Stuck between the Global North and South: Middling migrants in Australia and Singapore

Introduction: theorising the ‘middle’

The literature on ‘middling transnationals’ is relatively new, having grown since Conradson and Latham’s (2005) article that highlighted how transnational migration can take on ‘middling’ forms. The authors showed how ‘middling’ migrants may be distinct from the then literature's focus on transnational elites and, at the other end of the spectrum, marginalised migrants. Certainly, middling transnationals may enjoy certain privileges but may not move for the same reasons as elites do. Rather, scholars have found that middling migrants move for a combination of reasons involving economics, lifestyle and even for self-development. As such, the literature on middling migrants has looked at skilled professionals (Beaverstock, 2011; Colic-Peisker & Deng, 2019; Ho, 2011; Wee & Yeoh, 2021) and middle-class youths seeking overseas adventures on ‘working holidays’ (Clarke, 2005, Robertson, 2013). This work is significant in contributing to understanding of migrants who are ‘wedged’ between the ‘highly skilled’ and ‘low-skilled’ migrant workers. The middling literature, however, has a large concentration on ‘white’ migrants (Beaverstock, 2011; Collins, 2014; Conradson & Latham, 2005; Scott, 2006; Wiles, 2008;) and gendered analyses are overtly focused on women (Kofman, 2012; Main, 2016; Tu & Xie, 2020). Literature on Asian middling migrants is relatively sparse, though this has been growing in recent years (Baas, 2017; Colic-Peisker & Deng, 2019 Jaskułowski, 2017; Robertson, 2019; Wee & Yeoh, 2021).

There is room, however, to further theorise the ‘middle’. Current understandings on middling migrants are often located around migrants’ mid-level skills and their middle-class status, suggesting a fixity around a migrant's middle-class socio-economic status. Skills and middle-class status are, however, subjected to change depending on a migrant's physical as well as social location – locations which may fluctuate and defy stasis. At the risk of stretching what ‘the middle’ could consist of, there is room to conceptualise the middle beyond the socio-economic or middle class, and challenge the binaries of high-skilled/low-skilled, professional/non-professional, middle class/working class, and sojourn/settlement. While such a theorisation can risk sounding like a meaningless catch-all, scholars studying ‘the middle’ should claim the ‘middle’ as a way of exploring and capturing the complexities of transnational migration that are insufficiently understood by mainstream categories. While this study's respondents do challenge multiple binaries, the article will mainly focus on how their middling visa category and middling imaginaries interact with anxious desires. Through focusing on ‘the middle’, this article aims to illuminate the ambiguities of migration and provide a window into understanding how states produce and manage ambiguities in migration as well as its consequences on migrants.

Drawing on interviews from two separate studies with 28 mainland Chinese migrants living in Singapore between 2013 and 2018, and 10 Nepali migrants living in Melbourne, Australia between 2018 and 2019, respectively, this article considers how temporary migration regimes in Australia and Singapore discipline migrants into compliant subjects through their anxious desires. This article argues, first, that migrants from the Global South experience heightened anxious desires due to imaginaries oscillating between the Global North and South. Second, and relatedly, it argues that migration regimes keep migrants compliant through managing their anxious desires. By detailing the experiences of different groups of Asian migrants in separate migration regimes, this article aims to highlight the heterogeneous experiences among migrants originating from the Global South, and the techniques used by different states to produce temporary and compliant migrants.

