Renegotiating migration experiences: Indonesian domestic workers in Singapore and use of information communication technologies

Abstract

This article considers the ways in which information communication technologies (ICTs) are embedded in foreign domestic workers’ migration experiences in Singapore. Due to Singapore’s stringent migration regime, whereby foreign domestic workers are required to live-in with their employers, domestic workers often find their access and use of ICTs subject to a high degree of surveillance and regulation by their employers. Using Massey’s notion of power geometry, we consider how increasing reliance upon communications technology by both domestic workers and their employers necessitates a renegotiation of social relations in the household. In doing so, this article demonstrates that foreign domestic workers’ negotiations of ICTs are ‘always ongoing’, creating fluid possibilities for these women to exercise a greater sense of agency within the realm of their daily lives. Yet, we highlight that gaining access to ICTs also requires women to negotiate the inequalities inscribed upon their position as a foreign domestic worker.

Keywords

Foreign domestic workers migration Singapore transnational communication transnational families

After I arrived, [my] employer … provided me with a book on the rules that I must follow. Don’t talk to friends, don’t wear a skirt while I do my daily activities and I can’t have a mobile phone.

Hera, 4 years in Singapore

Hera, an Indonesian woman, explained her initial encounter with her employer upon commencing her role as a foreign domestic worker in Singapore. Required to live-in with her employer due to Singapore’s stringent migration regime,¹ Hera described the limits placed upon her use of information communication technologies (ICTs) in the early stages of her employment. Hera’s story is not uncommon. Many women who constitute Singapore’s over 200,000 strong foreign domestic workforce (Ministry of Manpower [MOM], 2015) often find themselves facing some degree of restrictions regarding their use of ICTs (HOME, 2015). This is despite working in one of the world’s most technologically advanced cities with the wherewithal to ‘put in place the infrastructure, policies, ecosystem and capabilities to enable a Smart Nation’ (Infocomm Development Agency, 2015). Thus, a tension exists for women like Hera, who upon their arrival are inserted into a nation that has one of the world’s best developed ICT infrastructures. Yet at the same time, their status as foreign domestic workers, and the position they are accorded by Singapore’s migration regime, means that they do not experience the same freedoms as high-skilled migrants or citizens in the realm of ICTs.

Taking lowly paid migrant women’s position in a restrictive migration regime as the departure point, this article will examine Indonesian domestic workers’ negotiations over ICTs in their everyday lives. In doing so, we use Massey’s (1991, 1993) lens of ‘power geometry’ which alerts us to the ways in which spatiality and mobility are both shaped by and reproduce differentiated power in society. In particular, Massey (1991) drew attention to the notion that ‘mobility and control over mobility both reflects and reinforces power’ (p. 25). The concept of power geometry has been used as an analytic to bring into question the politics and power underpinning space, including that of virtual space, particularly as we live in an era of heightened human movement and improved technologies (Massey, 1993). Consequently, Massey considers fundamental questions brought about by enhanced movement and communication at the global scale such as who moves and who does not, and how power and powerlessness can be experienced concurrently in different locations (Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2013: 375).

Using the lens of power geometry, this article reflects upon the ways in which ICTs are embedded in women’s migration experiences. This issue is particularly salient as domestic workers’ access to ICTs often occurs in the context of deeply asymmetrical employment relationships. This article also explores how ICTs facilitate women’s connection to their families so as to attend to the everyday rhythms of life, allowing them to maintain contact during their migration episode(s), which for many women is seen as a detour from a ‘proper’ life. In doing so, we consider how different forms of ICTs suffice at different stages and argue that communication with family in Indonesia plays an important role in allowing for relations to be ‘re-made’ (Massey, 2005) and recalibrated as women navigate their migration journeys.

Power geometry, use of ICTs and transnational migration

Over the past several decades, scholars from disciplines such as media and communication studies and geography have examined the role of ICTs, noting its potential to alter notions of spatial and temporal distance. ICTs were seen to contribute to a so-called ‘shrinking world’ (Abler, 1975, 1977; Abler and Falk, 1985; Janelle, 1968) or what later came to be known as ‘time-space compression’ (Harvey, 1990). From as early as the 1960s, scholars argued that the ‘compressed and electrically contracted’ nature of the world meant ‘that the globe is no more than one village’ (McLuhan, 1964: 4).

Doreen Massey in her seminal work on power geometry critiqued the ways in which ‘time-space compression’ had been understood. Based on the notion that space is more than merely distance, Massey explored power and politics embedded in space and its implications upon social relations. She maintained that the means by which ‘people are inserted into and placed within “time-space compression”’ is predicated on a high degree of ‘complex social differentiation’ (Massey, 1993: 63). As she elaborated, this differentiation is not only a question of ‘who moves and who doesn’t … it is also about power in relation to the flows and the movement … [whereby] some people are more in charge of it than others …’ (Massey, 1993: 62; emphasis in original).

