¹ This concept of migrant labor in Singapore is not new. In 1995, Lee Hsien Loong, before he became prime minister, stated that foreign workers could rapidly expand the workforce so that Singaporeans could take advantage of “growth opportunities.” Lee predicted that, while foreign workers would be an unqualified boon for capital, on the other hand, the influx of migrants could limit wage increases for Singaporeans working in the same sectors. However, in a recession, foreign workers could be expelled in order to create an “outflow” to buffer adverse impacts on Singaporean workers. Hui Yang, Peidong Yang, and Shaohua Zhan, “Immigration, population, and foreign workforce in Singapore: An overview of trends, policies, and issues,” HSSE Online 6.1 (2017). For a brief overview of the stratification of work permits/passes in Singapore, see “Work passes and permits,” Ministry of Manpower, December 17, 2018.

² Upneet Kaur-Nagpal, “Poets on Permits – a documentary on migrant workers + poets in Singapore,” Uptake Media, December 10, 2016.

³ The approach that I employ in this article draws on two works on working-class literature after the dissolution of the USSR. Sonali Perera's No country: Working-class writing in the age of globalization (2014) conceptualizes working-class writing as a social formation. Perera reworks concepts developed by Raymond Williams, Michael Denning, and Terry Eagleton to describe proletarian writing as “a strategic alliance of workers, writers, readers, and political activists who came together in formal and informal settings” (78). By viewing proletarian literature outside of the usual bounds of the 1920s and 1930s and the parties of the USSR, Great Britain, and the US, Perera is able to draw insights about a working-class literary tradition that includes the Dabindu collective, which consists of activists and garment factory workers who have migrated to free trade zones in Sri Lanka. The other work, Neferti Tadiar's Things fall away (2009), attempts to identify features of shared subjectivities in workers' and revolutionary literature in the Philippines and the Filipino diaspora. In particular, I draw inspiration from Tadiar's attention to the creative activities of workers that point to post-capitalist social relations.

⁴ His bio for the 2015 competition states that he was 28 at the time. “Shortlisted poets and their work – 2015,” Migrant Worker Poetry Competition, n.d. The translations for the 2015 competition from Bengali to English were made by Gopika Jadeja and Debobrata Basu, with input from Souradip Bhattacharya. “Results 2015,” Migrant Worker Poetry Competition, n.d.

⁵ “Shortlisted poets and their work – 2015.”

⁶ I am reproducing exactly the translated poems that were published on the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition web site.

⁷ I have had difficulty finding ethnographic research on affect among Bangladeshi migrants in Singapore, although articulations of guilt are quite common in the poems. See, for instance, Zakir Hossain Khokan's explanation for the poems he submitted to the first competition in “Dear Abbu,” MyVoice@Home. For affective dimensions of Bangladeshi migration in other locations, see Natacha Stevanovich, Remittances and Moral Economies of Bangladeshi New York Immigrants in Light of the Economic Crisis (Diss. Columbia University, 2018), and Francesco Della Puppa, “Ambivalences of the emotional logics of migration and family reunification emotions, experiences and aspirations of Bangladeshi husbands and wives in Italy,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, November 2016. On a neoliberal state's involvement in creating the affective conditions of migration, see Robyn Rodriguez, Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World, 2010. Recall also that Balista addressed her poem to the children of foreign domestic workers, and her request for them to remember that their parents feel sad and are suffering perhaps arises from guilt that parents feel when they leave their children.

⁸ Shromik Monir, “You are my poetry,” Migrant Worker Poetry Competition, n.d. Translations from Bengali to English for the 2016 competition were made by Anindita Dasgupta and Shivaji Das.

⁹ “Jibanananda Das: Defining 20^th century Bengali poetry,” The Daily Star, November 11, 2013.

¹⁰ “2014 winners,” Migrant Worker Poetry Competition, n.d. Gopika Jadeja with Debabrata Basu, Shivaji Das, and Souradip Bhattacharya translated from Bengali to English.

¹¹ “Shortlisted poets and their work – 2015.”

¹² “Societies Act,” Singapore Statutes Online, February 28, 2014.

