Example Banks

Question 1

SBU

He has been receiving a daily fixed rate of 18 SGD for an average of 9-10 hours of work, when he asked for a raise of at least $1, his SGrean-Chinese manager said he could not, because $1 is equivalent to 40 rupees. Who is he?

Answer 1

Vikram (34)

Question 2

SBU

Who said that policing is okay, but there seems to be a “bi-furcated” law system?

Answer 2

Vikram (34)

It is one which works to benefit Singaporeans, and another which conspires to mistreat and render Indian workers powerless.

Question 3

SBU

Who reasserted Vikram’s stance about differences in wage from worker to worker depending on race, saying that Chinese workers had to be paid a minimum of $40 a day while they have consistently been paid $18 a day?

Answer 3

Velu (32)

Question 4

SBU

Who felt that Little India was a place where anyone could fit in easily?

Answer 4

Velu (32)

• Only rich people shopped at Orchard Road, so they were excluded from it (no economic capital)
• Little India was a place for everyone, both them and rich people, and Indian vegetables are only available in Little India

Question 5

SBU

Who asserted with conviction that migrant workers were the reason for SG’s rapid development?

Answer 5

Velu (32)

Foreign workers (which include Tamil migrant workers) understand full well the role they play in SG’s development, and also understand that SG will very well continue to exploit them in order to fulfil its obsession with constantly physically remaking its appearance.

Question 6

SBU

On the presence of police in Little India, he said the police mainly checks the foreign workers, and will immediately go to them if anything feels wrong.

Answer 6

Velu (32)

Worse still, if SGreans do anything wrong, even if they see it, they won’t approach them to detain them.

Question 7

SBU

Who has positive feelings about Little India, saying that it feels like home?

Answer 7

Siva (38)

• It “feels like home” because he can see Tamil people like him and that makes him happy
• He can only go to Little India on Sunday, as he needs to do his laundry and cook on other days

Question 8

SBU

Who gave the example of dropping a cigarette butt on the ground and comparing the reactions by policemen depending on the race of the person who dropped it?

Answer 8

Siva (38)

• Sometimes when they’re minding their own business on the street, police will stop them and ask them to state their business. They do not do so for Chinese migrant workers, because they “have been given a lot of rights”
• When a Tamil migrant worker and a Singaporean commit the same crime of throwing a cigarette butt on the ground, the officers will only immediately issue fines to the former

Question 9

SBU

Who debunked the stereotype that migrant workers sleeping on cardboard / on the floor is because they got drunk the night before?

Answer 9

Siva (38)

He said that they might have had no money for lodging / could not catch the last train and have no place to sleep for the night.

Question 10

SBU

Who was listed as the worker who took pictures of monuments in Singapore?

Answer 10

Anjappan (43)

• Took pictures of monuments in SG for a photo diary project which Hamid started
• Illustrated the importance of the strength and historical ties which Singapore once shared with India (indicated through the use of the Tamil language on the monuments) to Anjappan

Question 11

SBU

Who confirmed the “racialised” wage difference in the SG migrant labour industry?

Answer 11

Key Informant #1

• Confirmed the wage difference between Chinese migrant workers and South Asian migrant workers is “racialised” and embedded in colourism (“the darkness of the people”), “prejudice rooted in stereotypes”
• Stated that it is an attitude that is not really contested, which led to it becoming an “excuse” for prejudice and less pay

Question 12

SBU

Who claimed that the police presence and arbitrary allocation was based off of SGreans’ perceptions of different migrant workers?

Answer 12

Key Informant #1

• Hence, more policemen in Little India → perceiving Indian migrant workers who crowd Little India on Sundays as a threat
• The fact that it’s crowded is a problem itself (?)
• Perceptions of South Asian workers as sexually threatening and molesters have exacerbated this problem as well

Question 13

SBU

Who confirmed the wage difference which Vikram and Velu claimed existed?

Answer 13

Key Informant #2

Confirming Vikram and Velu’s statements, Chinese migrant workers do earn about $50 a day and South Asian workers earn about $18.

Question 14

SBU

Who wrote a proposal in 2012?

Answer 14

Local (SGrean) residents staying near Little India

• Have been diligently writing to the press and complaining to their Member of Parliament since these “foreign workers‟ began arriving in Singapore in the 1970s
• Proposal in 2012 to cordon off a residents’ corner in Little India and introduce police patrols went through, as well as more signs put up in the area in both Tamil and Bengali
• Metal barriers have been put up as clear physical demarcations

Question 15

SBU

Even though Little India is the only place that Tamil migrant workers have found comfort in and feel closest to home despite labouring in a “global” city, they are still subject to ____________ within it.

Answer 15

exclusion

• Physical demarcations and mental boundaries keep migrant workers out of spaces
• Making a public space more ‘private’, thereby used as a form of social control to regulate the movements of migrant workers and prevent them from using such spaces freely
• All of this legitimises unequal treatment against Tamil migrant workers and other South Asian migrant workers

Question 16

SBU

Where do other migrant workers frequent?

3 places

Answer 16

1. Geylang
2. City Hall
3. Beach Road

Differential policing as claimed by some migrant workers is true. Tamil migrant workers are policed much more strongly than any other worker in Singapore. Such policing is carried out to control South Asian migrant workers’ masculinity specifically, not All of them.

Question 17

SBU

What was Wajihah Hamid’s personal example with the arbitrariness of the SGrean police force?