Massey’s point regarding power, and the corresponding politics of mobility, has a high degree of resonance in Singapore’s differentiated migration regime. Foreign domestic workers are mobile subjects whose migration and presence in the nation-state are predicated upon a ‘use and discard’ philosophy (Yeoh, 2006; Yeoh and Chang, 2001) designed to ensure that they remain a temporary labour force. Consequently, Massey’s argument regarding power geometry can be applied to global migration regimes, particularly those of temporary low-skilled workers, which are characterised by limited social rights and statutory entitlements for migrants (Lewis et al., 2014; O’Connell Davidson, 2013).

Scholars have noted the ubiquity of ICTs (including more recently smartphones and social media applications) has in part bridged the temporal and spatial gap caused by migration (see Cabanes and Acedera, 2012; Madianou, 2014, 2012; Madianou and Miller, 2012; Parreñas, 2005a; Thompson, 2009; Uy-Tioco, 2007). In the case of migrant domestic workers, mobile phones have enabled them to undertake ‘transnational mothering’ by fulfilling their parenting and care duties despite their physical absence (Fresnoza-Flot, 2009; McKay, 2007; Madianou and Miller, 2011; Parreñas, 2005a, 2005b; Uy-Tioco, 2007). ICTs also play a key role in facilitating the upkeep of a broad range of family ties. It has been argued that ICTs have brought about new ways for families to live together transnationally (Nedelcu, 2012). It is through a new range of technological mediums such as Skype and Facebook that transnational migrant families can transmit family memories, express their identities and establish a sense of connectedness (Hamel, 2009 cited by Benítez, 2012). In her exploration of long-distance intimacy, Deirdre McKay (2007) argues that ICTs can indeed constitute a ‘valid’ form of intimacy for migrants. In doing so, she challenges assumptions that true connection ‘can only arise through face-to-face connections’ (p. 180). Studies of this ilk illuminate the central role communication technologies play in ‘doing transnational families’, not just that of ‘transnational mothering’.

In the context of Singapore, the role of transnational mother and family member is one that has been strongly emphasised in research on domestic workers’ mobile phone use (Chib et al., 2014; Lin and Sun, 2010; Thomas and Lim, 2011). These studies include a focus upon how ICTs can facilitate an intensive mode of family relations by allowing women to make daily contact with their loved ones, especially children (Chib et al., 2014; Thomas and Lim, 2011; Thompson, 2009). Given the restrictive employment environment for many domestic workers, Lin and Sun (2010: 190) argued that this transnational family connection was an important factor in women regaining a sense of ‘subjectivity, connection and freedom’, although they often do so in a subversive manner due to employers’ restrictions over mobile phone use (see also Ueno, 2009). Studies have noted the use of mobile phones and the Internet as enabling a range of identities for domestic workers beyond that of wife and mother. For example, Thompson (2009) observed how mobile phones constituted a marker of social status, mediated intimate relationships with fellow migrants and played an instrumental role in facilitating job searches and social gatherings. This article advances this existing body of literature by exploring not only mobile phone use but also the rapidly expanding range of ICTs available to Indonesian domestic workers. Importantly, by examining use of contemporary ICTs, we consider how increasing reliance upon communications technology by both domestic workers and their employers necessitates a renegotiation of social relations in the household.

Despite the recognised benefits of ICTs in bridging the transnational divide between migrants and their families, others have stressed the idea that technology can work to reproduce and perpetuate social inequalities along class, gender and other lines. Ducey (2010) labels technologies as ‘vehicles of inequalities’, whereby disparities remain imprinted in ICTs and can further social divides (p. 22). Similarly, Mahler and Pessar (2001) note how transnational communication between migrant husbands and left-behind wives can reify gender hierarchies as these wives may not have the financial resources to initiate communication. In a similar vein, Parreñas (2005a) reveals how the accessibility and availability of ICTs have further hampered female migrants’ ability to reconstitute their roles as breadwinners, as these technologies further entrench them within patriarchal frameworks via transnational mothering. Meanwhile, Madianou and Miller (2012) in their study of new media technologies underscore the persistent social divides created by unevenness of access, buying power and media literacy.

