Transnational Domestic Workers and the Negotiation of Mobility and Work Practices in Singapore's Home-Spaces

With global economic restructuring, one of the most striking migration flows within Asia has been that of women migrating to work as paid domestic workers in the region's higher growth economies. Drawing on in-depth interviews, we focus on the negotiation of mobility and work practices between employers in Singapore and their 'foreign maids' within home-space. We investigate the way employers define domestic work practices through 'ground rules' which fix and confine the body to specific time-spaces and postures, rendering the migrant domestic worker a non-mobile subject. We also explore the strategies of the domestic worker in circumventing rules in a bid to regain mobility. Using 'homespace' as the site of analysis, the paper illustrates the everyday production of (im)mobilities in a city-state where 'migration' and 'migrants' occupy a paradoxical place in its bid for global-city status.