Temporary migration regimes and emotions

Recent work on migrants has highlighted how migration regimes increasingly produce temporality in migrants’ lives, intensifying migrants’ experiences of being caught in between, and how these experiences interact with how migrants are disciplined (Collins, 2019; Robertson, 2019). Robertson (2019), for instance, brought time in to analyse migration experiences via a multi-scalar approach. She noted how time can function as a mode of governance that disciplines migrant bodies; as a constituent of migrants’ understandings of their mobile biographies and ‘their individual imaginings of mobile pasts, presents and futures; and as the rhythms of daily social life that constitute particular spaces and places’ (2019, p. 182). Rather than time, Collins (2019) argued that temporary migration regimes control the lives of migrants through emotions. He highlights the roles of anxiety and desire: the former results in migrants’ compliance as choices are perceived as limited while plans become uncertain; the latter propels migration even as this is in the direction preferred by states, employers and others. Collins’ conceptualisation of the role of desire and anxiety in migrants’ experiences is situated in a migration climate where temporary migration status is becoming a norm, unlike previous migration policies. As Collins (2019, p. 162) aptly states, ‘provisional migrants inhabit something of an in-between space, neither completely excluded from long-term settlement like guest workers nor on stable and predictable pathways to securing residence rights’. Essentially, the responsibility of securing settlement is passed onto migrants while producing migrant subjectivities that are guided by fears about maintaining their current status or achieving further rights. As a result, migrants cultivate desire for the possibilities in migration and develop anxiety about how to achieve migration (Collins, 2019, p. 162). States use migrants’ anxiety and desire as a tool to manage rising immigration and the rights and agency of migrants.

‘Desire’ is a common word found in migration studies but it is mostly used as a synonym for ‘motive’, ‘reason’ or ‘want’. Its use seldom involves theoretical discussions (Collins, 2018, p. 966). Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1983, in Collins, 2018, p. 967) suggestion that desire constitutes the ongoing attempt to reassert our status as a becoming-subject, and that it is productive in bringing different bodies together in transformative and new formations, Collins (2018, p. 967) argues that ‘desire’ is useful as a conceptual tool. He argued that ‘desire’ can be used to ‘extend analysis of migration to incorporate the multiple temporalities of mobility and its articulation across migrant bodies and social relations, through places of work and study, to urban, national, regional and global spaces’. While one can claim that an individual has a drive to migrate and seeks to fulfil this drive through specific actions, for Deleuze and Guattari, this drive is ‘always arranged and assembled by the social formation in which we find ourselves’ (Smith, 2007, p. 132). In other words, desire is a force that generates migration but it is also shaped by our situatedness in ‘social contexts, capitalism, familial relations, ethno-national cultures and migration regimes’ (Collins, 2019, p. 163). Focusing on desire as a force in migration enables us to investigate the ‘social formation’ in which migrants are situated. Since migration is an ongoing negotiation of past, present and future articulations without a single temporality, and its actualisation involves the complex entanglements of desires and actions to achieve desires (Collins, 2018, p. 967), ‘desire’ as a conceptual tool is especially useful in examining migrants’ situatedness in multiple temporalities.

Focusing on desire also highlights how migration management has evolved to regulate ‘affects, emotions and desires as techniques of government’ (Casas-Cortes et al., 2015, p. 85). Since desire can be interrupted by unfulfillment, it generates anxiety. As Anderson (2014) argues, we are in an ‘age of anxiety’ and the pervasiveness of anxiety constitutes contemporary life. The pervasiveness of anxiety is a tool for temporary migration regimes where the possibility of residence rights is held out alongside staggered time-limited rights (Collins, 2019, p. 163). Anxiety, therefore, is not only a general condition in response to uncertainties but a state technique that produces compliant migrant subjects. As Collins (2019, p. 163) aptly notes, anxiety ‘serves as part of the processes of capturing and channeling desire as well as constraining possibilities for desiring subjects to direct their own lives’. Regimes that produce high levels of anxiety are potent in maintaining ‘permanently temporary’ populations that meet states’ labour market needs but offer little room for societal inclusion (Collins, 2014, 2019, p. 163).

While Robertson (2019) and Collins (2018, 2019) contribute important insights as to how migrants’ experiences of temporality produce compliant subjects, they do not highlight the differences among their ‘Asian’ participants in terms of class status (such as in their original countries) and whether they originate from the Global North or Global South. While this article follows Collins (2019) in arguing for the centrality of anxious desires in migrants’ experiences, it aims to further Collins’ conceptualisation by including the context of the Global North and South. Asian migrants vary in their countries of origin and their experiences of temporality can differ greatly depending on what they may have to return to. Unlike migrants from the Global North, desire and anxiety are further intensified for migrants from the Global South. Migrants from the Global South often have fewer options and less to return to in their home countries, even if only in their imaginaries. Their oscillating imaginaries between the Global North and South are more likely to compel them to choose temporariness over return.