These studies illuminate how the social realities of migrants and their attendant access and use of ICTs are inflected by broader social categories such as class, gender and education. As such, Graham (1998), echoing Massey’s notion of power geometry, underscores how such technologies are always ‘socially contingent’ and that ‘they are enrolled in complex social and spatial power relations and struggles … [whereby] … some groups, areas and interests may benefit from the effects of new technologies, while others actually lose out’ (p. 176). In this vein, low-skilled migrants in Singapore have traditionally been excluded from access to ICTs such as mobile phones due to exorbitant prices for devices and phone plans (Thompson, 2009). However, the reduced cost of mobile telephony in recent years has seen foreign domestic workers become ‘potential customers’ for Singapore’s communications providers (Thompson, 2009: 366). Increasingly accessible ICTs, including more recently smartphones and tablets (Platt et al., 2013), suggests a potential shift in foreign domestic workers’ position within the power geometry framework. As Massey (2005) reminds us, spaces, including virtual spaces which migrants access through ICT, are always ‘the product of social relations …’ and the negotiations over these spaces are ‘always ongoing’ (p. 95).

Massey’s above point is salient with regard to foreign domestic workers in Singapore where ICTs are ubiquitous. The ascent of the smartphone – a technological hybrid between a mobile phone and computer with Internet capabilities – is said to usher in an ‘always on lifestyle’ (boyd, 2012, cited in Madianou, 2014). Being ‘always on’ reinforces the ubiquitous nature of ICTs, making the plethora of options to be connected anywhere and anytime made manageable through the portability of a mobile phone (Madianou, 2014). This has significant implications for foreign domestic workers, who can maintain an online presence throughout their working day as they move within (and beyond) the domestic sphere.

We show that while foreign domestic workers have increasing access to ICTs, it remains socially contingent and embedded within a power geometry that sees this access as a constant point of negotiation in the employment relationship. In other words, we argue that Singaporeans’ continuing reliance upon both foreign labour and ICTs means that foreign domestic workers’ negotiations of ICTs are ‘always ongoing’. This creates fluid possibilities for domestic workers to exercise a greater sense of agency within their realm of their daily lives while also requiring women to negotiate the inequalities inscribed upon their status as a foreign domestic worker.

Foreign domestic workers in Singapore

Singapore’s quarter of a century of rapid industrialisation has not only reorganised labour but also restructured family life as more women have become part of the workforce (Yeoh, 2006; Yeoh and Huang, 1999). Women’s increasing economic participation has resulted in a ‘crisis for household production’, not only through decreasing marriage and fertility rates but also through creating a care deficit in the domestic sphere (Tai, 2013: 1152). As an intervention to provide replacement labour, the government allowed for the limited recruitment of foreign domestic workers from less-developed countries in the region to fill the void in the reproductive sphere of the household (Yeoh, 2006). As such, Singapore has become a common destination for Indonesian women seeking employment. While official statistics on the nationalities of Singapore’s approximately 220,000 foreign domestic workers are not publicly available, it is widely recognised that the majority of these women hail from Indonesia and the Philippines² (TWC2, 2011).

Domestic workers occupy a unique place in Singapore. The live-in nature of their work means that for many domestic workers, the division between the time and space provided for work and for leisure becomes blurred. There exists a complex interplay between the work and home environment, with a domestic worker never really separated from her workplace, even after her duties for the day have finished (Yeoh and Huang, 1999). Subsequently, the live-in nature of their employment means that foreign domestic workers are typically highly dependent on their employers, even for basic necessities. This dependency is heightened during the initial period of a woman’s employment in Singapore when she normally undergoes a salary deduction period³ of around 7–9 months, often receiving a mere monthly sum of around SG$10 as ‘pocket money’ (Platt et al., 2013). Furthermore, the conflation between ‘work’ and ‘leisure’ time creates difficulties for foreign domestic workers to carve out and protect their own personal space and time and build social communities outside the work/home space. Reports which put the average work day of a foreign domestic worker at 14 hours (United Nations Development Fund for Women [UNIFEM] Singapore et al., 2011) indicate that the domestic sphere can indeed be an isolating space.

The complex dynamic between employers and employees and the respective spaces they occupy in Singapore are further complicated, given the high degree of regulation of foreign domestic workers (Platt, 2015; Yeoh and Huang, 1999). Upon hiring a foreign domestic worker, the employer becomes liable to pay SG$5000 which can be forfeited should she breach conditions of her work permit. These include absconding from her employer, pregnancy or delivery of any child in Singapore or marriage to a Singaporean or permanent resident without government approval (MOM, 2012a). Breach of these conditions can also lead to domestic workers’ dismissal and repatriation. Furthermore, foreign domestic workers are not allowed to be accompanied by any family member on their migration to Singapore, necessitating a transnational divide between them and their loved ones.

