COVID-19, Authoritarian Neoliberalism, and Precarious Migrant Work in Singapore: Structural Violence and Communicative Inequality
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Date
2020-08-20
Open Access Location
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Frontiers Media S.A.
Rights
(c) 2020 The Author
CC BY 4.0
CC BY 4.0
Abstract
Drawing upon an ongoing ethnography with low-wage migrant workers in Singapore, this article builds on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach (CCA) to explore the experiences of the workers amid COVID-19 outbreaks in dormitories housing them. The CCA foregrounds the interplays of communicative and material inequalities, suggesting that the erasure of infrastructures of voices among the margins reproduces and circulates unhealthy structures that threaten the health and well-being of the working classes. The voices of the low-wage migrant workers who participated in this study document the challenges with poor housing, poor sanitation, and food insecurity that are compounded with the absence of information and voice infrastructures. Amid the everyday threats to health and well-being that are generated by neoliberal reforms across the globe, the hyper-precarious conditions of migrant work rendered visible by the trajectories of COVID-19 call for structurally transformative futures that are anchored in the voices of workers at the margins of neoliberal economies.
Description
Keywords
low-wage migrant work, COVID-19, Singapore, authoritarianism, outbreak inequality, extreme neoliberalism, culture-centered approach, migration
Citation
Dutta MJ. (2020). COVID-19, Authoritarian Neoliberalism, and Precarious Migrant Work in Singapore: Structural Violence and Communicative Inequality. Frontiers in Communication. 5.