Methodology

This article draws from two separately conducted studies. From 2013 to 2014, I carried out fieldwork in Singapore to study Chinese migrants and their interactions with Singaporean-Chinese in Singapore, with follow-up visits between 2015 and 2018. This larger project involved participant and non-participant observations and conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with 62 respondents, 28 of whom are male mainland Chinese migrants, and whose interviews this article draws on. The interviews used in this article were conducted in Mandarin ¹ and I translated them into English. Having lived with various Nepali male housemates for about seven years in Melbourne, Australia, I was struck by how much their circumstances paralleled the mainland Chinese men I studied. I decided to explore the parallels between the two groups. Between 2018 and 2019, through snowballing from personal contacts, I contacted male Nepalis who were on the Temporary Graduate Visa or who were intending to apply for the visa and met with four respondents. I was subsequently invited to a cricket match between two Nepali teams in Melbourne and approached potential respondents who were part of the audience and/or players. I spent an entire day at the match and interviewed six respondents. The interviews in both studies lasted between 45 minutes to an hour and a half.

Contexts

Overqualified and underemployed: ‘main problem is PR’

Ram's (30, Nepal, Master's in biomedical engineering, cleaner) father is an accountant and his family has considerable land in Nepal. Their land was mortgaged to a bank for a loan to finance his studies in Australia, a common practice for middle-class families in Nepal. Ram was embedded in an environment where international migration was a norm and was heavily reliant on his family and friends for migration decision-making. He decided to join two of his good friends who were doing their Master’s degrees in Melbourne, Australia. However, while Ram did not initially desire Permanent Residency, he found out from talking with his friends in Australia that possessing PR was ‘important to get a job (in Australia)’. Ram does not intend to stay long term in Australia but was attracted to Australia because of the ‘environment’, which he claimed was respectful and has a more ‘sophisticated lifestyle’. The wages were also much higher than in Nepal. At the time of the interview, Ram had only a few months left on his TGV and he had already made plans to go onto another visa – a student visa – since he was still unsuccessful with his PR application. He has been working as a cleaner since the start of his Master’s degree. He was proud that he single-handedly paid off the AU$23,000 bank loan that financed him to come to Australia, yet he does not tell his parents about his cleaning work. He appeared anxious as he related to me how he keeps his cleaning work a secret from his parents:

They [my parents] don’t know [that I’m a cleaner].… They don’t ask me what I do…. If they know that [I am a cleaner], they won’t allow me to do it. They don’t want me to be a cleaner because in our country, cleaning is not a good job.… They want me to do my field of work.

Ram is adamant that he would leave his cleaning job as soon as he receives other work, including an unpaid internship, so long it is close to his field of study. He thinks that his qualifications may not necessarily translate to finding work in his field as he lacks ‘Australian experience’ and does not have PR. Since graduating, he has also been under pressure from his family to marry. He said,

When I received my Master’s degree and when I came here, when I got Australian visa, my mother told my relatives that my son is going to Australia. They were happy…. My mother will be happy if I go back to Nepal because she wants me to stay there but later, relatives will talk and say things, you know, this guy went abroad and he studied Master’s and he come back doing the same job, no progress in his life … and then my mother will get, you know, she won’t feel good…. Since my last semester [in school], [my parents] think that I should get married. After 26, in Nepal, everybody wants you to get married. I haven’t decided [to get married] because I’m looking for PR. Main problem is PR, my mind set up is to get PR then get married. If I get PR, I’ll get a job. Main thing job. I don’t want to say to that girl [potential partner] that I’m doing cleaning job.