Given this regulatory regime, it is not surprising that many employers have taken great interest in their domestic workers’ spatial mobility. Consequently, the implementation of the day-off policy in 2013 has been met with reluctance and apprehension from some employers who do not wish to jeopardise their security bond (Oon, 2013; Seow, 2014). This policy, which recommended a weekly day off for all foreign domestic workers, was put forward in March 2012. As well as recognising it as a basic labour right, the government noted that a regular day off provides foreign domestic workers ‘an important mental and emotional break from work’ (MOM, 2012b). As recommended in the policy directive, all foreign domestic workers who sign a new contract, or renew their current contract on or after 1 January 2013, are entitled to a weekly day off. However, employers are also given the option of providing their domestic workers with monetary compensation in lieu of a day off (approximately SG$15–20). This arrangement requires the worker’s consent. Yet, given the unequal power relations between employer and employee and the precarious and isolated nature of domestic work, it is conceivable that some foreign domestic workers comply with their employer’s wishes to work on their rest day. This was corroborated by a recent report that found that 40% of the 670 foreign domestic workers surveyed accessed a rest day on less than a weekly basis. Further analysis of a small subsample (n = 85) demonstrated that just over half (58%) of these women received compensation in lieu for working on their rest day (HOME, 2015).

As such, while some people may be able to position themselves favourably within Singapore’s migration regime, others such as foreign domestic workers are likely to be ‘more on the receiving-end’ or ‘effectively imprisoned’ (Massey, 1993: 62) by the system that regulates their migration status. This is made all the more apparent regarding the precarious nature of live-in domestic work in Singapore. Among migrant workers, those who enter the gendered sphere of domestic work have been identified as ‘particularly vulnerable to various forms of discrimination, exploitation, and abuse by virtue of their gender, temporary migrant status, and the nature and location of [their] work’ (Yeoh et al., 2004: 9). The short-term work permit policy for foreign domestic workers, along with the fact that they are not covered by the Employment Act, makes domestic work a highly precarious and flexible type of labour. It is within this prism of power geometries that ICTs have become increasingly important – especially for those at the ‘receiving end’ or ‘imprisoned’ by the parameters of their migration, which in effect limit domestic workers’ spatial and social mobility.

Focussing upon Massey’s notion of power geometry, it is clear that the regulatory regime in which foreign domestic workers enter upon their arrival in Singapore can work to circumscribe personal freedom and limit opportunities for both individual and collective agency. Thus, ICTs as a rapidly evolving medium have the capacity to alter the social relations embedded in live-in domestic work. As this article demonstrates, ICTs have the potential to enhance foreign domestic workers’ agency and shape critical aspects of their everyday lives. This includes the ways in which they perform their jobs, the support they can gain from others and their ability to share the quotidian aspects of their lives with families, as well as respond in times of family crises.

Methods

This article draws upon a survey (n = 201) and in-depth interviews (n = 38) with Indonesian foreign domestic workers residing in Singapore. The bulk of the data was collected over a 5-month period from October 2012 to February 2013, with some additional in-depth qualitative interviews conducted between November 2013 and January 2014. This article primarily draws upon the qualitative interviews which engaged women in a number of topics pertinent to their lives in Singapore, including their use of ICTs, with supporting data emerging from the survey findings. Interview transcripts were prepared and translated, and analysed with NVivo software. Analysis surrounding ICTs focussed on issues of use and access and corresponding dynamics with employers, as well as the potential for technology to facilitate social interaction in Singapore, Indonesia and elsewhere.

We sampled interview participants from the survey respondents in such a way as to elicit perspectives from foreign domestic workers of different family backgrounds (i.e. marital status and number of dependents) and work experiences (number of contract terms in Singapore, whether the domestic worker has a day off). By virtue of a face-to-face interview, we could only interview those who were willing to participate in a follow-up interview and could meet up (at a location of their convenience). This meant that it was difficult to interview women who had no access to a day off. As such, women with little spatial mobility outside the realm of the domestic sphere may report a different set of experiences regarding their use and access to ICTs.

Interviews were conducted near respondents’ workplaces, at recreational spaces such as malls and mosques. In some instances, interviews were conducted in women’s workplaces itself. In all cases, we ensured that we were able to conduct the interview in private and out of earshot of their employers. For some women we interviewed, it was not their first migration episode to Singapore, with a number (n = 7) having migrated previously. The majority of women we interviewed had been in Singapore for more than 5 years (n = 33), and thus they had accumulated a reasonable degree of experience with regard to ICTs in Singapore. Drawing upon women’s experiences, which for some have spanned several decades, we are able to gain perspectives on how ICTs have evolved and subsequently how this has shaped their migration experiences in Singapore.

