Materiality and the Lives of Singapore’s Bangladeshi Migrant Workers

Abstract

Money drives the narratives and life trajectories of Bangladeshi migrants who come to Singapore to work. They leave their families, borrow large sums of money, and pay thousands of dollars in agent fees to work strenuous jobs in Singapore in order to earn higher wages to support their families back home. This paper attempts to explore the relationship between these migrant workers and money with an approach delineated by Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory in which nonhumans like money, not just humans, have agency and are able to modify a given state of affairs as humans do. From interviews and observations, it is apparent that money is an important actor in the migrant workers’ lives, influencing their actions and subjectivities and participating in relations with the workers, their families, friends, fellow migrants, and their employers, The abstract nature of money renders it very versatile, not just in terms of the wide range of goods and services it can purchase, but also the manifold meanings it is associated with and the ways it modifies people’s behaviour and thinking. On top of the value attached to it due to its capacity as the universal mediator of value, money is also attributed with various meanings in different situations and contexts.