Sounds of Precarious Labour: Acoustic Regimes of Transient Workers
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal Holloway University of London
Department Name: Music
Abstract
This project investigates the sonic staking and regimenting of public, private and liminal spaces claimed by low-wage migrant workers in precarious labour. It focuses on unequal sonic and labour flows around the multicultural city-state of Singapore, where a Chinese-majority population draws heavily upon the resources of a primarily Muslim and lower-income region, particularly in domestic work and construction. This stark inequality has been exposed and exacerbated through the recent COVID pandemic, which has seen 'gold-standard' health-management protocols set up by the government upturned in a sudden and unexpected resurgence of infections among transient worker populations. At the heart COVID's second wave is the invisibilised and overlooked status of transient workers, whose (lack of) welfare - impacting overnight on the lives of all Singaporeans - has become a tipping point in a national-turned-global crisis and issue of public debate. Here, sounded worlds - particularly in electronic and virtual stakings of space, agency and identity amid harsh quarantined environments of packed hostels and employer-shared housing - have become ever more important recourses for migrants in safeguarding their voices, privacy and agency. Researching phenomena from earphone havens to social media singalongs to lockdown concerts and the acoustic disciplining of environments via language exclusion and sonic surveillance (eg maintenance of 'housework sounds' across the home), my project addresses multiple issues in urgent need of scrutiny.
My chief investigatory path targets sonic materialities, with an ocular-strategised approach to multisensorial ethnography that challenges the dominance of visually-determined narratives (Bull & Back 2003). In addition to the obvious (such as songs as therapeutic spaces), I look at the sonic regimenting of migrant communities through language control in homes, workplaces and public spaces, as well as affective soundscapes in places of sanctuary (mosques, churches, NGOs). I also consider musical imaginaries of worker-life on social media. I question debates on migration, cultural cleavage, civil society activism, technology and integration, and take an intersectional approach to analysing competing arcs of race, gender, religion, class, mobility and broader regional politics. Beyond the region, my findings will be relevant to all globally shifting societies where socio-economic inequalities borne of migratory changes and religious tensions loom. These asymmetries have been further intensified by COVID's uneven impact on the socialisation of private spaces and their sounded mappings. This intersectional approach pivots on sound studies (Steingo & Sykes 2019) and decolonised understandings of affective and marginalised labour through interrogating acoustic regimes, sonic havens and all ambivalent spaces in between. It explores interventionist strategies in building new pathways for structured listening and active (re)sounding, and makes transformative contributions towards thinking and policy-making on labour and equality in neglected aural realms whose critical reevaluation should not be overridden by blanket COVID challenges; rather, my research necessarily integrates active responses to the crisis.
Singapore as fieldsite has been chosen for its geopolitics: hailed as the culturo-economic broker for Southeast Asia, this wealthy city of third-and fourth-generation Chinese immigrants operates on asymmetrical exchanges of international resources. Here, notions of 'local' are often conflated with 'national' or 'cosmopolitan'. However, on the flipside of this globalism are ghost populations of low-paid migrant workers. My project gives voice to this invisibilised world and is integral to uncovering sounded counter-narratives of multiculturalism in Asia, where systemic inequalities have escalated the catastrophic impacts of COVID on (un)safe spaces (quarantined; surveiled; excluded; forcefully integrated).
My chief investigatory path targets sonic materialities, with an ocular-strategised approach to multisensorial ethnography that challenges the dominance of visually-determined narratives (Bull & Back 2003). In addition to the obvious (such as songs as therapeutic spaces), I look at the sonic regimenting of migrant communities through language control in homes, workplaces and public spaces, as well as affective soundscapes in places of sanctuary (mosques, churches, NGOs). I also consider musical imaginaries of worker-life on social media. I question debates on migration, cultural cleavage, civil society activism, technology and integration, and take an intersectional approach to analysing competing arcs of race, gender, religion, class, mobility and broader regional politics. Beyond the region, my findings will be relevant to all globally shifting societies where socio-economic inequalities borne of migratory changes and religious tensions loom. These asymmetries have been further intensified by COVID's uneven impact on the socialisation of private spaces and their sounded mappings. This intersectional approach pivots on sound studies (Steingo & Sykes 2019) and decolonised understandings of affective and marginalised labour through interrogating acoustic regimes, sonic havens and all ambivalent spaces in between. It explores interventionist strategies in building new pathways for structured listening and active (re)sounding, and makes transformative contributions towards thinking and policy-making on labour and equality in neglected aural realms whose critical reevaluation should not be overridden by blanket COVID challenges; rather, my research necessarily integrates active responses to the crisis.