ICTs and negotiating relationships in employers’ households

From our survey of 201 women, we found that the overwhelming majority of domestic workers (90% or n = 181) had their own phone while working in Singapore. However, follow-up interviews revealed that despite the widespread nature of mobile phone usage among foreign domestic workers in Singapore, not all employers are willing to provide access to a mobile phone immediately. A number of women we spoke to noted how they were only able to obtain a mobile phone after 1 or 2 years of service with an employer. Much like a day off, often perceived to be a privilege earned after gaining an employer’s trust, accessing a mobile phone is an articulation of the power relations between employee and employer. ICTs as a site of struggle between foreign domestic workers and their Singaporean employers are not a new phenomenon, with studies demonstrating the negotiations that went on in households over the use of fixed-line telephones before mobile phones became ubiquitous (Huang and Yeoh, 1996).

Issues of access to ICTs are reflective of the fact that negotiations are deeply embedded in social relations that work to shape the power geometries in which foreign domestic workers find themselves situated during their migration to Singapore. As Massey (2005) reminds us, these negotiations are constantly a potential site for renegotiation. Hera, whose quote opened this article, reflected the ‘always ongoing’ nature of negotiations regarding access to ICTs. At the time of the interview, she had been in Singapore for 4 years after arriving in 2008. Upon her departure, she was told by her Indonesian employment agent that she could not bring her mobile phone to Singapore. Once she arrived, this rule was reinforced by her employer, who also sought to limit Hera’s contact with others outside the realm of the household. Despite these strict rules, Hera’s employer did allow her use of their mobile phone so that she could stay in regular contact with her family.

Hera’s relationship with her employer evolved such that after 2 years, the restriction on Hera’s use of ICTs was lifted. Hera was then given the household Wi-Fi password and had her own mobile phone. Hera has since been able to maintain relationships with her family more readily, as well as keep up with fellow domestic worker friends in Singapore and overseas via Facebook. She also follows the Hong Kong branch of Indonesian Migrant Workers Union on Facebook – a migrant rights organisation which draws particular attention to domestic workers issues there. This has translated into a greater awareness of the local politics surrounding domestic work in Singapore:

… [I] know more about living here in Singapore … [about] Indonesian maids or the problems they face. They [other foreign domestic workers] are constantly uploading stuff on Facebook. I’m a member of their group, so I know …

Hera’s increasing freedom vis-à-vis access to ICTs mirrors a growing tolerance of technology use among foreign domestic workers. This tolerance coincides with the expectation that they will be increasingly contactable and connected to their employers in order to carry out their daily chores, including childcare. Melati, a woman in her 40s, who had worked with a Singaporean family for 2 years, used social media applications to share photos of her charges with their parents while they are at work during the day. A study of middle-class East Asian households’ use of ICTs found that such technologies facilitated an overarching sense of connectivity between mothers and children to the extent that women often experienced ‘a state of perpetual concern for their children’s well-being’ (Lim and Soon, 2010: 212). What Lim and Soon describe is an iteration of ‘remote mothering’ (Rakow and Navarro, 1993), a phenomenon where women’s mothering expanded to incorporate the use of ICTs to oversee their children’s schedules and welfare. Given Singapore’s reliance upon foreign domestic workers to fill the gap in reproductive labour, it is of little surprise that domestic workers such as Melati are now conduits for their employers’ ‘remote mothering’. Somewhat ironically, a study in Singapore found that foreign domestic workers also use their own children’s caregivers in a similar way and thus become ‘remote control parents’ (Chib et al., 2014: 84) from afar.

This greater tolerance of ICTs and the role they can play in facilitating communication between employers and domestic workers are also translating into a shift surrounding the ownership and access to mobile phones and other devices among the latter. Melati, who arrived in 2010 on her second migration to Singapore, noted how this time she was allowed to bring her own phone with her from Indonesia. Women we interviewed described how they had gone out and purchased phones with their employers or came home with devices, and in some cases, their employers volunteered to reimburse them the cost. Similarly, a number of Singapore-based employment agents have begun to provide newly arrived domestic workers with a SIM card before they are deployed to their employers (Aw, 2015). The shifting expectations surrounding mobile phone use was articulated by Raniah who has been in Singapore for 14 years. She recalls her early days in Singapore: ‘I didn’t even know who to call. My kids didn’t have a [phone]. I only wrote letters to them … [but] Nowadays in this era, we have to communicate with our families, our children’. A recent article in The Straits Times (Tan, 2014) reinforces the notion of shifting expectations among domestic workers, including their perceptions regarding Internet access. The article quotes employment agents who say that when it comes to Internet access, some foreign domestic workers are willing to trade their day-off entitlement in exchange for the household Wi-Fi password.

