Poverty, Migration and Literature from below: Bangladeshi Labour Migrants' Literary Expressions in Singapore.

• Author: Mahbub, Rifat

Introduction

I am revisiting this paper as the world is passing through the longest and perhaps the most complicated lockdown of our living history because of coronavirus (COVID 19) pandemic. While we don't exactly know what kind of world we will have to rebuild as we get used to living with the virus, there are clear indications that the world will change drastically at least for the near future. The global economy faces a new type of recession, for which it is not prepared. Unlike other economic recessions of the 20th and 21st centuries, this one is not caused by a financial collapse or economic shortfalls. Rather it is caused by what Ozili and Arun (2020) call the 'spill over' effects of ranges of fully-functioning industries such as sports, oil or tourism. Concerns are crucially raised for South Asian countries, fearing that the recent hard-earned economic development and the milestone of widespread poverty alleviation will face a grim U-turn as the pandemic sweeps through the world (World Bank South Asia Economic Forum 2020). One of the key issues being raised in the World Bank report was the reduction of foreign remittance as many international migrants may face joblessness, and at the same time, the global transaction chain may face challenges. For Bangladesh, already, there are early indications that foreign remittance in the early months of lockdown has reduced the country's chance of hitting its target of 17% more gross remittance from the year 2018-19 to 2019-2020 (Ahmed et al. 2020). There is a fear that as different host countries are taking stringent measures to control the spread of the virus (such as temporary pause in construction and industrial sector), the impact will be harsher in the upcoming months and years.

Coronavirus further revealed the unequal and unfair status quo between the so-called skilled and desirable migrants and the low-skilled, wage-earning precarious ones (The Business and Human Rights Resource Report 2020). From the hardest hit European countries such as Italy or Britain to oil-rich Gulf region and the giant Asian economies such as Singapore and China, often the low-paid migrant workers live through the uncertainties of joblessness, wagelessness and hunger. Living in a hostile environment without protection and support (Kalush 2020), many South Asian temporary migrant workers from the Gulf region have taken desperate steps to return to their home country, which they once left for a better life for them and their families (Hashmi 2020).

This desperate decision to return home during a global pandemic highlights the precarious condition of a migrant worker. In an affluent yet foreign city, where the status of a migrant worker precludes access to many provisions of a basic safety net, survival is impossible. Home, however poor and problem-stricken, will take them in. In reality this has proved challenging since most sending countries struggle to take back a large number of people from disparate geographical regions. Societies also fear the spread of the virus through the returning migrants (Liao 2020; The World Bank Group 2020). A strong unwelcoming backlash often has created a hostile environment for migrants returning home. Overnight, the term 'man power' or 'remittance senders' becomes empty: in host countries, the migrant workers' status as labourers has become precarious; consequently, their status as remittance senders in their own countries suffers. Some European countries such as Germany and Italy have temporarily changed their labour laws for asylum seekers, immigrants without jobs or papers, allowing them to work in agriculture industries which suffered from a labour crises because of the virus (InfoMigrants 2020). While welcoming, concerns are raised that such measures once again push already vulnerable migrants to the forefront of pandemic-stricken countries' economic rebuilding (D'Ignoti 2020). These issues are only unfolding, and the future of migrant workers seems uncertain.

Singapore (the focus for this paper) and its relation to low-skilled migrant workers becomes more murky and complicated in this pandemic. In the early months of the pandemic, Singapore appeared as a global role model to tackle the spread of the virus, with its robust testing system supported by a strong healthcare system (Heijman 2020). However, in April 2020 Singapore's second surge of the virus emerged from its migrant ghettos with over-crowded dormitories where low-skilled migrant workers typically live (Ratcliff 2020). Lawson and Elwood (2014) see unexpected contact zones of people of unequal social strata as an open-ended way to challenge the societal dominant perception of poverty as an individual failure. Rather more critical yet nuanced structural features that reproduce poverty and suffering often become apparent through such unusual encounters. The news and reports of migrant workers' suffering have created an opportunity for such encounters between the migrants and the wider Singaporean society. When the pandemic-hit dormitories became a topic of routine reporting, the grim photos of Singapore's migrant workers' living conditions have created a wave of shock across its civil communities. While Singapore's acute housing crisis and skyrocketing rent are common knowledge, the institutional neglect (Yea 2020) of migrants have become a topic of civil, political and media attention and discussion. A migrant male body with gloves and mask caged in a cramped room marks a critical transition from the hegemonic narrative of migrants as unknown abject figures to migrants suffering from longstanding policy-fed inequalities in an affluent country.

Being stuck in a strict lockdown, many migrants from Singapore have started using their personal social media pages such as the Facebook to express their emotions. The reciprocal nature of social media writing means that migrants could create a virtual community, sharing their collective thoughts on their everyday life. Migrants' own narratives have become even more important during the pandemic when they are turned into topics of national debates and discussions. Sharif Uddin--one of the poets/writers considered in this piece--writes from Singapore:

Lying on bunk, see nothing but a piece of sky boxed up by the window.

I store all my troubles in that bit of sky.

I am afraid that it will shatter/when I can no longer bear the burdens of my suffering! (Lim 2020)

The prison metaphor in his lines is a living experience for him and many others. This sense of being caged in an invisible prison runs through the words of the writers written even before the pandemic, as being discussed in the later part of the essay. Some discussions on Bangladeshi migrants in Singapore and the role of culture in Singapore's policy of community integration will provide the wider contexts within which the creative works need to be located and interpreted.

Bangladeshi Migrants in Singapore

The migratory relationship between Bangladesh and Singapore mirrors what Rahman calls, 'South-south migration' with three key attributes: "it is regional in geographical scope, temporary in duration, and single in terms of migration category" (2017:1). As globalisation and development within Asia speeded up in the late 20th century, gaining a momentum in the 21st century, countries closer to Bangladesh such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei have turned into key destinations of the temporary migrants mostly from rural Bangladesh. Men and increasingly women from different parts of rural Bangladesh take labour migration as a strategy to change their individual fortune, and to take their families out of the poverty zone, unlike the educated communities of big metropolis who often take migration as a lifestyle choice or to settle in a different country permanently. The chance to alleviate poverty through migration is certainly one of the push factors for labour migration. As labour migration typically takes place in particular clusters of rural communities (Siddiqui 2003; Mahbub 2017), the material changes in migrants' households become an obvious status symbol, incentivising young males and often females and their families to choose migration as an option to change the family's wheel of fortune. Siddiqui et al.'s report (2018) illustrate that the percentages of families living in poverty dropped from 10.35% to 9.6% from 2014 to 2017 based on the single fact of labour migration from these families. Within the overall growth of consumption in rural Bangladesh in this period, migrant households occupy the top position with 30% growth. Thus, like previous flows of migration from Bangladesh to European countries such as Britain (Gardner 1992), labour migration from rural Bangladesh to an affluent Asian country like Singapore is perceived to be an important way to move out of poverty and to attain some sort of financial security.

Singapore has a hierarchical and tiered migration system: roughly divided between migrant elites and migrant workers, where most Bangladeshis fall within the second category. Within the non-professional workers category, there are internal hierarchies. For example, the 'S' pass holders mid-level personnel (minimum earning $2200/month) are permitted to bring their families if the income level increases to $4000/month. By contrast, the work permit pass-holder workers do not have the right to bring their families. This category includes temporary migrant workers for industrial sectors and female domestic workers for household. The visas are obtained for two years, and the renewal largely depends on the status and demand of the jobs. A migrant worker can stay in Singapore for a maximum of 18 years (Mahbub...