Conclusion and after-thoughts

Evaluation of Project

Our project was primarily targeted at working Singaporeans as well as those entering the workforce and involved raising awareness about the abuse and dehumanisation that migrant workers routinely experience in their employment and living spaces in Singapore. In doing so, we sought to stimulate productive discourse about the rights of migrant workers as well as to reduce prejudice and discrimination that migrant community are presently beset with.

As we approach the end of our campaign, a key area of interest would be to examine the effectiveness of our campaign in increasing the salience of issues faced by the migrant worker community in public discourse.

While our team did manage to facilitate retrospection about the dehumanisation faced by migrant workers among the targeted local workforce population, the scale of such productive discourse functioned was limited by the brevity of the project. Owing to the fact that much of the discussion and reflections that we managed to solicit was achieved during the two-day long random blends exhibition, its impact remains curtailed by the homogeneity of the exhibition's visitors (which largely consisted of university undergraduates and staff) and the restricted timespan by which responses were gathered from the exhibit's visitors.

In addition, a considerable amount of time is need to demonstrate the full-fledged effects of our project's efforts and to realise a significant shift in the predominantly prejudicial attitudes towards the migrant community.

Key Challenges faced

Throughout the various project phases, our team notably experienced challenges in the following areas:

1. Authenticity of participation

Certain salient issues (e.g. sexual and physical abuse experienced by foreign domestic workers) were not as thoroughly examined as a result of their potentially sensitive nature and due in part to confidentiality restrictions (information with the potential to disclose the true identities of interviewees and its repercussions on the interviewee's present job security and existing employer-employee relationships)

2. Extent of participatory approaches used

Ideally, as part of the culture-centred approach (CCA) employed in the project, the migrant community members should be actively involved in every phase of the project (i.e. problem identification, developing study protocol, conducting the study and data analysis). However, in the process of data collection and analysis, we found it challenging to adhere to the iterative nature of CCA and to regularly check back with the interviewees on the codes that we obtained through their interviewees and the issues of exploitation that we surfaced. We did however made a mental note to ensure the veracity of quotes and anecdotes used in the video production process.

3. Communication and language barriers

A large part (if not all) of our interviews were conducted in English and this proved to be a challenge for interviewees who did not have English as their native vernacular or who were not particularly comfortable or fluent in spoken English. Some of the emotive nuances could have been lost in translation as the migrant workers at times grappled with understanding key phrases in questions posed to them and in crafting coherent responses to these questions asked.

After-thoughts and future areas of focus

While abating prejudicial attitudes of the migrant community remains an integral component in alleviating their existing mariginalisation, such attitudinal shifts among members of the society should also be complemented by concrete legislative changes that would criminalise the exploitation of the migrant community. Future projects of a similar nature could perhaps directly engage employers of migrant workers as well as that of legislative lawmakers.

Effecting long-term social change is often complex and uncertain and requires the collaboration of many key stakeholders at play. Our project is but a stepping stone in cultivating a truly egalitarian and empathetic society where low-wage, foreign migrant workers are seen as unconditional equals and being accorded necessary human rights.