Singapore as fieldsite has been chosen for its geopolitics: hailed as the culturo-economic broker for Southeast Asia, this wealthy city of third-and fourth-generation Chinese immigrants operates on asymmetrical exchanges of international resources. Here, notions of 'local' are often conflated with 'national' or 'cosmopolitan'. However, on the flipside of this globalism are ghost populations of low-paid migrant workers. My project gives voice to this invisibilised world and is integral to uncovering sounded counter-narratives of multiculturalism in Asia, where systemic inequalities have escalated the catastrophic impacts of COVID on (un)safe spaces (quarantined; surveiled; excluded; forcefully integrated).
People |
ORCID iD |
Shzr Tan (Principal Investigator / Fellow) |
Title | FAST Kitchen Percussion Band |
Description | Performance by the new FAST Kitchen Percussion Band (formed from workshops conducted on behalf of this project) for Hari Raya showcase, FAST on May 7 2023 |
Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Impact | - training of band participants in creative work/ music - increase in wellbeing of band participants |
Title | Song For Nur Listening Party |
Description | Fundraising Listening Party/ Concert for cancer patient and migrant worker Nur Roeg; Song For Nur campaign |
Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Impact | A turnout of 50 migrant workers and members of the Singapore public came to support the project in song, and also in support of Nur. We have raised £2000 to date for Nur Reog's healthcare expenses. |
Title | Soundscape Composition by Ghaliz Filkhair Haris |
Description | Soundscape composition based on found sound 'diary recordings' by Indonesian migrant workers in Southeast Asia, assembled in Berlin by Indonesian artist Ghaliz Filkhair Haris |
Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
Year Produced | 2023 |
Impact | Re-assessing of labour as affective, creative, musical and extrapolated in shifting contexts, rethinking of different Indonesian creative and transnational/ class identities through musical co-production. |
Description | 1. Acoustic disciplining of labour: the (re)structuring of lives, lifestyles and liminal spaces for identity- and community-making through the sounded environments of migrant workers in Southeast Asia. 2. Affective labour as affective leisure: this is seen for example in the (re)use of instruments of work (eg kitchen implements reformed for kitchen percussion bands) formerly identitifed as instruments of oppression, as instruments of creativity and self/ community expression. 3. Listening and silence as subversive acts: migrant workers actively negotiate these 'negative sonic spaces/ non-spaces' in deliberate agency via moments of non-engagement through non-speaking performed as 'non-understandings' in resistance and reclaiming of (non)space. 4. Intersectional solidarity rediscovered in neo/postcolonial margins afforded by the lowest common denominator of the English language as a a vehicle for intercultural communication between Indonesian, Filipina and Bangladeshi workers 5. Hacking of cheaper, 'back-channels' of technologies provided on higher-end platforms (paid for by employers' high-speed internet connections) for community use and communication 6. Recalibration of conversational and solidarity ethos in collaborative ethnography approaches between researchers and consultants |
Exploitation Route | 1. Reworking grounded theories and disciplinings of acoustic dimensions of (reluctant) labour and agency in work-completion 2. Redesigning care-oriented policies in facilitating different forms of labour in various regions around the world 3. Rethinking (and hacking) use of back-end social media technologies for vastly different demographics 4. Redrawing models for collaborative and dialogical research, as well as collaborative creativity |
Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Creative Economy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Education Leisure Activities including Sports Recreation and Tourism Government Democracy and Justice Culture Heritage Museums and Collections Other |
Description | 1. Feed forward into policy making on ASEAN and Southeast Asian labour governance structures via NGO consultations 2. Discernible improvement in wellbeing of various stakeholder communities in Indonesian, Filpina/x and Bangladeshi communities, as attested to in multiple social media (and broader) testimonies and spin-off creative projects (eg sound diaries, song stories and ongoing soundsofprecariouslabour.wordpress.com blog) |
First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Leisure Activities, including Sports, Recreation and Tourism,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
Impact Types | Cultural Societal Policy & public services |
Description | Influence on labour policy/ initiatives around wellbeing and labour contracts of migrant worker in interaction/engagement with acoustic regimes/ environments |
Geographic Reach | Asia |
Policy Influence Type | Contribution to new or improved professional practice |
