagata, 1984: 74-5; Anwar, 1987:60-7. 42 31 for a modern economy. By viewing the population as an organic system of living beings with biological traits and by linking these features with perceived economic value, society-as-body could therefore be regulated through processes that aim to augment Malaysia‟s economic resources. As constitutive of a „biopolitics of the population‟, the NPP was thus implemented by reinforcing women‟s roles as homemakers, in extending maternity incentives to mothers for their first five children, and an increase of tax relief for the third to fifth child to boost birth rates. From the 1980s to the early 1990s, Malaysia‟s economy depended on the (re)productive energies of women as rapid economic growth had bolstered labour demand. For most of the middle-class families in this study, current levels of consumption continue to depend on women‟s participation in formal sectors of work. Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest problems faced by many female respondents is the constant need to juggle the demands of a career, childcare problems and housework. As with the case in Singapore, the occupational restructuring of professions have channelled a sizeable proportion of women previously employed as lived-in domestics to the workforce in search of better pay and working hours.45 In turn, the class-reproduction efforts of middle-class families increasingly rely on working-class domestic helpers. After a 1986 ban by the Labour Ministry on the inflow of migrant labour in response to moral outrage over the rising numbers of “illegals”, state authorities finally acknowledged the long term demands for low-wage foreign labour. In 1986-87, the ban was lifted as the Immigration Department of Malaysia reopened the gates, with the hiring of FDWs under revised recruitment guidelines. However, only 44 Ching, 1987: 20. 32 specific groups were allowed entry on the terms of ethno-race, gender and nationality. For instance, the immigration of male domestic servants into Malaysia is still strictly prohibited on the grounds that “it would create social problems”.46 Importing women from China was also disallowed on the pretext that these „little dragon ladies‟ are often the reasons for family wreckage, apart from the potential „imbalance‟ it might precipitate in Malaysia‟s ethnic ratio.47 Consequently, the laws limit the definition of FDWs (or Pembantu Rumah Asing, „PRA‟ in governmental terms) specifically to healthy women between the ages of twenty-one and forty-five, who are nationals of the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Given that Wawasan 2020 depends on the fostering of specific classes of citizens, these guidelines reinforce the impression that domestic helpers were not a uniform privilege available to Malaysian families of all classes. Primarily, the Immigration Department instituted directives for agencies and requires employers to submit marriage certificates, income tax records and children‟s birth certificates (or medical reports of invalid elderly) as part of the application process.48 These documents require prospective employers to be married, with children below the age of fifteen or who have sick elderly requiring extensive care before they are awarded with the privilege of hiring a FDW. Both husband and wife of the applying household must also furnish evidence of a combined income of at least RM$5,000.00 to qualify for Filipino or Sri Lankan FDWs, or RM$3,000.00 for helpers from Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia. Not only would these documentary requirements normalize domestic work as gendered labour performed by 45 See Jamilah, 1992; Lim, 1987; Ong, 1987. New Straits Times, 30 April 1993 47 “When 'little dragon ladies' strike fear,” New Straits Times, 6 June 2007; “Govt firm on no maids from China,” New Straits Times, 15 October 2007. 48 See Appendices A to E. 46 33 unskilled women, they also promote the dual-income nuclear family as a basis for inclusion into Malaysia‟s expanding middle-class. Confinement and Securitization in Foreign Domestic Work The FDW‟s disadvantaged position is conditioned by an interrelationship between globalization, nationalism, and moral systems that view the assimilation of foreign women into households with suspicion. This section examines the outcome of policies in Malaysia and Singapore,which contribute towards the position of FDWs as a largely „invisible‟ category under labour laws, and how processes of localized household surveillance and national immigration and security policies coincide to regulate their presence as a „bio-commodities‟. 49 Primarily, the Employment Act in both Malaysia and Singapore narrowly defines FDWs as “domestic servants”, who enjoy limited rights and protection. 50 The legislation excludes her from provisions relating to the number of rest days, holidays annual leave and sick leave, limitations on hours of work and conditions for the termination of contract. With the exception of Filipino FDWs who are protected by standardized contracts enforced by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), FDWs of other nationalities do not sign standardized contracts with their employers to ensure minimum wages and rest days. The exclusion of FDWs from the Workmen‟s Compensation Act in both countries also highlights the absence of legal coverage for work-related accidents. 34 Responding to the public outrage over the surge of abuse cases in 1987, the Human Resource Minister of Malaysia presented the official reason for the exclusion of FDWs from legal coverage as a „definitional‟ issue: “We will have problems defining for instance, their [domestic workers] hours of work and the value of their accommodation by employers if they were to be included in the Employment Act.” 51 The NGO proposals in 2003 to overhaul guidelines on domestic service, was rebuked by the Human Resource Minister: “there is no need to include maids in the Employment Act as a household is generally not considered a workplace.”52 In Singapore, labour minister S. Rajaratnam explained in a parliamentary hearing in 1968 that “the nature of the duties of this category of employees is not amenable to regulation by ordinary labour legislation. For instance, the normal working day of 8 hours for the average employee cannot possibly be applied to the working conditions of [domestic workers]. The nature of duties requires them, as a rule, to be „attached‟ to their place of work. Under the circumstances, it is best that conditions of employment for this category of workers be left to be determined by mutual agreement”.53 In constructing the domestic worker as a “member of the family”, it follows that the enforcement of labour law on work hours and rest days are difficult to regulate and should be left to market forces and private arrangements made between the household and the FDW.54 In not recognizing domestic work as productive labour, the difficulty in monitoring the foreign labour trade has further undermined the protection of FDWs. One Malaysian official has since remarked that: “Laws for domestic workers and migrants are 49 Chin, 2003; Gee & Ho, 2006: 29-32 See Chin 1998: 84 and Gee & Ho, 2006: 176. 51 New Straits Times, 23 June 1987. 52 Ibid., 8 May 2003. 53 Gee & Ho, 2006: 176. 50 35 not clearly defined…. Maids are not really protected…. This issue is difficult to monitor. They are one by one [in individual households], how can we monitor? It is up to them to report. To get an organization to monitor maids is unlikely. Who is going to do that?”55 For instance, despite labour recruitment agents being commonly identified as one element in the equation of FDW exploitation, foreign labour recruitment licenses are easily obtainable and monitoring mechanisms to regulate employment agencies in Malaysia remain lacking.56 The “Guidelines for taking in a Domestic Worker (PRA)” stipulate the responsibilities of employers entering into a „contract of service‟ with FDWs, requiring Malaysian employers to provide “appropriate and accessible living conditions”, “nutritious food” and “at least eight hours of rest”.57 In reality, these regulations are difficult to enforce as the „appropriateness‟ and the „quality‟ of food varies according to the employer‟s own perceptions on what the FDW‟s quality of life should be. In the case of Singapore‟s Employment Agencies Act, which governs the operation and establishment of maid agencies in Singapore, the legal concern is with the integrity of agencies as businesses. To date, there is no clear stipulation on the authority of the Commissioner of Labour who executes this legislation in the suspension of agent licenses.58 Similarly, Singapore‟s Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, the singular piece of legislation that has direct bearing on the FDW‟s employment, only controls the technical parameters of the employment contract without providing any clear guidelines 54 Elias, 2008: 292. Interview with anonymous official from Ministry of Human Resources, quoted in Human Rights Watch, 2004: 60. 56 The perpetuation of abuses typically occurs along the lines of withholding of the FDW‟s travel documents, confiscation of belongings, intimidation, and the failure to provide information about where FDWs may turn to for help. 57 See Clause 14 of “Garis Panduan & Syarat-Syarat Pengamebilan Pembantu Rumah Asing (PRA)”, Malaysian Immigration Department in Appendix B 58 Gee & Ho, 2006: 30-31. 55 36 on social behaviour towards the FDW.59 As the legislation concerns itself with work permit technicalities and impose a hefty levy and a security bond of SGD$5000 on employers,60 it may at times work against the domestic worker, especially if the employer chooses to defray the levy cost by overworking and underpaying her. 61 In sum, abuse cases involving FDWs are often handled by authorities on an ad-hoc basis. This „handsoff‟ approach and the lack of consensus in regulating domestic work affirm what observers claim to be a governmental attitude that “prefers to leave the free market to determine the wages and other conditions of service for foreign maids”.62 The management of the FDW is perhaps best encapsulated within a dual mechanism of disciplinarian practices within the household and securitization at the level of the nation-state.63 At the household level, many commentators have pointed to the common practice of long working hours, a lack of rest days and the withholding of passports under the pretext of her „running away‟.64 Even benign employers do not as a matter of norm give regular day-offs to domestic workers, effectively restricting their movements within the household for continuous housework and surveillance.65 In part, this pervading sense of distrust of FDWs also arise from the risk of potential financial 59 Under the First Schedule, Clause 3 of Singapore‟s Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, „the employer shall be responsible for and bear the costs of the worker‟s upkeep and maintenance. This includes the provision of adequate food, as well as medical treatment. The employer shall provide safe working conditions and acceptable accommodation for the worker”. Such terms of “adequate” and “acceptable” are legally vague and the potential for discretion or even abuse is high. 60 MOM, 2008a. 61 Gee & Ho, 2006: 31. 62 Yeoh & Huang, 1999: 1156. See also Cheah, 2006, for a taxonomy of FDW skills and how much various ethnic „qualities‟ and perceived skills may fetch different wages in the market. 63 Ong, 2006: 201-205. 64 Human Rights Watch 2004; Chin, 1998. See also New Straits Times, 28 Oct 2008, where the Human Resources Ministry announced that it was exploring options to legalize the possession of passports by employers. 65 See UNIFEM, 2008b. A quick search on the internet has also revealed how some female employers are sharing notes on forums and blogs on how best to „manage‟ their FDW. In http://singaporemaid.blogspot. com/, translated versions of contracts and „house rules‟ stipulating the hour to hour duties of the FDW, her dress code and behaviour towards employers are shared between employers. 37 loss should an FDW go „missing‟; a RM445 “maid levy” and a RM10 stamp duty is imposed by Malaysia for each new hire and does not include agent fees which can amount to RM5,000 for each domestic helper.66 In particular, Christine Chin‟s work on the “infrapolitics” of domestic service attests to the practice of confinement by employers in Malaysia, which prevents the FDWs from learning about their contractual entitlements.67 My interviews with a four female employers highlights the mounting distrust of the FDW, whose sexual allure must be frequently monitored to prevent misconduct. 68 These moral boundaries, which crosscut ethno-racial prejudices on the „dirtiness‟ of foreign women, are further reinforced by ocassional press reports of „runaway‟ FDWs arrested for sex work and stories of rape and seduction by male employers. 69 Of greater concern is the convergence of these individual or collective fears over the perceived sexual and criminal tendencies of the FDWs with governmental interests in controlling their public presence. For instance, Ong has argued that the two year term enforced by the work permit system in Singapore creates the impression that employers‟ investment on the training and acculturation of the FDW is potentially a drain on familial 66 New Straits Times, 7 October 2004. See Chapter 5 “Infrapolitics of Domestic Service: Strategies of, and Resistances to, Control” in Chin, 1998: 125-64. 68 For an instructive example in Hong Kong see Constable, 1997: 106-8. Notably, some households and maid agencies in Singapore insist that the domestic worker be dressed in oversized t-shirts and shorts (commonly known as the “maid‟s garb”) as a disciplinary technology to manage her sexual allure. This is not helped by discriminatory legislation as well; Singapore‟s Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, Fourth Schedule, Clause 11, states that the domestic worker “shall not indulge or be involved in any illegal, immoral or undesirable activities, including breaking up families in Singapore” (Appendix F). In 2004, Malaysia‟s regulations for the hiring of FDWs carried a moralistic clause that demanded that “Foreign domestic workers should always watch their conduct at all times and should not be involved in activities that go against the ethics/culture of the host country” (Human Rights Watch 2004, Appendix C). This has since been replaced by reworded regulations in 2006, which no longer carried this clause. 69 See also Chin, 2003: 146; Gee & Ho, 2006: 51-56. 67 38 resources.70 The sense of „betrayal‟ becomes even greater when domestic workers are found guilty of misconduct despite their employers‟ emotional and material investment, reaffirming suspicion of their „outsider‟ status. According to an NGO report on Singapore, sites of violence emerge when the asymmetrical power relations between the female employer and the FDW is not held in abeyance. Coupled with the suspicion on their sexuality, the discourses on domestic work have created a situation in Singapore where female employers are more likely to oppress FDWs than male employers. 71 Beyond the „infrapolitics‟ of domestic work, policies of securitization have the effect of maintain the transience of these women, preventing them from settling into the host countries as naturalized citizens. In Singapore, these include the work permit system under the Employment of Foreign Worker‟s Act, which limits the FDW‟s stay to two years, subject to renewals.72 FDWs are not allowed to bring along dependants, apply for citizenship or to get married with Singaporean men in the course of their employment. The FDW is regulated through health check-ups and deportation is enforced in the event of pregnancy to prevent claims to citizenship. As policies that maintain her transience and sterility, current employment practices exclude the FDW from reproductive activities of her own. In Malaysia, the regulation of FDWs is an issue of „national security‟ for enforcement agencies. Like Singapore, the list of exclusionary immigration regulations limits the FDWs‟ stay to two years under the temporary work permit, disallowing her marriage with Malaysian men, and restricts accompanying dependants.73 FDWs are subjected to three medical check-ups annually, and in cases of pregnancy or sexually70 Ong, 2006: 209. Singam et.al., 2003: 2. 