Mobile Labour and Worker Resistance Strategies: A Study of Waste Collectors in Singapore

Abstract

Singapore stands as an exemplar for government-led initiatives to create a 'clean and green city'. However in the process of analysing the aesthetics of the urban landscape, few scholars have engaged with research on the lives of the (often forgotten) workers who make these changes possible. Prior conceptions of labour have viewed waged workers as passive factors of production, or a `pseudo-commodity?, with little ability for self-determination. However, the rise of labour organisations, and an increasing recognition of labour's ability to organise have brought about a paradigm shift that has seen labour reposition itself in a more assertive role in relation to the production process. As such, my work looks at the agency of mobile workers in relation to the structural constraints placed upon them. Focusing specifically on the resistance strategies employed by waste collectors, I seek to examine and analyse the practices and means through which the garbage collectors assert their agency in their daily conduct. Furthermore, I seek a deeper understanding of the nature of mobile work spaces, whereby spaces of production/employment have become more spatially fluid, as compared to regular desk-bound employment. Most importantly, I seek to elucidate a greater understanding of how the emergence of mobile work, with its attendant new work-spaces and work-scales, present new opportunities or constraints on the ability of workers to assert their individual and/or collective agency.