Skills to Bargain: Agency of Indonesian migrant domestic workers in Singapore

Global cities look to cheap, disposable (female) labour in developing countries as replacements for the high cost of labour in their own countries. Singapore is currently temporarily ‘home’ to at least an estimated 201,000 migrant domestic workers (MDWs), who are usually referred to as Foreign Domestic Workers or ‘foreign maids’. Indonesian migrant domestic workers (Tenaga Kerja Wanita or TKWs) in Singapore are entrenched in the political economy of migrant labour which is based on the power relations of gender, class, ethnicity, and migrant status. They are represented mostly as helpless ‘victims’ or deviant ‘criminals’, but also as ‘heroines’, by the Singapore state, media and employers. This research analyses the experiences of the TKWs who have been represented as ‘heroines’. This group of women study part-time for their undergraduate degree via online and distance-learning while working up to 15 hours as a full-time domestic worker for Singaporean employers. Using qualitative methods, this research investigates how these women bargain for freedoms such as off days and part-time study, in addition to subordinations in the form of the renewal of contracts. Although the success of their bargaining is largely determined by the final say of their employers, their skills (e.g. languages, cooking, cleaning, child-minding) obtained during migration constitute their bargaining power. This research reveals the complex nature of their agency and their desires.