Answer 17

• She was with a fellow SGrean friend of Tamil descent, and they both went to get food. There were policemen patrolling outside the food centre which they bought food from
• A few Singaporean Tamil men shouted and hurled verbal abuse at the both of them, but the police did not react to it despite being right there when it happened

Question 18

TW

Who learned about her job through a friend who had worked there before?

Answer 18

Vilai (29)

Friends were main agents in shaping her decision to come to work there.

Question 19

TW

What businesses did Vilai cite to justify her fantasy of return?

2 businesses

Answer 19

1. A retail business
2. A small restaurant
   They are doing very well.

Question 20

TW

Who fantasised about returning to Thailand and mentioned examples of Thai women who did?

Answer 20

Vilai (29)

Mentioned examples of Thai women who previously went to England who learned a lot from being there, they managed to improve their standard of living with the things they learned.

Question 21

TW

Who rhetorically asked “what are we supposed to ask?” when questioned about staff anxieties / development?

Answer 21

Karn (27)

• Said that all rules were clearly stated, with the most important thing being to satisfy clients
• Have to be accepting of everything, say sorry all the time and be agreeable
• Acceptance of the unfair –> symbolic violence

Question 22

TW

Who refused to see the doctor despite having a stomachache?

Answer 22

Jinda (30)

• Had a serious stomachache one night but refused to see the doctor due to poor English skills
• Said it would be a waste of her time and money and she probably wouldn’t understand what the doctor is saying, and that she would recover anyway

Question 23

TW

Who didn’t mind being sexualised, and had come to embrace it and play up to her skills in order to get a husband like her coworker?

Answer 23

Jinda (30)

• Does not really care about the sexualisation of Thai workers around her, including herself
• Saw fellow worker Saijai having a happy married life with an Englishman, and wouldn’t mind playing up to her skills to secure her a husband herself
• She herself always plays along with them for a good tip

Question 24

TW

Who recounted life with her British husband, saying that working in the restaurant “gave her a little power”?

Answer 24

Saijai (39)

• Account is quite different from how Jinda described it
• When she first moved to England, she stayed at home, had no social life, was unvalued and disrespected. It was also horrible when her husband got drunk. She endured because he was not a bad guy and still gave her money, and she took care of him and the house
• However, starting work in the restaurant and earning income for herself gave her a little power
• Agency accorded to Thai women can be through playing up to men through asserting their sexuality, or simply working in the restaurant and reinstating their social life and ability to earn income

Question 25

TW

Who was the jealous part timer?

Answer 25

Kate

• Unfair that Jean (another part-timer) was picked to be a hostess (someone perceived to be vital and important in the Jasmine restaurants)
• She does less things around the Jasmine for more cultural capital and the same amount of money

Question 26

TW

Who is the hostess part-timer, and what did she say about the full-time workers?

Answer 26

Jean, she said that they were being abused and that the employers valued the part-timers more because of their linguistic and cultural capital

• Believes that she looks good to the employers because of her middle-class background and higher education (cultural capital). They respect the part-timers more because of this
• Full-time waitresses have to work harder for a lower wage, eg. they have to clean every corner in the restaurant after finishing restaurant work
• “It is just abuse!”

Question 27

TW

Who has an accounting degree, but could not use it for the five whole years she spent waitressing in England?

Answer 27

Pranee (29)

• Very different when she cannot get to use her education
• She has an accounting degree and plans to review her studies when she gets back to Thailand
• She says that what you learn does not necessarily stay with you forever
• Since she arrived in England 5 years ago, all she did was run around in a restaurant, and could not use what she learned in college at all

Question 28

TW

Who illustrates the contradictory class mobility in Thai Women in England, by saying “their bodies are exhausted”?

Answer 28

Lek (28)

• Life is hard in Thailand, people don’t earn enough
• Thai migrant women in England can buy things in England they would not be able to buy in Thailand, even though they are working as waitresses (because they’re earning money)
• In Thailand, work is light, but they get no money. In England, they earn money, but their bodies are exhausted

Question 29

TW

Who recounted Saturday nights where men would come in and grab their arms and pinch their bottoms?

Answer 29

Tavee (26)

She reported it, to no avail (the management / her employers did not care, her coworkers encouraged her to play it up for a tip).

Question 29

TW

Who struggles first to reap the rewards later, and endures her hardship so that she can take back her struggles by being her own boss?

Answer 29

Tavee (26)

Question 30

TW

Who felt really bad about being a waitress, but also realised that it wasn’t so bad?

Answer 30

Pailin (32)

• After graduation, working in Thailand would not have been enough to sustain her parents’ lives
• After coming to England, she cried a lot and could not accept her position as a waitress
• It was only after a year that she realised that her plight was not so bad – her income in England was more than it could have been in Thailand, even though she graduated from college there
• Their structural position in society has to be understood through their participation in global capitalism in order to escape economic insecurity and gain status over other Thai women
• This ends up in them securing access to higher wage employment, but suffering as lower-positioned people in English society

Question 31

TW

Who, after seeing her already married coworker go out with other men, embraced the idea of transgressing server-customer boundaries (outside of Thai culture and discourse)?

Answer 31

Veena (33)

• She said that earning tips from chatting with customers was an expected profit but she does so because she has to give a satisfactory service
• After seeing fellow colleague Prang going out with a few Britishmen whom she had met through restaurant work despite being married, Veena began to accept the ‘transgression’ of server-customer boundaries as natural
• Thai women breaking the boundaries between servers and customers is symbolic of them positively reinforcing their identities as women (the fact that they have the agency to deploy their femininity and sexuality strategically)