'They Think We are Just Caregivers': The Ambivalence of Care in the Lives of Filipino Medical Workers in Singapore

Notions of care have multiple inflections in the lives of Filipino medical workers in Singapore. The present paper explores ethnographically how Filipino migrants narrate and experience ambivalent notions of care as they move across borders. Their labour is fraught with ambiguity as they distance themselves from ideas of care in their working lives. They position themselves as professionals and attempt to shed the long-standing associations of Filipinos as 'unskilled' care labour in the global economy and the feelings of shame 'care' evokes. However, discussions of care are at the heart of their narratives on the forms of sociality they have left behind in the Philippines and on their notions of how one ought to live in the world with others.