3 - Skill as Product and Instrument: Shaping Labour Migration and Precarity

Precarity and migration-driven diversification are co-produced through the neoliberalization of markets and migration regimes (Ye, 2023). The quest to maintain their knowledge-based economy across Asian cities has been fortified by labour migration. The management of labour migration has resulted in an array of work visas with varied conditions, largely differentiated by skills and income levels. In Singapore, the most recent visa introduced is the Overseas Network and Enterprise Pass (ONE Pass) that, amongst other high-income workers, aims to attract migrant practitioners in the arts. This is reflective of the parallel development of the arts industry in Singapore, that has been targeted as a growth engine for economic development as well in recent decades. It has also been well-documented that creative work is often precarious, where labour conditions are unstable and flexibilised (Banks, 2010). Indeed, much of the ongoing migration-driven diversification of the labour market is underlined by parallel insecurity and vulnerability. The concept of skill does a lot of heavy-lifting, politically (Iskander, 2021), by enabling the differential inclusion of migrants. Through the language of the market, the politics of skill is neutralized even as it rationalizes precarity. Drawing upon qualitative methods of semi-structured interviews with migrant animators to Singapore, this paper addresses how skill is both the product and the instrument that shapes the subjectivity of the creative labour migrant and precarity.

Co-Author 1
Junjia Ye (single-authored paper)