Ram feels stuck. He cannot go back to Nepal and return to what he said would be an ‘entry-level job’ in Nepal due to his perceptions of family's expectations. He said he has already ‘passed that phase’ and he wants a job that is commensurate with his qualifications yet he does not see that as possible without PR. Ram's desire for migration has kept him working as a cleaner the past three and a half years to fund his studies and his pursuit of points for PR. Failing to find an internship on his own, he recently paid AU $2000 to an agent to find him an unpaid internship. Currently, he does the internship from Monday to Wednesday, 9am to 5pm, and works from 6pm to 10.30pm as a cleaner. Ram's desire for migration fuelled his acceptance of an unpaid internship where he imagines he can accumulate ‘Australian experience’ that will better position him for a job and PR. Ram's anxieties are clear. He has kept his cleaning job a secret from his family even while using the job's earnings to clear a large debt. His anxieties are also fuelled by what his relatives would think and how his mother would suffer criticisms if he returned to Nepal. These anxieties are also of the future: as a now highly qualified man of an elevated status in Nepal, he is expected to marry. He is, however, reluctant as he found it unimaginable to tell his potential partner that he works as a cleaner. Ram's anxious desires keeps him compliant, even exploited; his anxious desires must be located in the middle space between the Global North and South. His anxious desires are almost always informed by his imaginary of Nepal: an imaginary where his relatives and family would be disappointed at his return, where he would have to return to lower wages than in Australia and an unsatisfying job. This is juxtaposed to what he now perceives as a ‘respectful’ Australian environment where the money is good. To add to his anxieties, Ram sees the English test as his biggest hurdle, a hurdle he is not confident of overcoming yet, as he has already started making plans to apply for a student visa to buy time to try to meet PR requirements. The English test, as we shall see, is a similar hurdle for other respondents, such as Shyam whom I describe below.

‘I’m temporary’: strategies to extend temporariness

Shyam (30, Nepal, Master’s in engineering, courier driver) comes from a very comfortable family in Nepal with servants. Although he did not go into detail, he discussed how his family has extensive connections with local bank managers who attended to them personally, a practice which he felt was unfair to others who had to queue and may still be denied service. This injustice, he said, was a key reason why he desired PR in Australia. Shyam came to Australia to study for a Master’s in engineering, a course unavailable in Nepal. While he was initially drawn to both the US and Australia, he eventually chose Australia because he thought it was safe and provided the option of migrating together with his girlfriend. Shyam's desire for PR, however, met a significant difficulty: ‘superior’ English skills required by the Australian immigration regime. I met Shyam at a time when his TGV was about to expire. He said ‘I’m temporary’, and described himself as ‘unhappy’ and ‘tense’. He felt that the two years have passed with him ‘doing nothing’. Shyam was anxious because his unmet desire meant many plans had to be shelved. As he related to me, his partner wanted to study in Australia and hoped that his attainment of PR would reduce the costs of her studies. As and when she can head to school with affordable educational fees, he would then be able to seek full-time work, rather than continue his courier work to finance what would otherwise be expensive international student fees for his partner. Finding full-time work would then allow him to go to Nepal and hold his wedding ceremony, which is a substantial cost. They would then return to Australia and save for a house; after buying a house, they would then have children. Since so much was dependent on Shyam attaining PR, he was understandably anxious, particularly with trying to fulfil the high points in a system that heavily favoured ‘superior’ English skills. He is unhappy that his current score of 7 does not help his application:

They are basically giving the scores based on English. If you are getting 7 points, it's not bad … 7 is more than enough to [show I] know the English language, like you don’t have to be superior in English because we already have a degree in engineering … [it should suffice that] we can communicate with each other, [whether it is in] writing letters, emails … and because we are living in Australia, we’ve been talking in English [to] everyone, at work everywhere.

He is also caught in a conundrum where he said he needs to have work experience to find full-time work in Australia, yet he is reluctant to seek an internship without PR, as he thinks that companies would not take him up for an internship without it. He talked about how he has seen and applied for many jobs where the emphasis is frequently on Australian residency and/or citizenship. He concludes: ‘So to me the main thing is the PR in here. So I was thinking about the points for the PR … [before] doing the internship.’

