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Diasporic subjects in the nation: Foreign domestic workers, the reach of law and civil society in Singapore

Transnational practices and networks of capital, labour, business and commodity markets, political movements and cultural flows are both the products of, and catalyst for, contemporary globalisation processes. In these spatially fluid times, what Faist calls “transnational social spaces” have emerged, “constituted by the various forms of resources or capital of migrants and spatially immobiles, on the one hand, and the regulations imposed by nation-states and various other opportunities and constraints, on the other; for example, including state-controlled immigration and refugee policies” (Faist, 1999, p. 40). Within this frame, “transnationalism” has attracted the attention of a wide range of social and political theorists. Some social science scholars have explored transnational connectivities in terms of the flows of people – undocumented migrant workers, refugees, asylum-seekers, business and professional elites, creative specialists, tourists – as well as the “contested politics of place-making, the social construction of power differentials, and the making of individual, group, national, and transnational identities, and their corresponding fields of difference” (Smith, 2001, p. 5). Indeed, hypermobility and the easy transgression of national borders in today’s globalising world may be liberating or emancipatory for some of the individuals involved, but may well subject others to constricting, repressive or exploitative social ideologies and policies, including those generated by the nation-state (both “sending” and “receiving”). This has stimulated interest in new notions of the relationship of rights and responsibilities between an individual, or group, and a particular nation-state, leading to work on new forms of citizenship (for example, dual citizenship, dual nationality, two-tier citizenship, and postnational membership), as well as new transnational frameworks for alliance-making and networking among social movements and non-governmental organisations coming together to assert pressure for social change spanning national boundaries (Law, 2002). In this rethinking of the ties between person and place, sociolegal scholars have also been interested in the “reach”, or impact of the law in a globalising world, and the “extent to which law regulates social and political life within and across borders, how law defines the experiences and treatment of diverse groups within societies, . . . and the significance of law in everyday life” in transnational social space (www.lawandsociety.org). Asian Studies Review March 2004, Vol. 28, pp. 7–23