72 MOM, 2008a. 73 See Clause 16 of “Garis Panduan & Syarat-Syarat Pengamebilan Pembantu Rumah Asing (PRA),” Malaysian Immigration Department in Appendix B. 71 39 transmitted diseases, procedures of deportation are implemented without the provision of medical treatment. This combination of confinement and securitization, both in commodifying and confining the FDW‟s presence to the household, culminates in what Ong has described as a system of „neoslavery‟.74 The contradictions between Malaysia‟s labour and immigration laws also obstruct the access to justice for many abused FDWs. By viewing migration as „fundamentally‟ a matter of policing borders and criminalizing „illegal‟ migrants, the practice of enforcing punitive immigration laws on undocumented foreign workers ignores the nature of these cases as matters of enforcing of labour laws and contractual obligations. Malaysia‟s Employment Act has no clear provisions where a FDW awaiting her case against employers may reside legally in the country without persecution under the Immigration Act. Police, immigration authorities and the local RELA militia (Ikatan Relawan Rakyat Malaysia, or “Volunteers of Malaysian People”) who arrest undocumented FDWs during nation-wide raids, often fail to screen them to ascertain if they are escaping trafficking or other forms of abuse and exploitation. Once apprehended, FDWs like other irregular migrants are processed into Malaysia‟s detention centres and do not have access to legal representation or a translator. 74 Ong, 2006: 196. 40 Fig. 2.3: Presentation by Ishak Mohamed, Director of Malaysia‟s Immigration Enforcement Branch.75 Currently, FDWs who wish to complain against employers or pursue criminal cases must apply for a temporary one month special passes costing RM100 per month, because their temporary work permits and entry visas are tied to their employers. Once they leave their employers, even for reasons of abuse or the withholding of wages, the FDW loses her legal status and may be incarcerated, fined and deported under Malaysia‟s immigration laws. 76 For transfer from one employer to the next, the FDW must return home and await the issuance of a new visa for her re-entry. While the special passes from the Immigration Department grants her legal residence for one month to attend to legal proceedings but disallows her from engaging in temporary employment, court cases take much longer than what the permit allows. Faced with pressures from NGOs, international humanitarian organizations and the governments of Indonesia and the Philippines, Malaysia has implemented a series of policy measures that aim to address maid abuse. Recently, these include a mandatory 75 Mohamed, 2008. 41 insurance scheme for FDWs, a hotline for employers and domestic workers, a half-day induction program for new employers, as well as increased commitment to prosecuting employers and agents for harbouring undocumented migrants, abuse and salary arrears issues.77 The Malaysian state has considered adopting standardized training programs for FDWs as implemented by the Malaysian Association of Foreign Maid Agencies, to achieve desired standards from the new FDWs.78 In recent years, Singapore‟s Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has also responded to pressures regarding the FDWs plight in several ways. These measures include a mandatory induction program for new employers and employees, increased commitment to prosecuting employers for unpaid wages and physical abuse, operating helplines, introducing an accreditation program for employment agencies, and enforcing stiffer penalties for errant agents. 79 However, these concessions to humanitarian pressures are limited as attention is deflected away from the state, whose national development projects depend on labour importation. One exposition of the problem of maid abuse by Pheng Cheah is to view it as “primarily one of concrete structural conditions that are inherently conducive to the widespread dehumanization of FDWs and only secondarily a matter of personal cruelty or pathology of individual employers”.80 Following this observation, state efforts at curtailing the conflict zones within the family can be seen as attempts at maintaining the structures of labour deployment and not benevolent protection. For neoslavery to 76 Tenaganita‟s Program Coordinator Aegile Fernandez reveals that some of the detained women have told her that a reason for their running away was because they were “overworked and tired.” Interview with Aegile Fernandez, 6 January 2009. 77 “Insurance for maids to cost only RM75,” New Straits Times, 17 January 2008; “Ministry to set up hotline for employers, maids,” New Straits Times, 21 June 2007; “New law on foreign workers to be tabled next year,” New Straits Times, 15 November 2007“Ministry suspends 19 maid agencies after complaints,” New Straits Times, 22 June 2007. 78 “Training for foreign maids introduced,” New Straits Times, 7 August 2001. 79 Human Rights Watch, 2005: 7; Piper, 2005: 3. 42 function, the FDW‟s body is maintained to upkeep the relay of reproductive labour into households. Even so, the FDW is not enhanced through training or legal validation on the grounds of her position as „unskilled‟ foreigner. Within this economy of domestic work, NGOs campaigning for the protection of FDWs become arbiters against abuse. Chapters 3 and 4 examine how these efforts take similar as well as divergent paths in their expression and development, pointing once again to the political intricacies that differentiate Malaysia and Singapore‟s governmental regimes. 80 Cheah, 2006: 203. CHAPTER THREE Dayoff.sg and „Active Citizens‟ in Singapore NGOs have been long regarded as important actors in addressing the inadequacies of migrant entitlements through the register of rights. 1 In Singapore and Malaysia, domestic political conditions and their limited legal status constrains the ability of migrants to selforganize, and thus migrants depend significantly on local citizens to highlight their concerns. Cross-country studies on Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan acknowledges the non-traditional, non-union labour organizations that fill the political void left by trade unions for migrant protection.2 The introduction of a social movement perspective on the question of migrant rights is therefore important as it is through such movements that engender the empowerment of workers through education, knowledge provision and eventually participation in „voice institutions‟.3 This chapter reviews the efforts by two social movements in Singapore as they search for the best way to campaign for the interests of FDWs. The city-state‟s resistance to rights talk has been well documented and it provides a chance to discuss and take stock of the different strategies of enacting rights claims within an illiberal polity. Furthermore, as Singapore views FDWs as a transient, unskilled labour force occupying an almost invisible position within the legal-politico terrain, these women are caught in a liminal position without access to many liberties. Under these circumstances, how would NGOs 1 Gallin, 2000. See the special issue by Piper and Ford (2006) on labour unions and NGOs in the respective countries. 3 Gruegel & Piper, 2007. 2 44 convince other citizens that the immigrants should have equal access to resources and protection on the terms of rights? Lenore Lyons has tracked the constraints for organizing on behalf of migrants in Singapore to the 1987 „Marxist Conspiracy‟, where the state detained twenty-two people under the Internal Security Act.4 Many were social workers and volunteers who were part of the Geylang Catholic Centre for Foreign Workers (GCC), which had advocated for better working conditions for all workers in Singapore, including migrants. However, the government viewed their efforts as a front to “radicalise student and Christian activists” and the GCC was subsequently closed.5 Critics of Singapore‟s „soft-authoritarian‟ government have since pointed to democratic deficits in public life for the general unwillingness to engage in political mobilisation on behalf of cultural communities, including foreign workers.6 Contrasting the state of migrant activism between Hong Kong and Singapore where more than twenty pro-migrant NGOs operate in the former and only a handful in the latter, Daniel Bell has suggested that the situation is indicative of the lack of civil liberties in Singapore (vis-à-vis Hong Kong) for agents to organize and protest for their interests.7 Similarly, a local study by Brenda Yeoh and Shirlena Huang has linked the poor situation of migrant protection to a „weak‟ civil society.8 Instead of direct contention, political observers of Singapore commonly point to a difference between „civil society‟, an independent domain necessary for the advancement 4 Lyons, 2007. For a detailed account of the events leading to the “Marxist Conspiracy”, see Rodan, 1996: 92; Barr, 2008: 237-243; Mauzy & Milne, 2002: 130; Seow, 1994. 5 Haas, 1989: 59. 6 Lyons, 2005: 7. 7 Bell, 2006: 285-6. See Piper 2006, for a similar assessment of the difficult conditions in Malaysia and Singapore. 8 Yeoh & Huang, 1999. 45 of democratic interests and rights, and „civic society‟ as a constrained political space that local rights-based groups operate within.9 Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) was one such group that found its humanitarian objectives to be constrained by the state‟s discourse of civic society. It first emerged in 2002 as a response to the shocking abuse and death of 19-year old Indonesian Muawanatul Chasanah.10 After a highly publicized media campaign as “The Working Committee 2”, the group became formalized as “Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2)” through registration under Singapore‟s Societies Act in 2004, and it undertook an expansion of its previous objectives to protect female domestic workers to include all migrant workers. The aim of the new TWC2 was to “promote respect for domestic workers through education, and secure better treatment of domestic workers through legislation and other means”.11 This is evident in the group‟s decision to move away from using the denigratory „maids‟ to „foreign domestic workers‟, as well as its campaign strategy to improve „conditions of work‟, thereby situating its advocacy within the nationalist narrative of development via labour importation strategies. In a book on TWC2‟s formation titled “Dignity Overdue”, founding members John Gee and Elaine Ho reveal that: 9 See Lee, 2000; Koh & Ooi, 2004. „Civic society‟ was a famous term coined by then Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo as a softer, collaborative sphere of association between the family and the state. Unlike the liberal brand of „civil society‟ whose expansion is associated democratisation and the shrinking of the hegemonic state, Yeo believes „civic society‟ in Singapore should embody a consultative partnership with the state to improve governance. Since the term began its circulation within policymakers, scholars have viewed it as a discourse to manage the political spaces available for activism. 10 See Singam et al., 2002. The acronym referred to the short-lived “The Working Committee” (TWC) that was formed in 1998 but disbanded a year later. 11 Gee & Ho, 2006: 73. 46 Many employers have valid reasons to complain about their domestic workers; there are workers who really are careless and irresponsible; who steal valuables and money; or who exploit their employers‟ trust in other ways. It would be wrong to ignore this side of the domestic worker issue. If we did, it could mean that employers would be less likely to listen to our views. We would then be seen as being biased, and that would make it difficult for us to talk and to hear from employers of domestic workers. Consequently, we needed to make the effort to acknowledge employer‟s complaints and recognize what was justified in them.12 Such „employer complains‟ highlight the constructed opposition between the rights of the FDW and the employer‟s demands for a cheap and reliable household helper. The bulk of the problems faced by pro-FDW groups in Singapore are related to the perception that the championing of FDWs‟ economic, social and cultural rights may run counter Singapore‟s demand for low-wage labour. Concomitantly, an NGO representative has noted that Singapore‟s NGOs “cannot engage the ministries on moral terms (such as rights) but on technicalities.”13 On the advocacy front, this translates into a need for TWC2 to address the general resistance towards „migrant rights‟ through the group‟s usage of technical language; on the standardization and regulation of working hours and tasks, the recognition of domestic work under the Employment Act, and the institution of rest days as part of labour relations. Overall, the means deployed have been described by Pheng Cheah as “strategies of business management” that highlight the economic payoffs of a rest day that serve „national interests‟ and the provision of technical expertise to assist, and not contest, technocratic governance.14 The move away from rights-based approaches is also reflected in the operational ethos of TWC2‟s biggest partner, the Humanitarian Organization for Migration 12 13 Ibid: 71. Presentation by Charanpal Bal Singh, manager of the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics at the “3rd Helpliners Training” held at TWC2 premises, 5 March 2008. 47 Economics (HOME). It was during her term as chairperson of the Archdiocese Commission for Migrants and Itinerant People (ACMI) that HOME‟s founder Bridget Lew began her work with migrant workers in 1997. Due to the sensitivity of pro-migrant activism in the Catholic Church because of its association with the „Marxist Conspiracy‟, Lew has often faced difficulties in convincing the church that pro-migrant activism needs to take on a stronger tone on rights. Lew eventually quit her position within the church after three years, and used her retirement funds to set up her own non-profit and secular NGO in 2004, citing her wish to avoid “all sorts of politics, including those in the church”.15 Unlike TWC2‟s emphasis on research and advocacy, HOME‟s initial emphasis was on direct service provision through the operation of shelters for FDWs. While there was some rivalry between TWC2 and HOME in the early formative years, the common concern on migrant issues and the functional specialization of both groups have provided more than sufficient reasons for cooperation.16 The Dayoff.sg Campaign As a case study, the “Dayoff.sg” campaign in support of a legislated day-off for domestic workers was an early collaborative effort between between TWC2, HOME and UNIFEM Singapore in May 2008 to raise awareness on the welfare of FDWs in Singapore.17 The campaign validates domestic work as a profession that should be accorded the basic 14 Cheah, 2006: 248. Lim & Li, 2007. 16 In 2009, TWC, HOME and a pro-migrant arts group Migrant Voices signed a memorandum of understanding to share resources and cooperate on behalf of migrant rights in Singapore. 17 As my main fieldwork site is at TWC2, the following discussion on the day-off campaign will largely be concentrating on developments that unfold within the organization. 15 48 labour rights of rest days and urges employers to discard the „maid‟ label in favour of the more dignified „domestic worker‟.18 Positioning FDWs as “productive individuals who make extremely valuable contributions to Singaporean society like any other worker,” and should enjoy a day off “to learn new skills, acquire knowledge and be empowered as individuals”, the campaign‟s moral message presents the FDWs individuals whose free time contributes economic benefits to Singapore.19 Furthermore, when employers are reminded that FDWs form part of the labour force that partake in jobs which locals shun, the campaign repositions FDWs‟ vulnerability as a form of market availability supporting national development. In its own words, the campaign “is really only asking people to treat others as they would wish to be treated themselves”, and the campaign has mounted a public education campaign which includes talks and partnerships with educational institutions, community groups and organizations. 