Shyam's anxiety manifests in his checking of the government's immigration portal twice a day for updates. He has even called the immigration department multiple times and told me he was once the 92nd caller, with a considerable wait. Besides the English test, he is also worried about bullying and racism:

maybe bully, racism. I’m afraid of that … because of our English you know, because of our culture. Like when I used to work as a labourer. They are like ‘We don’t understand what you speak.’ They don’t want to speak to us. Because they put some slang language you know. They speak their own Australian. And if you don’t understand them at the time, they don’t want to talk to you next time. [It’s not only me] Toward other colleagues also, they [my colleagues] are Indians …​

Shyam's anxious desires are caught in a middle space between the Global North and South where he is unhappy working as a courier driver in Australia, but also unhappy if he has to return to Nepal where he perceives there is injustice and where job prospects are bleak. Despite being worried about racism and bullying, he desires PR and is willing to remain temporary in pursuit of PR. If his plan for PR fails, Shyam has a plan B. Rather than returning to Nepal, his partner would take on a student visa and he could apply for a dependent visa. Although it is unclear how this would aid him towards his objective of gaining PR – as he is likely to have to continue working as a courier in order to fund his partner's international student fees, and would have no time to focus on the English test – it seems it is the preferred option over a return to Nepal. Shyam would rather choose unhappiness in his courier job, bullying and racism, and stretching his temporariness in Australia over return.

‘China boy’ and discrimination: ‘trying’ for PR

Compared to respondents in Australia, my mainland Chinese respondents in Singapore were relatively helpless; selection criteria for PR in the Singaporean immigration system is unpublicised. Instead of focusing on beating the system then, my respondents characterised their efforts for PR in the word ‘try’ (shi yi shi). Like my Nepali respondents, whose anxious desires were founded on present, past and future imaginaries oscillating between the Global North and South, my mainland Chinese respondents’ imaginaries oscillated between China and Singapore, though in different ways. Their focus was not so much on the lack of infrastructure or opportunities in China but on comparing the environment and people. Although they had imagined pre-migration that they would fit in and be fairly ‘invisible’ in Singapore, which has a dominant ethnic Chinese population, they were frequently made visible through references to their nationality.

Terry (male, 26, chef), in his own words, comes from an ordinary background in China. He contrasts himself with his rich Chinese ex-classmates from whom he profits by selling them things. Terry desires PR despite the discrimination he has experienced in Singapore. He said:

I’ve had six jobs here. It was the same situation in every job, the mainland Chinese guy (zhonguozai) will always face discrimination, the employer will give you the hardest jobs. But if you’re hard working and perform, they will see that you can work, and they will start to respect you and be more polite.

Rather than complain of discrimination or quit his job, Terry referred to his resilience in being a good worker and changing people's minds. This is closely linked to his desire for PR. He desires PR as he said the environment in Singapore is good, especially since the levels of pollution are far lower than in China. He also desires a Singaporean passport to circumvent current visa restrictions and do business in Singapore and China. A Singaporean passport will also allow him to travel more conveniently to other countries, including the USA. While Terry desires PR in Singapore, he is anxious that the longer he stays there, the more he is missing out on opportunities in a fast-developing China. He said:

Once I receive PR, I will quit my job; I no longer have to work for others…. If I go back to China, I can do business with a Singapore passport and I have reduced taxes…. This motivates me to work hard. This is a core motivation [for me to do business in China]. However, having been in Singapore for so long, I may have lost out on many opportunities in China. I have lost many friends, networks and opportunities. Many…. But I’m still willing to stay…. I want to give it a good fight; I want to try.

Just as Terry ‘upgraded’ his passes in Singapore from student visa to a Work Permit and, currently, S-Pass, Terry was determined to find ways to attain PR in Singapore. Despite not wanting to work for others and being discriminated against in every job he has taken on in Singapore, Terry will hold onto his temporariness on the S-Pass as long as it presents an opportunity for him to apply for Permanent Residence.

Like Terry, whose anxious desires kept him compliant in the hope of attaining PR, Zhang (male, 35, chef) was a chef in China and migrated to Singapore with his wife: he remained a chef while his wife works as service staff. The two of them rent a room in an old lady's three-room public apartment. Zhang has been temporary in Singapore for 10 years. As per many of my respondents, Zhang's imaginary oscillates between China and Singapore through frequent comparisons between mainland Chinese and Singaporean-Chinese, claiming the latter are less amiable. Zhang claimed Singaporean-Chinese do not chat with their family members and may not even know their neighbours. I interviewed him during the lunar new year period and he related to me how he thinks Singapore has less atmosphere during lunar new year, as compared to China. He blamed this on Singaporeans’ competitiveness, which causes workers like him to lose out on celebrating the occasion. He told me that, after ten years, he still has not fully adjusted to Singapore, where the pace of life is ‘too fast’.

