ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses issues of marginalization in relation to low-wage migrants in Southeast Asia – examines Singapore specifically as a case study. It provides ongoing and previous fieldwork in Singapore with low-wage migrant workers in terms of the empirical material. In Asia, the link between urbanization/urban development and migration is evident both in processes of internal as well as international migration. The chapter explores how structured inequalities in Southeast Asian countries are expressed through three main apparatuses. The three main apparatuses are: bifurcation of labor policies and legal structures by the receiving state; debt bondage and direct or indirect wage management; and the controlled access available to low-wage migrants to seek resources under existing solutions aimed at improving their lives. A central factor mediating low-wage migrants and their unequal experiences in the urbanized centers of Southeast Asia is the construction of structured inequalities.
