“We are human beings too,” Migrant Domestic Workers’ Rights in Singapore

• Main Author: Popiolek, M.
• Other Authors: YSI Asia Convening 2019
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: H. : ĐHKT 2020
• Subjects: Social movements; Foreign domestic workers; Feminization of migration; Gender
• Online Access: http://repository.vnu.edu.vn/handle/VNU_123/70849
• Institution: Vietnam National University, Hanoi

This paper examines how social movements operate to negotiate rights for foreign domestic workers in Singapore. The leading advocacy non-governmental organisations, Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) and Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) establish a case study for this analysis. By using discourse analysis, this research argues that the two studied organisations draw from three dominant discourses on victimhood, civic society and rights. Further, by circulating these diversified framings, the two studied organisations build contrasting images of the foreign domestic workers in their advocacy in order to appeal to different target groups.