Circuit Breakers: Migrant Workers and the COVID-19 Crisis
It is no secret that the financial affluence achieved by Singapore in recent decades comes at a high, if not, human cost: the glistening skyscrapers and contemporary buildings designed by Bouygues Bâtiment International, Kohn Pederson Fox, Safdie Architects, and WOHA, among others, are constructed by migrant workers and unskilled laborers who come to Singapore on temporary visas. Given the heightened influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, their living conditions, care, and quality of food have been brought back into the media spotlight. Migrant workers and their entanglements with the COVID-19 virus demonstrate how the housing and health of unskilled and lower-income laborers are more precarious in periods of crisis.
Singapore, like South Korea and Taiwan, has been lauded for its close control of COVID-19 cases within its borders — the Singaporean government shares transparent communication via a smartphone app with its citizens, follows and traces contacts of COVID-19 patients, keeps its infrastructure open, and relies on consolidated leadership. Patients who tested positive for COVID-19 are kept in hospitals and not allowed back into the community. This organized approach to the COVID-19 pandemic is now at odds with the treatment of migrant workers who must shelter in place in order to stem the viral outbreaks occurring in worker dormitories.
As of 14 April 2020, the Singaporean government has been trying to figure out how to control the quarantine of almost 200,000 workers who must remain isolated in 43 different dormitories. Of the 386 cases announced on 14 April, almost 280 of these cases include foreign workers. 4,100 of the country’s total cases (5,992 as of 19 April 2020) are “work permit holders in low-wage jobs shunned by locals.” According to this figure, almost seventy percent of Singapore’s total COVID-19 cases belong to migrant workers who live outside of Singapore’s central districts; they reside in industrial districts like Jurong Island with designated zones for petrochemical companies and areas intended for oil and gas refineries.
In the S11 dormitory in Punggol, as many as 12 men sometimes sleep in a single bedroom, so social distancing is rather difficult to achieve. Overcrowding, pest infestation, and emotional health are some of the problems faced by migrant workers, and often there is only one shower or toilet cubicle for 18 residents. Residents of eight of these dormitories are not allowed to leave their rooms due to widespread community transmission, and as a result, Singaporean military personnel and police have been sent to patrol these dormitories to ensure that workers remain in quarantine. Partial lockdowns in the form of “circuit breakers,” or state enforced measures to pre-empt the escalation of COVID cases, have culminated in the worker dormitories where circuit breaking resembles a form of camp internment. Filthy conditions exacerbated by workers staying indoors seem to persist. The Housing Development Board (HDB) has suggested to contractors managing dormitories that they should house healthy workers in “unused void decks and multi-story car parks” to improve safe distancing. This is all too evident in the recent Facebook post uploaded by the Online Citizen.
Workers’ uniforms hung on the external fence of Tuas View dormitory in Jurong Island, Singapore, August 2019. Photo by author.
It is rare that stories of migrant workers in their dormitories are acknowledged by the general populace. In contrast, public housing, marked by tall towers of residential flats in housing estates, represent the municipal face of Singapore, with 79% of citizens living in these buildings. Housing has always been a tightly monitored resource in Singapore: only Singaporean citizens are allowed to purchase flats in the housing estates, and there is a waitlist to buy an apartment. But this policy has led to 91% home ownership in Singapore. Even purchasing private vehicles is closely controlled and comes with a steep price tag, guaranteed by certificates of entitlement. The price of a certificate sometimes can exceed the value of a car. Worker dormitories lie at the opposite end of this spectrum: housing and shelter is extended as an amenity offered by the Singaporean government which can be taken away at any point in time. Monitored by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), worker dormitories have recently evolved to incorporate employer-sponsored training centres to encourage laborers to earn class credits and refine their trade skills. This strategy allows workers to shorten their commutes while taking up educational classes close to their job sites. It also keeps migrant workers in their dormitories, making them less likely to circulate within the city.
For architects, there has been a return to issues around health and hygiene in modern architecture, two poles around which pandemics thrive. Even the illness, germs, and chaotic disorder heralded by cholera, malaria, and tuberculosis are modest in scale compared with the economic, industrial, and political havoc caused by COVID-19. Now coronaviruses threaten contemporary life and widen the gap between those who are Singaporean citizens with financial security and migrant workers whose legal rights are tenuous at best. Housing for migrant workers in the time of COVID-19 has become a strained point of pressure for the Singaporean government; more frequent cleaning of common spaces and better meals have been brought to the isolated workers, but the limited measures to appease them seem weak when compared with the financial assets and deep pockets held by the Singaporean state.
“Housing for migrant workers no longer fits within the categories of social housing, public housing, or even mundane labels like apartments....”
Throughout human history, epidemics have shaped societal changes while entrenching existing racial and economic discrimination as demonstrated by historian Frank Snowden. In a recent interview, Snowden shares that epidemics, in fact, hold up “the mirror to human beings as to who we really are…they also reflect our relationships with the environment – the built environment that we create and the natural environment that responds.” This timely statement encapsulates how the Singaporean government views its migrant labor force – more as a disposable form of capital than as individuals whose lives are being compromised in the wake of this pandemic. Housing for migrant workers no longer fits within the categories of social housing, public housing, or even mundane labels like apartments and accommodations. It exists now in the liminal spaces unused by Singaporean society’s wealthier and permanent citizens, segregated from any meaningful human contact. Ground floors beneath buildings and carparks represent a new reality for migrant workers in Singapore, resurrecting racial and economic tensions in this multicultural society. There are no mattresses to sleep on, but plenty of space and wi-fi on the premises qualify these places as airy, comfortable housing in the eyes of the government.
