Abstract
In this chapter I turn to explicitly engage with the key question raised in the book: why do so few of these exploited migrant workers in Singapore attain protection or redress through the provisions of Singapore’s emerging anti-trafficking infrastructure? Given that internationally accepted characterisations and indicators of human trafficking, such as those developed by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UNGIFT), provide a ready fit to many of the migrants whose experiences were laid out in Chaps. 5 and 6, this emerges as a highly relevant question. As I will argue in this chapter, exploited migrant labourers who may well have claims as victims of trafficking within Singapore are disqualified or excluded at various stages of anti-trafficking interventions. In this chapter I focus particularly on exclusion through the application of what I refer to as ‘legal-jurisdictional exceptionalism’, which may be understood as the disqualification of victims through invocation and manipulation of legal-spatial demarcations, particularly external borders and internal boundaries.
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- 1.
The objective of this Convention and Recommendation is to ensure that fishers shall have decent conditions of work on board fishing vessels with regard to minimum requirements for work on board, conditions of service, accommodation and food, occupational safety and health protection, medical care, and social security.
Amongst the many improvements, the new Convention:
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raises the minimum age for work on board fishing vessels to 16 years;
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fixes the maximum period of validity of a medical certificate to two years;
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requires the adoption of laws regarding minimum levels of crewing and defines minimum periods of daily and weekly rest for vessels remaining at sea for more than three days;
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establishes fishers’ entitlement to repatriation at the cost of the fishing vessel owner; and
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finally, incorporates port state control provisions modelled after those applicable in the shipping industry (see http://www.ilo.org/global/standards/subjects-covered-by-international-labour-standards/fishers/lang%2D%2Den/index.htm, Accessed on 6 June 2018).
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- 2.
Although not made as forcefully or repeatedly, the Singaporean government does also suggest that middlemen in migrant workers’ home countries present major problems in enhancing the likelihood of migrant worker problems in Singapore. Blaming migrant worker source countries for not properly regulating labour recruitment agencies locates the problem of worker exploitation offshore and squarely outside Singapore’s control. In many conversations with TIP Taskforce representatives this view was often reiterated with officials arguing that their hands were proverbially tied because they could not interfere with domestic legislation and policies in source countries. See, for example, The Straits Times (2009), ‘Foreign workers: Source countries should stem the problems’ (17 January 2009).
- 3.
The Singapore government will not use the term ‘trafficked fishermen’ to describe any migrant fisher who winds up on Singaporean shores, even where such an assessment has been made by the embassy of the source country concerned in Singapore. The act of re-labelling fishermen’s experiences as situations of ‘distress’ rather than ‘trafficking’ is a tactic of elision of migrant fishers’ claims for redress as victims.
- 4.
Yati’s husband had a workplace accident a few days after Yati was placed in Keramat. Her husband broke both his hands and was unable to work. Because Yati was detained at Keramat for 18 months, their daughter was forced to drop out of school in Indonesia and the family struggled to find the money to pay for Yati’s husband’s treatment. Such experiences can have secondary, flow-on effects on the vulnerability of other family members. In this case, Yati’s detention leads to the heightened insecurity of her daughter. Often prevention of trafficked rhetoric stands in contrast to the effects of the migration-detention-criminalisation nexus.
- 5.
Other foreign embassies, including the Thai Embassy and Embassy of Myanmar, also provide accommodation for nationals in distress but do not operate their own shelters . TWC2 also provides accommodation for female migrants in distress, but also does not operate a separate shelter for women.
- 6.
In these cases, it is only women who have entered Singapore on a Performing Artist or ‘Entertainer’s Visa (PAV) who may be able to avail the TJS , since they entered Singapore with a legitimate work permit and therefore come under MOM’s purview as labour or salary dispute cases. HOME’s representative confided that they virtually never see women entering on Social Visit Passes (SVPs or tourist visas) presenting for assistance at their offices.
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Yea, S. (2020). Spaces of Deflection and Deportability Beyond Anti-trafficking. In: Paved with Good Intentions?. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3239-5_7
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