Responsible migrants: rights-claiming, risks and costs at the shelter

Abstract

Spaces of migration comprise multiple processes of knowledge-production operating at the nexus of state, non-state actors and individuals. Looking at a domestic migrant shelter in Singapore reveals how it acts as an alternative site of knowledge-production. Interviews with migrant workers at the shelter describe how they learn to ‘stand up’ for themselves by learning about laws, rights and job alternatives. At the same time, they reveal how risks and costs lie on the other side of rights-claiming; similarly, while jobseeking is an empowering act, opportunities for entrepreneurship fuel the neoliberal subjectification of migrant workers and distances the state from its duty of care. Using ‘responsibilisation’ as a lens helps make sense of the overlaps between systemic constraints and forms of agency that co-exist within the migration regime. Where the shelter offers opportunities for change, it also problematically reproduces a status quo where rights-claiming, burden of proof and jobseeking are constructed as the responsibility of migrants and NGOs, and beyond the remit of the state.