The desire to use technology, and its increasingly commonplace role in relationships between employers and employees, intersects with the notion of surveillance. The scrutiny of time was a theme that emerged constantly throughout our interviews with domestic workers when they discussed their use of ICTs. Monitoring the use of ICTs originated from both employers and domestic workers themselves, many of whom noted the importance of knowing one’s own limits. For example, for Yani, a 42-year-old divorcee, having a mobile phone has become an integral part of her everyday life in Singapore as she makes contact with her parents and her son in Indonesia on a daily basis. Having had four different employers in her decade-long stint in Singapore, Yani attested to the ways in which her relationship with her employer has mediated her use of ICTs. Regarding her first employer, she said she was so scared that ‘it was impossible to use a HP [hand phone]’. However, now according to Yani, her current employers are happy with her daily communication with her family. Yani said she imposed restrictions on her own mobile phone use: ‘I know the limitation[s], I know when is the working hours and when is the time to rest … When I work, I will work … I am not like other people … For me, I follow the rules’.

Muni, another woman who consciously limited her use of ICTs during work time, learnt to do so based on the knowledge that she was being surreptitiously monitored by her employer. Muni told of how she accepted her employer’s friend request on Facebook after he used a pseudonym. She said that he then scrutinised her use of Facebook, accusing her of not working every time that she opened her account. Muni’s complaint underscores the complexity of knowing the ‘proper’ time to use ICTs. This is all the more difficult given the live-in nature of domestic work whereby time ‘on’ and ‘off’ the job cannot be easily demarcated (Yeoh and Huang, 1999). In this vein, Nur underscored how having a mobile phone made her increasingly susceptible to the gaze of her employers who insisted she took it everywhere, including brief trips to the nearby shops or to the carpark where she washed their car. For Nur, there was a sense of defiance when she recounted, ‘If I don’t want them to find me I put it [the phone] at home’.

Therefore, both employers and foreign domestic workers harbour a shifting set of expectations regarding the role of ICTs in the performance of household tasks and the maintenance of household relationships. In this sense, power relations have shifted to allow women greater freedom in terms of their ability to communicate and maintain relationships with friends and family, although for some it has also increased the means through which they can be monitored by their employer. Nonetheless, foreign domestic workers remain, as Massey (2005) notes, ‘less in charge’ of their position within the complex social relations that engender the power geometries underpinning their migration. While ICTs may be more accessible and freely used, a different set of concerns emerges due to the difficulty in delineating between work and personal time for women who navigate their role as ‘always on’ live-in workers, against the backdrop of an ‘always on lifestyle’ (Boyd, 2012 cited in Madianou, 2014).

ICTs and negotiating relationships beyond the domestic sphere

Not surprisingly, women noted that use of ICTs was first and foremost for maintaining communication with family, as well as friends from their home communities in Indonesia. At the time of the survey in late 2012, most women (over 60%) did not have regular access to the Internet. This explains the reliance upon short message service (SMS) and phone calls as the key form of communication among 80% of our survey respondents when making contact with their family and friends in Indonesia. At this stage, only a relatively small number of women reported using web-based chat applications such as Skype (9%) and email (13%). Facebook proved more popular with over one-third of women reporting using it to maintain contact with friends in Singapore (38%) and friends in Indonesia (36%), and over a quarter of women used Facebook as a way to connect with family in Indonesia (27%). By the time we completed the second round of follow-up interviews in early 2014, our findings pointed to a growing use of smartphones (and to a lesser extent, tablets and laptop computers) among respondents, many of whom also had access to Wi-Fi in their employers’ household.

Importantly, our study also demonstrates how ICTs played a key role in providing women without a day off, who constituted approximately one-third (31%) of survey respondents, a way to maintain contact with family and friends. Of our survey respondents, of the 63 women who reported having no day off at all, around two-thirds (n = 46) said that they owned a mobile phone and thus maintained regular contact with family and friends. Nearly all of these women (41 of 46) maintained lines of contact with friends in Singapore via SMS and voice calls (39 of 46). Social media platforms, Facebook in particular, were also instrumental in allowing women to communicate with others outside the household. Over half (n = 25) of domestic workers without a day off who had access to a mobile phone also used Facebook to contact friends in Indonesia. Approximately one-third (n = 15) of these women also used Facebook to contact friends in Singapore. Thus, ICTs, particularly the mobile phone, is a key way of fostering a sense of connection and overcoming social isolation for domestic workers (Thompson, 2009).

Consistent with previous studies of migrant mothers, interviews with women revealed that much of their use of technology, including social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp, revolved around the distinctly gendered roles of ‘transnational mother’ and emotional caregiver (McKay, 2007; Madianou and Miller, 2011; Parreñas, 2005a, 2005b). Rosita’s communication with her child through Facebook revolved around the quotidian task of checking in to see whether he had done his homework. The low cost of social media has facilitated a more regular form of contact between mothers and their children. Melati noted how communicating with her son is now a daily event whereby ‘communicating just through Facebook, it’s enough … when it comes to talking on the telephone, we rarely communicate’.