Impact | - active and continual/sustained uptake of creative workshops (via Kitchen Percussion project) from migrant worker community upon formalisation of workshop frameworks released by FAST (funded by Ministry of Manpower) - active feedback and contributions from members of the public (with many expressing new attitudes towards migrant worker welfare in person, and also on social media) as a result of the Song For Nur campaign (which has raised so far more than £2000 from members of the public for Nur Reog's healthcare costs) - active change on support work around regulatory and documentation procedures around migrant worker transitions after a period of work to home countries, and also around migrant worker healthcare (change part-effected through ILO and Think Centre's recommendations and campaigns) |
Title | New approach to collaborative ethnography in the field |
Description | I am currently exploring community-based collaborative ethnography, by which my key study participants (migrant workers from Southeast Asia) are also given an (academic, and sometimes not) researcher's voice/ platform in the telling of their own stories, and asking of their own questions. This has led me to rethink the research process itself as a form of impact, and also to think about the (linguistic/ intellectual/ class-based/ cultural ) accessibility of publication platforms as well as language/writing style deployed. I am moving towards a more decolonial approach where the nature and choice of presentation style/formats in my research publications are geared towards the needs of primary stakeholders of study participants, who need to also be seen as researchers-actors-activists-educators in their own right, with their own agencies, and are also able to access and share the jointly worked-on research and findings. The choice of the Goethe-Institute platformed Nusasonic magazine, and the deliberate use of Wordpress community blog formats for shared editorship and jointly-authored uploads of research finding/ongoing queries/content have been strategic. My study consultants have all been credited as joint authors in two big projects listed on my publications list (to date), and I am exploring a similar collaborative ethnographic approach in alternative presentation styles in preparation for an anticipated monograph. Still, issues of inequality still persist with regards to the final destination/impacts of published research (on my own academic career, vis a vis the aspired future/alternative careers of individual migrant workers), and also in writing processes of jointly-produced projects in terms of unequal / limited time and labour allocations/ resources. Where I have tried to co-present research findings with joint authors, visa issues and limitations caused by work contracts (on the part of migrant worker collaborators) have posed a large number of challenges. |
Type Of Material | Model of mechanisms or symptoms - human |
Year Produced | 2022 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | A different, decolonial model for the framing of voices of study participants is being trialled here. My study participants have all expressed great pride on seeing their names on official and unofficial publications. However, the benefits/meanings derived from these publications are different for each participating party (whether myself, or individual and specific migrant worker co-authors) |
Description | Collaboration on Casework for specific individual, policy advice in scaled village campaign work, knowledge exchange |
Organisation | International Labour Organization (ILO) |
Country | Switzerland |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | 1. I am working with the International Labour Organisation (also in partnership with the Think Centre Singapore) on specific case work for a named Indonesian domestic migrant worker Nur Reog, who is in advanced stages of cancer. My research team are assisting in her transition from Singapore to Indonesia. We have launched fund-raising campaigns for her healthcare and relocation costs/ associated costs regarding loss of income to her family (Reog being primary income earner of her household). We are also looking at Nur's situation as a case study for developing recommendations on policy and good practice on state/public funded general healthcare provision for migrant workers in Southeast Asia, and also on transition arrangements. Additionally, my research has also fed into the ILO's strategic practices/ guidelines for re-orienting the public engagement role of music in communicating the situation of migrant workers, and also in fundraising. 2. My research on the acoustic regimentalisation of labour, as well as the therapeutic roles sounded environments/music play in the lives of migrant workers, has fed into the ILO's projects on continual education and awareness-raising among migrant domestic workers, the planning of well-being campaigns and initiatives for migrant workers, and also a rethinking/recalibration of private/professional boundaries in different workplaces impacted upon by sonic maneouvering, engineering and exclusion/inclusion. 3. I have developed extensive networks with migrant domestic workers in Singapore, a few key members of whom have, through my liaising, volunteered to be 'role models' in continual education and gender-awareness/ economic-awareness raising campaigns run by multiple village operatives across Indonesia by the ILO. |