¹³ Jack Tsen-Ta Lee, “The past, present and future of the Internal Security Act,” Singapore Public Law, June 5, 2012. Despite the repressive character of these acts, Singapore's record of human rights abuses against political activists is not nearly as horrific as that of several of the sending states for migrant workers such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, each of which have committed large-scale political killings, massacres, forced disappearances, and other forms of militarized political repression.

¹⁴ Lee

¹⁵ Nicola Piper, “Country Study: Singapore,” Migrant Labor in Southeast Asia. n.d.

¹⁶ Zuraidah Ibrahim, “Who's looking out for maids here?” Straits Times, July 27, 2002.

¹⁷ Although AWARE has focused mostly on local Singaporean women and TWC2 on migrant women, AWARE has continued to provide some support to TWC2's campaigns. However, the two organizations have strategically separated as TWC2 faces greater threat of political repression. According to Lenore Lyons, “the establishment of TWC2 was a means to test the OB markers without jeopardizing AWARE.” Lenore Lyons, “Dignity overdue: Women's rights activism in support of foreign domestic workers in Singapore,” University of Wollongong Research Online, 2007.

¹⁸ “Who eats with the Cuff Road Project and why?” TWC2, Feb 16, 2013. Data collected by TWC2 for a four-week period in 2012 shows that a large majority of the recipients of meals from the Cuff Road Project were Bangladeshi men who had filed injury claims. Between September 2015 and February 2016, 1,298 men benefitted from the meals. “The Cuff Road Project: How many men? How many meals?” TWC2, June 2, 2016.

¹⁹ Sabrina Toppa, “Migrant poets society,” Dhaka Tribune, November 26, 2014.

²⁰ Zakir Hussain Khokon, shortly after winning the 2014 competition, alludes to hostility that he perceived after the Little India incident: “After the riot, many Singaporeans think differently about us. We want to show that workers are not just go to work and go back to sleep. We also have creativity. We not only sweat, but we also make plays, short stories, poems.” Hong Xinyi, “Engaging migrant workers through art and adventure,” AP Migration, originally published in Channel News Asia, December 4, 2014. Subsequently, many commentators have framed the discussion of migrant worker poems as a response to the riot. See, for example, Richard Angus Whitehead's “‘this migrant soul enriches this earth’: Encounters with Migrant Bengali Poetry in Singapore,” June 13, 2016, and Md Sharif's poem “Little India Riot: Velu and a History,” which is reprinted in Whitehead's text.

²¹ “Perspectives: Shivaji Das, committee member of migrant worker poetry competition,” #WhyBeTowkayTan, February 1, 2016.

²² “2014 winners,” Migrant Worker Poetry Competition, n.d.

²³ Amelia Tan, “Maids get help to break out of poverty,” Straits Times, September 20, 2014.

²⁴ aidha, Annual Report 2017-2018, 2018.

²⁵ Shivaji Das, one of the main organizers of the competitions, stated that outreach for 2015 was routed through the following organizations: HOME and Healthserve for Chinese workers, TWC2 and Indonesia Family Network for Indonesians, Aidha and the Philippine Embassy for Filipinos, and Banglar Kantha for Bangladeshis. Das also credited the infrastructure of social media, and he named Facebook and Weibo in particular. “Singapore's migrant worker poets,” The Online Citizen, December 2, 2015.

²⁶ “Migrant Poetry Competition 2015: Bringing the conversation ahead by celebration and critique,” Change Thinker, December 17, 2015.

²⁷ “Shortlisted poets and their work – 2015.”

²⁸ aidha.

²⁹ “Shortlisted poets and their work – 2016.” Translations from Tagalog and Bisaya to English were made by Shane Carreon and Shivaji Das.

³⁰ Olivia Ho, “Maids who write prose and poetry,” Straits Times, November 21, 2017.

³¹ Pedja Stanisc, Fathin Ungku, and Aradhana Aravindan, “Singapore jails couple for starving Filipino domestic helper,” Reuters, March 27, 2017, and Selina Lum, “Couple's jail terms raised to 10 months for starving maid who lost 20kg,” Straits Times, September 15, 2017. Journalists' reports of testimony during the trial vindicate most of the details included in Espanola's poem, but the situation Gawidan faced was even more horrific. Her employers were initially sentenced to shorter jail terms and a fine, but the prosecution appealed to increase the jail terms to 10 months. Amir Hussain, “Maid who was underfed by her employers testifies that they watched her every move,” Straits Times, Dec 15, 2015.