These seemingly mundane interactions between migrant women and their children are indicative of a key form of transnational mothers’ agency as they harness ICTs to integrate their economic earning potential and frequent interactions with their children (Parreñas, 2005b; Peng and Wong, 2013). Moreover, we argue that this form of transnational familial communication constitutes a key strategy for women who often perceive their migration to be a detour or aberration from a ‘proper’ life. After 6 years in Singapore, Naning cures her homesickness by contacting her family. While her separation and feelings of displacement have become normal (sudah terbiasa) and she does not feel the need to call home as much, she states ‘If I miss them [my family] I can just call them’. But Naning sees her migration as coming to an end when she marries. She noted how she has a few potential suitors from near her home in Indonesia who have contacted her through Facebook, asking to meet up with her when she next returns home. For Naning, ICTs help her to maintain present emotional ties to her family. Simultaneously, ICTs also provide her with the hopes to develop future emotional ties through the pursuit of a ‘normal’ life which involves returning to Indonesia where she aims to marry and have a family of her own.

Nur, a single mother to a 21-year-old daughter, showed how ICTs play a vital role in family crises. Her story demonstrates how different forms of communication technologies suffice at different stages, particularly as the dynamics of her relationship with her daughter shifted over time. Nur described how she left for Singapore nearly 20 years ago after she was suddenly widowed and her father tried to force her to remarry. Her daughter, who was then still a toddler, was left in the care of her sibling. Nur told how her daughter had recently joined an extremist religious group and had subsequently become a source of worry for her. During the interview, Nur rued leaving for Singapore, stating that she ‘really regretted’ leaving her daughter in the light of the events that had come to pass.

Whereas previously Nur used to Skype with her daughter on a regular basis, according to Nur her daughter was ‘very holy’ and no longer wanted to use Skype. Moreover, Nur found it more difficult to sit down in front of the computer and communicate in real time as she said her employer would ‘nag’ her, although they willingly provided her access to the household Wi-Fi. Finding herself at a cross-road and unsure of what to do about her daughter’s newfound fundamentalism, Nur tried continually to contact her through the messaging application WhatsApp. Meanwhile, Nur had saved the money necessary to fund her daughter’s first year at Gadjah Madah University, one of Indonesia’s most prestigious (and expensive) universities, although her daughter had so far refused to take up a place. Frustrated, Nur turned to her family through their online chat group to help her keep an eye on her daughter. In the meantime, Nur contemplated whether she would return home to Indonesia for good or continue on in Singapore to fulfil her dream of educating her daughter.

Nur’s family crisis represents a disruption to the everyday rhythm of life that had existed prior to her daughter’s religious conversion. As the relationship with her daughter became more difficult to manage, Nur altered the means of communicating with her daughter to direct messaging in the hope that she could reach her. Her narrative also speaks to the ambivalence migrant mothers experience as they struggle with their own inner conflicts between managing work and family – ambivalence that is accentuated as their work takes them far from their children (Madianou, 2012). In this sense, Nur’s dreams for her daughter’s future, regrets over her departure from the family home and immediate concerns for her daughter’s welfare coalesce into a temporal sequence of ‘accentuated ambivalence’ (Madianou, 2012) constructed around the past, present and future. For Nur, ICTs have also constituted a source of disappointment as the difficulty to make contact with her daughter is a palpable reminder that her daughter has shut her out of her life. Consequently, ICTs have become a mixed blessing for women as they strive to maintain relationships with loved ones and pursue their own life plans, many of which revolve around their families, through their transnational labour. Nur’s story also highlights that ICTs, while affording women with opportunities, can also constitute a medium of inequality (Ducey, 2010) where as a single, transnational mother she relies upon technology as she attempts to carve out a future for herself and her daughter.

Conclusion

The ubiquity of ICTs has seen foreign domestic workers renegotiate a range of relations both in the context of their migration to Singapore and in their roles as members of transnational families. In the context of their jobs as live-in domestic workers, women must learn how to delineate between time spent ‘on’ and ‘off’ duty, even as ICTs present growing opportunities for socialising and entertainment. Simultaneously, ICTs engender new demands placed on foreign domestic workers to act as conduits in ‘remote mothering’ and constitute an alternative space for the surveillance of domestic workers’ time and whereabouts. In this sense, ICTs can situate women within an ambivalent relationship vis-à-vis the freedoms that such technologies can produce. This ambivalence between the increasing reliance upon ICTs in the domestic sphere, on the one hand, and the restrictions often placed upon domestic workers, on the other, underscore the socially contingent nature of access to spaces, including virtual or online space (Massey, 2005). This article highlights the multifaceted nature of women’s engagement with ICTs that are made fraught in the context of their employment, as they learn to self-monitor and evade detection from employers by deliberately leaving their phones at home. In drawing attention to these tensions, we demonstrate how the ‘always ongoing’ negotiations underpinning power geometries are playing out in the lives of those ‘less in charge’ (Massey, 1993) of their position within Singapore’s migration regime.