Collaborator Contribution | 1. Assistance with case work around the specific individual of Nur Roeg (see above). Followups have already been made with regard to a care/advice team convened to be on hand in Indonesia awaiting Nur's return, arrangements for document transfer of medical and other records, relocation, briefings. 2. Provision of information, data and guidelines currently deployed by ILO officers on welfare/well-being and education-oriented projects with a view towards deploying these in my own research project |
Impact | - Identifying and training of new individuals in my research network for further career development in specific education campaigns run by the ILO - Specific casework for Nur Reog, and drawing of lessons from this experience to inform on future policy (this is also done in collaboration with The Think Centre) Collaboration is multidisciplinary, involving Music/ Performing Arts and Development Studies/ International Relations/Political Science |
Start Year | 2023 |
Description | Conference on Sounding Southeast Asian Networks (organised by PI on this project) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | This was an international symposium convened at RHUL Bedford Square campus to triage different research questions and approaches around the core project investigation on Southeast Asian migrantions and acoustic pathways. Details of the event are presented below: Organisers: Shzr Ee Tan (RHUL), in collaboration with Anglo Asiatic Arts & Heritage Alliance (AAAHA) As the world comes to terms with recovery from a pandemic whose effects remain exacerbated by existing structural inequalities across the world, we come together as a Southeast Asian (Plus) collective of liminally-spaced thinkers, writers, practitioners and activists, with a renewed commitment to making community together. We ask questions about what it means to be (separately, differently, and communally) Southeast Asian in a post- #BlackLivesMatter world. Here, the fabled term has now been given a new twist through "postwoke" sensibilities recalibrating race debates as Gen Z/climate/precarity debates. We ask what it means to be a Southeast Asian person/ally thinking about and actively making music/sound - or, simply - listening to the world and one another in shared CET/UTC/SEA time zones, where the affordances and connectivities of WhatsApp organising and social media have brought new meanings to intimate transnational conversations and soundwaves on "underground gossip networks." We pose questions of ourselves in relation to the hierarchised world of inter-ethnic solidarities and intergenerational conversations. We come together to identify and process our shared and conflicting/challenging experiences of curiosity, anxiety, hope, precarity, abundance, cynicism, trust, anger, empathy, and healing. We attempt to negotiate ways of being alone and of coming together. We hope to discover new ways of finding one another as people collectively invest in the thriving of post-migrant Southeast Asian sound communities. Over three workshops/sharing sessions and a performance lecture, we will rethink old and new tropes about Southeast Asian musical/sounded/listening traditions and communities in the UK and Europe. We will make reference to non-linear and overlapped historical migrations. We also celebrate key turning points (eg London's first Southeast Asian Arts Festival; Decolonial Frequencies initiative in Berlin), and commemorate ever-changing sonic memories (via old and new mediations from karaoke to radio and ABRSM, plus also good ol' family-lineaged storytelling). While we take stock of the past and present, we also think ahead about processes and structures of support, of capacity-building and renewal, and posit tentative suggestions for the unique offerings that Southeast Asian musicians/artists/allies/communities can pledge to not only a Southeast Asian cultural industry in the UK/Europe, but also broader community life in physical and spiritual places we call our transient or permanent homes. * This event is held under the auspices of the AHRC-funded research project, Sounds of Precarious Labour. PROGRAMME 9.30 am Coffee; welcome words 10.00 - 11.00 am Workshop 1 on Community/Capacity building and Intersectional Southeast Asian sounded/music networks BREAK 11 - 12 pm - ASIAN SNACKS! (and maybe some biscuits from Ye Olde England) 11.30 pm - 1 pm Workshop 2 - Paper presentations on Inter-Southeast Asian exchanges in Asia: Andita Aniarani (RHUL) Solomon Shiu (Oxford) Shzr Ee Tan (RHUL) LUNCH - 1 pm - 2.30 pm - CURRY PUFFS and ACHAR! 2.30 - 4 pm Workshop 3 - next steps on Historical, current and future trajectories: intergenerational exchanges; past experiences at London's first Southeast Asian Arts Festival; future paths BREAK 4 - 4.30 pm ASIAN SNACKS! (and maybe some biscuits from Ye Olde England) 4.30 - 5.30 pm Lecture-Performance by meLê yamomo and Johanes Santosa Pribadi Mo'ong 5.30 pm Closing Words 6 pm DINNER Participants: Andita Aniarani Hi Ching Lonán Ó Briain Tina K Ramnarine Johannes Santoso Pribadi Solomon Shiu Shzr Ee Tan meLê yamomo Sarnt Utamachote Kamolnun Ruddit |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