Zhang initially arrived in Singapore on a Work Permit. He did not profit in his first two years in Singapore as he had to make up for the high agency fees he had paid to come to Singapore. Hence, he continued to stay and work in Singapore. He talked about how he was highly stressed out when he first arrived in Singapore. His employer had stringent requirements which he had to meet, including a test to see how many dumplings he could make in a limited time. He said his colleagues also treated him badly due to his Chinese nationality. Zhang also felt discrimination in the rental market. Once, he had called to enquire about renting a place; the potential landlord hung up on him the moment he found out Zhang was mainland Chinese. Zhang was also aware of the various prejudices against mainland Chinese migrants. He related stories of how many Singaporeans would deliberately cause trouble for him and his colleagues from China. He said:

There are so many examples [of discrimination]. They intentionally make it difficult for us.… One time, I served some food to a customer with kids. His child dropped his chopsticks and should really pick it up himself. Instead, because I was there, he made me pick it up.’

Zhang said things became better as he eventually earned his co-workers’ and employer's respect by being a good worker, and his employer has renewed his work pass since, enabling him to spend the past 10 years in Singapore. Since employees on Work Permits can only work up to a maximum of 10 years, and he was promoted to supervisor recently, his employer applied to upgrade his work pass to an S-Pass. Holding an S-Pass now made him eligible to apply for PR. Although Zhang revealed that he knew his chances of attaining PR were low, he said he wanted to ‘try’. Zhang's desires for PR are anxious as he wanted to earn more money in Singapore before returning to China. While he has considered staying in Singapore permanently, as he still feels it is a generally good, secure country, he said staying in Singapore would require ‘courage to face life in future. If I remain in Singapore, I will have to keep working for others. If I buy a house, I may have to pay for the mortgage till I am past 50 years old.’ While Zhang desires PR in order to earn more money, he is anxious that staying in Singapore means having to spend the rest of his life working for others and incur a high mortgage debt. At the same time, his imaginary keeps returning to China, where he is missing out on being close to his elderly parents and family and an imaginary of a community that is more ‘amiable’ and where life is less ‘fast-paced’. Indeed, Zhang's face fell as he related to me how he had called home and could hear his family gathering for the Chinese New Year festivities, clearly regretting not being able to be there. He concluded, ‘But I have no choice, I have to face the realities and earn some money before going back.’ Zhang's anxious desires have kept him as a compliant worker for 10 years, having worked his way from the Work Permit to an S-Pass. Like Terry, he did not want to keep working for others and, instead of quitting or finding ways to fight discrimination at work, he has remained compliant and sought instead to prove his merit as a good worker. This allowed him to be promoted to a supervisory position at work, enabling his S-Pass visa and his eligibility to apply for PR. While he articulated that he knew his chances were ‘slim’, he has remained temporary so he could give Singaporean PR a ‘try’.

Discussion: stuck between the Global North and South

The case study of Nepali migrants in Australia exemplifies how migrants are stuck in an immigration regime that privileges English ‘skills’ (20 points) and, to a certain extent, the Professional Year course (5 points), which emphasises interview ‘skills’, dressing up and ‘soft skills’, and which also privileges private companies that receive highly qualified individuals for unpaid work. It is no wonder that many of my respondents suggested that Australia's immigration regime is ‘a money-making industry’. However, respondents’ anxious desires fuel their compliance, even exploitation, in the system, despite their awareness of its inconsistencies, where one may be highly qualified but still not meet Australia's standard of ‘skills’. Upon graduation with a ‘prestigious’ Australian higher degree, however, many find themselves caught between two levels. On one level, they are ‘stuck’ between a student visa and a working visa, and between imaginaries of the future and present realities. On a second level, they experience ‘a middle space’ between the Global North and South. Originating from the middle to upper middle class in Nepal, they have never encountered manual work, yet now they have working-class jobs in Australia. The Global North has displaced their original class positions even as, in the Global South, their positions are elevated as Australian Master's degree holders. It is their imaginaries oscillating between the Global North and South that heighten their anxious desires.

On the other hand, the analysis of mainland Chinese respondents in Singapore shows how they have mostly remained in class positions similar to those they held in China. Nevertheless, their imaginaries of ‘less’ in their original country feeds their anxious desires. While not displacing their class positions, Singapore's migration regime similarly induces anxious desires albeit in different ways. The lack of guidelines on selection criteria for PR have compelled them into extended temporariness and their determination to ‘try’. They spend many years in Singapore, upgrading from visa to visa to finally qualify to apply for PR, and intend to apply multiple times to ‘try’ and attain it. Unlike Nepali migrants in Australia, whose anxious desires revolve around meeting the points system, mainland Chinese migrants’ anxious desires are with the black box of Singapore's immigration system. They do not know how to meet the unstated selection criteria but can only hope that their applications will be successful. Their anxious desires ensured their compliance in the system and meant that none of them fought against the discrimination they suffered at work. Neither did any them suggest that they would quit their work unless they receive PR. Unlike low-wage migrants who do not have the option to quit their work due to high debt incurred back home and high agents’ fees, my respondents are far more resourceful. That even Zhang, who has accumulated significant savings from his 10 years of work in Singapore, did not suggest for a moment that he may quit his work before attaining his PR, shows the effectiveness of state disciplinary techniques. Since there is no maximum period of employment for S-Pass holders, and there is no maximum number of times one can apply for PR, complemented by a cheap application fee, my respondents could remain in Singapore for years, stuck in their anxious desires.

Unlike migrants from the Global North, respondents in this article have little or less to return to, even if only in their imaginaries. While both the Australian and Singaporean immigration regimes claim to be selective based on skills; in reality, the systems significantly disadvantage migrants from the Global South. While their desire–anxiety disciplines them into compliant, desirable migrants, it also acts as a ‘Global South picket fence’ for the immigration regime. In Australia, it seems that the closer one is to being ‘white’ (language, clothing and so on), the more likely it is one can progress past the fence. In Singapore, the omnipotent Singaporean state and its mysterious immigration system ensures workers with skills in demand remain in extended temporariness, where one may be encouraged to apply again and again for PR and may never receive it. As men, respondents also indicated that their masculinity is always at stake. Ram was under pressure to get married and indeed desired to. However, his working-class job as a cleaner in Australia has prevented him from seeking out a partner. He made it clear that he could not possibly tell his potential partner that he was a cleaner in Australia, especially because of his elevated status in Nepal with a Master’s degree. Zhang similarly described how the stress levels at work are ever increasing but that: ‘As a man, I must uphold my responsibility.’ My respondents are ‘sitting’ on the fence, unable to return nor move forward.

Conclusion: state techniques and ‘permanently temporary’ migrants

This article has examined middling migrants in Australia and Singapore to argue, first, that migrants from the Global South experience heightened anxious desires due to imaginaries oscillating between the Global North and South. Second, and relatedly, it argues that migration regimes keep migrants compliant through managing their anxious desires. ‘Asian migrants’ are heterogeneous, and their experiences of temporality can vary according to their countries of origin and what they may have to return to. As migrants from the Global South they are more likely to choose extended temporariness over return.

The use of desire as a conceptual tool enabled the article to investigate the ‘social formation’ in which migrants are situated and how migration regimes manage emotions as a governing technique. Anxiety is produced when desires are unfulfilled and, as this article discussed, is not only a response to uncertainties but a tool for regimes to manage migration levels. Through focusing on their past, present and future articulations of desire and anxiety, this article showed they imagine less to return to in their original countries, including the lack of infrastructure, pollution and so on, conditions particularly endemic in the Global South, and ‘more’ to stay for in Australia and Singapore. Importantly, respondents in both Australia and Singapore highlighted the different techniques used by the two states to manage migrants’ emotions while producing the similar outcomes of keeping them compliant. As regimes that produce desires to migrate and high levels of anxiety, Australia and Singapore have found effective ways to regulate ‘permanently temporary’ populations – especially migrants from the Global South – that satisfy their labour market needs but provide little room for inclusion in their societies.