Simultaneously, the increased availability and accessibility of ICTs play a significant role in bridging the divide between women and their families, allowing transnational members to remain connected and maintain a sense of presence in one another’s lives (Madianou, 2012, 2014, Madianou and Miller, 2012; Parreñas, 2005b; Thompson, 2009). In this sense, communication technologies also help women to maintain connections to the lives which they assume they will return to once their migration is ‘over’. As we have shown, for many women in our study, much of this communication revolves around the mundane activities of a familial nature such as checking in on the children’s homework or simply making their daily presence felt. Yet in cases such as Nur’s, when family situations reach crisis point, different methods and modes of ICTs may need to be deployed, and in some cases, technology may not be enough to assuage the ‘accentuated ambivalence’ (Madianou, 2012) migrant mothers often experience.

Consequently, through our examination of Indonesian domestic workers’ use of ICTs, this article highlights the intersection of power geometries and transnational familial communication. Inasmuch as ICTs allow for greater social freedoms and enhance women’s ties with families, women must also negotiate the attendant inequalities at play which are imprinted upon their use of such technologies. Furthermore, it is also important to note that the power geometries underpinning women’s migration, especially in destinations that forbid their families from migrating with them, are actually what compel the need for transnational family communication in the first place – a gap which is increasingly bridged by ICTs.

Transnational family communication is therefore imbricated with inequalities brought about by power geometries which tend to position domestic workers at the ‘receiving end’. While the power relations at play do not deprive women of agency that technology can promote, it also sets the stage for the ways and means in which use of ICTs can – or cannot – take place.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work has been funded by UK aid from the UK government through the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium; however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.

Notes

Author biographies

Maria Platt is a Research Fellow at Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS). Her research interests include domestic work; reproductive labour and the politics of intimacy, migration and mobilities; and gender relations and marriage in the Asian context. Recent publications have focussed on the everyday politics of marriage and its dissolution, the politics of intimacy in the realm of domestic work and women’s agency in the transition to marriage in Indonesia. Her sole-authored book Marriage, Gender and Islam in Indonesia: Women’s Negotiation of the Marital Continuum (Routledge) is forthcoming in 2016.

Brenda SA Yeoh is Professor (Provost’s Chair), Department of Geography at National University of Singapore (NUS), as well as Research Leader of the Asian Migration Cluster at the Asia Research Institute, NUS. Her research interests include the politics of space in colonial and postcolonial cities, and she also has considerable experience working on a wide range of migration research in Asia. Her latest book is entitled Transnational Labour Migration, Remittances and the Changing Family in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, with Lan Anh Hoang).

Kristel Anne Acedera is an M Soc Sci candidate at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. Her current research interest is about the role of communication technologies on transnational familyhood and mediated intimacies. Her previous works on this have been published in New Media & Society as well as in a report for the UK Department for International Development.

Khoo Choon Yen is Research Assistant at Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and is concurrently pursuing her master’s degree at the Department of Geography. Her master’s thesis looks at the impacts of parental labour migration on young women’s aspirations and subjectivities with regard to adulthood. Her research interests include labour migration from/within Indonesia and Southeast Asia, gender and migration, and youth aspirations.

Grace Baey is an independent researcher based in Singapore with a keen interest in social documentary photography. At the Asia Research Institute, she was Co-Investigator of the research project entitled ‘Migration and Precarious Work: Negotiating Debt, Employment and Livelihood Strategies amongst Bangladeshi Migrant Men working in Singapore’s Construction Industry’, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) under the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium. Her research interests include transnational labour migration in Southeast Asia, recruitment practices, gender and migration, and international political economy.

Theodora Lam is a Research Associate in the Asian MetaCentre for Population and Sustainable Development Analysis based in Asia Research Institute and a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. Her research interests cover transnational migration, children’s geographies and gender studies. She has co-edited several special journal issues in Global Networks (with Brenda SA Yeoh and Shirlena Huang) and International Migration (with Shirlena Huang and Brenda SA Yeoh) and published in various journals and edited books including Children’s Geographies, Environment and Planning A and Asia Pacific Viewpoint.

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