Singapore’s Pandemic Governance and Deepening Marginalization of Migrant Workmen

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the outbreaks of COVID-19 among migrant workers in Singapore, describing how the first phases of the pandemic constituted the vast majority of infections in Singapore. It explains how the infections are attributed to a pre-existing political economy that both spatially contains and socially marginalizes migrant workers. It also looks at a complex picture of migrant worker infection clusters that connected to a structural and institutional history of socio-spatial exclusion and economic marginalization. The chapter reviews the racial/migrant context of Singapore and policies aimed at the spatialization of difference. It examines the living and working conditions of migrant workmen in Singapore, which increases the prevalence of COVID-19 infections among the sub-population.