Abstract
The narrative of Singaporean exceptionalism has been globally reproduced in how the country has successfully managed the Covid-19 pandemic, where Singapore is self-branding as a model managerial SmartNation that has built an extensive digitalized and surveillance infrastructure for others to emulate. Many of these technologies appear to have been developed and tested in low-income migrant worker dormitories. Straddling science and technology studies (STS) and migration studies, this project examines the racialized and gendered processes of producing social exclusion and inequality in Singapore. Our aims are first, to understand whether and how low-wage migrant worker dormitories have become such experimentation sites, and second, to explore the differential implications of the surveillance assemblage for both the Singaporean “community,” other migrant workers, and other nations who may adopt Singaporean technologies. Our research questions are: (1) How have the purpose-built, private-publicly owned dormitories housing Singapore’s largely South Asian low-wage migrant workers (LIMWs) become experimental sites for testing Singapore’s rapidly growing arsenal of surveillance technologies (contact tracing apps, wastewater surveillance, CCTV, health surveillance through testing, etc.)? (2) How is the surveillance assemblage reproducing the racialized and gendered hierarchies of labor constructed through the nation’s immigration regime? With what implications for international would-be adopters? (3) How are LIMWs using technologies to counter-surveil their employers, the state, and NGOs? We expect to find that dormitories are testing sites, that surveillance is tied to the racialized and gendered hierarchies of the immigration regime, and that workers are attempting, with little success, to counter-surveil employers and the state.
Principal Investigators

Monamie B. Haines
Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University

Laavanya Kathiravelu
Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University

Junjia Ye
Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University