³² Beh Lih Yi, “OFW takes 2nd place in literary contest for migrant workers in Singapore,” GMA News Online, December 4, 2017.

³³ Yi.

³⁴ “Societies Act,” Singapore Statutes Online, February 28, 2014.

³⁵ See Su-Mei Ooi, “Rethinking Linkage to the West: What Authoritarian Stability in Singapore Tells Us,” 2016, for an historical account of ways in which the People's Action Party has actively isolated its opposition from transnational support. On a recent application of the Societies Act, see Roderick Chia, “Democracy and Civil Society in Singapore: The Politics of Control,” 2012. The Registrar of Societies required the organization Singaporeans for Democracy to insert articles into its constitution that prohibited several forms of association and financial relationships with foreign persons, organizations, or parties.

³⁶ An expansion of the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition, the Global Migrant Festival, featured a web site which initially displayed over its main page the logo of the Embassy of the United States in Singapore. Visible behind the logo was the main page, which could be viewed without the logo by clicking on a box to close the logo image. It was as if the logo was a shield that acted as a barrier between a reader (who could be an official of the Singaporean state) and the web page itself. That page is no longer the main page for the festival, but the main page from the day when I viewed it, February 3, 2019, is visible through this link.

³⁷ First prize was SGD 500 in 2017, about USD 375, with second and third-place winners receiving smaller prizes. Stephanie DeLuca, “A woman wins Singapore's Migrant Worker Poetry Competition for the first time,” Melville House.

³⁸ “Migrant Worker Poetry Competition 2017,” U.S. Embassy in Singapore, December 3, 2017.

³⁹ Of course, the “success story” could also be a variation of the “economic miracle” discourse about Singapore. See Ooi.

⁴⁰ A series of articles in this journal, easily found by searching for the keyword “Spratly,” provides analysis and historical context for the conflict around the South China Sea.

⁴¹ Mayo Martin, “After poems, Singapore's migrant workers try their hand at doing a play,” Channel NewsAsia, December 2, 2017.

⁴² See Pratiwi Retnaningdyah, “‘We have voices, too’: Identity, community empowerment and Indonesian domestic workers' digital literary practices,” for the emergence of Sastri BMI (Indonesian migrant workers' literature). See Kilim Park, Kisah Sukses: Stories of Indonesian Migrant Worker Returnees Living in Greater Jakarta (Diss. University of British Columbia, 2018), for a discussion of creative work among Indonesian migrant workers both while they were abroad and after they returned to Indonesia. See Najib Kailani, “Forum Lingkar Pena and Muslim youth in contemporary Indonesia,” RIMA: Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs 46.1 (2012): 33-53, on Forum Lingkar Pena, an organization that supports a literary scene that spans Indonesia and the Indonesian labor diaspora.

⁴³ On the development of dagong literature in China see Wanning Sun, “Poetry of labour and (dis)articulation of class: China's worker-poets and the cultural politics of boundaries,” Journal of Contemporary China 21.78 (2012): 993-1010, “Workers and peasants as historical subjects: The formation of media cultures in China,” n.d, and “‘Northern Girls’: Cultural politics of agency and South China's migrant literature,” Asian Studies Review 38.2 (2014): 168-185. On a recently-published anthology of poems translated into English, see Megan Walsh, “China's migrant worker poetry,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus.

⁴⁴ Contrast also the situations of proletarian writing elsewhere and at different times in Asia. See, for instance, Heather Bowen-Struyk and Norma Field, “‘Art as a Weapon’: Japanese Proletarian Literature on the Centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, and Ruth Barraclough, “Tales of Seduction: Factory Girls in Korean Proletarian Literature,” positions: east asia cultures critique, 14.2 (Fall 2006): 345-371. Finally, for a wonderful account of proletarian and anarchist influences on literature, see Sunyoung Park's The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (2015).