URL | https://royalholloway.ac.uk/research-and-teaching/departments-and-schools/music/events/workshop-soun... |
Description | Conference paper on the sounded lives of migrant workers, ICTM and IASPM Conference, Malaysia |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Sharing of research and migrant worker listening habits and community action networks, which led to questions on scope and reach of migrant participation, which led to similar deployment of technological affordances used by migrant workers to 'hack' technological pathways. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Cultural Heritage & Partnerships Day at RHUL |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | I presented work on acoustic regimes of labour in Southeast Asia, and different schematics/ models for collaborative co-created research. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cultural-and-heritage-partnerships-day-at-royal-holloway-tickets-7736... |
Description | Curated Panel at British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference (organised by PI on this project) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | A specialist panel on migration, Southeast Asian sonorities was organised on behalf of the Project theme and presented at the British Forum for Ethnomusicology's Annual Conference in April 2023. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
URL | https://docplayer.net/235152147-Bfe-annual-conference-2023-music-and-movement-13-th-16-th-april-univ... |
Description | Field Trip and Guided Experience at the Singapore Art Museum |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Guided Field Trip and Sonic/ Immersive Experience with Curator Yuen Chee Wai and Cheryl Ong, with members of the Singapore Art Museum, March 6 an March 21, 2022 |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Interviews at YM Gallery Mar - May 2022 |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Interviews and video recordings/ representations of stories from Migrant Workers in Singapore |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Kitchen Percussion Workshop |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Kitchen percussion improvisation workshop conducted with core group of 10 performers, with multiple video clips of short performance and followup virtual submissions shared widely on social media across Singaporean, Indonesian and Filipino networks (within Singapore, and wider Southeast Asia) |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Presentation on Narrowcasting in the Migrant worker worlds, SOAS Research Seminar Series |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Schools |
Results and Impact | Presentation was held at SOAS Research Seminar series attended by 50 - 100 students/ staff, which sparked questions on migrant labour and digital platforms. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Presentation on migrant worker soundscapes for CTM Festival, Berlin |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Talk on acoustic lives of migrant workers for the CTM Festival Berlin |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Scholar of the Month - presentation on Radical Aunties and Transient Workers for Gender Institute |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Other audiences |
Results and Impact | Presentation on Transient Workers and Radical Aunties for Royal Holloway Gender Institute and external parties |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
Description | Talk on Acoustic Lives of Migrant Labour, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
Results and Impact | Lecture-presentation on the sounded lives of migrant workers for the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
Description | Weekly Kitchen Percussion Workshops (in-person/online/hybrid) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
Results and Impact | We have been convening weekly hybrid workshops on kitchen percussion on the basis of three in-person intensive starter sessions in Feb/ Mar 2023. The workshops test the idea of affective labour as affective leisure, whereby domestic migrant workers use the tools of their labour (kitchen utensils) to create short rhythmic and musical presentations, and rethink the work-as-play dynamics. The workshops have created therapeutic spaces for workers, but also allowed for a re-understanding and re-appreciation of the labours undertaken by the workers, and understandings of how sonic environments impact on their daily and wider lives. Interim presentations of each workshop are recorded and shared widely (with relatives of the workers in Indonesia) on a private social networks on WhatsApp and Facebook. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |