ABSTRACT
This chapter argues the context of discipline and restraint, domestic workers' bodies act as a potential site of sexual transgression. Singapore, a city-state known for its productivity, efficiency and dramatic rise from 'third world to first' relies heavily on a significant foreign labor force. Using Ann Stoler's framework regarding the management of intimacy under colonial rule, the author show how Singapore as a postcolonial society has come to recreate many of the intimate anxieties of the colonial era Stoler describes. Postcolonial Singapore has demanded discipline and restraint of all of its citizens, including in the realm of sexuality, with some arguing that it has maintained, and even perfected, the regime of sexual regulation inherited from its colonial predecessors. Consequently, Singapore has come to rely heavily upon foreign domestic workers to fill the gap in domestic labor previously provided by Singaporean women who have increasingly entered the paid workforce since the 1970s.