20 The campaign has also launched a website to “allay the fears” and “burst the bubbles of myths” surrounding the consequences of giving a day-off.21 Concerns of domestic workers running away (thus forfeiting the employer‟s security deposit) or the worry that she will mix with “bad company” are met with the campaign‟s emphasis on trust, communication and kindness as regulatory discourses in the absence of legislation.22 To support these appeals that TWC2 and HOME make on the employers, it is necessary for the groups to step up on direct services to improve the perception of FDWs by employers. At the women‟s shelter run by HOME which houses many FDWs awaiting 18 Abdul Rahman & Lorente, 2004: 9; UNIFEM, 2008a. UNIFEM, 2008b: 1. 20 UNIFEM, 2008a: 1. 21 Ibid, 2. 22 Dayoff.sg website, 2008. 19 49 legal proceedings regarding errant employers, a strict curfew is imposed on their movements and a dress code is enforced to maintain their moral legitimacy. This is especially important for HOME‟s Executive Director, Jolovan Wham, who shared that because the shelter is situated near a residential estate, care must be exercised to manage neighbours‟ perceptions of HOME‟s shelter and FDWs in general. 23 To encourage an active lifestyle as these women await court proceedings or employment, they are urged to partake in cultural activities to occupy their free time. Beyond the pastoral care that is rendered by HOME‟s shelter for women, there are also technical interventions that attempt to improve their market position through skills training, and HOME has linked up with other welfare organisations to equip the women with competencies in English Language, micro-finance management, hairdressing and computer skills, to name a few.24 For TWC2, the bulk of its direct services targeting FDWs has been rendered through the provision of a helpline service which has answered close to 2000 calls since its inception in 2006. The bulk of calls are from domestic workers seeking assistance and advice for the issues they encounter in their employment in Singapore. 25 Besides the provision of emotional support, helpline volunteers are briefed to empower and educate migrant workers about their legal rights and entitlements under the employment laws in 23 Interview with Jolovan Wham of HOME, 9 December 2008. See for instance, the websites of UNIFEM (http://www.unifemsingapore.org.sg), HOME (http://www.home.org.sg) and TWC2 (http://www.twc2.org.sg). HOME runs an IT training center known as CyberHome with the assistance of the Microsoft Unlimited Potential Program, and LifeHome, a life skills training facility funded by Western Union that organizes language courses. The Dayoff.sg campaign also hosts a website (http://www.dayoff.sg/index.shtml) which provides links to various social services available for domestic workers to tap onto for skills upgrading and networking. Piper and Yamanaka (2008) have also argued that one important way of promoting the interests for volunteer immigrants is via skills acquisition, linking protection to human and social capital building. 25 TWC2, 2008. The 2006-07 annual helpline report reveals that women‟s usage of the helpline outnumber men by almost seventy percent, with the bulk of issues relating to money and salary matters, and close to ten percent relating to physical abuse. While the helpline was inaugurated to help domestic workers, it has since expanded its target group to accommodate all migrant workers, including construction and shipyard workers. 24 50 Singapore, and to orientate their everyday behaviour to minimize conflict with their employers. The calls are then recorded into case files for monitoring and follow-up and the statistics are channelled towards TWC2‟s research reports for public advocacy. More recently, the emphasis on productivity has crosscut dominant ideas on health and work, and there have been discussions on the possibility of getting doctors onboard the initiative. Framed as a health issue, the day-off for FDWs is positioned as a step towards instilling „work-life harmony‟ for these women and the presence of doctors would lend medical credence to the movement‟s drive for rest days.26 Fig. 3.1: A poster by TWC2 for its day-off campaign in 2009. Note the moral appeals in its presentation. 26 See also UNIFEM, 2008b: 1. The attachment of the day-off to health concerns as a point of advocacy is especially powerful, when the Singapore government themselves have emphasized on the importance of work-life balance for Singapore citizens, culminating most recently in the institution of a five day work week for all civil servants (MOM, 2005). 51 A major strategy of the campaign was thus to alter public perception about the moral obligation of employers in protecting these mobile but vulnerable women, while simultaneously training the FDW to fit within the ascribed identity scripts of domestic workers as docile, productive and chaste. This is helped by media reports of abuse cases which undermine citizens‟ impression of themselves as an „educated‟ and „caring‟ society.27 The ethical treatment of FDWs, often framed by the campaign as adopting an understanding of the FDW‟s „difficult position‟, is therefore pitched as a remedy for Singapore‟s tarnished face of „Asian‟ hospitality. Historically, this appeal to „Asian primordialism‟ within the region emerged as an ideological bulwark against the unfettered individualism blamed for the West‟s socio-economic decay.28 Projecting itself as a benevolent alternative of capitalism, Singapore employs the rhetoric of „Asian values‟ to foster ideological consensus for national development projects despite the attendant social dislocations. In claiming that wealth accumulation and competition need not be at odds with visions of a „caring‟ society, „Asian values‟ continues to ignore the plight of abused FDWs.29 27 Yeoh et. al., 2004. Wee, 2007: 108-112. 29 Ong, 2006: 210. 28 52 Fig. 3.2: Selections from A Day Off photo exhibition by Sim Chi Yin, commissioned by TWC2 and exhibited between October and December 2003 at various locations island wide. Operating under the constraints of communitarianism, the dayoff campaign‟s attempts to reintroduce FDWs as legitimate subjects employs the same language of „benevolent development‟ as espoused by Asian values. Instead of calling stakeholders to task according to international charters, the circulation of discourses on „empathetic employers‟ and expressions of maid abuse as „national shame‟ become strategies to validate labour rights in the absence of state codification of these liberties. 30 It may seem naïve to insist that such appeals to the morality of employers will generate substantial 30 In a forum letter published on The Straits Times (10 March 2003), TWC2 members Imran Price and Lim Chi-Sharn exhort Singaporeans to view “the current state of the foreign domestic worker in Singapore [as] a source of national embarrassment”, and that “it is our national obligation to safeguard the welfare of foreign domestic workers.” 53 improvements to the working conditions of FDWs given the power imbalance within the household, but such informal rules and ethical appeals are just as fundamental as the set of rights guaranteed by law, if the intention is to improve the welfare of FDWs. For Daniel Bell, it is important to emphasize this point only because “liberal-democratic theorists (and Western NGOs) are inclined to think, first and foremost, of legalistic conditions for securing the welfare of the vulnerable”.31 However, as the success of the campaign is also contingent on its ability to stay within the discursive boundaries of „national interests‟ and failure to toe the line may result in backlashes for the NGOs. One example of this cost of transgression occurred prior to the Dayoff.sg campaign, where TWC2‟s own efforts in its “Sundays Off” campaign led to a series of closed-door dialogue sessions with the MOM in June and November 2003. Founding members Gee and Ho note that: The ministry was concerned that by highlighting some of the poorer examples of how domestic workers are treated in Singapore, TWC2 would be putting Singapore in a negative light on the international plane. It also expressed reservations about TWC2‟s proposal for tighter legislation to determine the working conditions of domestic workers in Singapore, although the ministry was willing to consider the regulatory aspects of the matter.32 Here, the governmental concern was that the media‟s involvement in TWC2‟s work had contravened national interests because it did not act within the state‟s formulation of civic society as a consultative partner; the group had made the government „lose face‟. While 31 Bell, 2006: 289. My interviews with three FDWs reveal that it was nice of their employers to grant additional privileges such as freedom to use a mobile phone, to use the internet or even to be able to date a boyfriend (entitlements commonly denied to FDWs) out of goodwill and trust. Such details were deeply appreciated by FDWs because it went beyond formal legal obligations of the employers, and it would have been different had these been spelt out in contract form. Of course, the relationship between employer and FDW is still a labour relation and as such, there needs to be a balance between concern over rights and the quality of relationships. The point here is that both concerns often conflict in practice and FDWs do not always prioritise rights in their decisions. 54 TWC2 has been careful in presenting a non-confrontational front because its humanitarian efforts depend on closed-door networking with the authorities, the group was deemed to have overstepped the „OB markers‟ because such reports might tarnish Singapore‟s international image.33 Similarly, TWC2‟s public call for tighter legalisation through a standardized employment contract and the inclusion of FDWs under the Employment Act is met with the MOM‟s insistence that it would only consider regulatory aspects. The ministry‟s rebuttal in this case repeats its oft mentioned rhetoric that the economics of domestic labour as best managed according to the dictates of the free market and the special needs of each family, and that the state should not intervene in the domestic sphere of family matters.34 In justifying itself in the face of mounting suspicion of its activities as „antinational‟ or as “acting as a trade union for FDWs in Singapore”35, TWC2 claims that its humanitarian actions mitigate the bias of foreign media: When TWC2 stretches out its hands to aggrieved FDWs, that gesture helps to moderate tension in the relationship. It helps to fight the prejudicial view that people in Singapore are bloody-minded or indifferent about the FDW‟s welfare.36 By consistently framing their work as complementary to the national project, TWC2 got away with a mild rebuke in this episode, suggesting that state interests - both in 32 Gee & Ho, 2006: 129. On the topic of „OB markers‟, see Chua, 2003; Koh & Ooi 2004 and Lee, 2002. In an informal interview with one of TWC2‟s executive committee members, it was noted that “TWC2‟s activism is not creative because [they] are often too afraid of overstepping the OB markers.” (Personal communication, 13 March 2009) 34 See Koh & Tan, 2006 and Hooi, 2004. In a press statement released to address calls by the Indonesian Embassy to raise the minimum salary of Indonesian maids to $280 a month from the current $230 from 1 Jan 2005, MOM said: “As a matter of national policy, MOM does not prescribe wages for all workers in Singapore, whether local or foreign. Whether wages should increase or decrease is best determined by market demand and supply for labour, skills, capabilities, and competency to perform the task.” 35 Gee & Ho, 2006: 134. 33 55 maintaining the welfare of FDWs for national development and in the protection of its international image – might be indirectly served by allowing the NGOs to moralize against employers through the local media.37 Consequently, the national project of making Singapore „a better place to live‟ is reaffirmed by TWC2‟s work on changing the mindsets of its citizens. ‘Active Citizens’ and New Possibilities In 2004, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong‟s pledge towards a more „open society‟ called on citizens to partake in the building of a robust „civic society‟ as part of the government‟s vision of a modern Singapore.38 Ironically, the activities of archetypical „active citizens‟ within the Dayoff.sg campaign reveal tensions between the government‟s desire for an „active citizenry‟ and the advocative attempts by local activists on behalf of non-citizens. While the civic participation of the campaign volunteers may fulfil the national longing for a vigorous populace, their work often test the circumscribed parameters of state-sanctioned grassroots activities and feedback channels. Consequently, these groups commonly assert their public position as nationally-oriented civic society organisations, even if their work challenge hegemonic definitions of national development as „progressive‟ and „benevolent‟. Given the plethora 36 Lyons, 2005: 25. See also MOM (2008b: 1, emphasis mine), where the ministry states that the “the „Day Off Campaign‟ to raise awareness among employers on the importance of arrest day for their FDWs is in line with MOM‟s effort to ensure that FDWs are accorded adequate rest.” Unsurprisingly, the MOM response also followed with a list of initiatives to protect the FDW‟s welfare, in a bid lay to rest any doubts on its regulatory capabilities. 38 See Lee Hsien Loong‟s address at the Harvard Club‟s thirty-fifth anniversary dinner, reprinted in The Straits Times, 7 January 2004: 24-5. 37 56 of state regulations and discourses that limit contentious forms of civic participation, it follows that the campaign strategy deliberately restrains its humanitarian efforts to the field of ethical interventions, and not channels of redress that often draw political scrutiny. In this sense, the work of TWC2 and HOME, dissolved of clearly enunciated rights-based discourses, fits the PAP‟s vision of civic society as a space inhabited by Singaporeans engaged in a consensual project of nation-building.39 This is not to say that NGOs like TWC2 and HOME are predisposed to this form of civic activism; it should be highlighted here that the motivations behind the mission objectives of these groups are often products of internal contestations on how best to extend the humanitarian cause of migrant protection and the development of civil society in general. As President of Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) and veteran member of TWC2 Dana Lam notes, a „softer approach‟ may not necessarily be the best for social movements: In retrospect, as the campaign director, I believe we made a mistake in being too cautious with our focus on the plight of the domestic worker. We were trying to please too many people, the authorities, the public even. And, quite typically, thinking that a softer approach was for the better. In the end, I felt the campaign lacked the punch to put the message across clearly, and that is Stop Abuse of Foreign Domestic Workers! This may be how we can do things best in Singapore. But I think it‟s sad that a wellintentioned citizens‟ initiative such as this should be so compromised.40 So while they might be united under a cause, members often disagree on the means of achieving those objectives. On another occasion, this dilemma between an overtly politicised stance and a softer, cooperative relationship with the state threatened to split a newly formed TWC2 in early 2003. In a bid to forge as many partnerships it could in the 39 40 Lyons, 2005: 26. Gee & Ho, 2006: 105, emphasis mine. 57 early stages of its formation, the proposal to partner with another civil society organisation, Think Centre, was tabled at a TWC2 meeting.41 Members eventually turned down the proposal on the grounds that Think Centre had been gazetted by the government as a political organisation, which TWC2 took to be a cautionary sign that they should be wary of being associated with. Following that meeting, past AWARE president and TWC2 member Constance Singam sent an appeal, asking members to revisit the decision as a “matter of principle”: We are a civil society movement with a fundamental responsibility (and something we all set out to do, even if not overtly expressed) to redefine the way we live and the values by which we live, be it social or political. We value democratic values, egalitarianism and inclusiveness. The maid issue/abuse is a tragic and extreme example of the lack of these values. The marginalisation of Think Centre is another example. Think Centre was gazetted a political organisation to starve them of foreign funds and as an example to other organisations. We, as a civil society movement, should not be party to its marginalisation.42 A counter-position was offered by current president of TWC2, John Gee: Before anything else, [TWC2] was set up to improve the position of FDWs here, and we should be single-minded about this: whatever takes us towards that objective is to be welcomed and anything which impeded us in reaching our goal is not. This sounds ruthless, but the goal is good and we are employing legitimate means to attain it. We should not let ourselves be derailed by fighting other battles that we did not collectively decide were ours at the outset. And I must say, on points of principle, that I always feel much more comfortable with taking a stand for which I might have to pay a price than with taking one for which other people (chiefly foreign women workers, in this case) will pay. I hope that the Think Centre could be told quite frankly of our concerns and that it would agree to respect them by not pursuing the question of sponsorship. If we share a common concern for FDWs we should be able to put that [aside] 41 Inaugurated in 1999, the Think Centre is commonly perceived as one of the government‟s key detractor because of its willingness to examine the „uncomfortable‟ issues of democracy and human rights in Singapore. While its public presence has been that of a think-tank, its close relationship with members of the opposition parties continues to raise governmental suspicion over its activities. 42 Gee & Ho, 2006: 123-4. 58 first and agree to find ways to cooperate fruitfully on the issue without jeopardising our chances of success.43 While members eventually voted against the Think Centre‟s sponsorship by a 10-5 majority, the issue raised a “pragmatism versus principles” debate over the development of civil society in general.44 Overall, the conservatism within the group reflects a fear of overstepping the „OB markers‟; TWC2 often engages in a process of self-regulation and are rewarded periodically for acting as partners of the state. This shift towards selfregulation by NGOs has been described by Garry Rodan when he argues that repressive laws such as the ISA are of diminishing importance in a political system of extensive cooptation.45 In their place, administrative law such as the Societies Act and the active wooing of activists under state patronage have become more effective means of regulation without the legitimacy backlashes associated with outright coercion.46 This has led Rodan to argue that Singapore possesses only “civil society forces”; a genuine civil society in the liberal tradition has not emerged despite nearly fifty years of rapid modernization.47 Following the received wisdom that governments around the world are predisposed to oppression and civil society is the natural domain of liberty, Singapore is a „frustrating case‟ for many liberal observers. The conceptual and empirical difficulties of placing the city-state within the debate on democratisation arise from the legitimacy enjoyed by the PAP leadership through its untarnished record of electoral victories and its tendency to impose anti-democratic laws through the parliamentary system. According to 43 Ibid: 125. Ibid: 126. 45 Rodan, 2003: 506. 46 George, 2005: 20. 47 Rodan, 2003: 505. 44 59 Chua, this steady state of „illiberal democracy‟ is compounded by an ambivalent electorate that is vocal about objectionable state intervention but unwilling to elect a new government.48 In this regard, the proposals by international bodies - articulated through the language of rights, rule of law and a strong civil society - lack political salience under the mechanisms of PAP hegemony. However, the conditions described above are by no means static. It is critical to note that this vacillation between acquiescence and resistance fit within the model of “political opportunity structure” for organizing social movements, where the scope for reforms occur in “protest cycles”.49 As part of a repertoire of political opportunities available, watershed events, such as grisly abuse cases, state opprobrium against dissidents, or the formalization of the government‟s own accountability rhetoric, can provide a stronger basis for NGOs to press for reforms. Conversely in more „settled‟ times, one can expect NGOs to pressure the public and government less on the terms of rights because of the political limitations on the rhetoric. Notably, when Singapore chaired ASEAN from August 2007 to July 2008, it has made clarifications to the ASEAN Charter in terms of good governance, human rights and fundamental freedoms. As Gary Rodan notes, a political opportunity emerges for activist groups here by the government‟s own tacit acceptance of rights; “While translating this commitment into a concrete and workable institution remains a challenge, Singapore‟s divergence from many other Southeast Asian countries where national human rights bodies are in place or being contemplated has been highlighted.”50 Notwithstanding Singapore officialdom‟s 48 Chua, 1996: 203. See McAdam, 1996; Tarrow, 1994 50 Rodan, 2009: 195. 49 60 ambiguity with regards to rights, one must acknowledge that the inclusion of articles in the ASEAN Charter on Human Rights is significant in propelling the emergence of coalitional linkages among local rights-based organizations. The most visible outcome of these partnerships has been the Working Committee for an ASEAN Human Rights commission, dubbed MARUAH (“Dignity” in Malay), which counts migrant and feminist NGO veterans John Gee, Braema Mathi, and Constance Singham as its core leadership. Like TWC2 and HOME, MARUAH is cautious about the presentation of its public presence: MARUAH appreciates that human rights is still relatively new in the Singapore context. As such, we intend to approach the issue of human rights at an appropriate pace, with a PPP (public−private−people) model built around partnerships with multiple stakeholders. We will adopt appropriate approaches such as dialogues and negotiations, while remaining guided by and clear in our mission of observing the fundamental principles of human rights. As such, MARUAH will be mindful of the need for a non-partisan stance on human rights.51 Despite its placid self-introduction, MARUAH has shown that it can adopt a critical stance on the formation of the ASEAN Human Rights Body (AHRB), charging governments to move beyond rhetoric and towards the substantive actualization of ASEAN‟s accountability platforms: While MARUAH appreciates the concepts of national sovereignty, noninterference and responsibilities accompanying rights, and the existence of differing political systems and cultural traditions, we would emphasize that the aim of the ASEAN Charter is to transform ASEAN into a “rulesbased” entity and to “place the well-being, livelihood and welfare of the peoples at the centre of the community-building process in ASEAN”. These words must be supported by the necessary political will if they are to become reality, instead of remaining as mere lofty aspirations. The member states of ASEAN have to understand that the proposed AHRB to 51 “Our Approach,” quoted from MARUAH‟s webpage (2009). 61 be established under Article 14 of the ASEAN Charter has to stand for something, if these ideals in the ASEAN Charter are to be actualized.52 While it is still early to assess MARUAH‟s work in the regional and national level, we can note the carving out of a space for rights, where the accountability of the government may now be questioned on those principles. On the other hand, activists are also keenly aware that the ASEAN Charter of Human Rights may slide down the slope of cultural relativism and become a regulatory discourse. In summary, this chapter has illustrated that TWC2 and HOME do not operate under ontologically stable notions of human rights and democracy, but deploy political tactics of situated ethics when strategically required. While they may protest against the abusive conditions of migrant employment from time to time with rights-based discourses and legal channels, they also perform the work of training and subjectification in tandem with national development, such as in the preparation and training of domestic workers for their employment and the reconfiguration of local mindsets on ethical treatment of foreign workers. Such connections to political and market forces and interaction with normative structures, often dismissed by critics as evidence of cooptation and docility, allow us to view the pursuit of humanitarian causes as flexible manoeuvres on a political surface with no clear gains to be made from rights talk. 52 MARUAH, 2008: 5. CHAPTER FOUR Tenaganita and Human Rights in Malaysia Reports of maid abuse cases in the Malaysian mainstream media highlight gaps where the goals of national development do not coincide with the rhetoric of a society that is „caring‟ and „ethical‟. While the reproductive labour performed by migrant women contributes towards Malaysia‟s rate of female citizen labour participation, FDWs remain susceptible to physical abuse, confinement, extended working hours and general xenophobia emanating from the host society.1 From June 2004 to August 2007, leading feminist group Tenaganita rescued 148 domestic workers and recorded 1050 instances of abuse, including rape, non-payment of wages and physical injury.2 Some observers have attributed this state of governmental inaction to Malaysia‟s foremost concern with economic development, diplomatic ties with other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its domestic ethnic stability; all of which are said to be pursued at the expense of human rights and migrant integration.3 Like Singapore, Malaysia‟s developmental drive produces two interdependent but asymmetrical subject-positions of a highly educated professional woman and the alien domestic worker that supports her. As discussed in Chapter 2, The vulnerability of the latter is enforced via an ethnicized and gendered system of hierarchical citizenship that ranks educated female citizens over FDWs in terms of their perceived worth in the 1 Abdul Rahman et. al. 2005. “Tenaganita rescues 148 maids,” The Star Online, 2007, Aug 16. 3 Gurowitz, 2000: 865. 2 63 knowledge economy. The ethno-racial stigma against the foreign women intersects existing boundaries erected by middle-class families who are suspicious of the assimilation of FDWs into their households. Concomitantly, contradictions between perceptions of the FDW as a „contaminating other‟ and her role as family caregiver contribute to a complex exclusionary system of household surveillance. Table 4.1: Number of undocumented immigrants in Malaysia (1993-99)4 Year 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Total Ops Nyah I Ops Nyah II Regularization* Voluntary Repatriation** 483 784 14 211 11 082 7 828 10 919 8 547 14 670 11 721 78 978 41 584 43 189 32 835 25 873 35 521 42 574 42 889 264 465 554 941 413 812 187 486 1 452 537 187 486 Total 483 784 55 795 54 271 40 663 591 733 44 068 244 730 54 610 1 904 484 * Regularization exercises in Peninsular Malaysia were carried between November 1991 and June 1992 and between June and December 1996. In Sabah, the exercise was carried out between March and October 1997 and in Sarawak in January and March 1998. The results for Sarawak are not available. ** Voluntary repatriation of undocumented migrants was carried out between 1 September and 15 November 1998. At the national level, securitization discourses targeting foreigners are often deployed in times of public anxiety for the purposes of consolidating political legitimacy. 5 For instance, in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-8, Malaysia embarked on anti-foreigner witch-hunts named „Operasi Nyah‟ (literally „Operation Get Out‟) to repatriate undocumented migrants, and the majority of those deported were Indonesian FDWs. With routine raids and immigration policies that ensure the transience of 4 Kassim, 2001: 135, compiled from unpublished data from the Malaysian Police Headquarters, Ministry of Home Affairs and the Immigration Department Headquarters. 64 employment for foreigners, the influx of cheap foreign manpower can be engineered in times of economic need and then readily expelled in the tide of public xenophobia. Through the case study of Tenaganita, I review the state of activism on behalf of migrant women in Peninsular Malaysia and argue that the rights-based discourses employed by the group might be understood as modalities of governance, and not necessarily political liberalization, as earlier studies tend to suggest. Although migrant NGOs are keen to work with accepted definitions of rights as set out by international treaties and conventions and often operate as a „check and balance‟ mechanism on state administration, current research has tended to disregard instances where the NGOs also drive policies of national development and family building through the management of the FDW. In order to render protection to the FDW, migrant NGOs contend with gendered discourses on national development and ethno-racial politics that exclude her. This chapter argues that by presenting the FDW as economically valuable for the host society, by educating and regulating aspects of her health and productivity, NGOs like Tenaganita traverse the exclusionary parameters of race, class and nationality faced by FDWs. By redefining the ways in which „women‟, „domestic work‟, „human rights‟ and „national development‟ are projected within policies and practices circulated by the Malaysian state and resurgent Islam, the humanitarian efforts may be viewed as sites of augmentation that attempt to add value to the FDW‟s body by training and presenting her as industrious, chaste and docile. In this regard, the work of these humanitarian organizations may at times cooperate with, and not contest, dominant discourses on patriarchal citizenship and the economic interest in cheap manpower. 5 “Radzi: Home Affairs to take charge of foreign workers,” New Straits Times, 14 Feb 2007. 65 This is not to say that the rights framework is absent in the migrant advocacy groups of Malaysia, or that it simply becomes reformulated into dominant discourses rid of humanitarian impulses. On the contrary, I argue that when state-society cooperation breaks down, liberal eruptions of rights form one of the defining features of Malaysia‟s highly politicized civil society. Vis à vis Singapore‟s „milder‟ form of civic participation, where migrant groups avoid an overt human rights agenda, the frequent enunciation of rights claims in the Malaysian case studies reflect broader qualitative differences in the political culture of both countries. Unlike Singapore‟s ideology of multiracialism which presents the state as „transcultural‟ and above the particularism of ethnic or class-based identities,6 I argue that Malaysia‟s founding premise of Bumiputera rights cannot hold without implying the concurrent emergence of other forms of politicized identity and rights in the public imagination. Tenaganita: Constrained or Transgressive Contention? Established in 1991, Tenaganita (Women‟s Force) remains as the most visible migrant rights advocacy NGO in Malaysia.7 While originally formed to address the mounting problems faced by women employed in the electronics and plantation sectors, the surge in migration-related issues drove the group to include migrants as subjects of their aid. Today, Tenaganita carries out projects in four core areas, with a designated desk for the substantive focus on 1) Migrant Rights Protection, 2) Anti Trafficking in Persons, 3) 6 7 Goh, 2007: 243. In the “About Us” section of Tenaganita‟s webpage, the group positions itself as “ordinary people who desire the best for our country, our humanity, our world and our future. We stand up for migrant rights, human rights.” 66 Combating Gender-Based Violence in Refugees, and 4) Women, Chemicals and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).8 These initiatives are carried out through a mixture of direct service provision of helplines, counselling and operating shelters, research and publication, legal support, public advocacy, closed–door discussions with state authorities and community-based interventions in health care and migrant empowerment. Tenaganita is not only concerned with specific issues affecting women but also committed to issues of democracy, justice and equality in Malaysia, and have participated in joint campaigns and forums. Co-founder Dr. Irene Fernandez was the Foundation President of All Women‟s Action Society (AWAM), the founder of the coalitional Women‟s Development Collective and also a founding member of Malaysia‟s forefront human rights organization, SUARAM (Suara Rakyat Malaysia, “The People‟s Voice”). At the regional level, Tenaganita enjoys close ties with CARAM Asia (Coordination of Action Research on AIDS and Mobility), which is a coalition of regional organizations engaged in action-research on the health aspects of migration.9 Tenaganita members were also past executives of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law, and Development (APWLD), a regional NGO that facilitates the access to justice and equality for women. 10 These cross-national linkages and coalitional networking underscores Tenaganita‟s willingness to address the transnational nature of migrant labour exploitation through a rights-based critique on the neoliberal economic order; a significant difference from 8 Interview with Aegile Fernandez, Program Coordinator, Tenaganita, 6 January 2009. Presentation by Cynthia Gabriel, Regional Coordinator, CARAM Asia, at the Bar Council Conference on Developing a Comprehensive Framework for Migrant Labour, 18-19 February 2008, Crystal Crown Hotel, Petaling Jaya. 10 Lyons, 2006: 12. 9 67 Singapore‟s „milder‟ migrant groups who often frame their activism in national terms.11 In her acceptance speech to the 2005 Right Livelihood Awards, Fernandez opined that: “We must change the rules of the global economy, for it is the logic of global capitalism that is the source of the disruption of society and of the environment. The challenge is that even as we deconstruct the old, we dare to imagine and win over people to our visions and programs for the new.”12 While Malaysia has not endorsed many international rights conventions, these standards are often cited by Tenaganita as established practices and general norms that are widely accepted regardless of governmental ratification.13 However, Tenaganita‟s rights-based approach is constantly attenuated by the threat of legal coercion and the limits on counter-hegemonic visions of Malaysian modernity. The 1987 Operasi Lalang (“Weeding Operation”) clampdown on civil society organizations, where 106 persons, including many opposition leaders and social activists, were detained under the Internal Security Act as suspected “Marxists”, continues to haunt activists today. 14 The dangers associated with the Societies Act have also pressed Tenaganita to conduct itself as a nonprofit business registered under the less restrictive Companies Act. Nonetheless, this refuge proved to be superficial when the director of the Malaysian Registry of Companies 11 Interview with Aegile Fernandez, 6 January 2009. A clear sign is Tenaganita‟s classification of FDWs as “trafficked”, because of the lack of legal protection whilst in Malaysia. Similarly in May 2006, when the Malaysian and Indonesian governments had finally resolved to institute a statement on minimum standards relating to recruitment and employment of Indonesian FDWs in Malaysia, Tenaganita‟s (2006) critical transnational perspective precipitated a scathing press statement, lambasting both governments for “abdicat[ing] their responsibility of protecting and upholding the rights of young women moving to be domestic workers.” 12 Fernandez, 2005; emphasis mine. 13 These include the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness (MWG-JUMP, 2009: 2). 14 Interview with John Liu, SUARAM, 1 January 2009. 68 raided the premises of Tenaganita in January 1997 “seemingly because the government was upset about the bad press it received for condoning the attack on the East Timor Conference”.15 Irene Fernandez herself had been the target of state sanctions when she was embroiled in a high profile court case over Tenaganita‟s criticisms of Malaysia‟s detention centres. The co-founder of Tenaganita was charged under section 81(A) of the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act on the allegation that her 1995 memorandum, “Abuse, Torture and Dehumanized Treatment of Migrant Workers at Detention Camps,” had propagated falsehoods about the government. She was acquitted in November 2008, after a thirteen-year court battle, which saw the mobilization grassroots support from 91 NGOs.16 Although Tenaganita‟s fiery accountability campaigns have been well documented, little has been said about its appeal on non-legalistic, instrumental grounds that the protection of migrant women is beneficial for the host country. Especially where the political independence of civil society groups comes with a hefty price in Malaysia, and when problems are better addressed by state action, it is naïve to expect Tenaganita to maintain a position that completely abstains itself from linking up with the government. In forming relations with state agencies as experts on issues of trafficking, immigration enforcement and in the training and subjectification of FDWs as motors of the Wawasan 2020 vision, Tenaganita‟s role as an arbiter in „nation building‟ cannot be overstated. 15 16 Gurowitz, 2000: 872. “Activist Irene Fernandez acquitted,” The Sun, 24 November 2008. 69 These initiatives include a „drop-in‟ counselling centre where employers can leave domestic workers in the care of Tenaganita, where skills training and „empowerment‟ workshops conducted for FDWs in order to augment their value within a knowledge economy.17 As I have argued earlier for Singapore‟s „Dayoff.sg‟ campaign, these extralegal interventions allow NGOs to validate labour rights state recognition of these liberties have not been forthcoming. Especially important where regulatory systems governing domestic work are vague, such appeals made on economic instrumentality of „productive‟ FDWs and the morality of „caring‟ and „modern‟ employers can contribute to the protection of FDWs without drawing political scrutiny associated with rights talk. This is not to say that both strands of activism are mutually exclusive; like TWC2 in Singapore, Tenaganita deploys both in varying degrees according to strategic gains.18 As an example, in October 2008, Tenaganita inaugurated the campaign to “recognize domestic work as work with one paid day off to reduce abuse against domestic workers”: Today‟s campaign focuses on the right to a paid day of for all domestic workers in the country especially “stay in” domestic workers. A day off from the employer and the family will bring positive results to both the family and the worker. The domestic worker is a human being with social needs like the need for friends. The off day can also be an opportunity for the worker to improve herself and her skills. A paid off day is a right. It is human. It brings about a space for renewal for the domestic worker. […] The campaign calls for the recognition of domestic worker as worker. Currently the Employment Act defines her as a servant. The word servant is degrading. It implies subjugation and a person who serves at all times. It is only when we recognize her as a domestic worker, will we protect her rights and uphold her dignity. The absence of a standardized contract, no off days, abuse, long hours of work and passports held by 17 Interview with Aegile Fernandez, 6 January 2009. These courses include computer training, hairdressing, cooking courses, how to set up businesses, accounting, etc. 18 I am skeptical of Ong‟s (2006: 212) claim that “only by invoking cultural understanding and compassion, not abstracts rights discourse, can the moral legitimacy of alien women‟s bio-security be persuasive to the host society.” I say so because rights discourses have a moral character; NGOs can invoke human rights as legal status and as cultural appeals on the moral worthiness of vulnerable women. The legal and moral aspects of rights are not as distinct as Ong makes them out to be. 70 employers all contribute to a condition of bonded labour and servitude. It is trafficking in persons for labour under the Anti trafficking in Persons Act as well as the Parlemo Protocol. 19 An ethical appeal is made to employers here to consider the situation of the FDW and how her welfare will bring “positive results to both the family and the worker.” Where political elites have called for the banning of FDWs on the grounds that cultural differences in childrearing would lead to a poor-upbringing of children in the household, Tenaganita reminds employers that raising children up in an abusive household is an equally appalling pedagogical environment. As enlightened Malaysians whose status as members of affluent society depends on the productivity and protection of less affluent others, Tenaganita also reminds these middle-class beneficiaries of Wawasan 2020 that FDWs deserve protection.20 Fig. 4.2: “Positive and Negative” posters for Tenaganita‟s day-off campaign 19 20 “Dayoff campaign press release,” Tenaganita, 19 October 2008, emphasis mine. Aegile Fernandez explains how the moral rhetoric of the campaign works: “We relate it [the day off issue] to their [FDW employers] own work and ask them to think about their position in the company they work for. If their employers ask them to work on Saturdays and Sundays, what would be their reactions? Then we link it to the domestic worker at their home, she is like you, a worker and yet she does not enjoy a day off which you take for granted.” Interview with Aegile Fernandez, 6 January 2009. 71 In speaking to a regional NGO on the political strategies of Tenaganita, Irene Fernandez acknowledges that a rights-based approach is only contingently deployed because there needs to be a balance between accountability strategies and public „sensitization‟: If you come out right away and say we are talking about a HRBA (human rights based approach) then I feel that sometimes you are in trouble. It‟s the way in which you approach it. […] We must first sensitize the government before we can lobby them. We must help them to understand the difference between prostitution and trafficking. I think that in the minds of the authorities the moment that you say trafficking they think that it‟s prostitution. While we are sensitizing them we bring to their attention the fact that there are laws and Conventions in place. We question why the state is not using them. It is always the victims and not the traffickers that face legal action. The long-term approach shouldn‟t be just to lobby the state.21 While „sensitization‟ can be taken to mean either reminding officials of the violations they have chosen to gloss over, or to enter into a diplomatic conciliation with the authorities, it is clear to Fernandez that rights-based accountability rhetoric and the language of negotiation and consultation are not at odds with one another. Where Tenaganita differs from TWC2 is its willingness and ability to enact rights-based mechanisms, even if both groups agree that “the long term approach shouldn‟t be just to lobby the state”. One way to view this „diplomatic‟ underside of rights activism is to consider Tenaganita‟s willingness to „play by the rules‟ as a partner of the state, and to work in a consultative manner with state authorities. Tenaganita‟s Programme Coordinator and Co-Founder Aegile Fernandez explains that: Our relationship with the police is very good. We have given training for police investigating officers on gender sensitization, domestic workers and trafficking. So that has opened us up to work better. So now they do 21 Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women Alliance, 2004: 65-8. 72 referrals or they call us for advice, and we can call them for assistance in case we need some help on a case file immediately. This has also led to the police headquarters setting up a special unit for trafficking and we work with this special unit. […] We help in investigation and translation and sometimes we house them first before they go to the governmental shelters. […] We also give them a lot of information on defaulting agents and we work with the police and immigration [department] to prosecute them.22 In working with the police, Tenaganita is able to render protection to FDWs and prosecuting errant employers much more efficiently than if it were to choose to abstain from interacting with the authorities. Nevertheless, the level of cooperation and consultation with other state agencies, such as the Human Resources Ministry, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Immigration Department, remains ad-hoc and strained. Especially where conditions are marked by malaise and official inaction, Tenaganita would then “go one step higher” and invoke accountability rhetoric, either through international rights or rule of law to effect changes. Fig. 4.3: An example of Tenaganita‟s „expertise relations‟ with the Royal Malaysian Police in Malacca. 22 Interview with Aegile Fernandez, 6 January 2009. See also Lai, 2007. 73 Fig. 4.4: Police officers lining up for an ice-breaker game during the training. Fig. 4.5: Tenaganita‟s booth at 2008‟s “Fiesta Femina: Young Women's Carnival” 7 June 2008, Taman Bandaran, Kelana Jaya. 74 Fig. 4.6: Women from Tenaganita‟s shelter performing at “Track of Talents”, a monthly song and dance event organized by Eagle Point Church in Puchong, Selangor, 10 November 2008. Critics accustomed to the view that the civil society groups‟ „consensual‟ or „coopted‟ approach have no impact on progressive social change, tend to celebrate rights talk and accountability systems as producing visible and immediate results.23 They tend to note Tenaganita‟s firm emphasis on the conventions and standards that should protect the FDW, but often without acknowledging that the group draws upon strands of extra-legal interventions in working with the state, and in morally appealing to stakeholders without a clear recourse to rights-based discourses. Notably, my interviews with Aegile Fernandez suggest that while the option of calling the state to task according to rightsbased instruments is important, the strategy of lobbying comes only after failed attempts at „sensitizing‟ the authorities during closed-door dialogues: 23 For instance, the human rights campaigns in Malaysia typically use similar tactics of public education, mobilization and lobbying. A common tactic is the signature campaign, supplemented by letter writing campaigns. 75 In the past [the ministries] never used to engage us, they just keep quiet. Lately, after the Prime Minister (Abdullah Badawi) has said that there must be some kind of working relationship between the government and NGOs, things have changed. This was last year (2008), he said that civil groups must be engaged, and now at least we see that letters are coming back to say they are looking into the cases. That is important for us because we can hold them accountable. We can put down who is the case officer, how many times did we call through to the Immigration Department for this case, what is the response, and then we send a letter with all this information and copy this to the Prime Minister‟s Office if nothing is done. We even attach the PM‟s speech to the letter so he remembers what he said about working together. […] So we quote the laws, we quote international conventions, ILO (International Labour Organisation) and all that; what Malaysia has signed. We can go one step higher, we file a complaint at ILO because Malaysia now is also in the United Nation‟s Human Rights Council. Or we file a complaint at the International Union or the ICC (Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights) Sub-Committee on Accreditation to downgrade SUHAKAM‟s status. So for a number of cases the UN (United Nations) has written to them. This is why they are very upset with us because they have to reply to it; they call us troublemakers! In this regard, we must maintain skepticism towards the idea that NGOs are non-reflexive adherents to rights talk. As seen in the case of Tenaganita, the vocabulary of rights is merely a guideline and not a rule on the possible courses of political action; the group interprets and formulates their application according to gains that can be made with/out the discourse of rights. Tenaganita‟s strategy of forging working relationships with state agencies before invoking accountability rhetoric is significant in this respect. The Fruits of Contention? In June 2009, the government of Malaysia agreed to institute a standardized contract for FDWs in Malaysia, which include provisions on salary, workplaces and day-offs. Minister of Human Resources Datuk Dr. S. Subramaniam was reported to have said that 76 the new provisions will be worked into Malaysia‟s Employment Act, and surprise checks will be conducted to ensure the welfare of FDWs.24 However, employers and FDW agencies were mixed in their reception to the policy amendments; news reports highlighted the concerns of employers of „runaway‟ FDWs, and that the provisions were „sound in principle‟ but difficult to enforce in reality. Furthermore, the event is also far from the complete professionalization of domestic service as envisioned by the campaign, because the stipulated day-off is subject to mutual agreement between employer and employee and FDWs can „agree‟ to receive money in lieu of the day-off. However, in securing the government‟s commitment to legislative amendments at the very least, NGOs campaigning on behalf of FDWs can nonetheless call employers to task for violations against the terms specified in the standardized contract. Even so, NGOs involved in the campaign are mindful that the implementation for such changes are dependent on the careful and constant management of public opinion, especially with regards to the newfound entitlements of ethno-racial foreigners in times of economic uncertainty, and the members within Tenaganita and the CARAM Asia network agreed internally to address the public objections raised to the proposed amendment.25 It is also unclear whether these proposed amendments surfaced as a result of the efforts of the lobbying efforts of NGOs, or as a result of the larger climate of accountability arising with the rhetoric of reform by a newly appointed Prime Minister. 24 25 “Maids to get one day off, govt to make surprise checks” The Star, 16 June 2009. See “Many against day-off for maids,” in The Star, 18 June 2009. In an internally circulated email among sympathizers to the day-off campaign, Vivian Chong of CARAM Asia ([n.d.]) notes that „We plan to draft a statement to laud the move and also to ward off objections from agencies and employers that was already reported in another news at the bottom.” 77 With these issues considered, it becomes difficult to ascertain whether the Tenaganita‟s overt rights-based approach to the day-off campaign is more efficacious than TWC2‟s less confrontationary stance. In asking how universal human rights impact domestic policies on FDWs in Malaysia and Singapore, quick answers are often imprecise for us to assess the political situation. For one, we can look to the strong presence of rights-based groups and increased activism in Malaysia and argue that there has been substantial headway made on those terms. Turning to the political suspicion of universal rights by governments espousing „Asian values‟, we can similarly say that social change on the basis of rights, unless state-initiated, has had limited influence in both countries. What both of these formulations miss is that while international norms do have an impact, their efficacy emerges in locally specific ways. This preceding discussion has demonstrated the terrain of interaction within which a whole range of rights are social constructed and enacted. Whether international conventions or more locally specific appropriations of rights guaranteed in legislation and accountability platforms, the utilization of rights based mechanisms offers no clear emancipatory outcomes because it can simultaneously constrain and enable activism on behalf of female migrant workers. CHAPTER FIVE The Subject of Rights As a question of resource allocation between different cultural collectives, the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights for one group within a nation-state may come at the expense of another, despite the liberal ideal of rights as universal. In reality, where the political language of rights has been successfully used by international NGOs in securing the entitlements of migrants, local NGOs often have to strategize around constraints (such as „Asian Values‟) on how best to extend their humanitarian goals. This is especially so in the context of some Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore, where rights talk can be more of an impediment than an enabler, given certain conservative political environments that are suspicious of rights as articulations of western imperialism.1 On the other hand, the question of citizenship is of less importance for lower skilled workers than their labour rights, partly due to their common experience of unpaid wages, lack of day-offs and their transient nature as temporary workers. Despite these problems, it is in this context of inequalities in access to citizenship status and rising incidence of temporary and return migration, that a call for a “transnational approach to migrant rights” has been made.2 1 Chua (2003) has written extensively on the constrained civil society and the limitations on liberal rights in the context of Singapore. For a comparison between Malaysia and Singapore‟s approach to the question of human rights activism by civil society, see Rodan, 2009. 2 Piper 2008: 290. 79 This thesis has reviewed the attempts by Tenaganita and TWC2 in addressing some of the complexities surrounding rights and citizenship regimes. I have suggested thus far that citizenship in our epoch is increasingly marked by modalities of governance that not only normalize social behaviour, they also constitute the social positions the agent inhabits. The discussion on the modernizing discourses of developmentalist Malaysia and Singapore in Chapter 2 is an attempt to illustrate precisely how these inscriptions variously mark and engender the collective particulars of „women‟ and „maids‟ according to a hierarchy of citizenship that ultimately marginalizes the latter. In highlighting the historical and geographical contingency in which these positions are constituted, it is similarly to reveal that universal rights claims made via these politicized identities often disregard the specificity in which those positions are brought into being. To the detriment of liberal multiculturalists, however, the insistence on an unencumbered person who can be endowed with rights is untenable, because the same individual is bounded by the cultural practices of the larger social unit of community which constitutes who s/he is.3 As liberal multiculturalism assumes that the individual seeking recognition is able to transcend the ascription of identity markers in an asocial capacity, it is ill-equipped to account for the paradox that while rights are conferred to atomized, depoliticized individuals, the claims to these entitlements are primarily made by politically defined communities. To enjoy rights, the individual is therefore obligated to conduct oneself responsibly to coordinate social life with other group members, so that the constitution of the collective group is not disrupted.4 3 4 Ibid.: 173. Appiah, 1994: 159-160. 80 This is the challenge faced by marginalized groups in Malaysia and Singapore, where the continued ascription of identities onto various subject-categories of ethnicity, class, gender and nationality today means that individuals do not have the freedom, as presumed by liberal multiculturalism, to select from a myriad of possible identity scripts for public recognition.5 As Daniel Goh argues, “The presumption of prepublic cultural identity by liberal multiculturalism does not therefore work in postcolonial societies where state recognition ascribes one‟s primary identity and leaves out the others as private and irrelevant to the making of public demands, rendering these irrelevant identities morally problematic and even politically seditious if they do make public demands.”6 In looking at the respective campaign efforts of TWC2 and Tenaganita, one might similarly ask: what happens to the FDW, if her ascribed identity - as „foreign‟, „female‟, and „unskilled‟– dismisses her from making public demands in the language of rights? What happens on a broader level, if the rights so desired by the individual redraw the configurations of power that enact his/her subordination? And how should civil society mobilize on behalf of these women, if these presupposed rights are disallowed public articulation? The data presented in this thesis do suggest that Tenaganita and TWC2 are keen to adopt the language of universal human rights and make reference to international labour and humanitarian standards in their work. Despite the value of such tools, the recourse to rights is not always a clear and easy choice for NGOs.In postcolonial societies, identities are sutured together from a multitude of ethno-racial, gendered and classed positions as ascriptive categories for racial governmentality. In this formulation, 5 Chua, 2005: 174-5. 81 political emancipation on the terms of the rights of „inherent personhood‟ become highly problematic (if not seditious) articulations because they aim to transcend these preconstructed categories that facilitate hegemonic governance. Where the state‟s constructed „universality‟ achieves fixedness, as the case with Singapore, it is able to demarcate claims external to itself as particularistic and thus in competition with the interests of the national collective. By extension, the discussion in Chapter 3 points to the nationally oriented character of TWC2‟s civic activism as a strategic adaptation to the governmental regime, seeking recognition for the subjugated constituency of FDWs but without overtly invoking rights. Concomitantly in Malaysia, where the state‟s particularity is visible through its support of Malay primacy, the efforts of Tenaganita gain latitude in that the state‟s foil of universality cannot be sustained without commitment to equal rights for others. By emphasizing the rights of those not captured in the national imaginary, the rights-based stance of Tenaganita calls the state to task for its protection of Malay rights despite its constitutional multiracialism. What the examples of TWC2 and Tenaganita share is the less observed modality of governmentality which both groups deploy to garner protection for the FDWs. It is commonly presumed that the state is separate and distinct from civil society, and so state fragmentation (or withdrawal from politcal spaces) is one variable cited by observers when measuring political agency within the two countries. However, I have argued that the size and „vibrancy‟ of civil society do not guarantee political liberalization because they are similarly sites of normalization and governance that train the FDWs for inclusion into the body-politic. In highlighting the ways in which the protection of FDWs can be 6 Goh, 2007: 243. 82 garnered through „expertise relations‟ and moral interventions, I have argued that the capacity for political agency is entailed not only in resistance but also in the ways in which FDWs and movements themselves are made to inhabit the ostensibly „oppressive‟ norms. Conclusion: Freedom as a Practice For readers accustomed to the enabling character of rights-based instruments carried by civil society, the critique that such projects are not inherently emancipatory is a deeply unsettling proposition. Indeed, one of the most common refrains from liberal quarters about the critique of rights is that it is negating practice that fails to offer instructive guidance on social change. Typical charges range from being academic, impractical, intellectually indulgent, or insensitive to the political urgencies at hand – in short, critique is of no relevance in the Real World. But in the haste to discover the „practical‟ political tools, I am less confident that the normative nature of rights talk can be overlooked when deploying them for urgent political demands. Temporally, where rights become an indisputable emancipatory force in history, such as the American Civil Rights movement, in other times rights become a hollow promise or a regulatory discourse to undermine radical political forces.7 Spatially, where rights empower individuals in one social location, such as property rights which support the power of landlords and capital, it may disempower those in other locations, especially in creating the subjects of „tenant‟ and „worker‟. 7 Bell, 1992; Bumiller, 1992. 83 None of this is to suggest that those without rights in a world penetrated by notions of civil liberties should abandon the endeavour to attain and use them. I am not suggesting that the female migrant worker‟s vulnerability to abuse and sexual violence, her economic subordination and her lack of reproductive freedom vanishes simply because we cannot attach who or what the „female migrant worker‟ is to the stable category of a sovereign individual. My preoccupation in this study was problematize the separation between state and civil society and the normative nature of rights; it is not a recommendation that our progressive efforts should remain entrenched in the status quo. The examples of Tenaganita and TWC2 remind us about the importance of comprehending the diffused character of power in our age. The sensitivity to the situated utility of rights discourses, the strategy of fusing humanitarian protection with the instrumentality of „national interests‟ through subject formation, the blurring of statesociety boundaries, and the strategic invocation of rights; all these allow us to envision humanitarian work as a constant negotiation of political claims and counterclaims without recourse to a normative position. 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(2004) “Diasporic Subjects in the Nation: Foreign Domestic Workers, the Reach of Law and Civil Society in Singapore,” Asian Studies Review, 28, 1, pp.7-24. Appendices Appendix A Application for Visitor Pass (Temporary Employment )Foreign / 99 Domestic Worker (Checklist), Malaysia Appendix B Immigration Department of Malaysia Prerequisites for Foreign Domestic Workers Appendix C Employer‟s Declaration for the hiring of a Muslim Foreign / 105 Domestic Worker (Annex A), Malaysia Appendix D Declaration for Muslim Foreign Domestic Worker Citizen of / 107 _______ (Annex B), Malaysia. Appendix E Standardised Contract of Employment, Malaysia Directives and / 101 / 109 99 Appendix A PERMOHONAN PAS LAWATAN (KERJA SEMENTARA) PEMBANTU RUMAH ASING (SENARAI SEMAK) Permohonan : Baru / Gantian / Lain-lain (Nyatakan: ________________) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Borang permohonan baru (PRA 1) / gantian (PRA 2) Borang IM.12 (permohonan Pas Lawatan) Borang IM.38 (permohonan untuk visa) Personal Bond yang dimatikan setem RM10.00 Perjanjian Pekerjaan oleh pembantu rumah asing yang dimatikan setem RM10.00 (Dalam 4 salinan) Salinan kad pengenalan suami dan isteri Salinan pasport pembantu rumah asing Laporan perubatan bakal pembantu rumah asing dari negara asal oleh panel klinik yang dilantik Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia. Borang Perakuan Pengambilan Pembantu Rumah Asing Beragama Islam (Lampiran A) dan Borang Perakuan Pembantu Rumah Asing Beragama Islam bagi majikan yang menggaji PRA beragama Islam (Lampiran B). Borang Perakuan Daripada Majikan Yang Tidak Menggunakan Agensi Berdaftar bagi majikan yang mengemukakan permohonan secara individu (Lampiran C). Pengesahan pekerjaan dan bukti pendapatan tetap suami isteri. Dokumen sokongan tujuan permohonan PRA (seperti sijil kelahiran anak, pengesahan pegawai perubatan mengenai keluarga sakit). Sijil perkahwinan (bagi permohonan kali pertama sahaja). Makluman: Dokumen sokongan Bil. 11 dan 12 tidak perlu dikemukakan bagi permohonan gantian PRA yang dibuat dalam tempoh 6 bulan dari tarikh surat kelulusan sebelum ini. PERHATIAN: Kenyataan ini adalah benar dan saya sedar sepanjang Laporan/ Kenyataan/ Represtasi palsu adalah merupakan satu kesalahan di bawah Sek. 56 (1) (f) Akta Imigresen 1959/63 dan boleh dikenakan denda tidak melebihi RM10,000.00 atau penjara tidak melebihi 5 tahun atau kedua-duanya sekali. Sekian, terima kasih. TANDATANGAN PEMOHON: .......................................... NAMA: .......................................... TARIKH: .......................................... 100 APPLICATION FOR VISITOR PASS (TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT) FOREIGN DOMESTIC WORKER (CHECKLIST) Application: New/Replacement/others (state: _______________) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. New application form (PRA 1) / replacement (PRA 2) Form IM.12 (Application for Visitor Pass) Form IM.38 (Application for visa) Personal Bond with stamp duty RM10.00 Worker‟s Contract by Foreign domestic worker with stamp duty RM10.00 (In 4 copies) 6. Copy of identification card of husband and wife 7. Copy of passport of foreign domestic worker 8. Medical report from country of origin obtained at a clinic appointed by the Ministry of Health Malaysia for prospective foreign domestic worker. 9. Certification form for employment of Muslim foreign domestic worker (Annex A) and Certification form for employers that employ Muslim foreign domestic workers (Annex B). 10. Certification form from employer filing an independent application, without reliance on a registered agency (Annex C). 11. Letter of Employment and Statement of income of husband and wife 12. Supporting documents for the application for foreign domestic worker (such as birth certificate, official declaration by medical official for members of family with ailments) 13. Marriage Certificate (for first time applications only) Additional Information: Supporting document (no 11 and 12) do not have to be provided for application to replace foreign domestic worker within 6 months from the date of previous approval. NOTICE: The declaration is true and I acknowledge that making false report/statement/acknowledgement is considered a crime under section 56 (1) (f) Immigration Act 1959/63 and is punishable to not more than RM 10, 000.00 or imprisonment not more than 5 years or both. Thank you. Signature of applicant: .......................................... Name: .......................................... Date: .......................................... 101 Appendix B JABATAN IMIGRESEN MALAYSIA GARIS PANDUAN & SYARAT-SYARAT PENGAMBILAN PEMBANTU RUMAH ASING (PRA) 1. Permohonan Pas Lawatan (Kerja Sementara) (PL(KS)) Pembantu Rumah Asing (PRA) boleh dibuat oleh majikan sendiri atau melalui agensi pekerjaan yang berdaftar dengan Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia di pejabat Imigresen Negeri mengikut alamat majikan. 2. Majikan perlu memastikan Borang Permohonan beserta dokumen yang diperlukan adalah lengkap sebelum dikemukakan ke Pejabat Imigresen Negeri. 3. Majikan mesti terdiri daripada suami atau isteri yang mempunyai anak berumur bawah 15 tahun yang perlu perhatian dan jagaan atau ibu bapa yang sakit/uzur. 4. Suami dan isteri majikan mestilah bekerja dan hanya satu (1) pembantu rumah asing yang layak dipohon untuk satu keluarga. 5. Jumlah pendapatan bulanan majikan yang hendak menggajikan PRA Filipina dan Sri Lanka hendaklah tidak kurang RM5,000.00 dan bagi PRA Indonesia, Thailand dan Kemboja ialah tidak kurang dari RM3,000.00. 6. Majikan yang telah diisytiharkan muflis oleh pihak berkuasa tidak layak mendapat kemudahan PRA. 7. Majikan yang mempunyai alasan yang kukuh dan pendapatan mengikut syarat yang ditetapkan oleh Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia dibenarkan memohon pembantu rumah asing kedua. 8. Bakal PRA mestilah perempuan, terdiri daripada warganegara Indonesia, Thailand, Kemboja, Filipina ataupun Sri Lanka serta berumur tidak kurang daripada 21 tahun dan tidak melebihi 45 tahun dan disahkan sihat oleh pusat-pusat perubatan yang dilantik. 9. Majikan beragama Islam dibenarkan menggaji PRA beragama Islam sahaja. 10. Bakal PRA mestilah berada di negara asal dan masuk/datang ke Malaysia menggunakan Visa Dengan Rujukan (VDR) yang diambil di pejabat perwakilan Malaysia di negara berkenaan. 11. Majikan dikehendaki membuat pemeriksaan kesihatan bagi PRA di Fomema Sdn. Bhd. sebaik tiba di negara ini dan mendapatkan endosment PL(KS) di Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia Negeri yang meluluskannya dalam masa 1 satu bulan dari tarikh tiba. 12. Pembantu rumah asing yang gagal pemeriksaan kesihatan tidak dibenarkan bekerja dan majikan perlu mengurus penghantaran pulang segera dengan mendapatkan Memo Periksa Keluar dari Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia. 13. Majikan hendaklah memastikan PRA ditugaskan untuk membuat kerja-kerja rumah sahaja (tidak termasuk cuci kereta). 14. Majikan dimestikan menyediakan kemudahan bilik/tempat tinggal yang sesuai kepada PRA lengkap dengan kemudahan asas dan makanan yang berkhasiat. PRA juga hendaklah diberi rehat secukupnya termasuk waktu tidur sekurang-kurangnya 8 jam sehari. 15. Majikan bukan Islam yang menggaji PRA yang beragama Islam mestilah menghormati sensitiviti agama PRA dengan membenarkan PRA melakukan ibadah seperti sembahyang 5 waktu, puasa bulan Ramadhan dan tidak disuruh melakukan kerja-kerja rumah yang bertentangan dengan agama Islam. 16. Majikan hendaklah maklum bahawa PRA tidak dibenarkan berkahwin dengan rakyat tempatan, rakyat asing atau pekerja asing yang berkerja di negara ini semasa memegang PL(KS). 102 17. Majikan hendaklah maklum bahawa PRA tidak dibenarkan membuat Permohonan Permit Masuk semasa memegang PL(KS). 18. Majikan hendaklah memastikan PRA tidak bertukar pekerjaan/sektor atau bertukar majikan tanpa kebenaran dari Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia. 19. Lanjutan tempoh PL(KS) hendaklah dikemukakan kepada mana-mana Pejabat Imigresen tiga (3) bulan sebelum tarikh tamat PL(KS) setelah mendapat kelulusan pemeriksaan kesihatan di Fomema Sdn. Bhd. 20. Majikan bertanggungjawab menyimpan rekod pembayaran gaji PRA dan menunjukkan kepada pihak Jabatan apabila diminta untuk tujuan lanjutan PL(KS) atau Memo Periksa Keluar. Gaji PRA hendaklah dijelaskan selewat-lewatnya pada minggu terakhir setiap bulan. 21. Rawatan perubatan perubatan PRA semasa dalam tempoh PL(KS) adalah di bawah tanggungjawab majikan. 22. Majikan bertanggungjawab melaporkan kepada Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia sekiranya PRA meninggal dunia, hilang atau melarikan diri dari tempat sepatutnya dia bekerja. 23. Majikan atau agensi pekerjaan tidak dibenarkan memukul atau apa-apa perbuatan yang mendatangkan kecederaan kepada PRA. 24. Sekiranya majikan dan pasangannya bercerai, Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia berhak untuk memindahkan nama majikan PRA berkenaan kepada isteri atau majikan baru yang berkelayakan. 25. Sekiranya majikan atau pasangannya meninggal dunia, maka majikan atau pasangan atau warisnya diminta melaporkan kepada Jabatan Imigrsen Malaysia untuk tujuan pengesahan status majikan baru PRA berkenaan. 26. Majikan hendaklah mendapatkan kelulusan dari Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia bagi PRA yang memohon berhenti atau diberhentikan atau tamat tempoh pas dengan mendapatkan Memo Periksa Keluar dari Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia bagi tujuan penghantaran pulang. 27. Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia mempunyai hak membatalkan kelulusan pas yang dikeluarkan. 28. Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia mempunyai kuasa memindahkan PRA yang dianiaya oleh majikan asal kepada majikan baru yang layak atas dasar kemanusiaan walaupun tanpa persetujuan majikan asal. 29. Majikan yang ingin membawa pembantu rumah asing bekerja di luar negara dikehendaki memaklumkan kepada pejabat perwakilan negara asal pembantu rumah asing berkenaan di Malaysia. 30. Majikan yang telah diberi kelulusan PRA tetapi gagal mematuhi syarat-syarat di atas akan disenaraihitamkan daripada mendapat kemudahan pembantu rumah asing. BAHAGIAN PEKERJA ASING JABATAN IMIGRESEN MALAYSIA PUTRAJAYA Ogos 2006 103 IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT OF MALAYSIA DIRECTIVES & PREREQUISITES FOR FOREIGN DOMESTIC WORKERS 1. The Application for Temporary Work Permit (PL[KS]) for Foreign Domestic Workers is to be completed through an employment agency that is registered with the Immigraiton Department of Malaysia and submitted to a Malaysian Negeri/State Department of Immigration according to the employer’s address. 2. The employer must ensure that the requied documentation for the permit application is in place before making a formal pplication with the Negeri/State level Immigration Department. 3. The employer must have a child not more than 15 years old or an ill parent requiring care and overseeing. 4. The employer’s wife must work and only one domestic worker may be requested per family. 5. The income of an employer who wises to compensate Fillipino and Sri Lankan domestic workers should be at least RM5,000.00 and for Indonesian, Thai and Cambodian domestic workers this sum should be at least RM3,000.00. 6. Employers who are currently declared bankrupt may not hire a domestic worker. 7. The employer may apply for an additional domestic worker only on special grounds as approved by the Immigration Department of Malaysia. 8. The female domestic worker must come from only the following countries, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines and Sri Lanka, and must be between the ages of 21 to 45. 9. Only Muslim families can hire Muslim domestic workers. 10. The prospective foreign domestic worker must remain in their home country and enter into Malaysia only after a Visa with Referral (VDR) has been successfully applied for and approved. 11. The domestic worker must undergo a health examination within a month of arriving into Malaysia with Fomema Sdn. Bhd. So that the Immigration Department of Malaysia may fully endorse the Temporary Work Permit (PL[KS]). 12. The domestic worker who does not fulfil the mandatory health checkup requirements will be sent home and the employer is responsible for the preparation of repatriation procedures including the application of an exit permit. 13. The domestic worker may only perform housework duties within the employer’s stipulater address (with the exception of car washing, which is usually done outside the household). 14. The domestic worker must be housed in appropriate living conditions that are accessible, provided with nutritious food and have at least 8 hours of rest everyday. 15. The employer must be sensitive to Muslim domestic worker’s religious needs and allow her to pray 5 times a day, to fast during the Ramadan period and to allow her to practice other religious activities. 16. The domestic worker, whilst in Malaysia under the Temporary Work Permit is not allowed to become married to a citizen of this country during her stay here. 17. The foreign domestic worker cannot apply for any other immigration entry permits while holding the Temporary Work Permit (PL[KS]). 18. The foreign domestic worker cannot change jobs or employer without prior approval of the Immigration Department of Malaysia. 104 19. The health report from Fomema Sdn. Bhd must be filed to the immigration authorities 3 months before the expiry of the Temporary Work Permit PL(KS). 20. The employer should maintain a record of wage payment details during the last week of every month and to furnish it upon request of the Immigration Department or when the domestic worker’s services are terminated. 21. The employer is responsible for the paying of all medical bills incurred by the domestic worker. 22. In the case of absence (running away), injury or death of the domestic worker, the employer must report it immediately to the Immigration Department of Malaysia. 23. The employment agency and the employer must not hit or physically harm the domestic worker during her term here. 24. Upon divorce, the domestic worker may be transferred to the wife or a third party. 25. In the event both employers are dead, the next of kin must inform the Immigration Department of Malaysia, so that procedures to transfer the domestic worker may be effected. 26. An Exit Permit is required for the termination of services or the resignation of the domestic worker and it should be submitted to the Immigration Department of Malaysia. 27. The Immigration Department of Malaysia reserves the right to terminate any Temporary Work Permit. 28. If the domestic worker is found to be abused or victimized under any circumstances, the Immigration Department of Malaysia may, on humanitarian grounds, transfer the domestic worker away without the prior approval of the current employer. 29. Employers who wish to migrate must inform the respective embassies of the domestic worker’s home country so that repatriation procedures can be implemented. 30. Any employer or domestic worker found to have breached these regulations may have their name blacklisted. FOREIGN WORKER SECTION IMMIGRATION DEPARTMENT OF MALAYSIA PUTRAJAYA August 2006 105 Appendix C Lampiran A PERAKUAN PENGAMBILAN PEMBANTU RUMAH ASING BERAGAMA ISLAM Saya ............................................................... pemegang kad pengenalan / pasport negara .................... nombor .......................... beralamat di ................................... ............................................................................................................................... ............................................................................................................................... dengan suci hati dan tanpa dipengaruhi oleh mana-mana pihak mengaku memahami isi kandungan Perjanjian Pekerjaan yang telah ditandatangani pada ................................ di antara saya sebagai majikan berdaftar dan pembantu rumah asing (PRA) warganegara........................................ no. pasport .................................. Seterusnya saya mengaku akan menyediakan bilik penginapan khusus untuk PRA dan memberi kebenaran untuk PRA saya menunaikan ibadat wajib seperti sembahyang lima waktu setiap hari dan berpuasa di bulan Ramadhan. Saya juga mempastikan tiada sebarang gangguan ke atas PRA semasa beliau mengerjakan ibadat berkenaan. Saya juga mengaku tidak akan membenarkan PRA menguruskan kerja-kerja rumah yang haram dari segi Islam termasuklah menguruskan kerja berkaitan dengan anjing dan babi. Saya juga bersetuju untuk menghantar balik ke tempat asal PRA saya dengan kos yang akan ditanggung oleh saya setelah perkhidmatan beliau tamat atau ditamatkan oleh saya. Diperbuat dengan sebenar-benarnya oleh saya pada ........ haribulan ............. 20....... ........................................ (Tandatangan) Disaksikan oleh Pegawai Kerajaan Kumpulan Pengurusan dan Profesional/ Pesuruhjaya Sumpah. Tandatangan : ............................................. Nama : ............................................. No. Kad Pengenalan : ..................................... Jawatan : ............................................. Cop Rasmi Jabatan: .................. Pada .......................... haribulan .............................. 20 ............. 106 Appendix A EMPLOYER’S DECLARATION FOR THE HIRING OF A MUSLIM FOREIGN DOMESTIC WORKER I ______________________________________ owner of identification card/passport of country ____________________ number _________________ with the following home address __________________________________________ with all due honesty and without coercion from any party admit to understanding the contents of the Terms of Employment Contract that was signed on _____________________ between myself as a registered employer and my foreign domestic worker (PRA) from the following country ______________________ with the passport number ___________________________. Following that, I hereby vow to prepare a bedroom solely for the use of my foreign domestic worker and to permit my foreign domestic worker to fulfill her religious obligations such as praying five times a day and fasting during the month of Ramadhan. I also vow ensure that my foreign domestic worker will not be disturbed at any instance when she is performing the above-mentioned religious obligations. I vow to not allow my foreign domestic worker to perform household chores that contradict with Islamic precepts such as handling dogs and pigs. I also vow to bear the cost of a flight ticket to my foreign domestic worker’s country of origin at the end of her working contract or upon the termination of her contract by myself. This contract has been signed with utmost honesty by myself on ______ (day) ________ (month) 20___. ……………………………… (Signature) Witnessed by the Public Officer for Executives and Professionals/ Commissioner of Oaths. Signature: _________________ Name: ____________________________ Identification card number: _____________________ Position: ___________________________ Official Stamp: __________________ On ______________ (day)________________ (month) 20________________. 107 Appendix D Lampiran B PERAKUAN PEMBANTU RUMAH ASING ISLAM WARGANEGARA ………………………. Saya .............................................................. pemegang pasport no. ........................ Mengaku dengan suci hati dan tanpa dipengaruhi oleh mana-mana pihak bersetuju untuk bekerja sebagai pembantu rumah asing (PRA) kepada: - ................................................................... Nama majikan dan no. kad pengenalan/pasport Beragama : ................................................. Alamat majikan : ................................................................... ................................................................... ................................................................... ................................................................... Saya bersetuju bahawa saya tidak akan membuat apa-apa tuntutan terhadap Kerajaan Malaysia atau wakilnya di dalam apa jua tindakan semasa berada di Malaysia. Sekian, pengakuan saya. Tandatangan : Nama PRA : ................................................ ……………………………………………. Saksi dari Negara sumber NAMA PENUH : ................................................ ALAMAT : ................................................ ................................................ ................................................ Cop Rasmi: ......................... NO. TELEFON : ................................................ 108 Annex B DECLARATION FOR MUSLIM FOREIGN DOMESTIC WORKER CITIZEN OF ____________________ I __________________________________ holder of passport number _____________________ Vow with utmost honesty and without coercion from any party to agree to work as a foreign domestic worker (PRA) to:- ................................................................... Name of employer and identification/passport number Religion: ................................................. Of the following address: ................................................................... ................................................................... ................................................................... ................................................................... I agree to not file any claim towards the government of Malaysia or its representative in any way whatsoever during the term of my stay in Malaysia. Hereby, I vow. Signature: ................................................ Name of Foreign Domestic Worker: ……………………………………………. Witness from Country of Origin Full name: ................................................ Address: ................................................ ................................................ ................................................ Official Stamp: ......................... Contact Number: ................................................ 109 Appendix E STANDARDISED CONTRACT OF EMPLOYMENT This contract is made on this ______ day of _________________ in the year ________ between ______________________________________________ I/C No. _____________________ of ___________________________ (hereinafter referred to as the Employer) of the one part and _________________________________ Holder of _____________ Passport No. ________________ of ___________________ (hereinafter referred to as the Domestic Worker) of the other part. IT IS HEREBY AGREED as follows: 1. Duration of the Contract (a) The Employer shall employ the Domestic Worker in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Contract and subject to the provisions of the relevant laws, regulations, rules, policies and directives of Malaysia; (b) This Contract shall commence from the date of the arrival of the Domestic Worker at the Employer‟s home; (c) The Domestic Worker shall continue in the employment under the terms and conditions of this Contract for a period of ____________ ( _________ ) years or until such time the Contract in terminated in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Contract. 2. Place of work / residence of Domestic Worker The Domestic Worker shall work and reside only ___________________________________________________ during duration of the Contract. at the 3. Duties and Responsibilities of the Domestic Worker (a) The Domestic Worker shall work only with the Employer and shall not seek employment or be employed elsewhere; (b) The Domestic Worker shall comply with reasonable instructions of the Employer in the performance of the assigned household duties; (c) The Domestic Worker shall perform diligently, faithfully and sincerely all household duties assigned by the Employer which shall not include commercial activities; 110 (d) The Domestic Worker shall not use or take advantage of the Employer‟s possessions without the Employer‟s permission; (e) The Domestic Worker is expected at all times observe proper attire and shall be courteous, polite and respectful to the Employer and family members of the Employer; (f) The Domestic Worker shall abide by the laws, rules, regulations, national policies and directive of Malaysia and respect the customs and traditions of Malaysia; (g) In the event that the Domestic Worker marries in Malaysia during the period of employment, the Government of Malaysia reserves the right to revoke the Work Pass; (h) No member of family or any other person shall be allowed to stay with the Domestic Worker in the place of employment without the consent of the Employer; 4. Duties and responsibilities of the Employer (a) The Employer shall provide the Domestic Worker with reasonable accommodation and basic amenities; (b) The Employer shall provide the Domestic Worker reasonable and sufficient daily meals; (c) The Employer shall not require the Domestic Worker to work or to be engaged in any activities other than that related to household duties; (d) The. Employer shall insure the Domestic Worker with the Foreign Worker Compensation Scheme in respect of any medical expenses the Domestic Worker may incur in the event of any injury where such injury arises out of and in the course of employment; (e) The Employer shall at all times respect and pay due regard to the sensitivity of religious beliefs of the Domestic Worker, including the right to perform prayers and to refuse to handle and consume non-Halal food; 5. Payment of Wages (a) The Employer shall pay the Domestic Worker a monthly wage of RM ________ ( ______________________________ RINGGIT MALAYSIA) and the payment shall be in accordance with labour laws of Malaysia. 111 (b) No deduction of the monthly wages of the Domestic Worker shall be done save accordance with the law. 6. Rest Period The Domestic Worker shall be allowed adequate rest. 7. Termination of Contract by the Employer The Employer may terminate the service of the Domestic Worker without notice if the Domestic Worker commits any of misconduct inconsistent with the fulfillment of the Domestic Worker‟s duties or if the Domestic Worker breaches any of the terms and conditions of this contract. For the purposes of this clause, misconduct includes the following: (i) working with another employer; (ii) disobeying lawful and reasonable order of the Employer; (iii) neglecting the household duties and habitually late for work; (iv) is found guilty of fraud and dishonesty; (v) is involved in illegal and lawful activities; (vi) permitting outsiders to enter the Employer‟s premises or to use Employer‟s possessions without Employer‟s permission; the (vii) using the Employer‟s possessions without the Employer‟s permission. Provided always that the Employer terminating the Contract under this clause shall provide proof of existence of such situation upon request of the Domestic Worker. 8. Termination of Contract by the Domestic Worker The Domestic Worker may terminate this contract without notice if: (i) The Domestic Worker has reasonable grounds to fear for his or her life or is threatened by violence or disease; (ii) The Domestic Worker is subjected to abuse or ill treatment by the Employer; or (iii) The Employer has failed to fulfill his obligation under paragraph 5. 112 Provided always that the Domestic Worker terminating the Contract under this clause shall provide proof of existence of such situation upon request of the Employer. 9. General Provisions (a) Transportation cost from the Domestic Worker‟s original exit point in ______________________ to the place of employment shall be borne by the Employer. (b) In the event that the Contract is terminated by the Employer on the ground that the Domestic Worker has committed misconduct, the Domestic Worker shall bear the costs of his/her repatriation. (c) The repatriation cost of the Domestic Worker from the place of employment to the original exit point in __________________ shall be borne by the Employer in the following circumstances: (1) at the completion of Contract of Employment; (2) termination of the Contract of Employment by the Employer; or (3) termination due to non-compliance of the terms and conditions of the Contract of Employment by the Employer. (d) Any dispute arising between the Employer and the Domestic Worker concerning the grounds for termination of the Contract of Employment pursuant to Paragraph 7 or 8 of this Contract shall be dealt with in accordance with the applicable laws in Malaysia. (e) For the purpose of this Contract, the terms “original exit point” shall mean, in _______________. 10. Extension of the Contract Notwithstanding the expiry of the duration of the Contract, the Employer and the Domestic Worker may agree that this Contract may be extended based on similar terms and conditions therein. 11. Time is Essence Time whenever mentioned shall be essence of this Contract in relation to all provisions of this Contract. 113 12. Governing Law This Contract is governed by, and shall be constructed in accordance with laws of Malaysia. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties to this Contract have here on to affixed their signature this ____________day __________ of 20___. Employer, Domestic Worker, ________________________ ________________________ Name: Date: Name: Date: Witnessed by, Witnessed by, ________________________ Name: Date: ________________________ Name: Date: *Note : A copy of this Contract must be submitted to the nearest Labour Department. [...]... skills training and enhancement, case management and organizing public campaigns for the rights of migrant workers In Singapore, I participated in the TWC2‟s internal meetings and closed door sessions with governmental bodies, interviewed key members, answered helpline calls, observed skills training classes conducted for the migrant workers, took part in cultural activities organised by FDWs and construction... by two NGOs in Malaysia and Singapore in addressing some of these complexities surrounding rights as they search for the best way to campaign for the interests of FDWs The countries‟ resistance to rights talk has been well documented and it provides a chance to explore and evaluate the different strategies of enacting rights claims within illiberal polities Furthermore, as Malaysia and Singapore views... For instance, John Keane defines civil society as “an aggregate of institutions whose members are engaged primarily in a complex of non-state activities – economic and cultural production, household life and voluntary association – and who in this way preserve and transform their identity by exercising all sorts of pressure or controls upon state institutions.” 11 In a similar vein, Jean Cohen and Andrew... effected in some but not in others 21 Chatterjee, 1993: 116-57 14 Where developmentalist states like Malaysia and Singapore increasingly link the modernization of their economies with the reproduction of the conventional nuclear family unit, the rights accrued to women ties her entitlements to her caregiver role in the family For instance in Chapter 2, I discuss how the governments in Malaysia and Singapore. .. middle-class families in the region, FDWs originate from the neighbouring countries of Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka Singapore is a major receiving country with 170,000 domestic workers now employed in every one of six households.3 Malaysia s occupational restructuring has also induced a demand for low wage, unskilled workers as Malaysians move up the labour value chain In 2008, governmental... 24.6% in 1970.18 As Singapore moved beyond manufacturing to consolidate its position in Asia as a financial and communications hub in the 1980s, women continued to join the ranks of professional workers, and the female LFPR soared to 47% in 1987 and subsequently 51% in 1997.19 While the industrialisation process was seemingly a high point for gender equality, the mobilisation of women into the economy... reversals Specifically, I examine the tensions in the legal-technical domain, where uneasy collaborations take place between state and civil society on instrumental grounds, and the simultaneously disciplined and empowered positions of FDWs who are at the receiving end of these collaborations The NGO practices and collaborations with the state include: (a) reframing dominant discourses and rhetoric so that... on the structure of cultural citizenships in the two countries 8 The Concept of Civil Society With the resurgence of civil society as a popular analytical register in the nineties, contemporary scholarship has favoured a liberal perspective in studying the relatively impoverished political conditions for social mobilization In viewing the state and civil society as distinctively separate spheres,... migration and on the case studies of Tenaganita and TWC2 Lenore Lyons‟s recent works contributes to the emerging debate on the evolution and maturation of migrant advocacy movements in the Malaysia and Singapore. 15 In arguing that the circumscribed attempts at „scaling up‟ by migrant advocacy groups of Singapore do not necessarily involve cross-border organizing, Lyons presents important modifications... confluence of the changing conditions of the international division of labour and the policy responses of sending and receiving countries, these migrational inflows are highly-gendered in nature, both in terms of the increased levels of female migration and in the stratification of the migrant labour market along the lines of gender, ethnicity and nationality For the labour-sending states, remittances ... Malaysia and Singapore / 17 The „Wife of the Wife‟ / 18 Nationalism and „Working Mothers‟ in Singapore / 24 Modernisation, Reproduction and Malaysia s Family Values / 27 Confinement and Securitization... (LFPR) in services and manufacturing rose from 19.3% in 1957 to 24.6% in 1970.18 As Singapore moved beyond manufacturing to consolidate its position in Asia as a financial and communications hub in. .. workers In Singapore, I participated in the TWC2‟s internal meetings and closed door sessions with governmental bodies, interviewed key members, answered helpline calls, observed skills training